Chicano! Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement Book Review

Introduction: The Chicano Movement in the Context of 1960s Civil Rights

The 1960s in America was a time of tremendous civil unrest — from the African-American civil rights movement, to the beginnings of the modern women's rights movement, to the inception of the gay rights movement after the Stonewall Riots. Amid this turbulence, it is easy to forget the importance of the struggle for equality among Mexican-Americans, particularly in the American Southwest. Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement by Francisco Arturo Rosales serves as an important reminder that the fight for civil rights among peoples of Latin American ancestry has a rightful place in the history of this tumultuous era. Moreover, Rosales argues that the modern struggle for Latin American civil rights must learn important lessons about collective unity from this period and carry those lessons forward into the future.

Part One: A Quest for a Homeland

The book is structured along four basic parts, which chronologically and thematically organize the movement's different chapters. Part 1, called "A Quest for a Homeland," examines the beginnings of the Chicano movement and its sources in Mexican-American history. Rosales stresses that Reies Lopez Tijerina's land grant movement in New Mexico in 1966 and 1967 launched the modern Chicano movement. Tijerina demanded that the American federal government honor the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. By invoking the history of the past, Tijerina rallied Mexicans and Mexican-Americans across the Southwest to resist present-day oppression.

The author uses Tijerina as an example of how Chicano rights activism is simultaneously a movement forward and a return to positive aspects of the past — forward in the sense that a proactive demand for rights was made, and backward in the sense that past wrongs became a rallying point and a source of positive identity development. This dynamic, Rosales implies, can provide a template for future movements and future struggles, even today.

Rosales also reminds the reader that "Chicano" is a relatively recent and constructed term. It was developed in the 1960s to mobilize collective unity and mass action among Mexican-Americans. Thus, although many of the movement's collective concepts were rooted in old history, the movement also attempted to create a new common identity. A resurgence of new voices in Latin American literature — such as the poetry of Rodolpho "Corky" Gonzales — rallied the developing movement, as did other writers' affirmations of cultural identity grounded in Aztec myths.

Part Two: The Struggle in the Fields

"The Struggle in the Fields," the title of Part 2, tells the story of perhaps the most famous element of the Chicano civil rights struggle: its association with the labor movement and the economic concerns of Cesar Chavez. Chavez organized grape pickers and other farm laborers in California through strikes, boycotts, pilgrimages, fasts, and other nonviolent forms of faith-based resistance modeled on the methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. Not eating grapes became a political statement in the 1960s — a testament to Chavez's skill as a leader who could speak in terms broadly understood and accepted by Americans of all ethnicities across the country.

Because Chavez also deployed faith and prayer in achieving his goals, he was able to fuse the Christian religion so important to farm workers into a vital element of the Chicano movement in a way that advanced rather than impeded its political struggles.

Conclusion: Enduring Lessons of Collective Unity

The major themes of Chicano mass mobilization and political enfranchisement are dealt with in a historical, agricultural, urban, and finally political fashion, all stressing the author's central theme that unity in the community remains essential in obtaining political rights, even if this first phase of the Chicano civil rights movement is no longer active. The book draws on testimony from the past — in the form of personal narratives — as well as historical documentation of the often-difficult relationship between Mexico and America, to support its emphasis on the need for America to right old wrongs and for Caucasians, Chicanos, and Latinos and Latinas across the nation to become active in securing greater recognition and political enfranchisement for Chicano workers.

The prejudices chronicled in the book still resonate today, as bilingual education and the rights of immigrants are often framed — however unconsciously — in racist terms by the modern media. The stress upon the need for community action is invigorating for individuals of all ethnicities who dwell in an increasingly individualistic and apolitical American media climate. The book is not simply important for highlighting a chapter of an often-forgotten era of recent American civil rights history, but for what it says about the need for future collective action by Mexican-Americans and Latino and Latina Americans of all national origins.

Works Cited

Rosales, Francisco Arturo. Chicano! The History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement. New York, 1996.