Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement

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Arte Publico Press, Jan 1, 1997 - History - 328 pages
Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement is the most comprehensive account of the arduous struggle by Mexican Americans to secure and protect their civil rights. It is also a companion volume to the critically acclaimed, four-part documentary series of the same title, which is now available on video from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Both this published volume and the video series are a testament to the Mexican American communityÍs hard-fought battle for social and legal equality as well as political and cultural identity. Since the United States-Mexico War, 1846-1848, Mexican Americans have striven to achieve full rights as citizens. From peaceful resistance and violent demonstrations, when their rights were ignored or abused, to the establishment of support organizations to carry on the struggle and the formation of labor unions to provide a united voice, the movement grew in strength and in numbers. However, it was during the 1960s and 1970s that the campaign exploded into a nationwide groundswell of Mexican Americans laying claim, once and for all, to their civil rights and asserting their cultural heritage. They took a name that had been used disparagingly against them for years Chicano and fashioned it into a battle cry, a term of pride, affirmation and struggle. Aimed at a broad general audience as well as college and high school students, Chicano! focuses on four themes: land, labor, educational reform and government. With solid research, accessible language and historical photographs, this volume highlights individuals, issues and pivotal developments that culminated in and comprised a landmark period for the second largest ethnic minority in the United States. Chicano! is a compelling monument to the individuals and events that transformed society.
 

Contents

Americans
1
Legacy of the Mexican Revolution
25
Mexican Immigrants
41
In Defense of México Undo
55
Organizing el México de Afuera
73
The Mexican American Generation
89
In Defense of the Workplace
111
The Struggle in the Fields
129
The Chicano Moratorium
197
The Youth of Aztlán
209
The Road to Political Empowerment
227
Legacy of the Chicano Movement
249
BIBLIOGRAPHY
269
CHRONOLOGY
279
CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS
283
INDEX
287

In Quest of a Homeland
153
The Fight for Educational Reform
173

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Page 2 - We were the pioneers of the Pacific coast, building towns and missions while General Washington was carrying on the war of the Revolution, and we often talk together of the days when a few hundred large Spanish ranches and mission tracts occupied the whole country from the Pacific to the San Joaquin.
Page 2 - ... .hicano activists believe that the US violently invaded Mexico, wrested from it what became the American Southwest and then subjugated its inhabitants; this event has been portrayed as the first of a series of actions casting Mexicans as victims of US imperialism. It follows, then, that a second raison d'etre of the Chicano Movement is the notion that the US violated basic tenets of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war with Mexico in 1848 and established conditions under which...
Page 10 - Mexicans! When the state of Texas began to receive the new organization which its sovereignty required as an integrant part of the Union, flocks of vampires, in the guise of men, came and scattered themselves in the settlements, without any capital except the corrupt heart and the most perverse intentions.

About the author (1997)

F. ARTURO ROSALES is the author of Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican-American Struggle for Civil Rights (Arte PÏblico Press, 2000), Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement (Arte PÏblico Press, 1997), Hispanics and the Humanities in the Southwest, and Pobre Raza: Violence, Justice, and Mobilization Among M?xico Lindo Immigrants. He is a professor of history at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

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