Women In The Chicana/O Movement

Chicanos an identity smacked right in the middle of being identified as American and Mexican. Chicanos were once afraid to self-identified as Mexican American because of the treatment of second class citizens Mexican Americans received. Chicanos had history of running toward their white identity by identifying as Americans to receive better treatment. They ran toward whiteness to receive the same rights many other Americans enjoyed. Chicanos used the running toward whiteness strategies, because they knew they were legally white but socially non-white therefore they tried to associated themselves as much as they could as Americans to receive better treatment.
However, Chicanos grew resilient and began too embrace their color and indigenous
For example, the women in the Brown Berets left because of the inequity they were living and having no voice in the group. They left the group and organized Las Adelitas de Aztlan and focused more on women issues and their health as well as creating one of the currently largest medical centers in the United States known as Altamed. In the Denver Youth Liberation Conference was also a perfect example of inequality of the sexes in the movement. The Conference was “emphasizing that the role of la Chicana in the movement was to “stand behind her man (Riddell).” The Conference expose the sexism and Chicana women were not having it, so they left the Conference and created the Chicana Caucus. Another example, that Chicana women weren’t well represent is the documentation of el Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. Where the cause of the Chicana/o movement was documented where women were not mention nor their contribution and benefit of the movement.
The Chicana/o movement had many success and even though men were the face of the movement, Chicana women and students had a huge contribution to those successes. The Chicana/o movement is usually associated with the four horsemen: Cesar Chavez of California Corky Gonzales of Colorado, Jose Angel Gutierrez of Texas, and Reies Lopez Tijerina of Texas. However, someone once said “behind every great man is a greater woman,” behind the shadows of the four horsemen were women like Dolores Huerta co-founder of the United Farmer Works (UFW) who help negotiate beneficial contracts for the