La Hermandad and Chicanas Organizing: The Community Rhetoric of the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional Organization

Abstract

To address the need for situated accounts of community rhetoric, this article examines the legacy of the first Chicana feminist organization, the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional (CFMN). The CFMN and their archival collection provid[ed] Chicanas an education about how to interpret, be and act in the world. To invent a rhetorical identity, and an organization that makes change, the CFMN 1) invoked a remembering of a Chicana history of policy making to incite other Chicanas into political action; and 2) strategically drew on the use of the Chicana concept of “La Hermandad” to define a particular Chicana method of collectivity.