ChicanoFest 2023: The Deportation of Cholos and the Reproduction of an American Identity in Guadalajara

• In Event: Beyond Empire: Latinidades, Borders, and the Unmaking of US Exceptionalism

Abstract

In Mexico, deportees are discriminated in general and cholos are criminalized in particular. Perhaps for this reason, they often find each other and continue to keep alive their American identity. In Guadalajara the growing community of cholos has established car clubs and tattoo shops that specialize in a Chicano and cholo aesthetic. This paper explores how cholos who grew up in California and were deported after serving prison sentences are reproducing their Mexican American identity—as cholos and Chicanos. In May 2023 the cholo community organized ChicanoFest and brought together universities, call centers, non-profits, deportees and returnees, and Mexican co-nationals who had never migrated. At ChicanoFest 2023 there was (sanctioned) cruising down a main street that culminated in a low rider car show at a public park before eventually moving to the parking lot of a call center—a large employer of deportees. There was food, music, spoken word, and performances as well as academic and artistic panels on the topic of deportation and coerced return. Using human geography and performance studies, this paper explores how US-based identities are reproduced in Mexico. These deportees are reproducing specific gendered and regional identities—cholos and Chicanos—to continue to claim their US identities in Mexico. I argue that cholos mobilize their cultural practices and aesthetics to build community with each other and with Mexican co-nationals. And, that they are also trying to learn from other deportees’ and returnees’ experiences in order build alliances across a variety of differences. As cholos and Chicanos, deportees and returnees are expelled from the United States, the lives they are building in Mexico are directly related to their lives as undocumented Americans.

Author

• Perla M Guerrero, University of Maryland-College Park