The chicano movement: dead or alive?  (Page 6/11)

The beginnings of the chicano movement

By the mid-1960s the presence of 3 ^rd and 4 ^th generation young adults of Mexican ancestry made themselves known by their challenges to established ideas and leadership. The leadership of earlier generations in LULAC and the American G. I. Forum was too conservative for the young. Organizations formed in earlier decades were questioned as to the logic behind excluding membership from the poor, particularly farm workers, the non-citizen, women, and the youth under the age of twenty-one. The younger people disagreed with their grandparents that old-style homeland politics were of primary importance and also disagreed with their parents that assimilation into Anglo culture was the most preferred ideology.

The early stirrings of social protest came from two movements led by Cesar E. Chavez in California and Reies Lopez Tijerina in New Mexico. There are several sources of biographical material on these individuals and their organizations. Among the more recent works are Richard Griswold del Castillo, Cesar Chavez: A Struggle for Justice, Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2002; Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard A. Garcia, Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit, Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996; Jose Angel Gutierrez as translator and editor of Reies Lopez Tijerina’s autobiography, They Called Me ‘King Tiger’: My Struggle for the Land and Our Rights, Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2002. Chavez organized farm workers and engaged in labor strikes, consumer boycotts of products, and demonstrations of group power such as marches, pickets, rallies, and speech-making at various venues. He was jailed on several occasions for several violations involving his protests. Chavez personally engaged in several hunger strikes that ruined his health. The farm worker movement developed its own newspaper, El Malcriado , and guerrilla theatre, Teatro Campesino . Even though this SM was focused on labor issues, it employed culturally relevant symbols to identify it as a Chicano-based effort. Chavez publicly proclaimed himself to be a Chicano. Their colors were red and black. The union symbol was a rising Phoenix-like Thunderbird. The religious icon, La Virgen Guadalupe , was ubiquitous at all public gatherings and even political buttons. Cesar Chavez became the most well known, nationally and internationally, of the emerging Chicano leaders by the early 1970s. Dolores Huerta, a co-leader with Chavez, was equally important in the organization and development of the farm worker union but her contributions were overshadowed by the attention given to Chavez. For a brief profile of Dolores Huerta see Cathleen Roundtree, ON Women Turning 50, San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993, pps. 127-133. Women have always done tremendous work in organizing, defending, and advocating for La Raza but seldom receive credit for their contributions.

Reies Lopez Tijerina, while on a proselytizing mission for his brand of religion, learned of the land grant struggles in New Mexico. He termed this SM the Land Recovery Movement and called his organization La Alianza de Pueblos Libres. Tijerina resurrected the Chicano birthrights to a homeland within the United States. He proclaimed the land had been stolen from Indo-Hispanos , his term for Chicanos, hybrids of Spanish and Indian bloodlines. Tijerina, like Chavez, organized public demonstrations, walked hundreds of miles in marches, gathered petitions for mailing to Anglo public officials, maintained weekly radio programs and regular newsprint stories in Spanish, and held massive gatherings at public lands, such as national forests and historical sites to claim these places as the occupied homeland.