This book provides a long-needed overview of the Chicana and Chicano movement’s social history as it grew, flourished, and then slowly fragmented. The authors examine the movement’s origins in the 1960s and 1970s, showing how it evolved from a variety of organizations and activities united in their quest for basic equities for Mexican Americans in U.S. society. Within this matrix of agendas, objectives, strategies, approaches, ideologies, and identities, numerous electrifying moments stitched together the struggle for civil and human rights. Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez show how these convergences underscored tensions among diverse individuals and organizations at every level. Their narrative offers an assessment of U.S. society and the Mexican American community at a critical time, offering a unique understanding of its civic progress toward a more equitable social order.

"Creating Aztlâan interrogates the important role of Aztlâan in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture. Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being, author Dylan A. T. Miner (Mâetis) discusses the multiple roles that Aztlâan has played atvarious moments in time, engaging pre-colonial indigeneities, alongside colonial, modern, and contemporary Xicano responses to colonization"--

In the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United States’ national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano/a movement. Many Protestant Anglo Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In contrast, Californios—Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os—stressed deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage. Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.

During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of Aztlán, homeland of the ancient Aztecs, served as a unifying force in an emerging cultural renaissance. Does the term remain useful? This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán weighs its value. To encompass new developments in the discourse the editors have added six new essays.

One of the most famous leaders of the Chicano civil rights movement, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales was a multifaceted and charismatic, bigger-than-life hero who inspired his followers not only by taking direct political action but also by making eloquent speeches, writing incisive essays, and creating the kind of socially engaged poetry and drama that could be communicated easily through the barrios of Aztlán, populated by Chicanos in the United States. Gonzales is the author of I Am Joaquín , an epic poem of the Chicano movement that lives on in film, sound recording, and hundreds of anthologies. Gonzales and other Chicanos established the Crusade for Justice, a Denver-based civil rights organization, school, and community center, in 1966. The school, La Escuela Tlatelolco, lives on today almost four decades after its founding. In Message to Aztlán , Dr. Antonio Esquibel, Professor Emeritus of Metropolitan State College of Denver, has compiled the first collection of Gonzales diverse writings: the original I Am Joaquín (1976), along with a new Spanish translation, seven major speeches (1968-78); two plays, The Revolutionist and A Cross for Malcovio (1966-67); various poems written during the 1970s, and a selection of letters. These varied works demonstrate the evolution of Gonzales thought on human and civil rights. Any examination of the Chicano movement is incomplete without this volume. Eight pages of photographs accompany the text.

Texas, for years, was a one-party state controlled by white democrats. In 1962, a young eighteen-year-old heard the first rumblings of Chicano community organization in the barrios of Cristal. The rumor in the town was that five Mexican Americans were going to run for all five seats on the city council. But first, poor citizens had to find a way to pay the $1.75 poll tax. Money had to be raised—through bake sales of tamales, cake walks, and dances. So began the political activism of José Angel Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez's autobiography, The Making of a Chicano Militant, is the first insider's view of the important political and social events within the Mexican American communities in South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. A controversial and dynamic political figure during the height of the Chicano movement, Gutiérrez offers an absorbing personal account of his life at the forefront of the Mexican-American civil rights movement—first as a Chicano and then as a militant. Gutiérrez traces the racial, ethnic, economic, and social prejudices facing Chicanos with powerful scenes from his own life: his first summer job as a tortilla maker at the age of eleven, his racially motivated kidnapping as a teenager, and his coming of age in the face of discrimination as a radical organizer in college and graduate school. When Gutiérrez finally returned to Cristal, he helped form the Mexican American Youth Organization and, subsequently the Raza Unida Party to confront issues of ethnic intolerance in his community. His story is soon to be a classic in the developing literature of Mexican American leaders.

Bridging the fields of Religion and Latina/o Studies, this book fills a gap by examining the “spiritual” rhetoric and practices of the Chicano movement. Bringing new theoretical life to biblical studies and Chicana/o writings from the 1960s, such as El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán and El Plan de Santa Barbara, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo boldly makes the case that peoples, for whom historical memories of displacement loom large, engage scriptures in order to make and contest homes. Movement literature drew upon and defied the scriptural legacies of Revelation, a Christian scriptural text that also carries a displaced homing dream. Through the slipperiness of utopian imaginations, these texts become places of belonging for those whose belonging has otherwise been questioned. Hidalgo’s elegant comparative study articulates as never before how Aztlán and the new Jerusalem’s imaginative power rest in their ambiguities, their ambivalence, and the significance that people ascribe to them.

On May 8, 1959, the evening news shocked Los Angeles residents, who saw LA County sheriffs carrying a Mexican American woman from her home in Chavez Ravine not far from downtown. Immediately afterward, the house was bulldozed to the ground. This violent act was the last step in the forced eviction of 3,500 families from the unique hilltop barrio that in 1962 became the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. John H. M. Laslett offers a new interpretation of the Chavez Ravine tragedy, paying special attention to the early history of the barrio, the reform of Los Angeles's destructive urban renewal policies, and the influence of the evictions on the collective memory of the Mexican American community. In addition to examining the political decisions made by power brokers at city hall, Shameful Victory argues that the tragedy exerted a much greater influence on the history of the Los Angeles civil rights movement than has hitherto been appreciated. The author also sheds fresh light on how the community grew, on the experience of individual home owners who were evicted from the barrio, and on the influence that the event had on the development of recent Chicano/a popular music, drama, and literature.

The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education remains to this day the largest and most ambitious attempt to provide free, universal college education in the United States. Yet the Master Plan, the product of committed Cold War liberals, unfortunately served to reinforce the very class-based exclusions and de facto racism that plagued K–12 education in the nation's largest and most diverse state. In doing so, it inspired a wave of student and faculty organizing that not only forced administrators and politicians to live up to the original promise of the Master Plan—quality higher education for all—but changed the face of California itself. Higher Education for All is the first and only comprehensive account of the California Master Plan. Through deep archival work and sharp attention to a fascinating cast of historical characters, Andrew Stone Higgins has excavated the forgotten history of the Master Plan: from its origins in the 1957 Sputnik Crisis, through Governor Ronald Reagan's financial starvation and his failed quest to introduce tuition, to the student struggle to institute affirmative action in university admissions.

The work of this important sculptor, spokesperson, and teacher is seen from a variety of cultural perspectives in this book, which draws upon the artist's entire oeuvre and places well-known works alongside unpublished drawings, paintings, sculptures, notebooks, and statements. Designed in a large format to complement Magu's bold use of color, the book includes essays addressing such topics as the concept of emplacement, gender and the imagery of lowriders, and Magu as a social artist. Exhibition: University Art Galleries, University of California, Irvine, USA (12.09.-16.12.2017).