There will be a planning meeting for the “La Raza Unida 40th Anniversary Commemoration” on Saturday, June 2, 2012 from 2-4 pm, in the Media Room at the Mercado Mayapan.
September 1, 2012 marks the 40th year anniversary of the Raza Unida Party’s first national conference and political convention that took place September 1-4, 1972 in El Paso, Texas at the El Paso County Coliseum. More than 1,500 delegates from throughout the United States, over half of them women, converged in El Paso to caucus around social and political issues important to the Chicano(a) community and to elect a leader of the new political party. Delegates caucused at the Sacred Heart Gym in Segundo Barrio before assembling at the Coliseum.
Dr. José Angel
Gutiérrez is a Chicano activist, a primary co-founder of La Raza Unida, and political leader of
the Chicano Movement during the 1960s and 1970s in Texas. La Raza
Unida Party was a political organization
that emerged to help to raise public consciousness of Chicano civil rights and
to politicize Latinos into getting in control of their community threw the
ballot box, because the Democratic Party had taken advantage of Latino voters
and provided empty promises. Gutierrez will be in El Paso for the historic
reunion of Chicano activists and leaders of the Chicano Movement that emerged
out of the Civil Rights Movement.
Jose Angel, is a personal friend a leader and mentor, I am honored to have been included in one of his books, “Chicanas in Charge: Texas Women in the Public Arena” and to have served as a primary organizer in El Paso of his campaign for the US Senate in Texas. He is a boisterous and opinionated Chicano, out spoken, well read, and fearless. His presence, persona, and political knowledge on empowerment shatter the political conscience because Jose Angel speaks not only with authority but passion for politics and power.
Jose Angel, is a personal friend a leader and mentor, I am honored to have been included in one of his books, “Chicanas in Charge: Texas Women in the Public Arena” and to have served as a primary organizer in El Paso of his campaign for the US Senate in Texas. He is a boisterous and opinionated Chicano, out spoken, well read, and fearless. His presence, persona, and political knowledge on empowerment shatter the political conscience because Jose Angel speaks not only with authority but passion for politics and power.
His book publications include El Político: The Mexican
American Elected Official (El Paso: Mictla Publications, 1972); A Gringo Manual on How to Handle Mexicans
(Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico: Imprenta Velasco Burkhardt, 1974); A War of Words (co-authored) (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985); The
Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1998); and translator of Reies López Tijerina, They Called Me "King Tiger":
My Struggle for the Land and Our Rights (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2000); a
revised and expanded edition of A Gringo
Manual on How to Handle Mexicans (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2001); Chicano Manual on How to Handle Gringos
(Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2003); We
Won't Back Down: Severita Lara's Rise from Student Leader to Mayor
(Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2005); and Making
of a Civil Rights Leader (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2005).
He also has written several articles and chapters over the
years, the most recent being "Chicano Music: The Politics and Evolution
to 1950", for an anthology edited by Lawrence Clayton for Texas A
& M University Press, forthcoming; "Binacionalismo en el siglo XXI:
Chicanos y mexicanos en los Estados Unidos", Fondo Editorial Huaxaca,
Oaxaca, Mexico, forthcoming; "Experiences of Chicana County Judges in
Texas Politics: In Their Own Words", Frontiers: A Journal of Women's
Studies, 20:1, Spring 1999; and, "Los dos Mexicos",
Extensiones: Revista Interdisciplinaria de la Universidad Intercontinental,
Mexico D.F., Mexico 4:1 y 2. 1997. Gutierrez organized and conducted most of
the interviews for the oral history project Tejano Voices at the University of
Texas at Arlington.
The cry of Crystal City resulted in the
birth of the Raza Unida Party, and
one cannot mention Crystal City without reference to Jose Angel Gutierrez. It
was established on January 17, 1970, at Campestre Hall in Crystal City, Texas, where
a meeting of 300 Mexican Americans was held. In 1967, Gutiérrez and Mario Compean founded MAYO,
the Mexican American Youth
Organization. In 1969, at
the first and only national MAYO meeting, Chicano activists endorsed the
formation of a third party. Gutierrez is
credited for proposing the establishment of the third party.
The Raza Unida Party then filed for party status in Zavala,
La Salle, and Dimmit counties in January 1970.
The rest is Chicano history that will be retold during the historic
September 40th Anniversary Commemoration.
Miguel Juarez is
on the committee and has informed me that there is an extensive outreach to the
founders and participants of the 1972 Raza Unida Party Convention. Dr.
Dennis Bixler-Marquez is an academic facilitator, under Chicano Studies at the University of
Texas at El Paso for the event. This
event will be a great historical reference for old Chicano activists, academics,
historians, the young, and the young at heart.
Our better educational, social and economic standing is a result of a
hard struggle that continues to exist, even though generations of Latinos have now
successfully moved up the social and political empowerment ladders. Let’s join
the community in organizing a great event!!
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