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Week 10 · Chapter

Chapter 10 — Chicana/o and Latina/o Experiences II: Movements and Many Communities

Introduction to Ethnic Studies Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze Chicana/o and Latina/o experiences, from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo through the Bracero Program, the courts, the Chicano movement, and Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences, and explain who uses which group term), Objective 2 (define and distinguish the course's core concepts: race, ethnicity, and nationality; racialization and racial formation; ethnocentrism; prejudice, individual and institutional discrimination, and structural inequality; and intersectionality as distinct from adding identities together) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This chapter follows the people of Mexican and Latin American descent in the United States through the movements of the 1960s and the many communities that came after. Students walked out of their high schools, farmworkers struck the grape fields, and the Chicano movement (the Mexican American civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s) gave people a new name for themselves. You will also meet Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences, which reached the United States by very different roads. Then you will sort the group terms, Hispanic (origin in Spanish-speaking countries) and Latino (origin in Latin America), and learn who uses which. You will finish able to read one student's account beside the dated record and say, in one plain sentence, what each one shows.

Why you already care about this

Picture a family dinner (an illustrative scene) with three generations at one table. The grandfather says he is Mexican American. His daughter, who marched in college, says she is Chicana. Her son says Latino, and his younger sister says Latine. A cousin visiting from the East Coast says she is Puerto Rican, first and always.

Nobody at that table is wrong. Each word carries a history, a place, and a choice. An ethnic studies reader asks where each word came from, who chose it, and what it was meant to do. This week, those questions lead to the movements of the 1960s and to the many communities that the federal forms group under one term.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

describe the Chicano movement and explain Chicana/o as a self-chosen political identity;
explain who began the Delano grape strike (1965) and who joined it, and place it on the farm-labor thread;
read the archive's E6 excerpt for what it says, who made it, whom it affected, and what it leaves out, and place the walkouts of 1968 on two threads;
compare Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences as different histories, each with its own dated law or event;
read "Hispanic or Latino" in the federal categories of 1997 and 2024, and count the categories;
explain who uses Hispanic, Latino, Latina/o, Chicana/o, Latinx, and Latine, and lay out the debate over the newer terms without taking a side.

Carry this sentence with you: Many communities, many roads — one federal term, not one history.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 gave you the field's questions, its origins in the strikes of 1968 and 1969, and positionality. Week 2 defined race, ethnicity, and the federal categories. Week 3 drew the line between immigrant and colonized or incorporated peoples. Weeks 6 and 7 read the 14th Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Week 9 read the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), the Bracero Program, Mendez v. Westminster (1946), and Hernandez v. Texas (1954).
This week: the Chicano movement, the Delano grape strike, the East Los Angeles walkouts, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences, and the group terms.
How they connect: Week 9 showed how conquest, labor, and the courts shaped belonging; this week shows how many communities organized and named themselves.
Where we're going next: Week 11 begins a new unit, Asian American and Pacific Islander Experiences I: Exclusion and Incarceration, where the exclusion laws and the naturalization cases take center stage.

Week 9 gave you the ground this chapter stands on. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), Mexicans who stayed in the ceded lands could become U.S. citizens. Their families became part of the United States by conquest, not by immigration. Week 3 named that difference: the field separates immigrant peoples, who came by choice under a country's immigration rules, from colonized or incorporated peoples, who became part of the United States by conquest, annexation, or force. Keep that line in view; Puerto Ricans stand on the incorporated side of it too.

A word on names, said once. Hispanic and Latino are the federal terms, written together as "Hispanic or Latino". Chicana/o is a self-chosen political identity that rose with the 1960s movement. Latinx and Latine are newer gender-inclusive forms whose use is debated. The slash in Chicana/o and Latina/o names women and men together. This course keys the concept, never the label, and names people as they most commonly name themselves.

1. Name the Chicano movement: a people names itself

Think of a club or a team that picked its own name instead of the one outsiders gave it. Once a group picks a word and says it on purpose, the word starts to mean something new. Choosing a name is one of the first things a movement does.

In the 1960s many young Mexican Americans did that with the word Chicano. Choosing it was a political act: it named a people who were organizing, with demands about work, schools, land, and what colleges taught.

