Lecture: Chicana/o and Latina/o Experiences II: Movements and Many Communities
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 10
Opening
Picture a family dinner with three generations at one table. The grandfather says he's Mexican American. His daughter, who marched in college, says she's Chicana. Her son says Latino, and his younger sister says Latine. A cousin visiting from the East Coast says she's Puerto Rican, first and always. Nobody at that table is wrong, and in this lecture I want you to ask where each of those words came from.
You've built a lot to get here. In Week 3, you drew the line between immigrant peoples and colonized or incorporated peoples. In Weeks 6 and 7, you read the 14th Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Last week, in Week 9, you read the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, the Bracero Program, and two court cases about schools and juries. That week was about conquest, labor, and the courts. This week is about how many communities organized, and how they named themselves.
Here's the plan. We'll start with the Chicano movement and the name it chose. Then we'll walk the Delano grape strike, then one student's account of the school walkouts of 1968. After that, we'll widen the lens to Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central American experiences. We'll read the federal categories next, and we'll finish by sorting the group terms and the debate over the newest ones. One rule before we start. Hispanic and Latino are the federal terms. Chicana and Chicano name a political identity people chose. Latinx and Latine are newer forms whose use is debated, and this course takes no side in that debate.
1. The Chicano movement and the name it chose
Think of a club or a team that picked its own name instead of the one outsiders gave it. Once a group says a word 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. 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. And 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 is the masculine form. When you see the slash, it names women and men together.
Let's sort those four strands by where they happened. Farm labor organizing happened in the fields, and it picks up the farm-labor story you started with the Bracero Program. School walkouts happened in high schools, and they continue the story of Mendez v. Westminster from 1946 and Brown v. Board of Education from 1954. Land-grant claims were about land in the territory ceded in 1848, where the treaty had promised that the property of Mexicans who stayed would be respected. And campus demands for Chicano studies connect to Week 1, when strikers in 1968 and 1969 demanded departments that included La Raza Studies.
So a name like Mexican American describes ancestry and citizenship. Chicana or Chicano adds a political choice. It says, "We are organizing." That's why the grandfather and his daughter at that dinner table can both be right.
Pause and try this. A friend calls a Cuban American neighbor "Chicano." Using this section's definition, what's off about that?
Think about who chose the word, and for what.
Here's the answer. Chicana and Chicano name a self-chosen political identity for people of Mexican descent that rose with the 1960s movement. A Cuban American neighbor may never have chosen it, so you use the word for the people who choose it.
2. The Delano grape strike: who began it, who joined it
Picture a picket line outside a warehouse. One crew walks out first. About a week later, a second crew, with a different language and a different union, votes to walk out beside them. Now both crews hold the line together.
That's 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. Eight days later, the National Farm Workers Association joined it. The Filipino workers struck ten grape vineyards. The National Farm Workers Association brought Mexican American farmworkers into the strike.
Let's count the days. The Filipino farmworkers struck on the 8th of the month. The vote to join came on the 16th of the same month. Take 8 away from 16 and you get 8 days.
Now set the strike on the farm-labor thread. The Bracero Program ended in 1964, and the strike began in 1965. That's 1 year later. Remember E1 from last week, the farmworker who came on a bracero contract in the 1950s? He said he had "papers from two governments," and his contract ended when the season did. A year after the program ended, workers from two groups were striking together in the same kind of fields. That's a coalition: two groups of workers in one fight.
Pause and try this. Someone tells you Mexican American farmworkers began the Delano grape strike alone. What two facts from this section correct that?
Say the order out loud: first, then second.
Here's the answer. More than 800 Filipino farmworkers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee began the strike, and the National Farm Workers Association voted to join it 8 days later. Filipino farmworkers began it, and Mexican American farmworkers joined them.
3. The walkouts, read through E6
Think about a school rule you thought was unfair. Maybe it was a dress code, or the way classes were assigned. Now imagine thousands of students across a city feeling the same way, and walking 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. That count is an estimate from the record, so we say it in words and never treat it as exact. These are the East Los Angeles walkouts.
The course archive is an illustrative, unnamed public library's collection, built for this course. Its excerpts are identified by role and decade, and none of them is a real person's words. Excerpt E6 comes from a student who joined a high-school walkout in the 1960s, interviewed in the 2000s. The student says they walked out in March of 1968. Some of them had been punished for speaking Spanish in class. The counselors steered them into shop instead of college classes. They wanted teachers who looked like them and classes about their own history. The student's father was angry that day. Years later, he came to the student's college graduation and said he understood.
Let's walk the reading in the field's order. What does it say? It gives reasons: punishment for speaking Spanish, and being steered into shop. Who made it? A narrator, decades later, telling why one student walked out and how one family's view changed. Whom did it affect? The narrator, classmates, and a father. What does it leave out? It doesn't name the school or say how many students walked out. So you check its date against the record, and the count of about 15,000 comes from the record. Now add a comparison. Mendez v. Westminster came 22 years before the walkouts, and Brown v. Board of Education came 14 years before them. Courts had ruled against separate schools. Yet students in 1968 still asked for bilingual education and their own history. And that same year, in November, the San Francisco State strike began.
