Texas, for years, was a one-party state controlled by white democrats. In 1962, a young eighteen-year-old heard the first rumblings of Chicano community organization in the barrios of Cristal. The rumor in the town was that five Mexican Americans were going to run for all five seats on the city council. But first, poor citizens had to find a way to pay the $1.75 poll tax. Money had to be raised—through bake sales of tamales, cake walks, and dances. So began the political activism of José Angel Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez's autobiography, The Making of a Chicano Militant, is the first insider's view of the important political and social events within the Mexican American communities in South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. A controversial and dynamic political figure during the height of the Chicano movement, Gutiérrez offers an absorbing personal account of his life at the forefront of the Mexican-American civil rights movement—first as a Chicano and then as a militant. Gutiérrez traces the racial, ethnic, economic, and social prejudices facing Chicanos with powerful scenes from his own life: his first summer job as a tortilla maker at the age of eleven, his racially motivated kidnapping as a teenager, and his coming of age in the face of discrimination as a radical organizer in college and graduate school. When Gutiérrez finally returned to Cristal, he helped form the Mexican American Youth Organization and, subsequently the Raza Unida Party to confront issues of ethnic intolerance in his community. His story is soon to be a classic in the developing literature of Mexican American leaders.

During the 1960s and '70s, Mexican Americans began to agitate for social and political change. From their diverse activities and agendas there emerged a new political consciousness. Emphasizing race and class within the context of an oppressive society, this militant ethos would become the unifying theme for groups involved in a myriad of causes. Chicanismo, as it came to be known, marked a transformation in the way Mexican Americans thought about themselves, enabling them for the first time to see themselves as a community with a past and a present. In Chicanismo, the first intellectual history of the Chicano Movement and the militant ethos that emerged from it, Ignacio Garcia traces the development of the philosophical strains that guided the movement. First, Mexican Americans came to believe that the liberal agenda that had promised education and equality had failed them, leading them toward separatism. Second, they saw a need to reinterpret the past as it related to their own history, leading them to discovered their legacy of struggle. Third, Mexican American activists, intellectuals, and artists affirmed a renewed pride in their ethnicity and class status. Finally, this new philosophy-Chicanismo-was politicized through the struggles of the Chicano organizations that promoted it as they faced resistance or external attacks. Although the idea of Chicanismo would eventually unravel, its ideological strains remain important even today. Combining research and personal knowledge of people, events, organizations, and political/cultural rhetoric, along with a synthesis of scholarship from a variety of fields, Chicanismo provides a unique, multidimensional view of the Chicano Movement.

Under this somewhat threatening title, the renowned civil rights leader Jos? Angel Guti?rrez provides a guidebook to minority empowerment through the use of analysis, practical experience and anecdote. His primary goal is the conversion of Latino demographic power into educational, economic and political power. In an incisive introduction, Guti?rrez analyzes the types of power and evaluates Chicano and Latino access to power at various levels in U.S. society. In very plain, down-to-earth language and examples, Guti?rrez takes pains to make his broad knowledge and experience available to everyone, but especially to those who want to be activists for themselves and their communities. For him the empowerment of a minority or working-class person can transfer into greater empowerment of the whole community. This manual penned by the founder of the only successful Hispanic political party, La Raza Unida, brings together an impressive breadth of models to either follow or avoid. Quite often, Guti?rrezÍs voice is not only the seasoned voice of reason, but also that of humor, wry wit and satire. If nothing else, The Chicano Manual on How to Handle Gringos is a wonderful survey of the Chicano and Latino community on the move in all spheres of life in the United States on the very eve of its demographic and cultural ascendancy.

José Angel Gutiérrez is the firebrand civil rights leader of the 1960s and 70s who succeeded in making a minority-based political party a reality in Texas and various other states. In 1970, Gutiérrez led la Raza Unida Party to stunning victories in Crystal City, Texas, and surrounding communities, with Mexican Americans winning all contested seats on the city council and school board, seats held for decades by Anglos. One of the four great leaders of the Chicano Movement, Gutiérrez, along with César Chávez, Reies López Tijerina, and Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, made national calls for militancy and unity, penned nationalist manifestoes, and forced political and educational reform at national and regional levels. Despite Gutiérrezs total commitment to la causa, he found time to write in order to share his political wisdom. Originally self-published during the head of the Chicano Movement, A Gringo Manual on How to Handle Mexicans, now expanded and revised, is a humorous and irreverent manual meant to educate grassroots leaders in practical strategies for community organization, leadership, and negotiation. With tongue in cheek, Gutiérrez attacks the authorities and sacred cows that caused Chicanos anxiety for decades. The manual is a classic in Chicano politics and as a political self-help recipe book. It remains as relevant today as when it was originally published in the early 1970s.

Born in 1944, Jose Angel Gutierrez grew up in a time when Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas and the Southwest attended separate schools and avoided public facilities and restaurants that were designated "Whites Only." Despite the limits of segregation and rural culture in Texas, the passion to learn and to educate others, as well as to undo injustice, burned in his belly from an early age. Gutierrez offers portraits of his early influences, from his father's own pursuit of knowledge and political involvement, to his Mexican pre-school teacher's interest in bilingual-bicultural education which did not exist in public schools at that time, and to his mother's courage and persistence, taking up migrant field work to provide for her family after the death of young Gutierrez's father. In this intensely narrated memoir, Gutierrez details his rise from being beaten down by racist political and agricultural interests in South Texas to his leadership role in the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Complemented by photos from his personal archives, Gutierrez recalls his struggle for education, his early baptism in grass-roots political organizing, and his success in creating one of history's most successful third party movements, La Raza Unida Party. Along the way, Gutierrez earned college and law degrees, as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science. He was elected or appointed to school boards, commissions, judgeships and party chairmanships, all with the single-minded purpose of extending equality to Mexican Americans and other minorities in the United States. Through his tireless efforts, he crossed paths with African American and Native American civil rights leaders, Mexican presidents, and other international figures.

A stirring new portrait of one of the most important black leaders of the twentieth century introduces readers to the fiery woman who inspired generations of activists. (Social Science)