Youth, Identity, Power is a study of the origins and development of Chicano radicalism in America. Written by a leader of the Chicano Student Movement of the 1960s who also played a role in the creation of the wider Chicano Power Movement, this is the first fill-length work to appear on the subject. It fills an important gap in the history of political protest in the United States. The author places the Chicano movement in the wider context of the political development of Mexicans and their descendants in the US, tracing the emergence of Chicano student activists in the 1930s and their initial challenge to the dominant racial and class ideologies of the time. Munoz then documents the rise and fall of the Chicano Power Movement, situating the student protests of the sixties within the changing political scene of the time, and assessing the movement's contribution to the cultural development of the Chicano population as a whole. He concludes with an account of Chicano politics in the 1980s. Youth, Identity, Power was named an Outstanding Book on Human Rights in the United States by the Gustavus Myers Center in 1990.

In the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. These “invented traditions” had a profound impact on North American religious and ethnic relations, serving to bring elements of Catholic history within the Protestant fold of the United States’ national history as well as playing an integral role in the emergence of the early Chicano/a movement. Many Protestant Anglo Americans understood their settlement in the far Southwest as following in the footsteps of the colonial project begun by Catholic Spanish missionaries. In contrast, Californios—Mexican-Americans and Chicana/os—stressed deep connections to a pre-Columbian past over to their own Spanish heritage. Thus, as Anglo Americans fashioned themselves as the spiritual heirs to the Spanish frontier, many ethnic Mexicans came to see themselves as the spiritual heirs to a southwestern Aztec homeland.

This collection of essays written by a stellar cast of art historians and scholars looks closely at the forces that shaped fine art and material culture in California. Illustrations.

Youth, Identity, Power is the classic study of the origins of the 1960s Chicano civil rights movement. Written by a leader of the Chicano student movement who also played a key role in the creation of the wider Chicano Movement, this is the first full-length work to appear on the subject. It fills an important gap in the history of political and social protest in the United States. Carlos Muñoz places the Chicano Movement in the context of the political and intellectual development of people of Mexican descent in the USA, tracing the emergence of student activists and intellectuals in the 1930s and their initial challenge to the dominant white racial and class ideologies. He then documents the rise and fall of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, situating it within the 1960s civil rights and radical movements and assessing the Chicano Movement’s contribution to the development of the Mexican American population and the Latino population as a whole. In an afterword to this new edition, Muñoz charts the burgeoning growth of US Latino communities, assesses the nativist backlash against them, and argues that Latinos must play a central role in a new movement for multiracial democracy.

Over the past twenty-five years, Chicano artists have made a unique contribution to public art in California, transforming thousands of walls into colorful artworks that express the dreams, achievements, aspirations, and cultural identity of the Mexican-American community. Signs From the Heart tells the inside story of this new and important American art form in four interpretive essays by noted Chicano scholars about its historical, artistic, and educational significance.

This book provides a long-needed overview of the Chicana and Chicano movement's social history as it grew, flourished, and then slowly fragmented. The authors examine the movement's origins in the 1960s and 1970s, showing how it evolved from a variety of organizations and activities united in their quest for basic equities for Mexican Americans in U.S. society. Within this matrix of agendas, objectives, strategies, approaches, ideologies, and identities, numerous electrifying moments stitched together the struggle for civil and human rights. Gómez-Quiñones and Vásquez show how these convergences underscored tensions among diverse individuals and organizations at every level. Their narrative offers an assessment of U.S. society and the Mexican American community at a critical time, offering a unique understanding of its civic progress toward a more equitable social order.