Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States.
Chicano was a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was first reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco subculture. By the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed to express political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent (with many using the Nahuatl language).
Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Chicano Movement leaders expressed solidarity with the African political struggle and collaborated with the Black Power movement. Chicano youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance.
Prominent journalist Rubén Salazar defined a Chicano as "a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself
In Mexico's Indigenous regions, Indigenous people refer to members of the non-indigenous majority as mexicanos, referring to the modern nation of Mexico. Among themselves, the speaker identifies by their pueblo (village or tribal) identity, such as Mayan, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huastec, or any of the other hundreds of indigenous groups. A newly emigrated Nahuatl speaker in an urban center might have referred to his cultural relatives in this country, different from himself, as mexicanos, shortened to Chicanos or Xicanos.
