El Plan De Santa Barbara Summary

MEChA is a Mexican-American student organization that encourages cultural education and political activism. In their 1969 founding manifesto“El Plan de Santa Barbara”, they outline the basic ideas of what it means to be Chicanx. Using this document, we can determine what Mexican-Americans believed to be the root of their struggle and the type of people it would take to overcome it. The manifesto starts off by saying “For all peoples … the time comes when they must reckon with their history” (Mintz 195) and relates to the Chicano struggle by saying “Our struggle, tempered by the American past, is an historical reality” (Mintz 195). To reckon with one’s history is to face the consequences of events long past in the current time. In the case of the Mexican Americans, this history includes discrimination from settlement after the Mexican-American War, pay wage discrimination and work conditions, poor representation in government jobs, and discrimination in education. In saying this, the manifesto is blaming historical racism from Americans for their struggle. The manifesto goes on by saying the cost of …show more content…
The paragraph first identifies what it used to mean to be Chicano: “Culturally, the word Chicano, in the past a pejorative and class-bound adjective, has now become the root idea of a new cultural identity for our people” (Mintz 195). Then it goes on to say that the term was then adopted as a symbol of a “rebirth of pride and confidence” (Mintz 195). In adopting what used to be a negative term, Chicanos show that to be one of their kind, one had to be strong and resilient in order to achieve what they wanted for Mexican-Americans. It also signifies that Chicanos must be proud of their history, even if it drove people to describe them in a negative way. Overall, this signifies that Chicanos stand for the improvement of the lives of their own people, and would go to great lengths to achieve their