The Five Paths to Power: José Ángel Gutiérrez and the Continuing Work of the Chicana and Chicano Movement, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. May 31, 2026

The Five Paths to Power: José Ángel Gutiérrez and the Continuing Work of the Chicana/o Movement

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 31, 2026

Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez LEAD Conference Presentation, San Bernardino, 2014 video

An apt quote for today's essay is by the late, great William Faulkner (2011),

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”

For those of us who still understand ourselves as part of the Chicana and Chicano Movement like myself—or as heirs to its unfinished struggle—the work of Professor José Ángel Gutiérrez remains indispensable. 

Gutiérrez, a founder of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), a key architect of La Raza Unida Party, and one of the most important political thinkers and organizers of the Movement, has long insisted that social change does not happen through sentiment alone. It requires strategy, organization, memory, courage, and power.

In his important essay, “The Chicano Movement: Paths to Power,” Gutiérrez identifies five major strategies through which Chicanas and Chicanos sought to transform the conditions of their lives: revolt, litigation, protest, electoral work, and coalition/alliance building (Gutiérrez, 2011). These were not abstract categories. They were forged in barrios, schools, courtrooms, fields, streets, city halls, and statehouses. They emerged from communities tired of being ignored, segregated, undereducated, politically marginalized, and treated as foreigners in lands where our people had deep historical roots.

These five paths remain urgently relevant today, as follows:

1. Revolt: Refusing the Terms of Our Subordination

By “revolt,” we should not understand only dramatic rebellion. At its deepest level, revolt is the refusal to accept the legitimacy of an unjust order. It is the moment when a community says: no more.

For the Chicano Movement, revolt meant refusing second-class citizenship. It meant rejecting school systems that punished Spanish-speaking children, political systems that excluded Mexican American voters, and cultural systems that taught our people shame instead of dignity. 

For Gutierrez, revolt was a psychological, cultural, and political awakening. It began when people stopped asking politely for recognition and began asserting their right to exist, speak, organize, and govern.

Today, revolt is still necessary because the conditions of erasure have not disappeared; they have merely changed form. We see it in attacks on Ethnic Studies, anti-DEI legislation, book bans, curriculum censorship, voter suppression, immigrant criminalization, and the ongoing attempt to make Mexican American history seem controversial in the very places where it is foundational.

For Chicanas and Chicanos today, revolt means refusing silence. It means refusing to let others define our history, our language, our children, our communities, or our future. It means recognizing that dignity begins when we stop internalizing the stories told about us and begin telling the truth about ourselves.

2. Litigation: Using the Law Without Worshiping It

The Chicano Movement understood the courts as one terrain of struggle. Litigation challenged discriminatory schooling, voting practices, jury exclusion, employment discrimination, and the denial of language rights. Legal strategies mattered because unjust systems often hide behind the appearance of legality. Court cases can expose contradictions between democratic ideals and institutional practices.

But Gutiérrez’s framework also reminds us that litigation is only one path—never the sole path. The law can be a shield, but rarely is it sufficient by itself. Courts can affirm rights, but communities must organize to make those rights real. Legal victories can be delayed, narrowed, ignored, or reversed when they are not backed by public pressure and organized power.

This lesson is crucial today. As civil rights protections are weakened and universities, schools, and public agencies comply in advance with political intimidation, litigation remains necessary. Communities must challenge unconstitutional policies, discriminatory governance, and violations of academic freedom and equal protection. But legal strategy must be joined to public education, organizing, documentation, and movement-building.

Wikipedia

We need lawyers, yes. But we also need witnesses, scholars, students, parents, artists, clergy, workers, and community organizations who can make visible what the law alone may not see.

3. Protest: Making Injustice Public

Protest was central to the Chicano Movement because injustice often survives

by being normalized. Walkouts, marches, boycotts, rallies, pickets, and public demonstrations made private suffering visible. They turned isolated grievances into collective demands.

The Crystal City walkouts, the East Los Angeles blowouts, the Chicano Moratorium, farmworker marches, and countless local demonstrations taught a powerful lesson: When institutions refuse to listen, people must create a public moral crisis that cannot be ignored.

