ABSTRACT
As Spain prepares to celebrate the quincentenary of ‘the discovery’ in 1992 contemporary Chicanas have been deliberating on the force of significations of that event. It took almost 400 years for the territory that today we call Mexico to acquire a cohesive national identity and sovereignty. Centuries passed before the majority of the inhabitants were able to call themselves Mexican citizens. As a result, on the Mexican side of the hyphen in the designation Mexican-American, Chicanas rethink their involvement in Mexico’s turbulent colonial and postcolonial history, while also reconsidering, on the American side, their involvement in the capitalist neocolonization of the population of Mexican descent in the United States (Barrera et al, 1972).
