The Chicano press served as a medium to learn Chicano history, literature, as well as current news and politics. We have located and mapped more than 300 publications. Many were tiny, printing only a few issues and folding in a year or less. Others were much more influential, like El Macriado, the monthly published by the United Farm Workers union or El Gritodel Norte from Denver and Caracol from San Antonio. Notice how many communities, large and small, hosted Chicano periodicals (155). Notice that 1970-1972 were peak years and that over half were published in California. The maps are hosted by Tableau Public and may take a few seconds to respond. If slow, refresh the page.
Move between two maps, a chart, and list below
Sources: Al-Bayati, Barbara Kuhn. Ethnic Serials at Selected University of California Libraries: A Union List. Los Angeles: University of California, 1977.
Chicano Studies Serials Collection. Serials Micro Film Project Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu/chicano-studies-collection.
Rojas, Guillermo. "Chicano/Raza Newspaper and Periodical Serials Listing." Hispania: A Journal Devoted to the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese 58, no. 4 (1975): 851-63. Rodriguez, Marc S. Rethinking the Chicano Movement. American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge, 2015.
LULAC has represented Mexican Americans since 1929, making it the nation's oldest surviving Latino civil rights organization. Founded in Corpus Christi in 1929, LULAC expanded first in Texas. Victory in a precedent-setting 1945 lawsuit challenging segregation of Mexican American students in Orange County, California, helped the organization grow. By 1977, LULAC had chapters in 21 states.
When ethnic Mexican farm workers led by Cesar Chavez joined with Filipino American workers led by Larry Itliong in 1965 to strike grape growers in Delano, California, the modern farm workers' movement was born. Here we map more than 1000 strike actions, boycotts, and other UFW related events showing the movement's support across the United States and Canada.
Chicano students began to organize on college campuses in the late 1960s, forming organizations with various names. In 1969 most of these organizations merged forming El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztlan (MEChA). MEChA spread in stages and as of 2012 claimed more than 500 chapters.
Following the so-called “Chicano takeover” of Crystal City’s school board and city council in 1970, activists launched Raza Unida Party, running candidates in local and state elections in Texas and several other states. These maps show the growth and decline of RUP chapters and electoral campaigns.
In the barrios of Los Angeles, Chicano youth founded the Brown Berets in 1967, modeled after the Black Panther Party. The organization was dedicated to combatting police brutality and racism but some chapters also demanded education, job, and housing equality. By 1969, there were 29 chapters mostly in California but units developed in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas and Washington.
Scholars have paid some attention to the geography of Chicano activism but not in the detail that now becomes possible with the maps this project provides. This essay offers important observations while introducing the key organizations of the Chicano movement.
