UNM Chicana/o Studies

The Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at the University of New Mexico is an interdisciplinary program. The purpose of the department is to promote a critical understanding of Chicano/Hispano/Mexicano communities through teaching, research, and advocacy. Since our program resides at the flagship institution of the state that has the largest percentage of Hispanics in the country, this mission is integral to furthering the understanding of New Mexico’s present and the nation’s future.

Chicana and Chicano Studies accomplishes its mission by offering an undergraduate minor, promoting research, and establishing community partnerships. Curriculum and community engagement efforts focus on three areas:

  1. Chicana/o cultural studies
  2. Politics and social justice
  3. The transnational U.S.-Mexico experience

The program offers courses on gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, arts and culture, political and social mobilization, immigration and citizenship, history and heritage, land grant studies, Chicana feminism, and queer studies. We address our three areas through a curriculum taught in both English and Spanish and maintain a regional and transnational focus on New Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, and Mexico. We view our partnerships with community and student organizations as central to our academic mission and our objectives for student learning.

 UNM Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement and Call for Continuing Dialogue on Stopping Sexual Violence

We stand by and support all survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, including Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas, and Dolores Huerta, who are survivors of sexual violence perpetrated by César Chávez. We acknowledge and support all survivors of sexual violence, who have or have not shared their experiences publicly. Our solidarity goes out to all who have experienced abuse and assault. Abuse in all its forms needs to be addressed in our communities, especially in educational spaces. 
The abuse perpetrated by César Chávez is the same sexual violence that women and children in immigration detention suffer, the same sexual violence that terrorizes the people in Gaza, the same sexual violence that girls in the Epstein files experienced. Sexual violence is a system and mechanism of power that depends upon the widespread dehumanization of women and children; it is a deeply embedded system of power pervasive across all social institutions and organizations in the US and globally. Deplorable and serial acts of sexual assault against women and children remind us of the vicious and cruel actions of individuals and nation states in the fields, factories, war zones, and in homes by powerful actors, be they leaders of social justice movements or an entire nation-state military apparatus. The ongoing attacks on women, men, and children in the Middle East, by the global Epstein network, in ICE detention centers and border surveillance zones, the missing and murdered Indigenous women, the femicide in Mexico, and sexual abuse in Chicanx and Latinx organizations has triggered all victims of sexual violence and they all necessitate our care, consideration, and support.  
As a department, we will discuss the implications of the news of César Chávez’s sexual abuse of women and children in all our programs, services, and curriculum.  We are also removing all images and references to Chávez in our department. We want to ensure that within our classrooms and spaces of learning we recognize sexual violence as a system of power, and we will confront the corruption of people  who engage in this abusive mechanism of power. We will also confront the shortcomings and limitations of histories that center one man as the great hero of collective social movements. We believe that the recognition of sexual and gender-based violence should be vital to our educational activities. We commit to continually informing our understanding, behaviors, and values in nurturing a healthy, just, and dignified environment for all. 
We need to develop a full perspective of ending sexual and physical violence. This requires time, actions, and reflections. We need to add to our questions and ideas so that as a community we can dismantle the structures and transform the processes that uphold this harm. These are some of our initial questions with the aim of promoting ongoing dialogue and actions for the safety and well-being for women and for the most vulnerable of our communities. 
  •   As we move forward, how do we best support each other, especially those who have experienced sexual violence? 
  •       What are the systemic conditions that perpetuate sexual violence? 
  •       How do we create mechanisms of accountability and justice that end cycles of violence?  
  •       How do we prepare women and children to exercise bodily and spirit autonomy in all spaces and places? 
We commit to discussing ideas on how to move this painful but necessary conversation forward. 
If you or anyone you know is a victim of sexual violence, there are resources to support you on campus, in Albuquerque, and statewide.