The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In Fall 2022, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,500 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students.
M.E.Ch.A. is a US-based organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through political action. The acronym of the organization's name is the Chicano word mecha, which is the Chicano pronunciation of the English word match and therefore symbolic of a fire or spark; mecha in Spanish means fuse or wick. The motto of MEChA is 'La Union Hace La Fuerza'.
Merrill College is a residential college at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The theme of the college, and the name of its freshman core course, is "cultural identities and global consciousness."
Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans, particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California, as well as in Chicago. Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with Spanglish, which is a mixing of Spanish and English; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of English, not a "learner English" or interlanguage. It is even the native dialect of some speakers who know little to no Spanish, or have no Mexican heritage.
Colegio Cesar Chavez was an American college-without-walls in Mount Angel, Oregon. The college was named after Mexican American civil rights activist César Chávez. Colegio was established in 1973 and closed in 1983. Colegio was the first accredited, independent four-year Chicano/Latino college in the United States. In 1975 it was granted candidacy status from the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges. In 1977, Colegio granted degrees to 22 graduates, a number exceeding the combined number of Chicanos who graduated that same year from University of Oregon and Oregon State University. In his book Colegio Cesar Chavez, 1973–1983: A Chicano Struggle for Educational Self-Determination, author Carlos Maldonado writes that Colegio Cesar Chavez was one of the few institutions that was named after Cesar Chavez during his lifetime.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the United Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.
The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF) is a Sacramento, California-based art collective, founded in 1970 by Ricardo Favela, José Montoya and Esteban Villa. It was one of the "most important collective artist groups" in the Chicano art movement in California during the 1970s and the 1980s and continues to be influential into the 21st century.
The Brown Berets are a Chicano/Mexican-American–based community organization in Watsonville, California, modeled after the Brown Berets of the Civil Rights Movement. Watsonville is a town with a population of 53,856 of which 82% are Latino. An excerpt from their website states, "we serve as a community defense force acting for the liberation and amelioration of our barrios". Their beliefs are anti-military, anti-police, and anti-border patrol. Their members are encouraged to study the Black Panthers and American Militant Resistance. Brown Beret member and former Watsonville Mayor Oscar Rios was quoted in an interview as saying "It (California) belonged to us, Mexico, 1848. It was taken away okay, so it's no surprise we're taking it back slowly but surely."
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.
José Antonio "Tony" Burciaga was an American Chicano artist, poet, and writer who explored issues of Chicano identity and American society.
Diane Rodriguez was an American theatre artist who directed, wrote and performed. An OBIE Award winning actress, she was known for using comedy to confront various forms of oppression, often with special attention to issues of gender and sexuality.
César E. Chávez National Monument, also known as Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, is a 116-acre (47 ha) U.S. National Monument in Keene, Kern County, California, located about 32 miles away from Bakersfield, California. The property was the headquarters of the United Farm Workers (UFW), and home to César Chávez from the early 1970s until his death in 1993. Chávez's gravesite is located in the property's gardens along with that of his wife, Helen Fabela Chávez. Originally developed as a headquarters and worker housing area for a quarry, it served as a tuberculosis sanitarium in the early 1900s, until its acquisition by the UFW in the early 1970s.
The Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) is a society that aims to further the success of Chicano/Hispanic and Native American students in obtaining advanced degrees, careers, leadership positions, and equality in the STEM field. Founded in 1973, SACNAS has over 20,000 members and 110 chapters on college campuses across the United States and United States held territories. SACNAS began in junior and high schools through graduate and undergraduate programs with the purpose of mentoring students of minority backgrounds. The society does not discriminate against any group, and benefits African American, Asian American, and white students, as well as those who are in the social sciences. In the past decade alone, SACNAS has experienced major growth. The society experienced an increased participation rate of 40% for their annual conferences between 2005 and 2010, while jumping from 32 to 50 chapters on college campuses across the nation between 2007 and 2010. The society's revenue increased as well, moving from $2.3 million to $3.8 million from 2007 to 2010, a total growth of 65%. SACNAS is the largest multicultural STEM diversity organization in the US.
