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Isabel Garcia, Attorney, Arizona Border Rights Project
"We knew this was coming," said Isabel Garcia, about the May 2001 deaths of fourteen Mexican men migrating across the Arizona desert in 130-degree heat. Garcia is a lawyer in Tucson and co-founder of the Arizona Border Rights Project, an umbrella group of 60 organizations that assists immigrants. "We've been forewarning, lobbying, begging, cajoling, protesting, shouting, praying. We've done everything to bring attention to this very deadly law enforcement strategy that has been used by the border patrol of driving people into the most remote areas, where they have to know this will occur." Garcia works against the current generation of border control policies being pursued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The "blockade-style" enforcement strategies attempt to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, but Garcia says they have actually forced migrants to cross into more hostile and dangerous desert terrain, where they risk accidents, dehydration, and death. At the same time, border communities are increasingly hostile to all Mexican, Chicana/o and Latina/o peoples. Garcia asks the question, "How many deaths will it take before we realize that our policy is at the root of the problem?"

Norma Cantu, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights.
Norma V. Cantú is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. She was nominated by President Clinton on March 5 and sworn in on May 24, 1993. Assistant Secretary Cantú is responsible for enforcing the Federal civil rights statutes that protect the rights of students to an equal educational opportunity without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age. As the head of the Department’s Office for Civil Rights, Assistant Secretary Cantú seeks to establish a civil rights compliance program directed at affording all students the opportunity to realize their educational potential from the moment they enter the classroom. (suggested by Isabel Martinez)

Irasema T. Garza, Director, U.S. Dept. of Labor Women's Bureau
In November 1999, Irasema T. Garza was confirmed as the 14th Director of the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau.  The Women's Bureau was created by Congress in 1920 with a mandate to "promote the welfare of wage-earning women," and is the only federal agency charged with advocating on behalf of women in the workforce. In 1994, Ms. Garza served as Executive Director of the Congressional Commission on Family and Medical Leave.  She has also been active in the labor movement, serving on the Executive Board of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2733 for seven years.  Ms. Garza is a native of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan.  (--from her Department of Labor bio)

Maria Martin, producer of Latino USA
Elizabeth Toledo, Action Vice President, the National Organization for Women
 

Gloria Anzaldua, writer/activist
Gloria Anzaldua is a Chicana tejana lesbian-feminist poet and fiction writer. She is co-editor of of two of the most influential publications in the emergence of Chicana feminisms:  This Bridge Called My Back:Writings by Radical Women of Color, editor of Haciendo Caras/Making Face, Making Soul: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Gloria has been active in the migrant farm workers movement; she has taught Chicano Studies, Feminist Studies, and creative writing in various universities (SFSU, UT Austin, Norwich Univ) and has conducted writing workshops around the country. 

Maxine Baca Zinn, professor
Maxine Baca Zinn, PhD is professor of sociology at Michigan State University where she is also senior research associate at the Julian Samoria Research Institute. Dr. Zinn is a specialist in family, race and gender issues. Dr. Zinn's work examines the ways in which structural factors shape gender relations and power dynamics in Chicano families.  Her work argues for a reconstruction of family life through incorporating race as a dimension of social structure rather than merely an expression of cultural difference. She is the co-editor of Women of Color in U.S. Society, with Bonnie Thornton Dill, eds., (Temple University Press, 1994), and Through the Prism of Difference (Allyn and Bacon, 1997). Dr. Zinn holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon.  Much of Baca Zinn's research relates to the racial subtext of the national debate about family values. According to Baca Zinn, racial and ethnic preconceptions have created a hierarchy in which the same family structure is more acceptable for some members of society than others. For example, as more and more middle-class, white women enter the labor force, female-headed households are gaining acceptance. On the other hand, female-headed black families have been labeled deviant and pathological, although 50 percent of black women have been in the labor force since 1880.  -from her bio at the Radcliffe Institute

Rusty Barcelo, Associate Vice President for Multicultural Affairs, University of Minnesota.  Dr. Barcelo's office has major leadership for important aspects of UMN's various K-12 initiatives, diversity goals and community outreach initiatives. Her office is responsible for administrative and programmatic management of the Learning Resource Centers, the Cultural Centers, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Program, Disability Services, and the Office of University Women (previously the Commission on Women and the Woman's Center).  Dr. Barcelo has a long record of research and activism in Chicana Studies and the Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. 