Protest still matters today because so much harm is bureaucratized. Programs are “consolidated.” Offices are “restructured.” Books are “reviewed.” Faculty lines are “reallocated.” Students are gaslit—told that nothing has been lost even as the histories, departments, programs, and communities that sustained them are dismantled before their very eyes.

Protest interrupts this language of management. It says plainly what official language conceals. It names erasure as erasure. It names intimidation as intimidation. It names political interference as political interference.

For those of us who carry the memory of the Chicana/o Movement, protest is not a performance. It is public pedagogy. It teaches people what is happening, who is responsible, what is at stake, and what collective courage looks like.

4. Electoral Work: Power Must Be Contested Where Decisions Are Made

Gutiérrez’s role in La Raza Unida Party remains one of the great examples of Chicano political imagination. La Raza Unida did not simply ask the major parties to be kinder to Mexican Americans. It challenged the assumption that our communities should remain loyal to political institutions that ignored them.

Electoral work matters because budgets, school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures, and governing boards shape everyday life. Who gets represented? Which schools get funded? Which histories get taught? Which neighborhoods get protected? Which communities get policed? These are political questions.

Today, Chicana/o Movement politics must again take electoral work seriously—not as a substitute for organizing, but as one of its necessary expressions. We need candidates rooted in community, accountable to movement values, and prepared to defend public education, voting rights, labor rights, immigrant rights, academic freedom, bilingual education, and Ethnic Studies.

We also need political education. Voting alone is insufficient if people do not understand the structures that govern their lives. Electoral work must include voter registration, candidate recruitment, policy analysis, community forums, school board engagement, and accountability after elections.

The lesson of Gutiérrez is not simply “run for office.” The lesson is: build independent political power that is rooted in community.

5. Coalition and Alliance Building: No One Wins Alone

The Chicano Movement was never as solitary as some histories suggest. It intersected with Black freedom struggles, Indigenous sovereignty movements, labor organizing, antiwar activism, feminist struggles, student movements, and immigrant justice work. Coalition was not always easy, but it was necessary.

Gutiérrez’ fifth path—coalition and alliance building—may be the most urgent today. The forces attacking Chicana/o studies, African American studies, gender studies, immigrant communities, voting rights, labor rights, and public universities are not operating in isolation. They are coordinated. Our response must be coordinated as well.

This means building principled alliances across Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian American, immigrant, LGBTQ+, labor, student, faculty, faith, and community organizations. It means understanding that an attack on one field of knowledge is an attack on all communities whose histories challenge domination. It means recognizing that Ethnic Studies, bilingual education, civil rights, and academic freedom are not “special interests.” They are democratic necessities.

Coalition does not require sameness. It requires clarity, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to confronting systems of power. The Chicana/o Movement teaches us that solidarity is not charity. It is strategy. It is also a moral practice.

Why These Five Paths Matter Now

We are living through a renewed struggle over memory, belonging, and power. Across the country, and especially in Texas, we see efforts to narrow what can be taught, studied, named, funded, or publicly defended. The attack on DEI, Ethnic Studies, bilingual education, immigrant rights, and academic freedom is not accidental. It is part of a larger effort to discipline institutions and communities that have challenged racial hierarchy.

This is why Gutiérrez’ five paths remain so instructive. They remind us that movements need more than outrage. They need multiple strategies operating together.

Revolt gives us the courage to reject injustice.

Litigation gives us tools to challenge it.

Protest gives injustice a public face.

Electoral work contests power where decisions are made.

Coalition building ensures that we do not fight alone.

For those of us who still claim the Chicana and Chicano Movement, the question is not whether the movement is over. The question is whether we are willing to carry its unfinished responsibilities into the present.

To be part of this movement today is not simply to remember the past with pride. It is to defend the conditions that make dignity, knowledge, representation, and self-determination possible. It is to teach our children that they come from people who fought back. It is to insist that our communities are not marginal to democracy; we are central to its unfinished promise.

José Ángel Gutiérrez gave us not only a history, but a strategic vocabulary. His five paths remind us that power itself is not automatically democratic. Communities and movements can organize power toward very different ends. 

