Mario T. García - Böcker

Chicano Catholicism-both as a popular religion and a foundation for community organizing-has, over the past century, inspired Chicano resistance to external forces of oppression and discrimination including from other non-Mexican Catholics and even the institutionalized church. Chicano Catholics have also used their faith to assert their particular identity and establish a kind of cultural citizenship. Based exclusively on original research and sources, Mario T. GarcÍa here offers the first major historical study to explore the various dimensions of the role of Catholicism in Chicano history in the twentieth century. This is also one of the first significant studies in the still limited field of Chicano religious history. Topics range from how early Chicano Catholic intellectuals and civil rights leaders were influenced by Catholic Social Doctrine, to the role that popular religion has played in the lives of ordinary men and women in both rural and urban areas. GarcÍa also examines faith-based Chicano community movements like CatÓlicos Por La Raza in the 1960s and the Sanctuary movement in Los Angeles in the 1980s. While Latino/a history and culture has been, for the most part, inextricably linked with the tenets and practices of Catholicism, there has been very little written, until recently, about Chicano Catholic history. GarcÍa helps to fill that void and explore the impact-both positive and negative-that the Catholic experience has had on the Chicano community.

Professor Luis Leal is one of the most outstanding scholars of Mexican, Latin American, and Chicano literatures and the dean of Mexican American intellectuals in the United States. He was one of the first senior scholars to recognize the viability and importance of Chicano literature, and, through his perceptive literary criticism, helped to legitimize it as a worthy field of study. His contributions to humanistic learning have brought him many honors, including Mexico's Aquila Azteca and the United States' National Humanities Medal. In this testimonio or oral history, Luis Leal reflects upon his early life in Mexico, his intellectual formation at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, and his work and publications as a scholar at the Universities of Illinois and California, Santa Barbara. Through insightful questions, Mario GarcÍa draws out the connections between literature and history that have been a primary focus of Leal's work. He also elicits Leal's assessment of many of the prominent writers he has known and studied, including Mariano Azuela, William Faulkner, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez, Jorge Luis Borges, TomÁs Rivera, Rolando Hinojosa, Rudolfo Anaya, Elena Poniatowska, Sandra Cisneros, Richard RodrÍguez, and Ana Castillo.

García explores the relationship of class, race, and labor in El Paso, documenting  the evolution of work, housing, education, politics, and culture in the Mexican community. Desert Immigrants makes a significant contribution not only to Chicano and Mexican history, but to the history of immigration and labor and urban studies as well.

A pioneering political and intellectual history of the Chicano leaders who emerged from the barrios of the Southwest between 1930 and 1960—Ignacio L. López, George I. Sanchez, Josefina Fierro de Bright, and others—and of their effort to capture first-class citizenship for Mexican Americans.  Drawing extensively on archival material and oral history, Mario T. García discusses the key figures, organizations, and issues of the movement; in so doing he casts new light not only on Chicano history but also on the histories of American ethnicity and civil rights movements.

The largest social movement by people of Mexican descent in the U.S. to date, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s linked civil rights activism with a new, assertive ethnic identity: Chicano Power! Beginning with the farmworkers' struggle led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the Movement expanded to urban areas throughout the Southwest, Midwest and Pacific Northwest, as a generation of self-proclaimed Chicanos fought to empower their communities. Recently, a new generation of historians has produced an explosion of interesting work on the Movement.The Chicano Movement: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century collects the various strands of this research into one readable collection, exploring the contours of the Movement while disputing the idea of it being one monolithic group. Bringing the story up through the 1980s, The Chicano Movement introduces students to the impact of the Movement, and enables them to expand their understanding of what it means to be an activist, a Chicano, and an American.