Dr. Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez, Professor of Chicana/o Studies. 
Dr. Broyles-Gonzalez was invited to a White House ceremony by President Bill Clinton and the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 35th anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act: June 10, 1998.  The White House ceremony highlighted Professor Broyles-Gonzalez' historic 1996 lawsuit which challenged the unequal pay of women professors at the University of California, and was settled in October of 1997.   Her victory places UC discriminatory actions within permanent court scrutiny and custody, and is an enduring marker in the struggle for womens rights. (more)
Professor Broyles-Gonzlez is a Yaqui-Chicana native of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands with a doctorate in German Studies from Stanford University.  In 1985 she became the first woman of color to receive tenure at the University of California in Santa Barbara; she advanced to full Professor in 1991.   In 1996 she received the lifetime Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Association for Chicana/o Studies. Her most recent book El  Teatro Campesino: Theater in the Chicano Movement  has received broad critical acclaim. (submitted by Dr. Antonia Castaneda, St. Mary's University

Cecilia Preciado Burciaga, educator
Cecilia Burciaga is currently Advisor to the President at California State Univerity at Monterey. Her long and distinguished record in higher education includes twenty-three years in the offices of Graduate Studies, Affirmative Action, and Development at Stanford University. She also served as a much beloved Resident Fellow in the Mexican-American Student Residence, Casa Zapata, with her late husband, artist/muralist Antonio Burciaga (d. Oct. 1996). She was most recently named to Clinton's Presidential Committee on Latinos in Higher Education; she has addressed audiences on issues and Chicanas and Chicanos in higher education all over the country, and has received honors and awards too numerous to mention here. 

Ana Castillo, writer/scholar/activist
Ana Castillo has made her life's work writing and educating about Chicana feminist issues in the United States, and most recently, Latina issues across the Americas (I Ask the Impossible, new poetry).  Through poetry, fiction, and personal narrative, Ana's woman-centered work deftly portrays both the horrific nature of misogynist violence against women at the same time that she describes with respect and wonder the networks and institutions of love, support, and friendship that sustain Chicanas in this crazed society we call home.  Ana's books are too numerous to list here, but the most recent include your webjefa's all-time favorite, So Far From God, as well as Loverboys, Massacre of the Dreamers, and Goddess of the Americas. Here's my short reviews of So Far and Massacre, and Ana's own gorgeous website. 

Lorna Dee Cervantes, poet/activist/artist
Lorna Dee is an accomplished and award-winning poet. Her first book Emplumada received an American Book award in 1982 for its insightful portrayal of Chicana/o communities in San Jose's rapidly changing urban environment in Northern California. One of the most well-known poems from the book is Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked Me How I, An Intelligent, Well-Read Person, Could Believe In The War Between Races..  Her poems include thoughts on growing up in Mexican-American communities in the San Jose/Santa Clara Valley area of Northern California. Two poems, "Freeway 280" and "Beneath the Shadow of a Freeway" document the loss/destruction of historica Chicano neighborhoods for the building of the 280 freeway in San Jose. Chicana/o literary critic Jose David Saldivar wrote about her work, "No book has so successfully made the California urban and rural worlds of unfinished freeways and 'spinached specked shoes' of cannery workers come alive. No book has so carefully elucidated what living as a Chicana in the West means...."  Here's a short interview with Lorna Dee and a link to her official website. 

Sandra Cisneros, writer/poet
This gifted Chicana writer was recently awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant for her literary accomplishments which include House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories as well as two books of poetry, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman.  Sandra currently resides in San Antonio where she is working on a novel and occasionally offering her time for Latina/o Writer Workshops with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. 

