More than Margaritas

Chicano movement … ?  Depending on where and when you grew up, and on which books were banned in your community, and on how history was taught in your school, you may or may not have learned much about the Chicano Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  As recently as 2010 Arizona passed a law that in effect dismantled Chicano or Mexican American studies. Thankfully it was overturned in 2017.  But, as of May 2025, the United States is facing a whole new level of attack on the teaching of any varied history or of narratives other than the white American experience. Do yourself a favor and go ahead and start working your way through the list of banned Mexican-American study books. 

Chicano history is American history. It matters because history informs our internal narrative about who we are, where we belong, and what is possible. Chicano history serves to lay an understanding that Hispanic people have held a deep connection to the land north of the Rio Grande for centuries. Our right to belong extends far beyond papers and our struggle for dignity and civil rights is not new.

No one can deny that controlling historical narratives is a political issue. This is all playing out in real time. The lack of widespread Chicano history is not an accident.

Chicano history would have taught you about The Mexican Repatriation of 1929 where between 400k-2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were forcibly deported, which historians and economists now say worsened the great depression.

Chicano history would have taught you about Operation Wetback in the 1950’s that also unjustly deported Mexican American. It would have taught you about the discrimination Mexican-Americans have faced and the court cases we won and the work that is necessary to maintain equal access to education, job opportunities, and the right to speak Spanish, which was guaranteed in the Treaty of Guadalupe.

Our right to belong extends far beyond papers and our struggle for dignity and civil rights is not new.

Although my people have faced cruel deportation, lynching, police brutality and a chronic undervaluing of our contributions to this country, we persist.

Which brings me back to the events of May 5th. In 1862 a small force of Zapotec and Mestizo Mexicans (2000) were victorious over the French Empire of Napoleon III (6000) in the Battle of Puebla. A true underdog celebration with victory in the hands of the Indigenous people of this land.  

Mexican-Americans in California immediately celebrated the win and saw the importance of keeping the French out of North America and Mexico a slavery free state during the Civil War.

During the pandemic while hosting a Cinco zoom celebration with my aunts and uncles I learned about how my great-grandfather led the Cinco de Mayo parade in Scotsbluff, Nebraska where he lived and worked as a farmworker. 

As we witness another wave of cruel and indiscriminate deportations and disappearances of Latino people by the United States, let us draw strength from the story of the Battle of Puebla.