The Chicano movement is the Mexican American civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It joined farm labor organizing, school walkouts, land-grant claims, and campus demands for Chicano studies.
Chicana/o is a self-chosen political identity for people of Mexican descent in the United States that rose with the Chicano movement; Chicana is the feminine form and Chicano the masculine form.

Worked example — sorting the movement's four strands. Match each strand to the setting where it happened and to a week of this course.

Farm labor organizing. The setting is the fields. You meet it in section 2, on the farm-labor thread that began with the Bracero Program in Week 9.
School walkouts. The setting is the high school. You meet it in section 3, on the separate-schools thread that ran through Mendez v. Westminster (1946) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Land-grant claims. The setting is land in the lands ceded in 1848. It reaches back to Week 9, when the treaty promised that the property of Mexicans who stayed would be respected.
Campus demands for Chicano studies. The setting is the college. It reaches back to Week 1, when strikers in 1968 and 1969 demanded departments that included La Raza Studies.

In words: the Chicano movement was one movement with four strands, and each strand answered a piece of the history you read in Week 9.

Notice what the name did. Mexican American describes ancestry and citizenship. Chicana/o adds a political choice: it says "we are organizing." That is why a family can hold both words at once, as the grandfather and his daughter did at the dinner table.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a name a group you belong to chose for itself. What did choosing it say that an outside label did not?
(b) Why might a movement choose a new word for its people instead of using the word on a government form?

Misconception check. Students often think Chicana/o is another word for any Latino person. That is tempting, because the words appear side by side in the names of courses and departments. But Chicana/o is a self-chosen political identity for people of Mexican descent that rose with the 1960s movement. The cure: use Chicana/o for the people who choose it, and do not stretch it to a Cuban or Salvadoran family who never did.

2. Trace the Delano grape strike: who began it, who joined it

Picture a picket line outside a warehouse (an illustrative scene). One crew walks out first. A week later a second crew, with a different language and a different union, votes to walk out beside them. Both crews hold the line together, and the warehouse cannot run.

That is the shape of the Delano grape strike. The Delano grape strike is the farmworkers' strike against grape growers around Delano, California, begun in September 1965 by more than 800 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and joined eight days later by the National Farm Workers Association.

The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee is the farmworkers' union whose Filipino members began the strike by striking ten grape vineyards around Delano.
The National Farm Workers Association is the farmworkers' association that voted to join the strike, bringing Mexican American farmworkers into the strike that Filipino farmworkers had begun.

Worked example — counting the days and placing the strike. Use the National Park Service's dated record.

The start. Filipino farmworkers struck in September 1965 on the 8th of the month.
The vote to join. The National Farm Workers Association voted to join on the 16th of the same month.
The gap. 16 − 8 = 8 days.
The thread. The Bracero Program ended in 1964 and the Delano grape strike began in 1965, so 1965 − 1964 = 1 year.

In words: Filipino farmworkers began the Delano grape strike, and Mexican American farmworkers joined them 8 days later, the year after the Bracero Program ended. The strike is a cross-group coalition, two groups of workers in one fight.

Now set it on the course's farm-labor thread (Dataset F). The thread runs from the Bracero Program (1942 to 1964) to the Delano grape strike (1965). Call back E1, the farmworker who came on a bracero contract in the 1950s (illustrative), who said he had "papers from two governments". His contract ended when the season did. A year after the program ended, farmworkers of two groups were striking for better terms in the same kind of fields.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a time two groups you know worked together on one goal. What did each group bring that the other did not?
(b) Why might the story of a strike get told as if only one group took part? What would that version leave out?

Misconception check. Students often think Mexican American farmworkers began the Delano grape strike alone. That is tempting, because the later boycott is often told as one group's story. But more than 800 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee began it, and the National Farm Workers Association voted to join 8 days later. The cure: name both groups, in order — who began it, then who joined.

3. Read the walkouts through E6: a student's account against the record

Think about a rule at your high school that you thought was unfair. Maybe it was a dress code, or the way classes were assigned. Now imagine that thousands of students across a city felt the same way about the same rules, and walked out together.

In March 1968, about 15,000 students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools. They demanded curriculum changes, bilingual education, and Mexican American administrators. The count is said in words and never keyed, because it is an estimate from the record.

The East Los Angeles walkouts are the protest of March 1968 in which about 15,000 students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools, demanding curriculum changes, bilingual education, and Mexican American administrators.

