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!