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The term "Aztlán" redefines space. Its discursive configurations, ranging from ancient mythology to land annexation, are engaged repeatedly in Chicano cultural studies and Chicana feminist practices. From the "manifesto" of the nationalist Chicano movement to the radical feminist perspectives in Cherrie Moraga's queer configurations of space and bodies,1 the genealogy of Aztlán affects cultural identity, shaping the ongoing modifications - and sometimes, commodifications - of the collectivity. According to myth, Aztlán is the ancestral homeland in the north that the Aztecs left in 1168 when they journeyed southward to found the promised land, Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), in 1325.
Many Chicanas and Chícanos, in locating the US Southwest as the geographical site of this pre-Hispanic homeland, claim that they are descendente of OMn Tonatiuh (the Náhuatl name for the Fifth Sun). As Armando B. Rendón explains, the Fifth Sun "is the very foundation of life, of spirituality, not in the restricted sense of an organized religion but in the nature of a common bond among all soul creatures."2 Aztlán thus represents the spiritual power of unity among a people who see in their common preHispanic heritage and indigenous past a source of cultural affirmation in the present. For Chicano nationalists, Aztlán's spiritual reality helps combat racism and exploitation, while its physical reality justifies contemporary efforts to reclaim this lost land. Gloria Anzaldua conceptualizes Aztlán in more complex terms as an in-between place, coinciding with the physical and metaphysical space of the US-Mexico border. The border is the place where the First and Third Worlds meet in a head-on confrontation: it is "where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds."3
This study begins with a brief analysis of Aztlán's historical conception as the Chicano homeland. In the second section of my study, I look at the possibilities of visual and performance art, discussing the way in which mestizaje is intertwined with Aztlán's geopolitical origin and the "native" body. This shifting conceptual framework moves Aztlán's spatiality and mythical subjectivity beyond Chicano nationalism into a more liberated realm in which the Chicana-mestiza body functions as the central structure. Generally speaking, I discuss the work of Chicana artists and scholars dealing with the idea of mestizaje and the intercultural body. In the last part, I examine Cherrie Moraga's...