By the 1960s, Chicano/a identity was consolidating around several key political positions: rejecting assimilation into Anglo-American society, resisting systemic racism and the American nation-state, and affirming the need to create alliances with other oppressed ethnic groups and Third World peoples. Political liberation was a founding principle of Chicano nationalism, which called for the creation of a Chicano/a subject whose political identity was separate from the U.S. nation-state, which Chicanos recognized had impoverished, oppressed, and destroyed their people and communities. Alberto Varon writes that, while Chicano nationalism "created enduring social improvement for the lives of Mexican Americans and others" through political action, this brand of Chicano nationalism privileged the machismo subject in its calls for political resistance, which has since been critiqued by Chicana feminism.