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Juan Valdez (1938 - August 25, 2012) was an activist of Spanish and indigenous descent [1] and an advocate for land-grant rights. He fired the first shot during a 1967 New Mexico courthouse raid that seized international attention and helped spark the Chicano Movement.
Valdez was born in 1938 in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Heir to a northern New Mexico land grant, Valdez was 29 years old when he joined the group of land grant advocates Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Land Grant Alliance) in raiding a Rio Arriba County courthouse in Tierra Amarilla. Their goal was to attempt a citizen's arrest of then-District Attorney Alfonso Sanchez over Hispanic land rights issues. [2] "Tijerina [the leader of the group] impressed me when he and most of the people who had walked from Albuquerque set up a camp and refused to leave," Valdez told retired lawyer Mike Scarborough in the book Trespassers On Our Own Land, an oral history of the Valdez family. [3] During the raid, Valdez shot and wounded state police officer Nick Saiz after Saiz went for his pistol and refused commands by Valdez to put his hands up. "It came down to; I shoot him or he was going to shoot me — so I pulled the trigger," Valdez is quoted as saying in the book. "Lucky for both of us, he didn't die." [2] The raiders also beat a deputy and took a sheriff and reporter hostage. After holding at the courthouse for a couple of hours, the armed group fled to the mountains under pursuit from the National Guard. Valdez was convicted of assault but was later pardoned by Governor Bruce King. The episode cemented Valdez and Tijerina's legacy among activists from the Chicano Movement of the 1970s who favoured more radical methods of fighting discrimination over those of the moderate Mexican American civil rights leaders a generation before.
"He loved the attention," said daughter Juanita Montoya, 48. "He wanted people to know our history and what happened to our land." [2] Valdez died peacefully from apparent heart conditions at his Canjilon ranch on August 25, 2012. [2]
Chicano or Chicana is an ethnic identity for Mexican Americans who have a non-Anglo self-image, embracing their Mexican Native ancestry. 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 the mainstream American culture 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.
Tierra Amarilla is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States.
Alianza Federal de Mercedes, which in English translates to Federal Land Grant Alliance, was a group led by Reies Tijerina based in New Mexico in the 1960s that fought for the land rights of Hispano New Mexicans.
Reies López Tijerina, was an activist who led a struggle in the 1960s and 1970s to restore New Mexican land grants to the descendants of their Spanish colonial and Mexican owners. As a vocal spokesman for the rights of Hispanos and Mexican Americans, he became a major figure of the early Chicano Movement and founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes. As an activist, he worked in community education and organization, media relations, and land reclamations. He became famous and infamous internationally for his 1967 armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse located on the Tierra Amarilla Land Grant whose lands, originally designated for Hispanic settlers, had largely been acquired by Anglo ranchers and land developers.
The Brown Berets is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Party. The Brown Berets was part of the Third World Liberation Front. It worked for educational reform, farmworkers' rights, and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. It also sought to separate the American Southwest from the control of the United States government.
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales was a Mexican-American boxer, poet, political organizer, and activist. He was one of many leaders for the Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. The Crusade for Justice was an urban rights and Chicano cultural urban movement during the 1960s focusing on social, political, and economic justice for Chicanos. Gonzales convened the first-ever Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in 1968, which was poorly attended due to timing and weather conditions. He tried again in March 1969, and established what is commonly known as the First Chicano Youth Liberation Conference. This conference was attended by many future Chicano activists and artists. It also birthed the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a pro-indigenist manifesto advocating revolutionary Chicano nationalism and self-determination for all Chicanos. Through the Crusade for Justice, Gonzales organized the Mexican American people of Denver to fight for their cultural, political, and economic rights, leaving his mark on history. He was honored with a Google Doodle in continued celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States on 30 September 2021.
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.
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 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.
El Teatro Campesino is a Chicano theatre company in California. Performing in both English and Spanish, El Teatro Campesino was founded in 1965 as the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers and the Chicano Movement with the "full support of César Chávez." Originally based in Delano, California, during the Delano Strike, the theatre is currently based in San Juan Bautista, California.
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
Land grants in New Mexico and Colorado were awarded to individuals and communities by the Spanish and Mexican governments to encourage settlement and expansion of the Territorio de Nuevo Mexico, which included southern Colorado. Land grants by the Spanish and Mexicans between 1692 and 1846 numbered 291 in New Mexico, four partly in New Mexico and partly in Colorado, and three in Colorado. The land area of grants totaled tens of thousands of square miles. "The two major types of land grants were private grants made to individuals, and communal grants made to groups of people for the purpose of establishing settlements. Communal land grants were also made to Pueblos for the lands they inhabited." The majority of the land area within grants was designated as common land for residents. Common land was mostly used for grazing cattle and sheep and harvesting timber. Smaller acreages within the grants were devoted to irrigation agriculture and home sites. The principal objectives of the land grants were to encourage the foundation of new communities and to expand the settled area on the frontiers of New Mexico for defense from Indian raids.
The Tierra Amarilla Land Grant in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado consists of 594,516 acres (2,405.92 km2) of mountainous land. The government of New Mexico awarded it to Manuel Martinez and his offspring in 1832. The grant was settled by Hispanics in the 1860s and the original inhabitants, the Ute Indians, were induced to leave. Settlers were given small plots, but most of the land in the grant area was designated as common land for the use of all the settlers and their descendants. After its conquest of New Mexico in 1846, the United States government upheld the validity of the grant, but subsequent actions by the U.S. did not protect the right to access common lands by the settlers. Politician and land speculator Thomas Catron, a member of the Santa Fe Ring, acquired nearly all the land by 1883 but later sold it to a development company. Access to the common lands of the grant by the Hispanic settlers and their descendants gradually disappeared as the common land became owned by Anglo ranchers, development companies, and speculators.
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.
Cañones is a census-designated place in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States. Its population was 118 as of the 2010 census. Cañones had a post office until it closed on January 3, 2002.
This is a Mexican American bibliography. This list consists of books, and journal articles, about Mexican Americans, Chicanos, and their history and culture. The list includes works of literature whose subject matter is significantly about Mexican Americans and the Chicano/a experience. This list does not include works by Mexican American writers which do not address the topic, such as science texts by Mexican American writers.
The following is a timeline of Latino civil rights in the United States.
The People's Constitutional Party was a political party active in the U.S. state of New Mexico during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Leonard Emlyn Davies is an American lawyer, civil rights activist, writer, and painter whose early work defending migrant farm workers and the Black Panther Party resulted in his participation in "The Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson," the first criminal trial to be filmed in its entirety in the United States.
Rosalio Muñoz is a Chicano activist who is most recognized for his anti-war and anti-police brutality organizing with the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. On August 29, 1970, Muñoz and fellow Chicano activist Ramses Noriega organized a peaceful march in East Los Angeles, California in which over 30,000 Mexican Americans were in attendance to protest the war in Vietnam. The event became a site of police brutality after sheriffs attacked and tear gassed the crowd, leading to the deaths of three people, including Muñoz's friend and Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar.