Nadine and Patsy Cordova, teachers at Vaughn High School. 
Nadine and Patsy were threatened, and then lost their jobs for teaching students about Chicano heroes like Cesar Chavez, and about the history of people of Mexican descent in this country (with Elizabeth Martinez' book, 500 Years of Chicano History).   The teachers also implemented a Racial Tolerance educational program in their classes and sponsored students who organized the school's first chapter of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan)--for this, Nadine Cordova was labelled a 'racist', threatened, and finally fired.  In November 1998, the sisters were awarded a half-million dollar settlement by a federal magistrate in a judgment against the Vaughn School Board.  Early details are in this recent article about their struggle to retain their jobs.  Since then, the sisters have received the Multi-Cultural Educators of the Year from the National Association of Multi-Cultural Education; the Pilgrimmage for Peace Award from theArchdiocese of Santa Fe; and the Guardian of Constitution Award from ACLU-NM.  In September of 1998, Nadine wrote this site "We actually got fired on July 7, 1997.  Since then my sister and I have moved to Albuquerque, NM.  I  removed my sons from the Vaughn school district immediately and enrolled them in Albuquerque Public Schools.  My home and my husband still remain inVaughn and not having my family together has been quite difficult.  Patsy started teaching at Mckinley Middle School here in Albuquerque this fall semester.  I am currently working as administrative assistant at University of New Mexico Chicana/o Studies Program since June.  Both Patsy and I are very happy with our new jobs and new friends. 

Marta Cotera, professor/activist
Marta Cotera served as a Chicana feminist icon to the current generation of Chicana feminists, activists, and scholars. Since the 1960s, she was active both in the Chicano movement, and in documenting the role of women within the movement. She is best known for her book, Sol y Hembra, one of the first and best histories of Mexican American women, and their contributions to civil rights and Chicana/o history.  Your webjefa was at a recent conference (April 2000) at Southwest Texas University in which Professor/activist Carmen Tafolla (otra chingona) recalled Cotera's Sol y Hembra as "the book we carried everywhere, like a Bible..."

Nancy de los Santos
Nancy de los Santos is the associate producer of the motion pictures Mi Familia and Selena, A fifteen-year veteran of the Hollywood film industry, Nancy began her career as the producer for the Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel television series At the Movies, and worked on a number of feature films including A Time for Destiny, The Abyss and Alien Nation.  De los Santos directed a short film from her own script for the Universal Television Film Project, Breaking Pan With Sol, which received the "Best Short Film" award from the Chicago International Latino Film Festival.  Her teleplay, Mothers Against Gangs is in development with Olmos Productions. She is co-producer of The Bronze Screen: The History of Latinos in Hollywood, currently in development. Nancy has spent the past three years focusing on major film projects with director Gregory Nava as the associate producer of the films Mi Familia and Selena. De Los Santos was named one of the Ten To Watch in Hispanic Magazine's issue on Hispanics in  Hollywood. (written by Sandra Fernandez). 

Josefina Fierro de Bright, organizer/activist
Josefina Fierro de Bright was born in Mexico in 1920.  She grew up in farm labor camps as the daughter of a bordera who served meals to migrant workers in Maderna, California .  Josefina gave up her studies at UCLA to become an organizer, and her style was described by veteran longshoremen's leader Bert Corona as gutsy, flamboyant, and tough.  As executive secretary of El Congreso (the first national Latino civil rights org) from 1939 to the mid-1940s, she organized protests against racism in the LA Schools, against the exclusion of Mexican-American youths from public swimming pools, and against police brutality.  In 1942, she was a key figure in organizing the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, to support the seventeen Chicano youths held without bail on little evidence for the alleged killing of one youth.  With Moreno, she helped to coordinate El Congreso's support for Spanish-speaking workers in the furniture, shoe manufacturing, electrical, garment, and longshoremen's unions.  --from Dolores Hayden, "Reinterpreting Latina History at the Embassy Auditorium," The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History.

Alana Flores, Live Oak High School ('98), Morgan Hill, CA
Alana led the fight  for the right of gay and lesbian students to attend Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California without pervasive and degrading harassment.   Alana says "After I graduated, I was no longer afraid: I was angry! I realized I was treated so unjustly that I had to do something about the corruption at Live Oak. I couldn't let this happen to anyone else. I wanted to get involved in making policy changes to help queer youth at Live Oak. I wanted to make sure that other gay students at that school had equal rights in terms of sexual harassment.  Read more of Alana's story at the Education Week archives or the ACLU background.

