 | This article is an orphan, as no other articles link to it . Please introduce links to this page from related articles ; try the Find link tool for suggestions. (July 2022) |
Deborah Mora Espinosa | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1951 (age 70–71) Colorado, U.S. |
| Occupation | Activist and museum director |
| Spouse(s) | Juan Espinosa |
Deborah Mora Espinosa (born 1951) is a Chicana activist in Colorado. She worked for History Colorado as the director of El Pueblo History Museum. [1]
Deborah Mora Espinosa was born in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1951 to parents Gilbert Mora-Durán and Calletana Mora-Adargo. [2] She grew up in western Colorado where her father worked on the D&RGW Railroad in Colorado. He died when Espinosa was 12 years old. Her parents had limited education and highly valued it in their children. The Mora family had three boys and four girls, and all received their high-school diplomas. [3]
Espinosa faced discrimination based on class and her Chicano heritage. Her parents were stigmatized for speaking Spanish. She attended a parochial elementary school where she was one of two Mexican children. [3]
Espionsa started her college career at Mesa College in 1969 but dropped out after feeling like she didn't belong. [3]
In 1970, she met Juan Espinosa who was returning from fighting in Vietnam. They married in 1971 and moved to Boulder, where they both attended the University of Colorado Boulder. [3]
She received an M.A. in Non-Profit Management at Regis University, where she was a Colorado Trust Fellow. [1]
Espinosa started a Chicano student newspaper called El Diario, and was a co-chair of the United Mexican American Students (UMAS) group. She and Juan became heavily involved in El Movimiento in Colorado. Because of their student newspaper, they joined many of the major events as journalists such as Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, the La Raza Unida Party in Texas, and the Crusade for Justice with Corky Gonzalez in Denver. [3]
Espinosa and other activists challenged CU's curriculum which excluded Chicano subjects, and protested discrimination. [3] During her time as a student, she focused on supporting women who could not attend UMAS meetings because they were mothers or working women. [2] Espinosa was friends with Los Seis de Boulder.
They went to Mexico to study for six months after Juan graduated from CU Boulder. When they returned to the US, they settled in Pueblo, Colorado. They have four daughters. Espinosa returned to college at the University of Southern Colorado. She received a B.S. degree in history and Chicano studies in 1975. [3]
The Espinosas, David Martinez, and Pablo Mora started the Pueblo-based newspaper, La Cucaracha. It focused on issues that were important to Chicanos. The paper informed the community and documented El Movimiento. [4] The paper ran from about 1968-1974 and operated out of the Espinosa's house. [2]
In 1988, she became the director of El Pueblo Museum for the Colorado Historical Society. Under her guidance, the museum moved from an old airplane hangar to a historic location in downtown Pueblo. She was involved in city planning and the renovation of downtown Pueblo. [3]
In 2015, she co-curated the exhibit at History Colorado Center in Denver, "El Moviemento: The Chicano Movement in Colorado." [1] [5]
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'.
El Plan de Santa Bárbara: A Chicano Plan for Higher Education is a 155-page document, which was written in 1969 by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education. Drafted at the University of California Santa Barbara, it is a blueprint for the inception of Chicana/o studies programs in colleges and universities throughout the US. The Chicano Coordinating Council expresses political mobilization to be dependent upon political consciousness, thus the institution of education is targeted as the platform to raise political conscious amongst Chicanos and spur higher learning to political action. The Plan proposes a curriculum in Chicano studies, the role of community control in Chicano education and the necessity of Chicano political independence. The document was a framework for educational and curriculum goals for the Chicano movements within the institution of education, while being the foundation for the Chicano student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA).
The Plan Espiritual de Aztlán was a pro-indigenist manifesto advocating Chicano nationalism and self-determination for Mexican Americans. It was adopted by the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference, a March 1969 convention hosted by Rodolfo Gonzales's Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado.
Chicanismo is the ideology behind the Chicano movement. It is an ideology based on a number of important factors that helped shape a social uprising in order to fight for the liberties of Mexican-Americans. Chicanismo was shaped by a number of intellectuals and influential activists as well as by the artistic and political sphere, and the many contributors to the ideology collaborated to create a strong sense of self-identity within the Chicano community. Cultural affirmation became one of the main methods of developing Chicanismo. This cultural affirmation was achieved by bringing a new sense of nationalism for Mexican-Americans, drawing ties to the long-forgotten history of Chicanos in lands that were very recently Mexican, and creating a symbolic connection to the ancestral ties of Mesoamerica and the Nahuatl language.
