Raul Melgoza

Pilgrims, missions, homes, and butterflies hold a key place in the Chicanx cultural imaginary. A study of Chicanx expressive culture and social justice activism, this project explores these figures to speak to how Mexican Americans navigate the ways racialization and settlerness intersect under U.S. settler colonialism in the Southwest. Drawing attention to how the forces of capitalism, liberalism, and colonialism racialize Mexicans as incorporable settlers and excludable aliens, this project argues that Chicanx artists and activists reharness this status into a source of antiracist critique. It names this politicized aesthetics of force and motion within Chicanx cultural politics “Chicanx Kinetics,” highlighting these four figures as emblems for understanding the status of Chicanx settlerness.