Francisca Flores, writer/activist
Francisca Flores was active in the struggle for Raza rights from the 1940s through the 1990s. She worked on the defense committee for the Sleepy Lagoon case, helped Carey McWilliams with his landmark book, North From Mexico, and edited Carta Editorial. She was often red-baited during the McCarthy era but helped to hide and organize underground screenings of "Salt of the Earth." She was a co-founder of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), served as the editor and publisher of Regeneracion, was a founder of the Comision Femenil Mexicana, and she also co-founded and served as the first director of the Chicana Social Service Center in Los Angeles. Francisca passed away April 27, 1996, at the age of 82. (--William V. Flores, Dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences, CSU Northridge) 

Anna Nieto Gomez, activist/scholar
Anna Nieto Gomez was one of the most articulate and outspoken Chicana feministas since the early days of the movimiento chicano. Nieto Gomez launched an early and enduring critique of the Chicano movement for ignoring women's issues. She founded an early feminist journal, Encuentro Femenil, in which she and other Chicanas spelled out an inclusive Chicana/o agenda, including issues around childcare, reproductive rights, and the feminization of poverty. 

Laura Gonzalez, editor-in-chief of the Gilroy High School newspaper Free Press
Laura led her staff in fighting the censorship of the Gilroy Unified School District (California).  The Free Press won the right to run a paid ad for counseling and support services for gay and lesbian youth at the Billy DeFrank Center in San Jose despite the complaints of a former superintendent of schools, church leaders, and parents.  The (new) District superintendent told school board trustees that the students were granted freedom of expression under California state law, so they grudgingly agreed that the item could not be banned from the paper.  Some of them said they would still rather the students didn't run the ad, although at least one recognized that services like the DeFrank Center's can make a difference in the high risk of suicide among gay and lesbian youth. 

Dolores Guerrero-Cruz, artist/activist
A painter, graphic artist, and muralist, Guerrero-Cruz has also taught these art mediums to the young. A resident of Los Angeles, Guerrero-Cruz has been very active in social issues in the community. She has done work for ARTSTEACH UCLA and the E.LA Rape Hotline, Child Abuse Center. Recent exhibitions have included 'Dia de los Muertos' for The Photo Center in 1986, Self-Help Graphics at Atelier in 1986, and 'Women by Women' at the Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco in 1985. 

Carmen Lomas Garza, artist
Carmen is one of the best known artist/folklorists in the Chicana/o art community. Her work reflects her interpretations of the collective regional memory of the traditions and customs of her native South Texas. Amalia Mesa Bains writes that Carmen's "visual storytelling offers varied groupings of characters engaged in the everyday events and festivities of their community" (CARA). In art school, Carmen studied children's art along with high art, and chose to focus on the latter's accessibility. Her art, she says, is simple, direct, and accessible. For example, a table is drawn at a tilt to illustrate its contents rather than follow the traditional rules of perspective. She adds, "I wanted to make the point that the aspects of Chicano culture that we take so much for granted are beautiful and worthy of depiction in fine art" 

Dolores Huerta, labor leader, vice-president of United Farm Workers
Dolores Huerta, 65, is the original vice-president of the United Farmworkers Movement, the first organization to support Mexican-American farm workers, which she cofounded with the late Cesar Chavez. Active since the early 60s with the farmworkers, she organized the grape boycott in New York in the late 1960s, worked to pass the first laws protecting collective-bargaining rights for California farm workers in 1975, and helped establish the first credit union for farm workers. She is currently working with her daughter Juanita to establish workshops to train a battalion of young labor organizers, a venture partially supported by funds from a lawsuit settled by the San Francisco Police Department for injuries that officers inflicted on her during a 1988 political demonstration. Dolores continues to tour the country lecturing, organizing events, lobbying legislators, and negotiating new contracts. She shrugs off the suggestions that she has become an icon of feminism or a symbol of Chicano pride. "I get a lot of accolades, but I feel a little unworthy of them," she says. "I've only been part of a continuum; so many have fought and died for all of us. I've just done my job." (--Chiori Santiago, Latina magazine, Summer 1996 issue...)