The largest social movement by people of Mexican descent in the U.S. to date, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s linked civil rights activism with a new, assertive ethnic identity: Chicano Power! Beginning with the farmworkers' struggle led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, the Movement expanded to urban areas throughout the Southwest, Midwest and Pacific Northwest, as a generation of self-proclaimed Chicanos fought to empower their communities. Recently, a new generation of historians has produced an explosion of interesting work on the Movement.The Chicano Movement: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century collects the various strands of this research into one readable collection, exploring the contours of the Movement while disputing the idea of it being one monolithic group. Bringing the story up through the 1980s, The Chicano Movement introduces students to the impact of the Movement, and enables them to expand their understanding of what it means to be an activist, a Chicano, and an American.

Who is Bert Corona? Though not readily identified by most Americans, nor indeed by many Mexican Americans, Corona is a man of enormous political commitment whose activism has spanned much of this century. Now his voice can be heard by the wide audience it deserves. In this landmark publication - the first autobiography by a major figure in Chicano history - Bert Corona relates his life story. Corona was born in El Paso in 1918. Inspired by his parents' participation in the Mexican Revolution, he dedicated his life to fighting economic and social injustice. An early labor organizer among ethnic communities in southern California, Corona has agitated for labor and civil rights since the 1940s. His efforts continue today in campaigns to organize undocumented immigrants. This book evolved from a three-year oral history project between Bert Corona and historian Mario T. Garcia. The result is a testimonio, a collaborative autobiography in which historical memories are preserved more through oral traditions than through written documents. Corona's story represents a collective memory of the Mexican-American community's struggle against discrimination and racism.His narration and Garcia's analysis together provide a journey into the Mexican-American world. Bert Corona's reflections offer us an invaluable glimpse at the lifework of a major grass-roots American leader. His story is further enriched by biographical sketches of others whose names have been little recorded during six decades of American labor history.

Taking us from the open spaces of rural New Mexico and the fields of California's Great Central Valley to the intellectual milieu of student life in Berkeley during the 1950s, this memoir, based on an oral history by Mario T. Garcia, is the powerful and moving testimonio of a young Mexican American woman's struggle to rise out of poverty. "Migrant Daughter" is the coming-of-age story of Frances Esquibel Tywoniak, who was born in Spanish-speaking New Mexico, moved with her family to California during the Depression to attend school and work as a farm laborer, and subsequently won a university scholarship, becoming one of the few Mexican Americans to attend the University of California, Berkeley, at that time. Giving a personal perspective on the conflicts of living in and between cultures, this eloquent story provides a rare glimpse into the life of a young Mexican American woman who achieved her dreams of obtaining a university education. In addition to the many fascinating details of everyday life the narrative provides, Mario T. Garcia's introduction contextualizes the place and importance of Tywoniak's life.Both introduction and narrative illustrate the process by which Tywoniak negotiated her relation to ethnic identity and cultural allegiances, the ways in which she came to find education as a channel for breaking with fieldwork patterns of life, and the effect of migration on family and culture. This deeply personal memoir portrays a courageous Mexican American woman moving between many cultural worlds, a life story that at times parallels, and at times diverges from, the real life experiences of thousands of other, unnamed women.

In The Chicano Generation, veteran Chicano civil rights scholar Mario T. Garcia provides a rare look inside the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s as they unfolded in Los Angeles. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with three key activists, this book illuminates the lives of Raul Ruiz, Gloria Arellanes, and Rosalio Munoz their family histories and widely divergent backgrounds; the events surrounding their growing consciousness as Chicanos; the sexism encountered by Arellanes; and the aftermath of their political histories. In his substantial introduction, Garcia situates the Chicano movement in Los Angeles and contextualizes activism within the largest civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in US history a struggle that featured Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, the student movement highlighted by the 1968 LA school blowouts, the Chicano antiwar movement, the organization of La Raza Unida Party, the Chicana feminist movement, the organizing of undocumented workers, and the Chicano Renaissance.Weaving this revolution against a backdrop of historic Mexican American activism from the 1930s to the 1960s and the contemporary black power and black civil rights movements, Garcia gives readers the best representations of the Chicano generation in Los Angeles.