Patricia Zavella is an anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Latin American and Latino Studies department. She has spent a career advancing Latina and Chicana feminism through her scholarship, teaching, and activism. She was president of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists and has served on the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 2016, Zavella received the American Anthropological Association's award from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology to recognize her career studying gender discrimination. The awards committee said Zavella’s career accomplishments advancing the status of women, and especially Latina and Chicana women have been exceptional. She has made critical contributions to understanding how gender, race, nation, and class intersect in specific contexts through her scholarship, teaching, advocacy, and mentorship. Zavella’s research focuses on migration, gender and health in Latina/o communities, Latino families in transition, feminist studies, and ethnographic research methods. She has worked on many collaborative projects, including an ongoing partnership with Xóchitl Castañeda where she wrote four articles some were in English and others in Spanish. The Society for the Anthropology of North America awarded Zavella the Distinguished Career Achievement in the Critical Study of North America Award in the year 2010. She has published many books including, most recently, "I'm Neither Here Nor There, Mexicans"Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, which focuses on working class Mexican Americans struggle for agency and identity in Santa Cruz County.
Tlaloc Rivas is a Mexican-American writer, producer, and theatre director. He is one of the co-founders of the Latinx Theatre Commons, which works side by side with HowlRound to revolutionize American theater and to highlight and promote the contributions and presence of Latinos in theatre. Central to Rivas' work is the Latino experience, but also exploring the American experience through the lens' of underrepresented voices. Rivas focuses on writing and directing plays that significantly explore Latino identity and history. Additionally, Rivas has also translated and adapted plays from the Spanish language and directed Spanish-language and bilingual plays such as Mariela in the Desert by Karen Zacarias and classical works such as Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña.
César Cruz is a gang violence prevention advocate and Dean of Secondary Schools Program at Harvard University. He was born in Guadalajara c. 1974, coming to the United States as an undocumented immigrant at age 9, and holds a B.A. in history from UC Berkeley, and a doctorate in educational leadership from Harvard Graduate School of Education. On May 1, 1992, he was one of 65 people arrested marching on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge after the acquittal of officers charged with beating Rodney King. In 1995, he was involved in a fifteen-day hunger strike at University of California, Irvine. The 1995 strike was undertaken by Cruz and others from UC Berkeley and UC Irvine to protect and promote affirmative action at UC Irvine. Cruz was later part of a 26-day hunger strike in 2004, which resulted in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger agreeing to refinance the West Contra Costa Unified School District's high interest loans. He was keynote speaker for the Cesar Chavez Convocation at UC Santa Cruz in 2014 and Hermanos Unidos National Conference at California State University, Fullerton in 2017. Research at Homeboy Industries, a job skills program in the Los Angeles area for gang members, served as his Harvard doctoral capstone work. He was the first male Mexican-immigrant to earn a doctorate at Harvard's Education Leadership program.
The term Chicanafuturism was originated by scholar Catherine S. Ramírez which she introduced in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies in 2004. The term is a portmanteau of 'chicana' and 'futurism', inspired by the developing movement of Afrofuturism. The word 'chicana' refers to a woman or girl of Mexican origin or descent. However, 'Chicana' itself serves as a chosen identity for many female Mexican Americans in the United States, to express self-determination and solidarity in a shared cultural, ethnic, and communal identity while openly rejecting assimilation. Ramírez created the concept of Chicanafuturism as a response to white androcentrism that she felt permeated science-fiction and American society. Chicanafuturism can be understood as part of a larger genre of Latino futurisms.
Maria Luisa Alanis Ruiz is an American Chicana activist and academic in Oregon. She has been active in Chicano and Latino social justice work in the state of Oregon since the 1970s, helped found Portland's Cinco de Mayo festival, and has been a long-term volunteer for the Portland-Guadalajara Sister-City Association. Much of her academic career was spent developing Chicano and Latino Studies programming and curricula for Portland State University.
Carmen Leon is an American painter and teacher known for her work in the Watsonville, Santa Cruz area.
Angélica Becerra is an activist visual artist who primarily works in watercolor and digital media.