Irene Martinez, co-founder, Fiesta Educativa
Ms. Martinez is co-founder of Fiesta Educativa, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing bilingual education and support services for children and families with disabilities.  Founded in 1978 in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, the organization continues to help mostly-Latino parents understand and take advantage of federal and state services for children with disabilities, including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and autism.  Parents and children share stories and resources, hear bilingual presentations by professionals, discuss issues like communication and sexuality.  Parents also gain a valuable ally in dealing with government bureaucracy as they learn about the laws governing the education and daily lives of the disabled: California's Lanterman Act, and the federal individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Americans with Disabilities Act.  Fiesta Educativa sponsors a yearly conference in late May; for info call 323.221.6696

Vilma Martinez, lawyer/activist
Vilma Martinez was one of the first Chicana lawyers; she graduated from Columbia in 1967, worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and then for a major firm in New York. She left the firm in 1973 to become the General Counsel of MALDEF. She was the third person to head MALDEF since its founding in 1968. She was an outstanding General Counsel, administratively in terms of placing the organization on a sound financial basis and substantively in terms of involving MALDEF in the key civil rights issues of the 70s and 80s, such as reapportionment. She left MALDEF in the mid-80s to become a partner in a major LA firm. (--Miguel Mendez, Stanford Law School)

Amalia Mesa-Bains, artist/scholar
San Francisco resident Amalia Mesa-Bains is an artist, scholar, curator, and writer who has been involved in the Chicano artist movement since the 1960s. Dr. Mesa-Bains is a leading altar installation artist, incorporating Chicano culture and folk traditions into her work. She was the curator for the traveling Ceremony of Memory exhibit and the regional committee chair (Northern California) for the exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 (CARA). She also has written extensively on Chicano art and culture. Among her many awards is a 1992 Distinguished MacArthur Fellowship. She has served as a consultant for the Texas State Council on the Arts and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and is a former Commissioner of Arts for the City of San Francisco.  She holds a BA in painting from San Jose State University, an MA in interdisciplinary education from San Francisco State University, and an MA and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the School of Clinical Psychology, Wright Institute in Berkeley.  --from Amalia's PBS bio

Cherrie Moraga, writer/poet/activist/playwright
Cherrie Moraga is a prolific, award-winning Chicana writer/activist/poet/ playwright. Her many published works include Loving in the War Years/Lo Que Nunca Paso Por Los Labios, Cuentos: Stories by Latinas, and The Last Generation. Three of her plays are published in Heroes and Saints and Other Plays by West End Press. She is also co-editor of the pivotal Chicana feminist text, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, both the English and Spanish versions (co-authored separately with Gloria Anzaldua and Ana Castillo). Cherrie has taught drama and writing courses at various universities across the nation, and is currently a faculty member at Stanford University.  Her newest play, Watsonville, enjoyed a successful run in San Francisco last year. 

Anita Perez Ferguson, legislator
Anita was recently re-elected to a second term as the president of the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in Washington DC, a bipartisan political organization that recruits and trains female candidates to run for elected office, the first Chicana to do so.  Although she lost, she was one of the first Chicanas to run for US Congress in the state of California, 1990. She has worked both for the US State Department and the Clinton White House. She has won a variety of local awards for her many achievements (Pat Sweeney). 

Guadalupe Quintanilla, educator/profesora
Cuando Guadalupe comenzo su educacion como nina en el Valle del Rio Grande en Texas, ella fue designada como "retardada" debido a su baja calificacion en una prueba de IQ (en ingles, por supesto).  Mucho anos despues, cuando era adulto y madre, ella volvio al high school y sobresalio en sus clases.  Siguio su educacion hasta recibir un Doctorado en Educacion y ahora es Profesora de Educacion en la University of Houston.  Leer toda su historia.  (Jaime Garmendia) 

Adaljiza Sosa Riddell, UC Davis professor/activist/founder of MALCS
Adaljiza Sosa Riddell is currently a professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, and one of the most esteemed mentors of contemporary Chicana graduate and undergraduate students. She played a pivotal role in the development of Chicana Studies by founding Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, a national organization devoted to developing strategies for social change, and to "bridge the gap between intellectual work and active commitment to our communities" (MALCS Declaration).  MALCS is open to all Chicana scholars, activists, community members, and students. For more information and membership info, you can email clrp@davis.edu

Graciela Sanchez, Director, the Esperanza Center, San Antonio, Tejas
Graciela is the director of San Antonio's Esperanza Peace & Justice Center--a nationally renowned gente-based progressive organization that challenges our cultural view of women, people of color, queers and the poor through art, alliances, literature and action.  Because of their work, they have been attacked by the Religious Right in this city and conservative white gay men.  Their attacks in the media culminated in Esperanza's defunding from the city's art budget; the city cut over $70,000.   A lot of that money was earmarked to the Lesbian/Gay Film Festival, the MujerCanto festival (an arts festival that featured women) and MujerArtes (another mujer based arts program).  The city council freaked under the pressure from this unholy alliance.  Anyway, Esperanza no se muere! Graciela, her partner Gloria and the rest of the Board and staff of Esperanza weathered through the storm.   (written by Dulce Benavides, San Antonio Lesbian/Gay Association, who adds that "The experience that we had...cemented the fact that sexism, racism, classism and homophobia are branches from the same tree of intolerance and that we (as gay people) are not immune from its rotten fruit").