Pause and try this. Name one thing E6 tells you that a count of 15,000 students could never tell you.
Pick one detail from the excerpt and hold onto it.
Here's the answer. The count tells you how many walked out, but only the account tells you about the punishment for speaking Spanish and a father who changed his mind years later. The record gives you the event; the voice gives you what it meant.
4. Many communities, many roads
Picture a clinic waiting room 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 sign treats them as one audience. But each one reached that room by a different road.
Start with Puerto Rico. 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 isn't what puts Puerto Ricans among the incorporated peoples, though. Week 3 put them there because they became part of the country by conquest or annexation, not by immigrating.
Language comes next. 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. Count the gap from 1917 to 1965, and you get 48 years. So a citizen on paper still needed a second law to vote in the language of their schooling.
Now Cuba. 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. Later, the Refugee Act of 1980 shortened that period to one year. That was a law written for one national group.
And Central America. Many Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans came to the United States in the 1980s, during civil wars in Central America. We teach that in words, with no figure. Put it all together with last week's lesson about 1848, and you have four roads: conquest, citizenship by an act of Congress, a law for one group, and flight from war.
Pause and try this. Is a family that moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago an immigrant family? Use the 1917 law to explain.
Think about which side of the Week 3 line Puerto Ricans stand on.
Here's the answer. No. The Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, so the move is a move inside the country. Puerto Ricans stand among the colonized or incorporated peoples, not the immigrant peoples.
5. The federal categories
Think of a form you filled out for a job or a doctor's office. It may have asked two questions. First, "Are you Hispanic or Latino?" Then, "What is your race?" You may have paused at the second question. That design has a history.
In Week 2, you learned that the federal categories are the issuing body's categories, not biological groups. The original 1977 directive had an ethnic category for Hispanic origin. Starting in 1997, the federal standards paired the terms as Hispanic or Latino, the federal term for people of Hispanic or Latino origin, who may be of any race. From 1997 to 2024, the standards asked it as an ethnicity, separately from race.
Let's count. In 1997 there were two questions: 5 minimum race categories, and 2 ethnicity categories, Hispanic or Latino and Not Hispanic or Latino. In 2024 the revision asked one combined question with 7 minimum categories. Those 7 are the 5 race categories, plus Hispanic or Latino, plus Middle Eastern or North African. So 5 plus 2 makes 7. And from 1997 to 2024 is 27 years. The count changed because the issuing body changed its question, not because people changed.
Pause and try this. A classmate says Latino was always a race on federal forms. What does the 1997 standard say?
Think about how many questions the 1997 form asked.
Here's the answer. From 1997 to 2024 the standards asked Hispanic or Latino as an ethnicity, in its own question, separately from race. A Hispanic or Latino person may be of any race, so it's a federal category, not a biological group.
6. Who uses which term, and the debate
Go back to that family dinner. The grandfather, his daughter, and her children each chose a different word. Group names belong to a time and a group of speakers, and they're worth getting right.
Hispanic is a term for people whose origin is in Spanish-speaking countries. Latino is a term for people whose origin is in Latin America. Here's a test. Take a family from Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. They're Latin American, but not from a Spanish-speaking country, so they're Latino but not Hispanic. Now take a family from Spain. They're from a Spanish-speaking country, but not from Latin America, so they're Hispanic but not Latino. The two words overlap for most families from Latin America, but they're not identical in every use.
Then there are newer forms. Latinx is a newer gender-inclusive form of Latino that replaces the gendered ending with an x. Latine is a newer gender-inclusive form that uses an e ending. Their use is debated, and I want you to hear both sides fairly. Supporters say the x or the e includes people whom a gendered ending leaves out. 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. This course takes no side and keys no survey figure. The rule for your own writing stays the same: use the term the people you're writing about most commonly use, and say who uses which.
Pause and try this. Is a family from Spain Hispanic, Latino, or both, by this lecture's definitions?
Check each definition against the family, one at a time.
Here's the answer. Hispanic, but not Latino. Spain is a Spanish-speaking country, so the family is Hispanic, but Spain is not in Latin America, so the family is not Latino by that definition.
Closing
Let me pull it together. The Chicano movement joined farm labor, school walkouts, land-grant claims, and campus demands, and Chicana and Chicano name a political identity people chose. Filipino farmworkers began the Delano grape strike in 1965, and Mexican American farmworkers joined them 8 days later. E6 showed you why one student walked out in 1968, and the record showed you the demands. Puerto Ricans became citizens by the 1917 act, Cubans had a 1966 law of their own, and Central Americans came during civil wars in the 1980s. From 1997 to 2024, Hispanic or Latino was an ethnicity asked apart from race. And Hispanic and Latino aren't identical in every use, while the debate over Latinx and Latine stays a named debate.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week begins a new unit, Asian American and Pacific Islander Experiences I: Exclusion and Incarceration, where you'll read who the law kept out, and who it locked up.
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