A revision of the previous PPT on Chican@ Activism.

1. CHICAN@ ACTIVISM AND THE CHICAN@
MOVEMENT

2. BROWN BERETS
 focus on returning all United
States territory once held by
Mexico to Mexico
 they have also organized
against police brutality and
advocate for educational
equality
 By September 1968, the Brown
Berets became a national
organization having opened
chapters California, Arizona,
Texas, Colorado, New Mexico,
Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit,
Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, and
Indiana.

3. LA ALIANZA
La Alianza, as it became known, was officially
incorporated on February 2, 1963, the 115th
anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Reis Tijerna 9-21-1926
The Alianza sought "to organize and acquaint the
heirs of all Spanish land-grants covered by the
Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty" with their rights.

4. POOR PEOPLE’S MARCH
The Poor People's Campaign was a 1968 effort to gain economic
justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, and carried out in the wake of King's assassination.
King told his aides that the SCLC would have to raise
nonviolence to a new level to pressure Congress into
passing an Economic Bill of Rights for the nation’s poor.
The SCLC resolved to expand its civil rights struggle to
include demands for economic justice and to challenge the
Vietnam War.[10] In his concluding address to the conference,
King announced a shift from "reform" to "revolution" and
stated: "We have moved from the era of civil rights to an era
of human rights."[

5. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Civil disobedience is the active,
professed refusal to obey certain laws,
demands, or commands of a
government, or of an occupying
international power. Civil disobedience
is sometimes, though not always,
defined as being nonviolent resistance.
Ghandi and MLK, Jr. were practitioners
who believed in Civil Disobedience.

6. RODOLFO “CORKY” GONZALES
(June 30, 1928 – April 12, 2005)
was a Mexican American boxer, poet, and
political activist. He convened the first-ever
Chicano youth conference in March 1969, which
was attended by many future Chicano activists
and artists. The conference also promulgated
the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a manifesto
demanding self-determination for Chicanos.As
an early figure of the movement for the equal
rights of Mexican Americans, he is often
considered one of the founders of the Chicano
Movement.

7. EL PLAN ESPIRITUAL DE ATZLAN
El Plan de Aztlan was adopted at the first National Chicano Youth Liberation
Conference in Denver, Colorado, March 1969. The plan presented for the first
time a clear statement of the growing nationalist consciousness of the Chicano
people.
It raised the concept of Aztlan, a Chicano nation, and the need for Chicano control
of the Chicano community.

8. ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS OF EL PLAN
1. UNITY: in the thinking of our people concerning the barrios, the pueblo, the campo, the land,
the poor, the middle class, the professional-all committed to the liberation of La Raza.
2. ECONOMY: economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by
driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and
developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore
materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the
distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and
development Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership
will be acquired by the community for the people's welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must
be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units.
3. EDUCATION: must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education,
contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our
counselors, and our programs.
4. INSTITUTIONS: shall serve our people by providing the service necessary for a full life and
their welfare on the basis of restitution, not handouts or beggar's crumbs. Restitution for past
economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial
of civil and human rights. Institutions in our community which do not serve the people have no
place in the community. The institutions belong to the people.

9. GOALS OF EL PLAN CONT…
5. SELF-DEFENSE of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The
front line defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their
involvement as protectors of their people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer
their responsibility and their lives for their people. Those who place themselves in the front ranks
for their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our
brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of
liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile
delinquency, but revolutionary acts.
6. CULTURAL values of our people strengthen our identity and the moral backbone of the
movement. Our culture unites and educates the family of La Raza towards liberation with one
heart and one mind. We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce
literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture. Our
cultural values of life, family, and home will serve as a powerful weapon to defeat the gringo
dollar value system and encourage the process of love and brotherhood.
7. POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through indepen-dent action on our part, since the
two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough. Where we
are a majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group;
nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de La Raza!
Action

10. HISTORY OF THE UFW
The Bracero program, an informal
arrangement between the United
States and Mexican governments,
became Public Law 78 in 1951.
Started during World War II as a
program to provide Mexican
agricultural workers to growers, it
continued after the war.

11. THE START OF THE UFW

12. THE CHICAN@ MOVEMENT, THE UFW &
AGRICULTURAL REFORM

13. UFW
By 1970 the UFW got grape growers to accept
union contracts and effectively organized most
of that industry, claiming 50,000 dues paying
members - the most ever represented by a
union in California agriculture. Gains included a
union-run hiring hall, a health clinic and health
plan, credit union, community center and
cooperative gas station, as well as higher
wages. The hiring hall meant an end to
discrimination and favoritism by labor
contractors.

14. THE CHICANO MORATORIUM AND THE
DISSATISFACTION WITH THE VIETNAM WARNAM
WAR
The Chicano Moratorium was a movement of Chicano activists that
organized anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and activities in Mexican
American communities throughout the Southwest and elsewhere from
November 1969 through August 1971. "Our struggle is not in Vietnam
but in the movement for social justice at home" was a key slogan of the
movement. It was coordinated by the National Chicano Moratorium
Committee (NCMC) and led largely by activists from the Chicano
student movement and the Brown Beret organization.

15. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The strikers' cause was boosted by other events in the nation at the same
time. The Civil Rights movement had increased public awareness of the
effects of racism, including lowered standards of living for the victims
of prejudice in housing, employment, schools, voting, and other areas
of daily life. The Civil Rights movement focused attention on the
treatment of Blacks in the south. But the situation in the fields of
California proved similar enough that the largely Chicano and Filipino
farmworkers benefited by the new public understanding of racism. As a
result, millions of consumers stopped buying table grapes.

16. EL PLAN DE SANTA BARBARA
El Plan de Santa Bárbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education was written
by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education as a
manifesto for the implementation of Chicano Studies educational
programs throughout the state of California. The Plan was adopted in
April 1969 at a symposium held at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, USA.

17. TOPICS IN THE MANIFESTO
a. Chicana/o commitment: returning/working for the community
b. Self-Determination: for social and political action
c. Term “Chicana/o”: Use to be derogatory term that was re-appropriated to
symbolize rebirth of pride and confidence.
d. Chicanismo: Man/woman is “never closer to his [her] true self as when he
[she] is close to his [her] community.
e. Strategic use of education: Chicano Studies represents conceptualization of
Chicano community’s aspirations that involve higher education. (this section is
specific toCalifornia school systems, but can be used by others as a reference)

18. A RECLAIMING OF INDIGENOUS ART AND IDENTITY

19. ART, CULTURE, MILITANCY, CHICANO PRIDE
AND THE CHICAN@ MOVEMENT