the land,” which is how they were typically labeled despite being U.S. citizens (122). This claim to ethnic and national identity allowed Chicanos to “rewrite their status as a conquered people” (115). As indigenous people, Chicanos refused the notion that they were foreigners or outsiders, positioning themselves as inherent to the territories that constitute the United States. Mendoza’s installation alludes to the iconography used by the Chicano Movement to create their national culture. They sought to instill pride to counteract their oppression and associated Chicanos with symbols of physical strength, cunning, and prowess (111). They drew on the pre-Columbian aesthetics of the Aztec culture: headdresses, intricate calendar patterns, pyramids, eagles, snakes, and cacti. Like post-revolutionary Mexico, Chicano indigenismo invoked Aztec deities like Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and war. Fearless, determined, warrior-like, el Movimiento created an image of a people ready to battle against injustice. The power of this iconography is evident in the political posters created for the United Farmworkers (earlier referenced for their display of el Virgin de Guadalupe) from the 1960s to the 1980s. The UFW was closely associated with the Chicano Movement and worked to expose the cruel working conditions and miserable pay to which Mexican and Mexican American farm laborers were subjected. Xavier Viramontes’ 1973 silkscreen “Boycott Grapes” (Fig. 5) depicts a stern, dark-skinned Aztec god-like figure squeezing grapes that drip with the blood of farmworkers. The figure's skin color, indigenous facial features, and colorful headdress dispel the idea that farmworkers are foreigners who should be grateful for the opportunity to work in U.S. farmlands. Rather, farmworkers are associated with indigeneity that precedes the establishment of the United States, entitled to more for their foundational role in the Americas and present role in the U.S. economy. Arguably, the halo and rays emanating from the seven portraits of Immigrants Are Essential are reminiscent of the Aztec headdress in Viramontes’ silkscreen poster. If so, they allude to the indigeneity claims made by the Chicano Movement, which challenge the idea of the undocumented immigrant’s “foreignness” to the U.S. body. But there is also an important difference. The faces of the people depicted in the installation are not stern and confrontational like that of the Aztec warrior. Their faces are welcoming and smiling (potentially confrontational only because of the context in which they are displayed). Rather than invoke fiery, godlike authority, the headdresses in Mendoza’s portraits (framed by halos and loving adages) sanctify the presence of undocumented immigrants in terms of their indigeneity. The installations thus visually vindicate the very people anti-immigration advocates seek to delegitimate. The tone of the Immigrants Are Essential portraits are unquestionably different from UFW posters which were aimed at building a Chicano nationalism to counter Anglo-American nationalism. El Movimento, therefore, 18
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