In The Chicano Generation, veteran Chicano civil rights scholar Mario T. Garcia provides a rare look inside the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s as they unfolded in Los Angeles. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with three key activists, this book illuminates the lives of Raul Ruiz, Gloria Arellanes, and Rosalio Munoz their family histories and widely divergent backgrounds; the events surrounding their growing consciousness as Chicanos; the sexism encountered by Arellanes; and the aftermath of their political histories. In his substantial introduction, Garcia situates the Chicano movement in Los Angeles and contextualizes activism within the largest civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in US history a struggle that featured Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, the student movement highlighted by the 1968 LA school blowouts, the Chicano antiwar movement, the organization of La Raza Unida Party, the Chicana feminist movement, the organizing of undocumented workers, and the Chicano Renaissance.Weaving this revolution against a backdrop of historic Mexican American activism from the 1930s to the 1960s and the contemporary black power and black civil rights movements, Garcia gives readers the best representations of the Chicano generation in Los Angeles.

This first major collection of former Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist Ruben Salazar's writings, is a testament to his pioneering role in the Mexican American community, in journalism, and in the evolution of race relations in the U.S. Taken together, the articles serve as a documentary history of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and of the changing perspective of the nation as a whole.Since his tragic death while covering the massive Chicano antiwar moratorium in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970, Ruben Salazar has become a legend in the Chicano community. As a reporter and later as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Salazar was the first journalist of Mexican American background to cross over into the mainstream English-language press. He wrote extensively on the Mexican American community and served as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and Vietnam. This first major collection of Salazar's writing is a testament to his pioneering role in the Mexican American community, in journalism, and in the evolution of race relations in the United States. Taken together, the articles serve as a documentary history of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and of the changing perspective of the nation as a whole.Border Correspondent presents selections from each period of Salazar's career. The stories and columns document a growing frustration with the Kennedy administration, a young César Chávez beginning to organize farm workers, the Vietnam War, and conflict between police and community in East Los Angeles. One of the first to take investigative journalism into the streets and jails, Salazar's first-hand accounts of his experiences with drug users and police, ordinary people and criminals, make compelling reading.Mario García's introduction provides a biographical sketch of Salazar and situates him in the context of American journalism and Chicano history.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

This first major collection of former Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist Ruben Salazar's writings, is a testament to his pioneering role in the Mexican American community, in journalism, and in the evolution of race relations in the U.S. Taken together, the articles serve as a documentary history of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and of the changing perspective of the nation as a whole.Since his tragic death while covering the massive Chicano antiwar moratorium in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970, Ruben Salazar has become a legend in the Chicano community. As a reporter and later as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Salazar was the first journalist of Mexican American background to cross over into the mainstream English-language press. He wrote extensively on the Mexican American community and served as a foreign correspondent in Latin America and Vietnam. This first major collection of Salazar's writing is a testament to his pioneering role in the Mexican American community, in journalism, and in the evolution of race relations in the United States. Taken together, the articles serve as a documentary history of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and of the changing perspective of the nation as a whole.Border Correspondent presents selections from each period of Salazar's career. The stories and columns document a growing frustration with the Kennedy administration, a young César Chávez beginning to organize farm workers, the Vietnam War, and conflict between police and community in East Los Angeles. One of the first to take investigative journalism into the streets and jails, Salazar's first-hand accounts of his experiences with drug users and police, ordinary people and criminals, make compelling reading.Mario García's introduction provides a biographical sketch of Salazar and situates him in the context of American journalism and Chicano history.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

One of the fastest growing ethnic groups within the United States is the Chicano/Latino population.  Chicanos are people of Mexican descent in the United States.  The term Latino refers to all persons of Latin American backgrounds including Chicanos who reside in this country.  With an estimated number of about 30 million, Latinos are expected to become the largest minority population in the country exceeding the African American community. Bridging Cultures is an introductory text containing a variety of articles and essays by key Chicano/Latino scholars and writers.  It is intended to provide an introduction to some of the key issues facing Chicanos/Latinos from both a historical and contemporary perspective.   Bridging Cultures provides students a broad understanding of the role that Chicanos/Latinos have played in the United States society and the increasing role they are playing into the 21st century.

