The Development of the Chicana Movement

“Chicanas suffer from three way oppression. Along with the racism and poverty suffered by all Raza, we endure oppression based on being a woman (sexism). We see the need to change those so-called "traditions" about women and to affirm the true tradition of strong, active Chicanas. We also oppose forced sterilizations and we support the struggle of Inez Garcia who was sentenced to prison in 1974 for killing a man for rape."(500 Años of Pueblo Chicana History)”

As in the case with other movements, the question of gender inequality fractionalized the Chicano Movement. Some resisted the call for equality of the sexes. Others stressed the importance of developing autonomous feminist organizations. In March 1969 the Denver Youth Conference took place. The conference adopted El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, setting the goals of nationalism and self-determination for the Chicano Youth Movement. At this conference a workshop was held discussing the role of women in the movement. This was one of the principle actions the sparked the Chicana Feminist Movement.  An important Chicana and Chicano voice was El Grio Del Norte, a newspaper for which personages such as Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez and Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez wrote. In her featured column, Vasquez asked Chicanos to stand up and rethink the given social order, including U.S militarism, interventions in Vietnam and Latin America, the Catholic Church, white society and sexism, forcing many readers to rethink their positions on these issues.

Denver Youth Conference 1969

Elizabeth ''Betita" Martinez

Chicana gropus focused on the problems of Mexican women.  Most topics revolved around male-chauvinism, abortion, child care, and sexism within the Chicano and the white women's movement. Women participated in community organizations, immigration services, picket lines, campus rallies, and welfare services.

 By 1971, in Houston Texas, at La Conferencia de Mujeres Por la Raza, the first national Chicana conference, women spoke out with a distinctly feminist platform. The resolutions called for "free legal abortions and birth control in the Chicano community be provided and controlled by Chicanas." In addition they called for higher education, for acknowledgment of the Catholic Church as an instrument of oppression, for compassionate equalitarian marriage, and for child care arrangements to ensure women's involvement in the movement.

 Chicana Movement Newspapers

El Grito (Betita Martinez)

Encuentro Feminil (Adelaida del Castillo and Ana Nieto Gomez)

Regeneracion (Francisca Flores)

El Chicano (Gloria Macias Harrison)

Through their writings, Chicanas challenged prescribed gender roles at home, at school and at movement meetings.

Chicana Movement Leaders 

Dolores Huerta: labor leader and civil rights activist. Dolores co-founded the National Farmworkers association (United FarmWorkers) with Cesar Chavez.

Maria Varela: community organizer for the Student Non Violent Coordinating committee

Chicana Feminist Writers

"Chicana feminism means the struggle to obtain self-determination for all Chicanas, in particular that chicanas can choose their own life course without contending with the pressures of racism, sexism and poverty. It means working to overcome oppression, institutional and individual. Chicana feminism is much more than the slogan: "the personal is political': it represents a collective effort for dignity and respect. "

Gloria Anzaldua

Ana Castillo

Emma Perez

" With poetry I could encourage, reaffirm, and mirror efforts toward social change .  I wrote poetry while at anti war rallies, during class discussions about capitalism, at Cinco de Mayo celebrations and at Santana concerts." -Naomi Quinonez (From Out of the Shadows)

 In this way, picking up the pen for Chicanas became a political act. (From Out of the Shadows)

Rise Up! To Woman
Rise up! Rise up to life, to activity, to
the beauty of truly living; but rise up radiant
and powerful , beautiful with qualities, splendid
with virtues, strong with energies.




Hey! See that lady protesting against

Injustice

Es mi mama

That girl in the brown beret, the

One teaching the children

She’s my Hermana

Over there fasting with the migrants                           

Es mi tia..

Listen to her shout!

La nueva Chicana

Viola Correa

                                                                                   

El Movimiento

My people...

you have grown greatly

you are recovering your strengths, one by one

you shatter horizons

you burst through the boundaries of your skin

You are a spring of many footsteps

and a hurricane of voices

that crack your throats

Death will not kill you

for a new sun surges high

in your sky of ancient rage

Lucilia Rios

¡Viva la mujer Chicana!

La Alianza Federal de Mercedes

In the 1960's La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, which in English translates to the Federal Land Grant Alliance, was an organization founded by Reies Lopez Tijerina to take back the land Chicano New Mexicans claimed was stolen from them. Tijerina was a former preacher deeply concerned about the social conditions and the rights of Hispanic people.

Tijerina led a group of Hispanos that came together to fight for any land that had been taken from them. He organized them to restore New Mexican land grants. As a spokesman for the rights of Hispanics and Mexican Americans, he became a major figure of the early Chicano Movement. In July of 1966 the group staged a peaceful demonstration and protest marches in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Then on October 15, 1966, they occupied Echo Amphitheater.