The course's running archive (Dataset A) is an illustrative, unnamed public library's collection. Its excerpts are constructed for this course, identified by role and decade, and never presented as a real person's words. Here is E6: a student who joined a high-school walkout in the 1960s, interviewed in the 2000s.

"We walked out in March of 1968. Some of us had been punished for speaking Spanish in class, and the counselors steered us into shop instead of college classes. We wanted teachers who looked like us and classes about our own history. My father was angry that I left school that day. Years later he came to my college graduation and told me he understood." (E6, illustrative)

Worked example — reading E6 in the field's order. Walk the five questions every reading asks.

What it says. Some students had been punished for speaking Spanish in class. Counselors steered them into shop instead of college classes. They wanted teachers who looked like them and classes about their own history. The narrator's father was angry that day, and years later he said he understood.
Who made it. It is a first-person account recorded decades later, which tells why one student walked out and how one family's view changed; the dated record tells when the walkouts happened and what the students demanded.
Whom it affected. The narrator, classmates who were punished or steered, the father, and, years later, a college graduate.
What it leaves out. It does not name the school, the student's teachers, or how many students walked out, so its date is checked against the record of the walkouts in March 1968, and the count of about 15,000 comes from the record, in words.
What a comparison adds. Set beside Brown v. Board of Education (1954) on the separate-schools thread, E6 shows that a court ruling against separate schools did not end unequal treatment inside schools; students in 1968 still asked for bilingual education and their own history.

In words: E6 is an illustrative account of the East Los Angeles walkouts of 1968, in which the narrator's reasons (punishment for speaking Spanish and steering into shop classes) match the students' documented demands for bilingual education and curriculum change, and the father's change of mind shows what a dated record leaves out.

Worked example — placing the walkouts on two threads. Work each gap in years.

Separate schools, Mendez to the walkouts. Mendez v. Westminster came in 1946 and the walkouts in 1968, so 1968 − 1946 = 22 years.
Separate schools, Brown to the walkouts. Brown v. Board of Education came in 1954, so 1968 − 1954 = 14 years.
Movements. The walkouts came in March 1968 and the San Francisco State strike began in November 1968, so 1968 − 1968 = 0 years; both fall in the same year.

In words: 22 years after Mendez v. Westminster (1946) and 14 years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruled against separate schools, students still walked out over what happened inside their schools, and in the same year college students at San Francisco State struck for ethnic studies.

Here is an honesty note about E6. The excerpt is evidence of experience and meaning, not a count or a calendar. Its "March of 1968" matches the record, and that match is what lets you trust it as a witness to that event.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) What is one thing E6 tells you that a newspaper count of the walkouts could never tell you?
(b) Why do you think the father changed his mind? What would you want to ask the narrator if you could?

Misconception check. Students often think Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ended unequal schooling everywhere, so the walkouts must have been about something else. That is tempting, because Brown held unanimously that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." But a ruling against separate schools did not change what was taught, who taught it, or how students were steered. The cure: read the walkouts as a demand about what happened inside schools, 14 years after Brown.

4. Widen the lens: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences

Think about a clinic waiting room (an illustrative scene) where every sign is in English and Spanish. One person waiting there was born in San Juan. Another came from Havana as a child, and a third came from San Salvador as a teenager. The bilingual sign treats them as one audience, but each one reached that room by a different road.

That is the point of this section: the communities grouped under one federal term have different histories, set by different laws and events.

Puerto Rican experiences

The Jones-Shafroth Act is the 1917 law of Congress that gave Puerto Ricans U.S. statutory citizenship. Statutory citizenship is citizenship granted by an act of Congress rather than by the Constitution's own words. Because Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, a move from San Juan to New York is a move inside the country, not immigration. Citizenship is not what places Puerto Ricans among the colonized or incorporated peoples, though: Week 3 put them there because they became part of the United States by conquest or annexation, not by immigrating.

Language carries the next part of the story. Section 4(e) is the part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that protected citizens educated in American-flag schools taught in a language other than English from English-literacy requirements for voting. A citizen schooled in Spanish in Puerto Rico could not be turned away at a mainland polling place for failing an English test.

Worked example — from citizenship to the language protection. Work the gap.

Citizenship. The Jones-Shafroth Act came in 1917.
The language protection. The Voting Rights Act, with Section 4(e), came in 1965.
The gap. 1965 − 1917 = 48 years.

