Sometimes we also find a tendency to view everything that's indigenous as good and anything "European"-such as Spain-as evil. That view overlooks suc… - Elizabeth Martínez

When I worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC from 1961 to 1968, first as a volunteer and then as full-time staff, it seemed perfectly natural. If a person wanted to spend her life tearing down the prison called White Supremacy, what better place to go than the Black movement? And proudly, too. It took a few years to wonder, how does a person who isn't white-but not Black either-fit into the color scheme of this color-obsessed society? After a while, some unexplored Mexican spirit inside, and the changing times outside, drew me to the Southwest, where I had never been. It had its own prison of White Supremacy. But the two prisons were really one, and the fight was really one, and a perfectly natural voice said: Let us tear down all prisons together. Amen.

The history and problems of La Chicana are similar to those of Latin-American women. Although the native Indian women of the Americas was, before the Spanish conquest, far from being completely free, she often participated more fully in the life of the society than did her sister under Spanish rule. The coming of the European, with his Catholic Church and feudal social system, was a turning point. Our roots lie in the act of rape: the rape of women, the rape of an entire continent and its people.

The very concept of collective responsibility for human well-being is under attack by neo-liberalism all over the world.