From the November-December 2015 issue of News & Letters

I have been enjoying your paper and especially its coverage of Latin America. Your prison coverage is also welcoming. My idea is that News & Letters include some coverage of the Chican@ nation. It is almost as if Chican@s do not exist because hardly any publications by the U.S. Left ever give coverage. This must change.

Dialectics is not just for whites or Blacks in U.S. borders. Your paper covers and applies dialectics to the Black struggle, but perhaps News & Letters should dig deeper and bring Dunayevskaya’s thought up to date and apply her thinking to the Chican@ struggle. Is this possible?

Chican@ people are the fastest growing segment of oppressed nations inside U.S. borders, yet few groups ever dig their analysis out of the 1950s; but the social reality and social forces in U.S. borders do not look the same. Marx taught us that nothing stays the same, and yet people’s analyses of Chican@s do not reflect this.

The Raza needs theory—a theory which includes the struggles within U.S. borders today, not simply a theory which shows them how to support other people’s struggles. Of course we all have the same oppressor, but there are issues that are unique to our existence, which we need to learn in order to overcome. Nationalism of the oppressed is applied Internationalism after all.

I look forward to seeing News & Letters grow and develop its analysis on the contemporary Chican@ nation. La Lucha Sigue!

One thing people could do is order this new book which gives a glimpse of today’s Chican@ struggle: Chicano Power and the Struggle for Aztlán at: www.prisoncensorship.info/chicanopower, written by Chican@ prisoners.

—Jose