 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2019) |
Francisca Flores (December 1913, San Diego California - April 1996) was a labor rights activist, an early Chicana feminist, a journal editor, and an anti-poverty activist.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2019) |
Francisca Flores (December 1913, San Diego California - April 1996) was a labor rights activist, an early Chicana feminist, a journal editor, and an anti-poverty activist.
Flores was born in 1913 in San Diego, California, [1] to Maria Montelongo, a shop steward and cook, and Vicente Flores, a worker in a slaughterhouse. In 1926, one of her brothers died of tuberculosis; the same year, Flores contracted the same illness and spent the next 10 years in a sanatorium for those afflicted with the sickness. [2] While there, Flores befriended female veterans of Mexican Revolution. These friendships led to her organize a political discussion group for women in the sanatorium, Hermanas de la Revolución Mexicana. Her experience with Hermanas de la Revolución inspired to her to promote women's rights and heavily influenced her ideas about politics, labor, and civil rights, which were leftist and decidedly pro-Mexican. [3] Flores left the sanatorium in 1936 at age 23.
In 1943 Flores joined the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, a group of California activists committed to clearing a group of 12 young Mexican American men falsely convicted of murder in what came to be known as the Sleepy Lagoon Trial. [3] Flores also organized underground viewings of the 1954 pro-union film Salt of the Earth, which was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. [3] In 1960, she helped found the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA). [3]
Flores felt that the Chicano Movement of the 1960s ad 70s did not adequately address Chicana women's rights and needs, so she and other women branched out from the movement and created the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, the first national Chicana feminist organization in the United States. [4] She felt that it would improve the political and economic conditions of Mexican women in the United States. By the 1970s, the Comisión opened the Chicano Service Action Center (CSAC), a job trading center located in Los Angeles, two bilingual daycare centers (Centro de Niños), and a shelter for domestic violence victims. Eventually over 20 active chapters were established with approximately 300 members by the 1980s.
Today Flores is remembered as a Chicana feminist who sought to liberate Mexican American women. Flores came up against heavy criticism aimed at the Chicana feminist movement. Flores's response to the criticism that feminism was a, "betrayal of Chicano culture and heritage," was "Our culture hell!" which became a slogan for the Chicana feminist movement (2). [5]
Flores was an editor of Regeneración, a feminist magazine modeled after the Mexican anarchist newspaper of the same name which had been published by the Magnón brothers in the early 1900s. [6] In it she wrote, "Chicanas can no longer remain in a subservient role or as auxiliary forces in the Chicano movement. The must be included in the front line of communication, leadership and organizational responsibility.... The issue of equality freedom, and self-determination of the Chicana-like the right of self-determination, equality, and liberation of the Mexican Chicano community- is not negotiable" (1).
Flores was also a strong activist for women's rights when it came to making contraceptive more available and supporting women's reproductive rights. She wrote, "Abortion, in our opinion, is a personal decision. The women must be allowed to make it without legal restrictions," (4).
Chicano, Chicana, is an identity for Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image. Chicano was originally a classist and racist slur used toward low-income Mexicans that was reclaimed in the 1940s among youth who belonged to the Pachuco and Pachuca subculture. In the 1960s, Chicano was widely reclaimed in the building of a movement toward political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of indigenous descent. Chicano developed its own meaning separate from Mexican American identity. Youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their own identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance. The community forged an independent political and cultural movement, sometimes working alongside the Black power movement.
Chicanismo emerged as the cultural consciousness behind the Chicano Movement. The central aspect of Chicanismo is the identification of Chicanos with their Indigenous American roots to create an affinity with the notion that they are native to the land rather than immigrants. Chicanismo brought a new sense of nationalism for Chicanos that extended the notion of family to all Chicano people. Barrios, or working-class neighborhoods, became the cultural hubs for the people. It created a symbolic connection to the ancestral ties of Mesoamerica and the Nahuatl language through the situating of Aztlán, the ancestral home of the Aztecs, in the southwestern United States. Chicanismo also rejected Americanization and assimilation as a form of cultural destruction of the Chicano people, fostering notions of Brown Pride. Xicanisma has been referred to as an extension of Chicanismo.
The Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional was a Mexican-American organization dedicated to economically and politically empowering Chicana women in the United States.
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, theory, and praxis that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicanas and the Chicana/o community in the United States. Chicana feminism empowers women to challenge institutionalized social norms and regards anyone a feminist who fights for the end of women's oppression in the community.
Las Adelitas de Aztlán was a short-lived Mexican American female civil rights organization that was created by Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes in 1970. Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes were all former members of the Brown Berets, another Mexican American Civil rights organization that had operated concurrently during the 1960s and 1970s in the California area. The founders left the Brown Berets due to enlarging gender discrepancies and disagreements that caused much alienation amongst their female members. The Las Adelitas De Aztlan advocated for Mexican-American Civil rights, better conditions for workers, protested police brutality and advocated for women's rights for the Latino community. The name of the organization was a tribute to Mexican female soldiers or soldaderas that fought during the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century.
Andrea Villarreal (1881–1963) was a Mexican revolutionary, journalist and feminist. She was most known for her work with the Regeneración newspaper and La Mujer Moderna.
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.
Hispanic and Latino women in America have been involved in journalism for years, using their multilingual skills to reach across cultures and spread news throughout the 19th century until the common era. Hispanic presses provided information important to the Hispanic and Latin American communities and helped to foster and preserve the cultural values that remain today. These presses also "promoted education, provided special-interest columns, and often founded magazines, publishing houses, and bookstores to disseminate the ideas of local and external writers."
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.
The Chicano Art Movement represents groundbreaking movements by Mexican-American artists to establish a unique artistic identity in the United States. Much of the art and the artists creating Chicano Art were heavily influenced by Chicano Movement which began in the 1960s.
Anna Nieto-Gomez is a scholar, journalist, and author who was a central part of the early Chicana movement. She founded the feminist journal, Encuentro Femenil, in which she and other Chicana writers addressed issues affecting the Latina community, such as childcare, reproductive rights, and the feminization of poverty.
Alicia Escalante is a Chicana activist who was active during the Chicano Movement. She was the founder and chair of the East Los Angeles Chicana Welfare Rights Organization from 1967 to 1978.
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.
The Chicana Rights Project(CRP) was a feminist organization created in 1974 to address the legal rights of poor Mexican-American women. The organization was guided by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and created by Vilma Martinez. The project was headquartered in San Francisco and San Antonio.
La Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza was held in Houston, Texas between May 28 and May 30 in 1971. The conference marked the first time Chicanas came together within the state from around the country to discuss issues important to feminism and Chicana women. It was considered the first conference of its kind by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
Mexican American Women's National Association, known today as MANA, A National Latina Organization, advocates for equality and empowers Latinas through leadership development. MANA was founded in 1974, making it one of the oldest active Mexican-American advocacy organizations, and as of 2000, it is considered the largest Latina organization in the United States. The organization was formed to address the intersection of Mexican-American and women's needs for equal rights. The founders created MANA with the intent of having a Latina-oriented organization. MANA publicizes and addresses Latina perspectives and needs through Social movements, Leadership education, and Advocacy within federal, state, and local governments. They have been involved with multiple major social movements throughout their history. These include advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment and Reproductive rights, as well as social movements on education, leadership development, women's healthcare, and racial discrimination in the work. MANA currently operates from its home base in Washington, D.C. and has local chapters across the nation.
Cynthia Ann Orozco is a professor of history and humanities at Eastern New Mexico University known for her work establishing the field of Chicana studies.
A Mexican American is a resident of the United States who is of Mexican descent. Mexican American-related topics include the following:
5.Flores, Lori A. “A Community of Limits and the Limits of Community: MALDEF's Chicana Rights Project, Empowering the ‘Typical Chicana," and the Question of Civil Rights, 1974-1983.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 27, no. 3, 2008, pp. 81–110. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27501837.