Gloria E. Anzaldúa in the context of Cherríe Moraga

Mestizo is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed Spanish and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European, even though their ancestors were Indigenous Americans. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification. With the Bourbon reforms and the independence of the Americas, the caste system disappeared and terms like "mestizo" fell in popularity.

The noun mestizaje, derived from the adjective mestizo, is a term for racial mixing that did not come into usage until the 20th century; it was not a colonial-era term. In the modern era, mestizaje is used by scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa as a synonym for miscegenation, with positive connotations.

The Coyolxauhqui imperative is a theory named after the Aztec goddess of the moon Coyolxauhqui to explain an ongoing and lifelong process of healing from events which fragment, dismember, or deeply wound the self spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. The imperative is the need to look at the wounds, understand how the self has been fragmented, and then reconstruct or remake the self in a new way. Repeatedly enacting this process is done in the search for wholeness or integration. The concept was developed by queer Chicana feminist Gloria E. Anzaldúa.

Scholars have applied her theory in varying contexts, such as in the need for educational institutions to recognize their responsibility to serving marginalized students; to look at the wounds they have caused so that they can reconstruct themselves in ways which promote holistic healing for students of color. The theory has also been applied in regard to identity, by uncovering aspects of the self that have been buried as a result of colonialism, and then reconstructing the self by looking at the complexity of the wounds and recognizing the fluidity and interconnectedness of the whole. The theory is recognized as one of Anzaldúa's central contributions to Chicana feminist theory, along with Nepantla, spiritual activism, and new tribalism.

New tribalism is a theory by queer Chicana feminist Gloria E. Anzaldúa to disrupt the matrix of imposed identity categories that the hegemonic culture imposes on people in order to maintain its power and authority. Anzaldúa states that she "appropriated" and reused the term from David Rieff, who had "used it to criticize [her] for being 'a professional Aztec' and for what he saw as [her] naive and nostalgic return to Indigenous roots." Rieff stated that Anzaldúa should "think a little less about race and a little more about class." In response, Anzaldúa developed the concept in order to form an inclusive social identity that "motivates subordinated communities to work together in coalition."

New tribalism has been referred to as "a provocative alternative to both assimilation and separatism" by building identity on affinity-based terms which keeps the formation of alliances against oppression in mind. Anzaldúa also developed the theory in response to critics who referred to her imagining of mestizaje "as narrow nationalism or essentialism," and instead urges readers to think about existing categories differently so that new language may be repeatedly formed and reformed. Scholars acknowledge that this work may be uncomfortable, confusing, and chaotic, but argue that this cannot be a reason to abandon the path forward. Although developed from her own perspective, the theory was not created to only contextualize the Chicana or Latina experience.

Spiritual activism is a practice that brings together the otherworldly and inward-focused work of spirituality and the outwardly-focused work of activism (which focuses on the conditions of the material or physical world). Spiritual activism asserts that these two practices are inseparable and calls for a recognition that the binaries of inward/outward, spiritual/material, and personal/political all form part of a larger interconnected whole between and among all living things. In an essay on queer Chicana feminist and theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa's reflections on spiritual activist practice, AnaLouise Keating states that "spiritual activism is spirituality for social change, spirituality that posits a relational worldview and uses this holistic worldview to transform one's self and one's worlds."

Spiritual activism is most often described as being separate from organized religion or dogma, but rather as activism that is generally egalitarian, particularly in service for people who are oppressed or marginalized, as well as for the Earth and all living things. Numerous women of color scholars, especially Black womanists and Chicana feminists, have developed and written about spiritual activism in their work as a way of creating positive social change. The Jewish rabbi Avraham Weiss describes spiritual activism in similar terms, as a fundamental teaching from Torah, and the Christian scholar Robert McAfee Brown says it's necessary to "overcome the great fallacy" to bring about real change.