INSURGENT AZTLÁN: THE LIBERATING POWER OF CULTURAL RESISTANCE

by Ernesto Mireles

Overview

Insurgent Aztlán The Liberating Power of Cultural Resistance reconstructs the relationship between social political insurgent theory and Xicano literature, film and myth. Based on decades of organizing experience and scholarly review of the writings of recognized observers and leaders of the process of national liberation movements, the author, Ernesto Todd Mireles, shares a remarkable work of scholarship that incorporates not only the essence of earlier resistance writing, but provides a new paradigm of liberation guidelines for the particular situation of Mexican Americans.
Mireles makes a solid case for addressing the decades-long decline of Mexican American identity within itself and broadly among sectors of American society by asserting the powerful role of culture and history, each value unable to exist without the other, in the preservation and political advancement of a people. In the case of Mexican Americans, which consists of an estimated 40 million people and boasts the highest birth rate in the U.S., they constitute "a nation within a nation."
The intellectual challenge, Mireles asserts, is connecting insurgent social political theory with the existing body of Xicano literature, film and myth. The organizing challenge is how to build an insurgent identity that fosters a "return to history" to build a consensus among Mexican Americans, who are a complex collective of culturally, educationally, politically, and economically diverse people, to reclaim their historical presence in the Americas and the world.
Insurgent Aztlán must be read by students from high school to graduate studies, their professors, organizers in the fields and factories, union shops, and urban community organizations, wherever Mexican Americans sense the need to re-evaluate their goals and aspirations for themselves and their families.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798317622558
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Dr. Ernesto Todd Mireles was born and raised in the 1970s-80s in Michigan, the northern reaches of the Xicano diaspora on la otra frontera (the Canadian border), which is geographically embedded in the territory of the Niswi Skoden Three Fires People. He witnessed firsthand how devastating to a region can be the loss of jobs from dependence on a single industry such as auto making.
Mireles grew up as a practicing Jehovah Witness and was introduced to organizing and field work at a very young age. His ideas about organizing within the Xicano community began to form in 1990, when he accepted the job training position at El Renacimiento, a monthly bilingual newspaper published in Lansing, Michigan. In 1992, Mireles entered Michigan State University and began a decade-long involvement with the Chicano youth group, Movimiento Estudiantil Xicano de Aztlán.
Since then, Mireles has worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers, United Steel Workers and the American Federation of Teachers. During these years, his ideas about organizing and anti-colonial struggle sharpened with the creation of the Xicano Development Center in Southwest Detroit. Mireles returned to Michigan State University where he earned his doctorate and inadvertently became a college professor.
Mireles lives with his family in Prescott, Arizona, where he teaches Xicano Studies and community organizing at Prescott College.