In words: 48 years passed between the law that made Puerto Ricans citizens and the law that protected their vote from an English-literacy test. A citizen on paper still needed a second law to vote in the language of their schooling.

Cuban experiences

The Cuban Adjustment Act is the 1966 law that let Cuban natives or citizens admitted or paroled into the United States after the start of 1959, and present for at least two years, become lawful permanent residents; the Refugee Act of 1980 shortened the period to one year. This was a law written for one national group, and it gave that group a path that others did not have.

Central American experiences

Many Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans came to the United States in the 1980s during civil wars in Central America. The course teaches their experiences in words and keys no figure. Their road ran through war at home, a different starting point from a treaty, a citizenship law, or a law written for one group.

Put the three side by side. Puerto Ricans became citizens by an act of Congress in 1917. Cubans gained a special path to permanent residence by a 1966 law. Central Americans came during civil wars in the 1980s. Add Week 9's Mexicans in the lands ceded in 1848, who became part of the country by conquest. That is four roads, and none of them is the same road.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a group you belong to that outsiders treat as one. What is one difference inside it that outsiders miss?
(b) Why might a bilingual sign be a good start for a clinic and still not be enough? What else would you want the clinic to know?

Misconception check. Students often think Latina/o communities are one group with one history. That is tempting, because one federal term and one shared language can make them look alike from outside. But Puerto Ricans are citizens by a 1917 law, Cubans had a 1966 law of their own, and Central Americans came during civil wars in the 1980s. The cure: before you generalize, ask which community, which law or event, and which decade.

5. Read the federal categories: Hispanic or Latino as ethnicity, then as a category

Think of a form you filled out for a job, a school, or a doctor's office. It may have asked two questions: "Are you Hispanic or Latino?" and then "What is your race?" You may have paused at the second question after answering the first. That two-question design has a history.

Week 2 told you the federal categories are the issuing body's categories, not biological groups. The original 1977 directive had four race categories and an ethnic category to indicate Hispanic origin or not of Hispanic origin. In 1997 the federal standards paired the terms as "Hispanic or Latino", and from 1997 to 2024 they asked it as an ethnicity, separately from race. OMB's 1997 notice said the categories "represent a social-political construct designed for collecting data on the race and ethnicity of broad population groups in this country, and are not anthropologically or scientifically based."

Hispanic or Latino is the federal term for people of Hispanic or Latino origin, who may be of any race; from 1997 to 2024 the federal standards asked it as an ethnicity separately from race, and the 2024 revision made it one of seven minimum categories in one combined question.

Worked example — counting the categories in 1997 and in 2024. Use the federal-categories timeline (Dataset C).

1997, two questions. 5 minimum race categories (American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; White) and 2 ethnicity categories (Hispanic or Latino; Not Hispanic or Latino).
2024, one question. One combined question with 5 + 2 = 7 minimum categories: the 5 race categories, plus Hispanic or Latino, plus Middle Eastern or North African.
The span. From the 1997 revision to the 2024 revision is 2024 − 1997 = 27 years.

In words: for 27 years "Hispanic or Latino" sat in its own ethnicity question, separate from race; in 2024 it became one of 7 minimum categories in one combined question. A limitation to keep in mind: the count of categories changed because the issuing body changed its question, not because people changed.

In practice (your tools). When you compare two forms in this course's free spreadsheet, put each year's categories in its own column, one category per row starting in row 2, and type =COUNTA(A2:A20) below the list (changing the letter for each column) to count the filled rows. The count is a fact about the form's design, never a fact about anyone's biology.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a form that asked you a question you did not know how to answer. What would a better question have looked like?
(b) Why might an issuing body move one term from a separate question into a combined list? What could that change make easier, and what could it make harder?

Misconception check. Students often think Latino was a race in the federal categories. That is tempting, because "Hispanic or Latino" now sits in the same list as the race categories. But from 1997 to 2024 the federal standards asked it as an ethnicity, separately from race, and a Hispanic or Latino person may be of any race. The cure: read the year on the form before you read the category, and call it a federal category, never a biological group.

6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx

Go back to the family dinner at the start of this chapter, where the grandfather, his daughter, and her children each chose a different word. Think, too, of a word your grandparents use for something that your friends call by another name. Neither word is wrong; each belongs to a time and a group of speakers. Group names work the same way, and they are worth getting right.

