Chicano Movement

The Beginning

While there is substantial agreement by Chicano Studies scholars on the organizations, issues, and events that defined the movement, there are some disagreements. Some scholars, for example, aver that the movement was set in motion by the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement in California during the 1960s. Others, however, while acknowledging the influence of César Chávez and the farmworkers' movement on Chicano Movement activists, argue that César Chávez never became an integral part of the Chicano Movement. The UFW and Chávez, they contend, represented a farmworkers' movement, principally Mexican, which did not evolve as a movement for Chicano power and identity, a defining characteristic of the Chicano Movement.

The Chicano Movement was partly a reaction to the civil rights Mexican American organizations of the 1940s and 1950s, organizations young Chicana/o activists believed were too accommodating and assimilationist. Among these were the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I. Forum. Chicano movement activists charged that these and other organizations' demands were too weak and the tactics they employed too passive. Chicano activists sought to correct both.

Goals of the Movement

Employing more radical tactics than their predecessors, including acts of civil disobedience and clashes with the police, Chicano Movement activists fought against the discrimination historically suffered by people of Mexican descent in the United States. Many in the movement saw the Chicano community as an internal colony of the United States and therefore saw the Chicano Movement as a liberation movement.

In many respects, the Chicano Movement was a nationalist movement, but many of its members recognized that they were part of a broader struggle of working-class people and other people of color. Issues included job and wage discrimination, police brutality and discrimination in the criminal justice system, lack of education and an education that distorted or ignored Chicano history, poor health care, discrimination in housing, and voting discrimination. More radical elements of the movement questioned the legitimacy of the U.S. government in the Southwest.

Chicano Movement organizations included La Raza Unida Party, the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), el Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), the Crusade for Justice, La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, and the Mexican American Legal [Page 273]Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). They often worked in isolation from one another but, in one way or another, challenged the White power structure. Perhaps no other organization embodied the movement better than La Raza Unida Party.

Important Organizations

La Raza Unida Party was formed in 1970 in south Texas by members of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), as an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties. Most prominent among its founders was José Angel Gutiérrez. The party enjoyed very little success outside of south Texas, where it managed to take control of school boards and city councils in a number of counties. The party became an official statewide party but never won an election on the state level.

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