A Plan to Kill All Anglos, the Texas Rangers and Vigilante Justice January 6th 1915 the Plan of San Diego was discovered in the possession of Basillio Ramos when he was captured in by the Texas Rangers. The manifesto, written in San Diego Texas, called for the formation of a Liberating Army of Races and […]
Author: jp
Mexican Americans in the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a complex issue for Mexican Americans. Many young men went off to fight and saw service in the military as a way proving their Americanness and solidifying their right to be full fledged members of the American Dream. With a machismo warrior spirit and with no aversion to hard work many […]
Artist: Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Since this site is intended to be both History and Culture–it’s about time I start posting about some of the amazing Chicana Artists who have been so influential. One who I will be writing a lot more on is Gloria Anzaldúa. She is definitely the best writer I’ve ever read. Why have you never heard […]
Mexican Americans in WWII
During WWII–despite much racism and social turmoil throughout the 1930’s against Mexican Americans, many eagerly joined the war effort and fought for their country. The first Coloradan to receive the Medal of Honor was Joe P. Martinez who led troops on an attack up a snowy mountain range in the Aleutian Islands on May 26th, […]
Operation Wetback 1954
Operation Wetback was a military style campaign in the border states intended to track down and deport as many people of Mexican heritage as possible. It was also one of the largest campaigns of deportation ever as over 1.5m+ immigrants were deported in a single year. However, the militarization and coordinated deportation efforts between Mexico […]
Bracero Program 1942-64
The Bracero program stared during WWII to recruit temporary farm labor from Mexico. After having intimidated and repatriated over a million people of Mexican heritage out of the United States in the 1930’s agricultural businesses were worried they would face labor shortages to work in the midst of WWII. The US and Mexico came to […]
From Immigration to Deportation: 1890 and 1940
The Rise and Fall of Immigrant Mexican Communities between 1890 and 1940 California and much of the Southwest had a native Mexican and American Indian culture throughout the 1800’s. This changed with an explosion of immigration between 1890 and 1930. The population of Los Angeles county alone grew from 101,000 to 2.2 million. This growth […]
The First Chicana Movement–1919
In the 1910’s Mexican women in El Paso Texas worked at home raising the family, cooking and housekeeping. This required gathering firewood and collecting water by hand in order to support her husband working manual labor for the railroads or in the factories. It was rare to venture outside of the home but some intrepid […]
Corky Gonzales Origins: Mexico, Immigration and Beets
Corky’s story starts June 18th, 1928 in Denver Hospital. (1) Corky’s father was from Chihuahua, Mexico and served in Pancho Villa’s army during the 1910 Mexican Revolution. It could be tall-tales but the timeline fits and many immigrants to the states in the 1910/20’s were fleeing the violence of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The […]
What’s a Chicano?
So, what do we call you? Chicano? Latino? Mexican? Hispanic? Hispano? Spanish Surnamed? Mexican-American? or maybe just American? And what about Chican@ and Latinx? Well, it’s complicated so let’s start with the term Chicano. This is an pre-columbian term from the Nahuatl language used by the Aztecs to describe their original homeland in what […]