Becoming La Raza

<p>In 1965 striking farm workers in the San Joaquin Valley sparked the beginning of the Chican@ movement. As the movement quickly gained traction across the southwestern United States public frictions emerged and splits among activists over strategic political decisions. José G. Izaguirre III explores how these disagreements often hinged on the establishment of a racial(ized) identity for Mexican Americans leading to the formation of La Raza Unida a political party dedicated to naming and defending Mexican Americans as a racialized community.</p><p>Through close readings of figures vocabularies and visualizations of iconic texts of the Chican@ Movement-including El Plan de Delano Rodolfo Corky Gonzales's I Am Joaquin and newspapers like <em>El Grito del Norte</em> and <em>La Raza</em>-Izaguirre demonstrates that la raza was never singular or unified. Instead he reveals a racial identity that was (re)negotiated (re)invented and (re)circulated against a Cold War backdrop that heightened rhetorics of race across the globe and increasingly threatened Mexican American bodies in the Vietnam War. In lieu of a unified nationalist movement Izaguirre argues that activists energized and empowered La Raza as a political community by making the Chican@ movement multivocal global and often aligned with whiteness.</p><p>For scholars of political movements US history race or rhetoric <em>Becoming La Raza </em>will provide a valuable perspective on one of the most important civil rights movements of the twentieth century.</p>