Laura Angelica Simon, educator/filmmaker.
 Seventeen months ago, fourth-grade teacher Laura Simon borrowed a video camera and proceeded to document the lives of her students, motivated by the passage in 1994 of Proposition 187 in California, which, among other things, would bar undocumented children from public schools.  Despite her lack of previous experience, her film, Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary, won the Freedom of Expression Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival and a congratulatory note from Hillary Rodham Clinton.  The film aired the week of July 1 on PBS, but is sure to repeat....look for Fear and Learning at Hoover on your local PBS station.... 

Phyllis Armas Soto, educator/activist
Phyllis is one of those amazing women who works tirelessly at both personal and professional levels to ...well, simply to make the world a better place for Chicana/os, Latina/os, and everybody else. She raised over eight foster children while a widow, worked counseling Chicana/o and Mexicana/o youth in the San Jose School District, drove buses to the fields so farmworkers could attend church, organized spiritual retreats for Chicanas and Mexicanas who felt alienated from the Church, and hit the pavement to support the United Farmworkers, as well as various other Chicana/o protest organizations. By the mid-1970s, called to recognize her talents as a gifted minister, she shifted her energies from the institutional Catholic Church tradition to the formation of an independent Catholic community with her late husband Tony which is committed to an egalitarian, antipatriarchal Catholic vision and which incorporated the indigenous elements of a Chicana/o spirituality. The Comunidad, as they called it, continues to meet today after eighteen years of independent existence. I was fortunate enough to meet Phyllis and her late husband Tony while doing fieldwork in San Jose and am currently writing a chapter about their many contributions to San Jose's Chicana/o community. 

Tecihtzin, activista, author, actor, storyteller, and dance and drama director 
Among Tecihtzin's many accomplishments, she is the founder of Ballet Folkorico en Aztlan in San Diego. The Ballet was founded in 1969 and is now directed by her daughter, Teresa.  Tecihtzin still teaches costume design and sewing to the members.  Tecihtzin, who is now 78 years old, also founded the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. The Centro is a Chicano/a multidisciplinary cultural center that promotes, preserves and creates arts and culture. She also founded Teatro Razita, a youth group that provided a venue for Chicanitos in the early 1970's. Teatro Razita gave a memorable performance of El Quinto Sol in front of the pyramids of Teotihuacan as participants of the 1974 TENAZ Festival (international chicano teatro association). She also represents the Chicano Nation at various indigenous gatherings and councils. She is a noted storyteller and author of various literary works. Her book Chía: A Powerful Recuerdo (Tochtli  Publishing, 1996) preserves the Tejana language and culture as Tecihtzin tells of her childhood experiences growing up along the San Antonio River in Tejas during the 1920s. (written by Nancy Rodriguez y Viviana Enrique)

Gloria Velasquez, writer/poet/professor.
Gloria works in a variety of arenas to educate us all about the complexities of the human experience.  A professor of Spanish at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she teaches fulltime, but also finds time to write poetry (I Used to Be a Superwoman) and children's books.  She has authored a series of books for young people from the perspective of youths of color, including Juanita Fights the School Board in which Juanita deals with school discrimination against Chicanas and fights to continue her education;  Maya's Divided World, which addresses the issues of divorce and a mother/daughter relationship; and Tommy Stands Alone, which tells the story of a Chicano teen who becomes a social outcast after realizing he is gay.  Read more about Gloria...
 

For more introductory names and information on Chicana and Latina chingonas, check your library for an excellent reference book titled Notable Hispanic American Women by Diane Telgen and Jim Kamp (Detroit : Gale Research, c1993).  If your library doesn't have it, ask them to order it!  Check academica for other sites and reference works.