Pensamiento Serpentino

Pensamiento Serpentino (Serpentine Thought) is a poem by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez originally published by Cucaracha Publications, which was part of El Teatro Campesino, in 1973.

[1] The poem received national attention after it was illegally banned as part of the removal of Mexican American Studies Programs in Tucson Unified School District.

"[4] Scholar Sheila Marie Contreras states that the poem "brings together Christian and Mesoamerican religious symbolism" and that it serves as a model for liberation and education which challenges dominant cultural conventions.

[1] The poem cites Quetzalcoatl's "cyclical shedding of skin as a dominant motif to represent the rebirth and renewal of spiritual and material forces.

This would, in Valdez's view, provide a way for the Chicana/o people to "throw off the ideological yokes of European Catholicism and reclaim the Indigenous gods and goddesses displaced by Judeo-Christian monotheism.

/ I love and respect myself.A study by the American Educational Research Journal demonstrated that students who were in the classes of the MAS programs "performed better on state tests and graduated at higher rates."