Raymond L. Telles was the first Mexican American mayor of a major U.S. city. Elected mayor of El Paso in 1957 and serving for two terms, he went on to become the first Mexican American ambassador in U.S. history, heading the U.S. delegation to Costa Rica. Historian Mario T. García brings Telles's remarkable story to life in this newly updated edition of his pioneering biography, The Making of a Mexican American Mayor. In the border metropolis of El Paso, more than half the population is Mexican American, yet this group had been denied effective political representation. Mexican Americans broke this barrier and achieved the ""politics of status"" through Telles's stunning 1957 victory. This book captures the excitement of that long-awaited election. The Making of a Mexican American Mayor also examines Telles's story as a microcosm of the history of Mexican Americans before and after World War II—the Mexican American Generation. As mayor and ambassador, Telles symbolized this generation's striving for political participation, and his legacy is evident in the growing number of Latinas/os holding office today.

The Chicano Movement, el movimiento, is known as the largest and most expansive civil rights and empowerment movement by Mexican Americans up to that time. It made Chicanos into major American political actors and laid the foundation for today's Latino political power. Rewriting the Chicano Movement is a collection of powerful new essays on the Chicano Movement that expand and revise our understanding of the movement. These essays capture the commitment, courage, and perseverance of movement activists, both men and women, and their struggles to achieve the promises of American democracy.The essays in this volume broaden traditional views of the Chicano Movement that are too narrow and monolithic. Instead, the contributors to this book highlight the role of women in the movement, the regional and ideological diversification of the movement, and the various cultural fronts in which the movement was active. Rewriting the Chicano Movement stresses that there was no single Chicano Movement but instead a composite of movements committed to the same goal of Chicano self-determination. Scholars, students, and community activists interested in the history of the Chicano Movement can best start by reading this book.Contributors: Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Tim Drescher, JesÚs Jesse Esparza, Patrick Fontes, Mario T. GarcÍa, Tiffany JasmÍn GonzÁlez, Ellen McCracken, Juan Pablo Mercado, Andrea MuÑoz, Michael Anthony Turcios, Omar Valerio-JimÉnez

This collection presents a rich, multidisciplinary inquiry into the role of religion in the Mexican American community. Breaking new ground by analyzing the influence of religion on Mexican American literature, art, activism, and popular culture, it makes the case for the establishment of Mexican American religious studies as a distinct, recognized field of scholarly inquiry. Scholars of religion, Latin American, and Chicano/a studies as well as of sociology, anthropology, and literary and performance studies, address several broad themes. Taking on questions of history and interpretation, they examine the origins of Mexican American religious studies and Mario Barrera’s theory of internal colonialism. In discussions of the utopian community founded by the preacher and activist Reies LÓpez Tijerina, CÉsar ChÁvez’s faith-based activism, and the Los Angeles-based CatÓlicos Por La Raza movement of the late 1960s, other contributors focus on mystics and prophets. Still others illuminate popular Catholicism by looking at Our Lady of Guadalupe, home altars, and Los Pastores dramas (nativity plays) as vehicles for personal, social, and political empowerment. Turning to literature, contributors consider Gloria AnzaldÚa’s view of the borderlands as a mystic vision and the ways that Chicana writers invoke religious symbols and rhetoric to articulate a moral vision highlighting social injustice. They investigate the role of healing, looking at it in relation to both the Latino Pentecostal movement and the practice of the curanderismo tradition in East Los Angeles. Delving into to popular culture, they reflect on Luis Valdez’s video drama La Pastorela: “The Shepherds’ Play,” the spirituality of Chicana art, and the religious overtones of the reverence for the slain Tejana music star Selena. This volume signals the vibrancy and diversity of the practices, arts, traditions, and spiritualities that reflect and inform Mexican American religion.Contributors: Rudy V. Busto, DavÍd Carrasco, Socorro CastaÑeda-Liles, GastÓn Espinosa, Richard R. Flores, Mario T. GarcÍa, MarÍa Herrera-Sobek, LuÍs D. LeÓn, Ellen McCracken, Stephen R. Lloyd-Moffett, Laura E. PÉrez, Roberto Lint Saragena, Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, Kay Turner

