Chicano Movement

Central to the movement phenomena, ad hoc organizations that focused on specific local crises or sector needs sprang up across the Southwest and Midwest. These groups centered on issues such as education reforms, service inequities, undesired urban changes, biases in war on poverty programs, drug impact, welfare rights, child care and ex-felon needs. Title II of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which stipulates participation by the "client" (that is, the poor), encouraged local group mobilization either through a positive outreach facilitating participation or as a consequence of negative reactions to the perceived malfunctioning or exclusivity of certain programs. Self-help organizations advocating individual determination developed in many localities and placed stress on individual rights and access to services, particularly for women and children. Many urban Mexican-Americans increasingly came to participate in public civic activities that involved direct interaction with officials and program personnel. The youth and women stepped forward as the primary participants in these efforts. Although Chicana/o politics in the early 1960s remained overwhelmingly liberal and reformist in content, more radical currents insisted on civic equities and plural participation within areas often controlled by electoral or patronage cliques. However, the dynamic leadership initiators often voiced a distrust of known older electoral políticos. By the late 1960s, certain currents encompassed procommunity autonomy and pluralist tendencies vis-à-vis constituted civic arrangements that were perceived as exclusionary and manipulated. Importantly, movement spokespersons established relations with groups, organizations, educational institutions, and political leaders not only across the Mexican border but also in other countries.