Lupe Anguiano (born 12 March 1929) is an American civil rights activist known for her work on women's rights, the rights of the poor, and the protection of the environment. [1] She is credited with bringing religious support and helping reframe religious debates to include these nationwide issues. [2]
Anguiano was the fourth of six children born to a Mexican-American migrant family who moved from Colorado to California between May and December to harvest fruit, vegetables and nuts. [3] She earned a master's degree in administration and education from Antioch College. [4]
Anguiano joined Our Lady of Victory Missionary Sisters from 1949 to 1964. [5] She chose the order for their reputation being advocates for the poor. She left the church after joining picket lines and protesting a prospective law set out by the California Association of Realtors to reverse the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act, which banned racial discrimination by landlords. [3]
Anguiano went on to work with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1965. She also consulted with government agencies and testified before state and national legislative bodies. She worked with Cesar Chavez, and in Michigan where she led the grape boycott of 1965. [6] After leaving her post in the government, she focused on the welfare system as a result of becoming “angry at the way in which the system traps young, healthy, and intelligent women; makes them dependent on welfare; destroys their pride and their willingness to work; and keeps them living always under the poverty level.” [4] In 1973, her disillusionment led her back to San Antonio where she became national organizer for the United Farm Workers and founded the National Women’s Employment & Education Inc, which helps single female parents move beyond welfare poverty. [4]
She is a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus, along with Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, and has worked on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment. Anguiano was a delegate to the historic "First Women's Conference" in Houston in 1977, where she, Jean Stapleton, and Coretta Scott King read the "Declaration of American Women." [7] In 1996, Congress passed landmark welfare reform legislation that contained many of her ideas. [3]
She currently volunteers at the California Coastal Protection Network, the Pacific Environment, and other environmental organizations. [8] Her papers are housed at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. [7]
In 2007, she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project. [1]
Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label Chicano is sometimes used interchangeably with Mexican American, although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American identity was related to encouraging assimilation into White American society and separating the community from the African-American political struggle, Chicano identity emerged among anti-assimilationist youth. Some belonged to the Pachuco subculture, and claimed the term. The term Chicano was widely reclaimed by ethnic Mexicans in the 1960s and 1970s to express political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent, diverging from the more assimilationist Mexican American term. Chicano Movement leaders collaborated with Black Power movement. Chicano youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance.
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.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National 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.
Chicana feminism is a sociopolitical movement in the United States that scrutinizes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections impacting Chicana identities. Chicana feminism is empowering and demands women within this movement to challenge institutionalized social norms that contribute to the stereotypes and oppressions of their ascribed identities. Most importantly, Chicana feminism is a movement, theory, and praxis that encourages women to reclaim their existence between and among the Chicano Movement and the American feminist movement.
The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as "the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States."
Rachel Rosenthal was a French-born interdisciplinary and performance artist, teacher, actress, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles.
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.
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."
Mary Frances Tarlton "Sissy" Farenthold was an American politician, attorney, activist, and educator. She was best known for her two campaigns for governor of Texas in 1972 and 1974, and for being placed in nomination for vice president of the United States, finishing second at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She was elected as the first chair of the National Women's Political Caucus in 1973.
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.
Dolores Delahanty is a social activist and political leader in Louisville, Kentucky. She was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus during the early Civil Rights Movement, and she was critical to the success of Kentucky's Fair Credit Law. Delahanty has devoted her life to improving the lives of others, primarily those of Kentucky women and children.
Cindy Marano was an economic justice activist from the United States. Marano worked for economic equity for women and low-income workers. She is a designated Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project, which described her as a "brilliant strategic thinker".
Johnnie Tillmon Blackston was an American welfare rights activist. She is regarded as one of the most influential welfare rights activists in the country, whose work with the NWRO influenced the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in particular.
Gloria Arellanes is a political activist known for her involvement with the Brown Berets during the Chicano Movement and has been influential in the development of Chicana feminism. As the first female Prime Minister of the Brown Berets, Arellanes worked to include the Chicana perspective in fighting for Mexican rights in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. Conflicts of covert "macho attitude" within the delegation of labor in the Brown Berets led Gloria Arellanes along with other female Brown Berets to leave the organization and create Las Adelitas de Aztlán. Similar to the Brown Berets, Las Adelitas de Aztlán strived to assist its community members in creating awareness for better bilingual education in Los Angeles as well as protesting against the Vietnam War. Arellanes was also a prominent figure in the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, leading Las Adelitas de Aztlán to participate in marches against the violence of the Vietnam War.
Sarumathi "Saru" Jayaraman is an American attorney, author, and activist from Los Angeles, California. She is an advocate for fair wages for restaurant workers and other service workers in the United States. In the aftermath of September 11th, she co-founded the non-profit public service organization Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. And in 2013 she founded a new organization to work on these issues, called One Fair Wage. Jayaraman is a recipient of the Ashoka fellowship in 2013 and the Soros Equality Fellowship in 2020.
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.
The following is a timeline of Latino civil rights in the United States.
Marian Kramer is a civil rights, poverty, and labor activist based in Detroit, Michigan.
Leslie Gilbert-Lurie is an American author, community leader, philanthropist, lawyer, and former television executive. Her memoir, Bending Toward the Sun, was published in 2009 by HarperCollins. She frequently moderates panel discussions and publicly speaks on topics related to human rights and policy reform.
For the Hong Kong actress and singer, see Miriam Yeung.