By Gil Cedillo One Saturday morning in late August 50 years ago, I finished my household chores early and slipped out of the house to meet some friends. We were going to the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. I was 16 years old, and this would be my first protest march. As it turned out, those were my first steps in a long march toward a more just world. I played quarterback on Roosevelt High’s Rough Riders football team, which at the time was my main goal in life. That day I marched with Mario Chacón and some other friends my parents called greñudos –longhairs. An estimated 30,000 marchers made the Moratorium the largest political protest in Los Angeles history. The Moratorium was a turning point for legions of young community activists. Marchers included political leaders Esteban Torres and Gloria Molina, attorneys Antonia Hernandez and Samuel Paz, photographer Luis Garza, and educator Maria Elena Yepes. My greñudo friend Mario and I wound up being roommates...

Raul Ruiz at an L.A. City College event | La Raza photograph collection. Courtesy of UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. By Thomas Varela Raul Ruiz, a photojournalist who documented Chicano history during the turbulent era of the 1960s and 1970s died on June 13, 2019.  He was 78-years-old.  His work as editor-writer for publications he started like Inside-Eastside, followed by Chicano Student Movement, chronicled the growth of political consciousness among a new generation of upwardly mobile Latinos. He later volunteered to take the reins of La Raza newspaper from Eliezer Risco and Ruth Robinson and began shaping it into a portal of current events. The latter publication at times printed 20,000 to 50,000 issues locally and its influence reached beyond Los Angeles.  Consequently, the accessibility of the paper inspired, to some degree, the creation of several Chicano college newspapers, like El Machete , at Los Angeles City College, El Popo at Valley College (N...

Editorial by Álvaro Huerta, Ph.D I first learned about MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlán) during UCLA’s Freshman Summer Program (FSP) in 1985, as a 17-year-old freshman. My humorous efforts to pass myself off as younger by joking that I was “actually” a 7-year-old math prodigy at UCLA in that year aside, I eventually joined the campus chapter. Many moons later, I still stand by MEChA’s mantra: “Once a MEChista, always a MEChista.” No offense to my friends who graduated from historic Cathedral High in Los Angeles, where it seems a similar slogan had served as to stoke alumni pride long before MEChA was founded in 1969. Moreover, I’m certain being a proud, life-long Cathedral “Phantom” never precluded anyone from becoming an equally committed MEChista. Shocked to learn of the name change to MEChA proposed during the MEChA National Conference 2019 at UCLA earlier this spring, I didn’t know whether to cry or yell. Given that my youth unfolded at one of the toughest...

In 1969, over a thousand Chicano youth from across the U.S. gathered in Denver, CO for a Movimiento conference. By Abel Salas and Anthony Ortega On March 30th, the Chicano Movement Symposium Series presented its second annual installation of a program that seeks to encourage study and discussion and healthy, constructive debate on meaning and results of Chicanismo, outside of the university setting. In keeping with that goal, according to organizer Anthony Ortega, about 100 guests attended the free symposium, titled Aztlan Then And Now: 1969 Chicano Youth Liberation Conference held from 11am to 4pm at the Church of the Epiphany in Lincoln Heights. The location was particularly well chosen in light of the fact that much of the planning and organizing in preparation for East L.A. Chicano student “Blowouts” in 1968 took place inside the very same church, more than a year before the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was held in Denver, Colorado. Convened by the Crusade for Justi...