Chicano Movement Ideology

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Ideology within the Chicano Movement Mexican and Mexican-Americans during the Chicano Movement are perceived to have joined groups that had similar goals to the individuals that made up the group, but in reality it is much more complicated than that. Perhaps Mexican and Mexican-Americans joined coalitions who not only had goals like them, but rather they also joined groups that had parallel ideological beliefs as them. The Chicano Movement, 1960s-1970s, was an effort by Mexican and Mexican-Americans to acquire their wants and needs, particularly right for farmworkers, education reform, and political empowerment. There were various methods to come about doing this. It is important to note La Raza Unida Party, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm…show more content…
Since Gutiérrez was the chairman, this led to the use of practical tactics, like helping get their member elected into government positions. Chavez (2002) and Navarro (2010) aid one another by providing qualitative data regarding elections polls as a method of expressing how well the party did compared to the other parties running for election. The majority of the positions that La Raza Unida ran for were at the state level. The goal was to get Mexican and Mexican-Americans elected in order to empower their people and serve them in various political issues where they felt that the government was not providing enough for them. This goes back to the idea of Chicano cultural nationalism in which the people no longer wanted to be part of this white power structure in which they lived. The first strategy La Raza Unida Party used was to get on the ballot and the way they did this was by obtaining signatures from voters and helping Mexican and Mexican-Americans get registered to vote (Chavez, 2002; Navarro, 2010). In the 1972 Congressional elections, a RUP candidate ran for the Senate and received 64,819 votes and was not the candidate to receive the lowest amount of votes (Navarro, 2010). The Republican and Democratic parties were still the two parties with the highest amount of votes. The RUP California State Senate position ran for election and it resulted in a loss for the party but the RUP candidate received over seven percent of the total vote (Chavez, 2002). The party struggled to get elected into state positions and La Raza Unida Party ran for multiple legislative positions, but was unable to get any of their candidates elected (Navarro, 2010). Chavez (2002) and Navarro (2010) give context of the specifics regarding certain elections. The ideology of Chicano cultural nationalism resulted in taking a pragmatic attitude towards government and
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