El Grito del Norte was a bilingual newspaper based in Española, New Mexico, co-founded by the activist Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez and the attorney Beverly Axelrod in 1968. Before this, Martínez had worked with social issues such as the black movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while Axelrod had been involved in the first production of The Black Panther. The tabloid was originally the publication of the Reies Tijerina's Alianza Federal de Mercedes, an organization dedicated to recovering the lands of dispossessed Hispanos, whom Axelrod represented as a lawyer. It expanded to provide coverage of the Chicano Movement in urban areas, workers' struggles and Latino political prisoners, as well as other Leftist causes. The paper often advocated for the advancement of such minority groups as well as the Black and Native American communities.
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement in the United States inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black Power movement, that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Before this, Chicano/a had been a term of derision, adopted by some Pachucos as an expression of defiance to Anglo-American society. With the rise of Chicanismo, Chicano/a became a reclaimed term in the 1960s and 1970s, used to express political autonomy, ethnic and cultural solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent, diverging from the assimilationist Mexican-American identity. Chicanos also expressed solidarity and defined their culture through the development of Chicano art during El Movimiento, and stood firm in preserving their religion.
Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections of women that identify as Chicana. Chicana feminism empowers women and insist that they challenge the stereotypes and boundaries that Chicanas face across lines of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality. Most importantly, Chicana feminism is a movement. It is also a theory and praxis that helps women reclaim their existence between and among the Chicano Movement and American feminist movements.
Judith Francisca Baca is an American artist, activist, and professor of Chicano studies, world arts, and cultures based at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice, California. Baca is the director of the mural project that created the Great Wall of Los Angeles, which is the largest communal mural project in the world.
Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez was an American Chicana feminist and a long-time community organizer, activist, author, and educator. She wrote numerous books and articles on different topics relating to social movements in the Americas. Her best-known work is the bilingual 500 years of Chicano History in Pictures, which later formed the basis for the educational video ¡Viva la Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History. Her work was hailed by Angela Y. Davis as comprising "one of the most important living histories of progressive activism in the contemporary era ... [Martínez is] inimitable ... irrepressible ... indefatigable."
Martha P. Cotera is a librarian, writer, and influential activist of both the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and the Chicana Feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Her two most notable works are Diosa y Hembra: The History and Heritage of Chicanas in the U.S. and The Chicana Feminist. Cotera was one of six women featured in a documentary, Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana, which recounts the experiences of some of the Chicana participants of the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas.
El Pueblo History Museum is a local history museum in Pueblo, Colorado, United States. The museum presents the history of Pueblo, together with the cultural and ethnic groups of the region. The historical site includes an 1840s-style adobe trading post and plaza and the archaeological excavation site of the original 1842 El Pueblo trading post which was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 1996. The facility is administered by History Colorado.
Chicana literature is a form of literature that has emerged from the Chicana Feminist movement. It aims to redefine Chicana archetypes in an effort to provide positive models for Chicanas. Chicana writers redefine their relationships with what Gloria Anzaldúa has called "Las Tres Madres" of Mexican culture by depicting them as feminist sources of strength and compassion.
Hijas de Cuauhtémoc was a student Chicana feminist newspaper founded in 1971 by Anna Nieto-Gómez and Adelaida Castillo while both were students at California State University, Long Beach.
Maria Teresa "Teresita" Sandoval Suazo (1811–1894) was among the first women of European heritage to live in the Arkansas Valley of present-day Colorado. She is one of the founders of El Pueblo in the current city of Pueblo, Colorado. She managed a ranch, the Doyle Settlement, in her later years.
Beginning with the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Chicanas used art to express political and social resistance. Through different art mediums both past and contemporary, Chicana artists have continued to explore and interrogate traditional Mexican-American values and embody feminist themes through different mediums including murals, painting, photography, and more. The momentum created from the Chicano Movement spurred a Chicano Renaissance among Chicanas and Chicanos. Political art was created by poets, writers, playwrights, and artists and used to defend against their oppression and societal marginalization. During the 1970s, Chicana feminist artists differed from their Anglo-feminist counterparts in the way they collaborated. Chicana feminist artists often utilized artistic collaborations and collectives that included men, while Anglo-feminist artists generally utilized women-only participants.
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.
A Mexican American is a resident of the United States who is of Mexican descent. Mexican American-related topics include the following:
Rita Martinez was a Chicana activist operating in Pueblo, Colorado. She is notable for her activism against the observance of Columbus Day in Colorado. Her efforts came to fruition in 2020, when Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill abolishing Columbus Day.
Guadalupe "Lupe" Villalobos Briseño is a civil rights activist who led the Kitayama Carnation Strike in 1968-1969. In 2020, Briseño was recognized for her work and was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.