Farm labor leader and civil rights advocate Dolores Huerta first worked with Cesar Chavez as a community organizer in Mexican American areas of southern California in the mid-1950s. Chavez dreamed of organizing farm workers, and in 1962 he started the National Farm Workers Association. He asked Huerta to work with them, and in the next three years they recruited a number of members. In 1965 the NFWA joined the AFL-CIO-affiliated Agricultural Workers' Committee in a strike against large grape growers in the San Joaquin Valley - a five-year strike that raised national awareness of the dismal treatment of the workers and led to the formation of the United Farm Workers union.Huerta's contributions to these efforts were invaluable in recruiting women for the cause, in keeping the union focused on nonviolent actions, and in gaining support in the eastern United States for the effective grape boycott that led to contracts for the union. Ten years after they started, they celebrated the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. They had made history.This is the first book to focus on Dolores Huerta. Throughout six decades of activism, she has made her own history and has been part of major events in the history of the country, standing alongside Robert Kennedy the night he was assassinated. Often called la Pasionaria, the passionate one, she continues to speak out on labor, environmental, antiwar, and women's issues. ""A Dolores Huerta Reader"" includes an informative biographical introduction, articles and book excerpts written about her, her own writing and speeches, and a recent interview with Mario Garcia where she expresses her unbending dedication to social justice. Anyone who wants to know more about Dolores Huerta should start with this book.

Latinos are already the largest minority group in the United States, and experts estimate that by 2050, one out of three Americans will identify as Latino. Though their population and influence are steadily rising, stereotypes and misconceptions about Latinos remain, from the assumption that they refuse to learn English to questions of just how ""American"" they actually are. By presenting thirteen riveting oral histories of young, first-generation college students, Mario T. Garcia counters those long-held stereotypes and expands our understanding of what he terms ""the Latino Generation."" By allowing these young people to share their stories and struggles, Garcia reveals that these students and children of immigrants will be critical players in the next chapter of our nation's history. Collected over several years, the testimonios follow the history of the speakers in thought-provoking ways, reminding us that members of the Latino Generation are not merely a demographic group but rather real individuals, as American in their aspirations and loyalty as the members of any other ethnic group in the country.

This is the amazing untold story of the Los Angeles sanctuary movement's champion, Father Luis Olivares (1934–1993), a Catholic priest and a charismatic, faith-driven leader for social justice. Beginning in 1980 and continuing for most of the decade, hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees made the hazardous journey to the United States, seeking asylum from political repression and violence in their home states. Instead of being welcomed by the "country of immigrants," they were rebuffed by the Reagan administration, which supported the governments from which they fled. To counter this policy, a powerful sanctuary movement rose up to provide safe havens in churches and synagogues for thousands of Central American refugees.Based on previously unexplored archives and over ninety oral histories, this compelling biography traces the life of a complex and constantly evolving individual, from Olivares's humble beginnings in San Antonio, Texas, to his close friendship with legendary civil rights leader Cesar Chavez and his historic leadership of the United Neighborhoods Organization and the sanctuary movement.

Once asked to explain how he had sustained himself over so many years of struggle, César Chávez responded: "I don't think I could base my will to struggle on cold economics or some political doctrine. For me, the base must be faith."In evaluating the life and struggles of César Chávez, one of the most recognized Latino leaders in the United States and the first labor leader to successfully organize and unionize U.S. farm workers, many historians, journalists, and other writers have largely missed one significant factor of his life—his faith and deep spirituality. The Gospel of César Chávez uses the prolific leader's own words to express his profound faith and the way it shaped his life and leadership.