Hispanic is a term for people whose origin is in Spanish-speaking countries; it is one of the two words in the federal term "Hispanic or Latino".
Latino is a term for people whose origin is in Latin America; Latina is the feminine form, and the federal standards have paired it with Hispanic as "Hispanic or Latino" since 1997.
Latina/o is a written form that names Latina women and Latino men together, used in the names of academic fields such as Chicana/o and Latina/o studies.
Latinx is a newer gender-inclusive form of Latino that replaces the gendered ending with an x; whether to use it is debated, and the course presents each side's case without a verdict.
Latine is a newer gender-inclusive form of Latino that uses an e ending in place of the gendered ending; its use, like that of Latinx, is debated.

Worked example — testing whether Hispanic and Latino are identical. Apply the two definitions to two families (illustrative).

A family from Brazil. Portuguese is spoken there, so the family is not from a Spanish-speaking country. Brazil is in Latin America, so the family is Latin American. Result: Latino by the definition, but not Hispanic.
A family from Spain. Spanish is spoken there, so the family is from a Spanish-speaking country. Spain is not in Latin America. Result: Hispanic by the definition, but not Latino.

In words: by their own definitions, Hispanic and Latino overlap for most families from Latin America but are not identical in every use; the federal standards pair them as one term, and each person may still prefer one word, or neither.

Now the debate, presented as a named debate. Supporters of Latinx and Latine say the x or the e includes people whom a gendered ending leaves out, women and people who do not identify as men or women. Critics say the x is hard to say in Spanish, and that many people it names prefer Latino, Latina, or a national-origin name such as Mexican American or Puerto Rican. You hear each side's strongest case here, and the course keys no survey figure and takes no side. In your own writing, the rule is the course rule: use the term the people you are writing about most commonly use, and say who uses which.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Which word would you want someone to use for your own family, and why? If you are not part of these communities, which word would you use when unsure, and how would you find out?
(b) Pick one side of the Latinx debate that is not your own first view. State its strongest case in one fair sentence.

Misconception check. Students often think Hispanic and Latino mean exactly the same thing in every use. That is tempting, because the federal forms print them together. But Hispanic names origin in Spanish-speaking countries and Latino names origin in Latin America, so a family from Brazil is Latino but not Hispanic, and a family from Spain is Hispanic but not Latino. The cure: when the difference matters, say which definition you mean.

Key terms

Chicano movement — The Mexican American civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which joined farm labor organizing, school walkouts, land-grant claims, and campus demands for Chicano studies. (first used: 1. Name the Chicano movement: a people names itself)
Chicana/o — A self-chosen political identity for people of Mexican descent in the United States that rose with the Chicano movement of the 1960s; Chicana is the feminine form and Chicano the masculine form. (first used: 1. Name the Chicano movement: a people names itself)
Delano grape strike — The farmworkers' strike against grape growers around Delano, California, begun in September 1965 by more than 800 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and joined eight days later by the National Farm Workers Association. (first used: 2. Trace the Delano grape strike: who began it, who joined it)
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee — The farmworkers' union whose Filipino members began the Delano grape strike in September 1965 by striking ten grape vineyards around Delano, California. (first used: 2. Trace the Delano grape strike: who began it, who joined it)
National Farm Workers Association — The farmworkers' association that voted in September 1965 to join the Delano grape strike, bringing Mexican American farmworkers into the strike that Filipino farmworkers had begun eight days earlier. (first used: 2. Trace the Delano grape strike: who began it, who joined it)
East Los Angeles walkouts — The protest of March 1968 in which about 15,000 students walked out of East Los Angeles high schools, demanding curriculum changes, bilingual education, and Mexican American administrators. (first used: 3. Read the walkouts through E6: a student's account against the record)
Jones-Shafroth Act — The 1917 law of Congress that gave Puerto Ricans U.S. statutory citizenship. (first used: 4. Widen the lens: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences)
Statutory citizenship — Citizenship granted by an act of Congress rather than by the Constitution's own words, as the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 granted it to Puerto Ricans. (first used: 4. Widen the lens: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences)
Section 4(e) — The part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that protected citizens educated in American-flag schools taught in a language other than English from English-literacy requirements for voting. (first used: 4. Widen the lens: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences)
Cuban Adjustment Act — The 1966 law that let Cuban natives or citizens admitted or paroled into the United States after the start of 1959, and present for at least two years, become lawful permanent residents; the Refugee Act of 1980 shortened the period to one year. (first used: 4. Widen the lens: Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences)
Hispanic or Latino — The federal term for people of Hispanic or Latino origin, who may be of any race; from 1997 to 2024 the federal standards asked it as an ethnicity separately from race, and the 2024 revision made it one of seven minimum categories in one combined question. (first used: 5. Read the federal categories: Hispanic or Latino as ethnicity, then as a category)
Hispanic — A term for people whose origin is in Spanish-speaking countries; it is one of the two words in the federal term "Hispanic or Latino". (first used: 6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx)
Latino — A term for people whose origin is in Latin America; Latina is the feminine form, and the federal standards have paired it with Hispanic as "Hispanic or Latino" since 1997. (first used: 6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx)
Latina/o — A written form that names Latina women and Latino men together, used in the names of academic fields such as Chicana/o and Latina/o studies. (first used: 6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx)
Latinx — A newer gender-inclusive form of Latino that replaces the gendered ending with an x; whether to use it is debated, and the course presents each side's case without a verdict. (first used: 6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx)
Latine — A newer gender-inclusive form of Latino that uses an e ending in place of the gendered ending; its use, like that of Latinx, is debated. (first used: 6. Sort the group terms: who uses which, and the debate over Latinx)

