The Chicano And Puerto Rican Movements Of The 1900s

Injustice and inequality often ignite the sparks of social and political movements. The Chicano (Mexican-American) and Puerto Rican movements of the 1900s provide such examples. Latinos are often considered a homogeneous and involved political subsection or as Beltrán describes a ‘sleeping giant.’ The metaphor describes a sleeping giant who contains much political control through its sheer size but does little with its power. Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans have historically proven this metaphor wrong and mobilized in great numbers to affect real change within their respective communities. Yet, though these movements originated from similar dilemmas and often used similar tactics, Latino uniformity within the political or social sphere

Youth played an immense part to these parties as well as bridging the gaps between social classes among the same ethnic groups. For example, Chicanos college students pushed their message of cultural perversion and racial equality through ‘blowouts’ and spoke for more Chicano educational programs at their universities. Young students throughout the Puerto Rican movement set up The Puerto Rican Student Union (La Unión) which pushed for better education services for Latinos. The new focuses of these groups became perceiving their identities, rather pushing for assimilation into ‘American’ culture.Though Puerto Ricans and Mexicans each attempted to achieve social change through way of the Democratic party, both shifted their focus on more internal change. Culture and education became two of the main avenues through which the movements strived for

Unity for Chicanos came in the form of an idea, of a dream, called El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán). ‘Plan of Aztlán’ became one the Chicanos signature ideas, this ‘Plan’ “sought to connect Chicanos to their indigenous past while… reminding them of the colonial implications of the Mexican-American war.” The ‘Plan’ become a method through which Mexican-Americans could be united through their shared ancestry and culture. Simultaneously, the Young Lords pushed for unity through a much more radical avenue. The Lords aimed to liberate their fellow Puerto Ricans and thus “rejected the established norms and American values… [and] ideas that perpetuate the supremacy of the male, the dehumanization of homosexuals, and inequality of our diverse racial origins.” The Young Lords strived towards revolutionary nationalism by promoting and thus uniting their communities behind societal changes. The Chicano movement leaned more towards cultural nationalism attempting to unity their communities through shared history; these differences unifying strategies greatly affected the gender relations within the