Cultural Writing. Biography. Latino/Latina Studies. William C. "Willie" Velasquez, Jr. founded the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP) and was an influential participant in other leading Latino rights and justice groups, including the Mexican American Youth Organization and the Mexican American Unity Council. From teh late 1960s until his untimely death in 1988, Velasquez helped Mexican Americans and other Hispanics become active participants in American political life. Although still insufficiently appreciated, Velasquez holds a unique status in the pantheon of modern American civil rights figures. "Few American leaders have had as much long term impact on a people ot the political system as Willie Velasquez. His efforts at SVREP and elsewhere helped to transform American political democracy and inclusiveness for Hispanic Americans and others in ways that many in American politics are only now beginning to comprehend"--Raul Yzaguirre.
Among the protest movements of the 1960s, the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) emerged as one of the principal Chicano organizations seeking social change. By the time MAYO evolved into the Raza Unida Party (RUP) in 1972, its influence had spread far beyond its Crystal City, Texas, origins. Its members precipitated some thirty-nine school walkouts, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and confronted church and governmental bodies on numerous occasions.
Armando Navarro here offers the first comprehensive assessment of MAYO's history, politics, leadership, ideology, strategies and tactics, and activist program. Interviews with many MAYO and RUP organizers and members, as well as first-hand knowledge drawn from his own participation in meetings, presentations, and rallies, enrich the text.
This wealth of material yields the first reliable history of this extremely vocal and visible catalyst of the Chicano Movement. The book will add significantly to our understanding of Sixties protest movements and the social and political conditions that gave them birth.
Inspired by a 1968 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights six-day hearing in San Antonio that introduced the Mexican American people to the rest of the nation, this book is an examination of the social change of Mexican Americans of Texas over the past half century.
In the mid-1960s, San Antonio, Texas, was a segregated city governed by an entrenched Anglo social and business elite. The Mexican American barrios of the west and south sides were characterized by substandard housing and experienced seasonal flooding. Gang warfare broke out regularly. Then the striking farmworkers of South Texas marched through the city and set off a social movement that transformed the barrios and ultimately brought down the old Anglo oligarchy. In Quixote's Soldiers, David Montejano uses a wealth of previously untapped sources, including the congressional papers of Henry B. Gonzalez, to present an intriguing and highly readable account of this turbulent period. Montejano divides the narrative into three parts. In the first part, he recounts how college student activists and politicized social workers mobilized barrio youth and mounted an aggressive challenge to both Anglo and Mexican American political elites. In the second part, Montejano looks at the dynamic evolution of the Chicano movement and the emergence of clear gender and class distinctions as women and ex-gang youth struggled to gain recognition as serious political actors. In the final part, Montejano analyzes the failures and successes of movement politics. He describes the work of second-generation movement organizations that made possible a new and more representative political order, symbolized by the election of Mayor Henry Cisneros in 1981.
"In 1940 there were virtually no Mexican American elected officials in Texas at any level of government. By the turn of the century that was no longer true. In fact, Mexican Americans in Texas had effectively reached parity with their white counterparts in elected office. This book tells the story of this dramatic transition in Texas politics and seeks to explain it utilizing original archival research, hours of interviews with leading figures, and the collected letters of some of Texas' most important politicians and activists. The departure from a racially uniform political class in Texas to incorporate Mexican Americans was slow and difficult.
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