As Katherine Stewart’s (2025) analysis of white Christian nationalism makes clear, movements can also build legal, electoral, institutional, and coalitional power in ways that narrow democracy, impose hierarchy, and exclude those who do not conform to their worldview.

That is why Gutiérrez’ framework remains so important. His analysis is not a celebration of power for its own sake. It is a call to build power from below in the service of dignity, equality, self-determination, and democratic life. 

The Chicana/o Movement sought greater justice in schools, fields, workplaces, neighborhoods, universities, and governing institutions. Its struggle was rooted in the lives of working people, students, women and men, families, and communities who had long been exploited, ignored, and told to wait.

These five paths are not romantic slogans. They are demanding forms of work. They require study, discipline, courage, organization, and historical memory. They also require us to ask, again and again: power for whom, and toward what end?

For those of us who still claim the Chicana and Chicano Movement, Gutiérrez' answer remains clear. We build power not to dominate others, but to make freedom, dignity, and justice more possible for all.

Reference

Faulkner, W. (2011). Requiem for a Nun. Vintage.

Gutiérrez, J. Á. (2011). The Chicano Movement: Paths to power. The Social Studies, 102(1), 25–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.533043

LEADCSUSB. (2014). Keynote address—“Chicano rights movements: Then and now”—Season 5 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7kZCz5p_7I&t=2092s

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Honoring La Raza Unida: A Third Party That Changed Texas Politics and Our Sense of What Is Possible by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Honoring La Raza Unida: A Third Party That Changed Texas Politics and Our Sense of What Is Possible

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Sometimes you strike gold. It helps being married to a historian, who asked me to scan this document for a friend and send it along—reminding me how easily treasures like these can slip through the cracks of history, particularly for the casual reader.

In any case, here is a link to the Raza Unida Party platform (1974) that all can read. For the record, raza is an endearing insider term that means “the people.” Hence, the party platform of a “people united”—a bold declaration of dignity and self-determination at a time when Mexican Americans were still struggling to be seen and heard in the halls of power. While the fight for representation continues today, the barriers facing our community were even more formidable in those years.

This morning is the first time I have ever seen or read it. I was in middle school at a time when history itself seemed to march in the streets—the Chicana/o Movement in full stride, the women’s movement gaining strength, and the anti–Vietnam War movement shaking the nation’s conscience. It was then that I first exclaimed that I was “Brown and proud”—a declaration resonant with the spirit of the Black, Red, and Yellow Power movements. All of this action clearly shook the establishment and resulted in Civil Rights legislation that remains among the most significant victories for equity and democracy in U.S. history.

Because network television and newspapers were our major sources of information, it was almost impossible not to hear about what was happening in Texas and other places throughout the Southwest where it took root. In fact, the Raza Unida Party was very much present in my hometown of San Angelo, West Texas, during the early 1970s. These stories seeped into my consciousness, shaping the way I understood politics, justice, and my place in the world.

As this contributed to my political formation, I dedicate this blog to honoring the hard work of those who dared to form a third party—many of them still with us today—because both major parties were largely indifferent to Chicanas/os and Mexican Americans in Texas and throughout the Southwest. Sadly, this reality still resonates with sectors of our communities who continue to feel left behind. Yet most positively, it reminds us of our long history of resistance to exclusion and subordination, particularly in the realm of education—education that is culturally relevant, adequately resourced, and a genuine pathway to higher learning.

Our community has never received these things as gifts from above. They have always been won through struggle, sacrifice, and organizing. Despite the current Epoch of Institutional Unraveling, as I term it, the silver lining is that the vision of Raza Unida lives on today. It lives on in grassroots efforts—whether through Ethnic Studies programs, culturally sustaining schools, bilingual and dual language programs, community-based initiatives like Academia Cuauhtli, or movements for political representation—that continue to build on this legacy of courage.

The party’s story is a reminder that when communities come together to demand representation, justice, and dignity, they can build power against the odds. Its legacy calls on us not only to remember but also to continue imagining and creating the structures of democracy we deserve.

La lucha de La Raza Unida nos recuerda que la justicia nunca se concede, sino que se conquista. Su legado vive en cada esfuerzo comunitario por representación, educación y dignidad—y nos llama a seguir construyendo la democracia que merecemos.