In time, the movement turned violent because members affiliated with Alianza Federal de Mercedes challenged any authority to get their land back. They attempted to arrest the County’s district to put him on trial, but the district attorney was out of town. As a result, a raid broke out on the Tierra Armarilla courthouse on June 5, 1967. This was a political movement and conflict that brought in the New Mexico National Guard. Shootings occurred, the protesters took hostages, and then the police undertook a manhunt. When the violence was over the trials came.

This group used the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to validate it in the struggle of Hispanic people to regain their lands from Anglo Landowners and the United States government. Tijerina and his supporters acted as a grass roots protest group.

Teatro Campesino

"Los actos son muy interesantes, chistosos, y representan la realidad de la vida del campesino"
-Cesar Chavez

-This might be the most famous of all of Valdez's actos. The first performance was at the Brown Beret junta, Elysian Park, East Los Angeles. It was written in 1967. This is a video of some people performing it. It's not exactly the same, but it's basically the jist of it.

http://youtu.be/69qZ-fF3g4o

and part 2:
http://youtu.be/LmyOTgseVT0




4/24/12- "Cada cabeza es un mundo" - Luis Valdez

So I'm still doing a lot of focusing on actos by Luis Valdez, but I also came across "Pensamiento Serpentino" which is like this poem that he wrote which details "a chicano approach to the theatre of reality."This is my favorite part so far:

It is giant improvisation
con role-playing
by men and women
y las razas del mundo
playing master and slave
rich and poor


black and white


pero underneath it all
is the truth
the Spiritual Truth
that determines all materia


la energia that creates the
universe
la fuerza con purpose
la primera cause de todo
even before the huelga
la First Cause de Creation


He makes some super interesting points about how we should all become "neo-mayans" because they knew what they were doing. He's a brilliant guy!

I've also emailed El Taller A. C. to see if I can send them a couple questions via email or do a personal interview when they come in for their performances. Is there anything anyone would like me to specifically ask them? (Remember, they're a women's rights group).




4/25/12
Hey guys check out this page! It's the fundraising site for the theatre group that I'm planning on interviewing. Make sure to come see them on Friday!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4223779/mexican-theatre-for-womens-rights-opening-borders?ref=live



if you have some time, check out this video. it's luis valdez on necessary theatre.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DaYL8cx9o

Delano Grape Strike 1960

Organizations in the Chicana/o movement

For my final project, I chose to concentrate on organizations in the Chicano/a movement. I concentrated on 2major people and two organizations that have made a difference in the Chicano/a movement. Below are the names/organizations and links to the 4 organizations, with info on the work they have done in the Chicano/a movement.

1. 1962- Cesar Chavez= labor leader, civil rights activist who started the organization National Farm Workers Association. He succeeded through non-violet pickets, boycotts and strikes to seek recognition of the dignity of farm workers. His organization, made people aware of the struggles of the migrate workers to strive for better pay and safer working conditions.

http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?inc=history/07.html&menu=research

2. 1967- Reies Lopez Tijerina = known as one of the Four Horsemen of the Chicano movement. Founded the Federal Alliance of Land Grants in New Mexico to reclaim Spanish and Mexican land grants held by Mexicans and Indians before the US/Mexican War. The Alizana’s purpose was to rescue the ownership of land through courts of New Mexico but it was determined in a court ruling that the US congress instead had the authority of land grants on international treaties. Unlike Cesar Chavez, Lopez Tijerina used militancy, unfortunately he spent time in prison for his actions. 
 http://borderzine.com/2009/07/reies-lopez-tijerina-a-chicano-leader%E2%80%99s-lifetime-of-achievement-is-honored/

 

3. 1968- Center for Autonomous Social Action(CASA)= Over a brief ten-year period (1968–1978), Centro de Acción Social Autónomo-Hermandad General de Trabajadores (CASA-HGT), the Center for Autonomous Social Action-General Brotherhood of Workers, went from a traditional mutualista or self-help center providing legal and other services as part of organizing undocumented Mexican workers in California, to a national organization rooting itself in broad working-class politics.

 

4.  1975- The Concilio for the Spanish Speaking=
Founded in 1962, The Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations, Inc. (Concilio) is the oldest Latino organization in Philadelphia and has a well-established reputation as a leader for Latino family services. The councils mission was to help with police community relation employment and social services.  The council was the first organization of its type in Philadelphia to unite the Puerto Rican community with the general Latino social group into a coalition representing all Spanish speaking groups in the city at large.
  http://elconcilio.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=25