The Chicano On Movement

Mexican-Americans have been mistreated in America ever since land that used to be Mexico has been succeeded into the country. White men have denied them rights in politics, health, land, and labor. Eventually this would lead to Mexican-Americans throughout the southwest region of America to unite to fight for their civil rights. This lead to the Chicano Movement in which Chicanos fought for civil rights during the 1960s’s in America in order to receive restoration of land, rights for farm workers and education reform which has helped reform the traditional and contemporary Chicano Diaspora by improving living conditions in the United States.

To begin, one of the main demands from the Chicano Movement was restoration of land to Chicanos. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave Mexican land to the US that is now current day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. This portion of land is known as Aztlan, a symbol of the movement’s “homeland”. The purpose of this treaty was to end the Mexican-American war that lasted from 1846 to 1848.

The treaty promised that Mexicans who owned land under Mexican and Spanish law would remain having rights to their land however, “the United States failed to honor this latter part of the agreement, as it did not recognize Mexicans’ original land grants that were given under Spanish and Mexican law. Many Mexicans thus lost their lands” (Immigration to the United States). America’s enability to keep their promise to Mexican-Americans resulted in anger and frustration to those who lost land.

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To respond, authorities of the Chicano Movement declared those of Mexican descent are not immigrants to the United States due to the land ownership of many Mexican-Americans prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. While these demands were meant to better the lives of Chicanos by giving them land rights, unfortunately they were unsuccessful in obtaining any land for their people. A second demand from the Chicano Movement was rights for farm workers which included livable wages, better working conditions, and improved living spaces. During the 1960’s, majority of farm workers were Mexican-Americans who worked long and tiresome days harvesting food on farms. These jobs paid less than the minimum which resulted in many of the workers children joining them while they work so the family could have enough income. An icon for this struggle is Cesar Chavez, a farm worker orginially from Arizona, who had to quit his schooling in the seventh grade in order to help his family pay bills.

Chavez fought for the rights of farm workers throughout the 1950’s to the 1970’s, during this time he founded the labor union, United Farm Workers, to organize against big food supppliers unjust treatment of field workers. Alongside Chavez, a woman by the name of Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers. She became a symbol of feminism and worked to progress the betterment of Chicanas and those in the workforce. The first protests the two held with the United Farm Workers was the Delano Grape Strike, “Farmworkers demanded $1.25 per hour, and when they didn’t receive it, on September 8 nine farms were struck, organized by AWOC’s Larry Itliong” (The Rise of the UFW). To begin, Chavez traveled 300 miles from Delano to Sacramento to pressure growers and to bring widespread public attention to the issue and to meet the demands of Filipino and Mexican laborers. The union boycotted grapes from company’s without unions which lead to a decrease in sales for these companies. While this fight was successful, soon after another strike began with lettuce growers. While the struggle to gain rights for these laborers was on going, activists continued their work.

Thanks to the work of activists, farm workers at the time were able to confidently demand more from their bosses, however these workers remain being one of the lowest paid workers in our economy today. A third demand from the Chicano Movement was education reform in order to better educate their youth. Many high schools across the southwest had less than ideal settings for their Chicano and Latino students. Schools that primarily were attended by Chicano students had low resources, high student to teacher ratios, and outdated textbooks. Among other things, “during the 1960s, students in predominantly Chicano schools suffered from overcrowded and segregated conditions, low reading scores, the tracking of students into non college-prep courses, exceptionally high dropout rates and an overall inferior quality education”.

To solve these issues in their schools, students across the southwest decided to hold protests and walkouts to express their distaste of the education system. Most well known are the East Los Angeles walkouts where Garfield, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Belmont and Wilson high schools whose schools held the highest dropout rates in Los Angeles United School District. Sal Castro, a teacher who taught at Belmont and Lincoln, inspired and helped organize students to protest because he believed it was unjust for students to not be able to speak their native language in school and administrators for being apathetic towards their success. This helped other students across the country to pursue educational rights within their school districts. For example in San Antonio, As a result, students were more motivated to go further in their education which led to the rise of more Chicanos and Latinos to enroll in universities.

The lasting impact of the Chicano Movement has tremendously helped to improve living conditions for Mexicans in America. Due to the work of activist during this time, Mexican-Americans have been able to climb the social ladder and obtain higher positions in the workforce. The movement did accomplish empowering Chicanos,today there are Mexicans in Congress, own businesses, and can receive higher education. In the past many Chicanos were ashamed or discouraged of celebrating their heritage, today there is a shift from that ideal and they have pride in their culture. While there are still problems in America regarding racism towards Chicanos, they are able to more comfortably address these issues and try to fix them.