Chicano Blowouts and the struggle to define who is a Chicano

WMST & ANTH

October 7, 2014

Chicano Blowouts

• What are Chicanos fighting for now?
• What is needed?

• The Los Angeles blowouts took place in March of 1968 and lasted a full week.
• Chicano students were discriminated against and suffered inequities in their schools at the hands of an Anglo school board
• In order to bring these injustices to the attention of LAUSD, Students (led by teachers)organized themselves and walked out of their classes, hitting the district where it hurt-- their pocket book.
• 10,000 students from five different schools protested
• This demonstration constituted the first en mass protest against racism by Mexican-Americans.
• The blowouts resulted in a meeting with the Los Angeles Unified School board to discuss student demands, but unfortunately, the board did not meet any of the students demands, citing a "lack of funding"

Demands of Chicano Students

The term seems to have come into first use in the fields of California in derision of the inability of native Nahuatl speakers from Morelos state to refer to themselves as "Mexicanos," and instead spoke of themselves as "Mesheecanos," in accordance with the pronunciation rules of their language. An equivocal factor is that in vulgar Spanish it is common for Mexicans to use the "CH" conjunction in place of certain consonants in order to create a term of endearment. Whatever its origin, it was at first insulting to be identified by this name. The term was appropriated by Mexican-American activists who took part in the Brown Power movement of the 60s and 70s in the U.S. southwest, and has now come into widespread usage. Among more "assimilated" Mexican-Americans, the term still retains an unsavory connotation, particularly because it is preferred by political activists and by those who seek to create a new and fresh identity for their culture rather than to subsume it blandly under the guise of any mainstream culture.

• Entrances to all buildings and restrooms should be accessible to all students during schools hours. Security can be enforced by designated students.
• Student menus should be Mexican oriented. When Mexican food is served, mothers from the barrios should come to the school and help supervise the preparation of the food. These mothers will meet the food handler requirements of Los Angeles City Schools and they will be compensated for their services.
• School janitorial services should be restricted to the employees hired for that purposes by the school board. Students will be punished by picking up paper or trash and keeping them out of class.
• Corporal punishment will only be administrated according to State Law.
• Bilingual-Bi-cultural education will be compulsory for Mexican-Americans in the Los Angeles City School System where there is a majority of Mexican-American students.
• Administrators and teachers who show any form of prejudice toward Mexican or Mexican-American students, including failure to recognize, understand, and appreciate Mexican culture and heritage, will be removed from East Los Angeles schools
• Textbooks and curriculum will be developed to show Mexican and Mexican-American contribution to the U.S. society and to show the injustices that Mexicans have suffered as a culture of that society.

Paula Crisostomo

A relatively recent term that has been appropriated by many Mexican descendants

as unique and therefore reflective of their unique culture, though its first usage

seems to have been discriminatory. The most likely source of the word is traced to

the 1930 and 40s period, when poor, rural Mexicans, often native Americans,

were imported to the US to provide cheap field labor, under an agreement of the

governments of both countries.

• A17-year-old Paula Crisostomo, a Mexican-American Filipina activist helped to spearhead the Chicano student walkouts or “Blowouts” of 1968. As a student at Lincoln High School in East L.A. Crisostomo was influenced by social studies teacher Sal Castro, who recently passed away at the age of 79.
• Crisostomo organized thousands of students in boycotting their classes in protest over lack of college access, tracking policies, prohibition of Spanish in the classroom, and racist curricula.

At the heart of the movement lay the issue of identity, often expressed in Raza nationalism - cultural, political, or both.

Young activists in 1960s replaced "Mexican-American" with "Chicano"

http://www.colorado.edu/StudentGroups/MEChA/soychicana.html