Well, it seems that the gorge of buddy making in the so called blogostitlán is done and over with. Many of the bloggers that started out as a chain like minded club barely write anymore or stand out as islands these days with no direction in sight.
I did the rounds on the links I have and many wail that they don’t write anymore and there interests for things Aztlán is long gone. Long gone are also the questions that forced a label upon them and long gone are also the memories that usually permeated the posts of said bloggers.
Many failed to realize that Chicanos are too different from one another to really form any group and many failed to realize that their superordinate label ‘American’ supercedes any notion of Chicanismo in their lives. What I mean by this is that the fear of being labeled alien is stronger than the fashionable chicano, we all love the stars and stripes but even more, we fear the questioning of our americanism.
Many also fell into the trap of racism accusing chicano culture of being essentially racist. Terms such as raza, güero, gringo and other terms raza uses to discuss the Other became a point of contention amongst some bloggers that just wanted to question us rather than explore the origins of said terms or why we used them at all. Many backed off quickly and began recoiling at the idea that their chicanismo was a sort of racism in disguise. They quickly forgot that chicanos embrace all forms of races in its ens.
Others just simply wanted out because blogging requires incredible amounts of energies to pursue its goal, to write on a frequent basis.
Then there is a point of contention being boiled as we speak, what is the Xicano blogsphere? I, for example, prefer a more militant form of xicano blogging that stands in direct verbal confrontation with the Other. I prefer cholo xicano and older more akin to the culture of xicanismo I grew up with.
Then there is a more pocho culture that embraces both cultures more openly which tends to cause friction with the latter above mentioned. Then there are the new arrivals to Aztlán which lack any form of direct contact with Aztlán which tends to cause friction with the latter two mentioned.
Be that as it may while the Xicano blogsphere seems to have dwindled somewhat in some corners though in other corners it blossoms. There are many sites and blogs that bespeak of xicanismo in all sorts of form. It is spreading out and the singularity factor that dominated the birth of the Xicano blogsphere. Even the kind of xicanismo that I spouse seems to be coming out.
Though I have nothing against the xicanismo which embraces Aztec and Maya semiotics, at the present time I give more time to my own kind of Xicanismo, desert related xicanismo which has been but forgotten.