---

Historical Note

La Raza Unida Party (RUP), founded in 1970 in Crystal City, Texas, emerged from the frustrations of Mexican American activists with the Democratic Party’s neglect of Chicano communities. Its roots lay in the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), created in 1967 by José Ángel Gutiérrez, Mario Compean, Willie Velasquez, Ignacio Perez, and Juan Patlan. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, they sought to create a new political force that advanced Chicano nationalism and self-determination.

From its earliest years, women shaped the party’s trajectory—activists like Luz Gutiérrez, Martha P. Cotera, Rosie Castro, Evey Chapa, and others demanded and secured space for Chicana leadership. RUP’s first major successes came in South Texas towns such as Crystal City, Cotulla, and Carrizo Springs, where candidates swept local elections. Alma Canales made history in 1972 as the first Chicana to run for lieutenant governor of Texas.

Dr. Emilio Zamora, now a distinguished historian, served as Travis County chair of the party in the 1970s, helping organize Mexican American political participation during a pivotal moment in Texas history. Today, his scholarship and mentorship continue to amplify Chicana/o voices.

The RUP’s statewide visibility peaked with the gubernatorial campaigns of Ramsey Muñiz in 1972 and 1974, which drew more than 200,000 votes and challenged the dominance of the two major parties. While RUP never succeeded at the state or national level, its campaigns demonstrated the potential of a united Chicana/o electorate and left a lasting imprint on Texas politics.

Knowing Mexican American Civil Rights Movement history that, unfortunately, our textbooks do not include, remains vastly important if we are to fully understand the plight of Mexican Americans advocating for an equitable and just education and the broader implications of this struggle for us today.

Texas history—and the history of the Southwest, in general, where large numbers of students protested in the form of school walkouts, rallies, and community organizing led to much-needed policy changes the provide a model—among others like coalitional, judicial, and electoral politics together with legislative actions—for collective struggles today.

It's worth noting that Mexican American progress is inextricably linked to Latina and Latino progress, as a whole, as well as with that of all other groups of color. As a society, we ALL benefit from appeals to civil rights and are NEVER hurt by it. We only benefit when we live up to our highest ideals as a country.

Looking forward to seeing this play that features, in particular, the legendary Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez' leadership, at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio soon. Go to this page for more information. Hurry up though since tickets are going fast.

-Angela Valenzuela

Fronteras: ‘Crystal City 1969’ play honors the real-life story of student 'heroes and sheroes' who fought for Latino civil rights

By Norma Martinez, 

Marian Navarro

In 1969, a Mexican American high school student in Crystal City wanted 

to join her school’s cheerleading squad.

She was automatically disqualified from applying. Only one Mexican 

American cheerleader was allowed and the squad had already met its 

yearly quota.

The incident became the catalyst that led to a historic school walkout. 

But it was more than about a cheerleader who didn’t get a spot on the 

team.

It was also about physical punishment students endured for speaking 

Spanish, and about how Mexican Americans were often discouraged 

from pursuing a college education.

The walkout was about discrimination and racism.

Dallas-based Cara Mía Theatre adapted the events of the walkout and 

turned it into the play, “Crystal City 1969.”

Playwrights David Lozano and Raul Treviño conducted interviews with former 

students, teachers, and law enforcement officials who lived through the 

walkout.

Lozano, executive artistic director of Cara Mía Theatre, said the movement 

was eye-opening for students.

“They were just discovering this reality and putting the pieces together 

because the world (and) what is essentially a quasi-Jim Crow culture (that) 

had become normalized,” he said. “But as young people, they were 

beginning to wake up to these differences and how they were treated.”

The Crystal City walkout was inspired by similar walkouts in Los Angeles, 

San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley.

Treviño, whose own uncle was a student leader of the walkout, said 

the play aims to ensure this event does not become a forgotten piece 

of history.

“It is a universal story. It's a timeless story. It’s David and Goliath,” he said. 

“You go back thousands of years and it's when young people are able to 

make a difference for their communities.”

The play is set to make its San Antonio debut at the Guadalupe Cultural 

Arts Center Jan. 19-22.