Summary

The Chicano movement joined farm labor, school walkouts, land-grant claims, and campus demands; Chicana/o is a self-chosen political identity.
Filipino farmworkers began the Delano grape strike in 1965; Mexican American farmworkers joined 8 days later.
E6 is read beside the record: the walkouts of 1968 demanded bilingual education and curriculum change.
Puerto Ricans are citizens by the 1917 act; Section 4(e) protected their vote in 1965.
The 1966 law gave Cubans a path to permanent residence; Central Americans came during the civil wars of the 1980s.
From 1997 to 2024, "Hispanic or Latino" was an ethnicity asked separately from race; in 2024 it became one of 7 minimum categories.
Hispanic and Latino are not identical in every use; the debate over Latinx and Latine is named, never settled here.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative neighborhood clinic (not a real one) put up its first bilingual signs 6 years after it opened, and it added a third language 11 years after that. How many years after it opened did the clinic add the third language?
A classmate writes, "The Delano grape strike was started by Mexican American farmworkers." Explain what is wrong with the sentence and how to fix it.
An illustrative student club's survey form (not a real one) asks one question with 7 checkboxes, and a second version asks two questions: one with 2 checkboxes and one with 5. Which version is shaped like the 1997 federal standards, and which is shaped like the 2024 revision?
A summary of this week ends, "Latinos are a race, and they all came to the United States as immigrants." Name the two misconceptions and rewrite the sentence.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Add the two spans: 6 + 11 = 17 years. The clinic added the third language 17 years after it opened. Notice that this is a fresh, illustrative clinic, not one of the dated events on this week's threads.
The sentence names only the group that joined the strike. More than 800 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee began the Delano grape strike in September 1965, and the National Farm Workers Association, bringing Mexican American farmworkers, voted to join 8 days later. A fixed sentence: "Filipino farmworkers began the Delano grape strike, and Mexican American farmworkers joined them."
The two-question version (2 checkboxes, then 5) is shaped like the 1997 standards, which asked "Hispanic or Latino" as an ethnicity separately from 5 minimum race categories. The one-question version with 7 checkboxes is shaped like the 2024 revision, which asks one combined question with 7 minimum categories.
First, "Hispanic or Latino" was asked as an ethnicity, separately from race, from 1997 to 2024, and a Hispanic or Latino person may be of any race; it is a federal category, not a race in the biological sense. Second, not every community came as immigrants: Mexicans in the lands ceded in 1848 became part of the United States by conquest, and Puerto Ricans are citizens by the 1917 act. A fixed sentence: "Hispanic or Latino people may be of any race, and their communities reached the United States by many roads, including conquest, citizenship by an act of Congress, and immigration."

Next up in this module: the lecture, the slide deck, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, you read how exclusion laws and the naturalization rule decided who could become a citizen, using the reading method you practiced on E6.

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