See showtimes and information here. Some shows may already 

be sold out.

Jose Angel Gutierrez recipient, 2019 United States Hispanic Hero Award

Friends,

Treat yourselves to this 13-minute video that documents an important story told by the legendary José Ángel Gutiérrez about the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement that involved high school and college youth, student walkouts, and the establishment of a third national party, the Raza Unida Party (RUP), founded in the early 1970s.                   

  Cesar Chavez and José Ángel Gutiérrez

It shows how powerful showing up and standing up to injustice can be. The story covered in the video below is about how José Ángel Gutiérrez', in his own words, evolved into an activist and civil rights leader. Among so many other contributions, Gutiérrez helped found the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) that stood up to the violent and shameless Texas Rangers—as covered recently in this blog (for example, see earlier post). It is thusly a history of student organizing and empowerment for the generation that founded the RUP. We owe much to this generation.

-Angela Valenzuela

"A Time for Action: There is no Alternative," by Dr. José Angel Gutierrez

Do read this word of caution and action proposed by Dr. José Angel Gutierrez, founder of the Raza Unida Party. I hope that the election does not go down the path of this deeply-concerning scenario—even as we know that voter suppression is real.

However, as 2016 tells, together with ongoing Russian meddling, his predictions are certainly within the realm of possibility. Read closely and consider yourself sufficiently warned and informed on next steps...

-Angela Valenzuela

#Vote2020 #2020Election #vote2020 #vote #votersuppression #votersuppressionisreal

A Time for Action: There is no Alternative

by Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez

Trump is going to steal the General Election despite a landslide victory by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He is going to claim illegal votes, fraudulent voter tallies, stolen and destroyed ballots and countless other lies. Everything he has said and done the past six months corroborate this prediction. He has slowed the mail service to prevent timely mail in ballots be counted; that continues. Some states have changed the vote by mail and in person rules. Some lower federal courts have upheld these new rules which include limiting mail drop boxes for ballot to one per county in Texas as Harris County. Houston is larger in population size than Rhode Island. Texas and Alabama have prohibited curb-side voting; handicapped persons must find other ways to vote. Tennessee has mandated first time voters must do so in person, no mail in ballots. Federal courts have upheld all these voter suppression measures. In almost all states, voters standing in line to vote early are having to wait up to 10 hours to do so; the average nationwide is 4 hour wait time. This is purposeful voter suppression.  Florida created a new poll tax by mandating all felons pay up all outstanding court fees to be able to vote. In California, the state Republican Party put up their own ballot drop off boxes to supposedly help voters get their ballots in on time. These boxes remained past these state ultimatums and deadlines. No one was arrested.  

During the recent summer protests Trump sent expeditionary troops from Homeland Security into Democratic-controlled cities supposedly to impose “law and order.” The governors and mayors of these cities did not ask for these armed thugs. Trump has threatened to re-send troops to prevent voter fraud on election day. He already has claimed ballots which voted for him have been thrown away in Pennsylvania. 

After 7pm the night of November 3rd, he will begin the tirade of lies about stolen ballot boxes, voter fraud, intimidation of voters, and the media reporting false vote returns. By the morning of the 4th, he will declare the election having been a total hoax, flawed, and fraudulent. He will prohibit the states having reported Democratic landslides from ratifying who will receive the Electoral College votes. His nine solid Republican governors will agree and withhold those votes on their own. He will ask his lap dog, U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate key states whose votes he needs to invalidate vote returns and keep Biden/Harris from an Electoral College wipeout. Trump and Barr will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold this fabricated investigation and announce him the winner. They will 6 to 3, maybe 5 to 4. The Supreme Court did this in Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98, (2000).

There is no alternative. It is a time for action. Let us all, especially those of us of Mexican origin, to begin a national campaign: No Compro/No Trabajo. Let us use our real power of labor and consumer spending given our numbers to kill Trump’s dictatorial plan. Let us not buy or report to work on Tuesday, December 8th, the day electors in states meet. Let us not buy or report to work on Monday, December 14th, the actual day for the Electoral College votes and reports that Biden and Harris are the winners of the national election. 

joseangelgutierrez@yahoo.com