People
Who is Dolores Huerta?
a legendary labor leader and civil rights activist whose lifelong dedication has shaped the rights of farmworkers, women, and immigrants across the United States.
What is the Unidad Documentary?
It is about the history of the Los Angeles-based organization, Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), founded in 1981. It chronicles the group's pivotal role in the LGBTQ+, women's, and civil rights movements, particularly during the AIDS epidemic, and highlights its ongoing advocacy on issues like immigration and police brutality.
What is the Lemon Grove Mural?
a mural located in San Diego, CA that was painted by artist Mario Chacon. This mural portrays the 1931 Lemon Grove Incident, the first successful desegregation court case involving Mexican-American students in the United States.
What is Precarity?
refers to a condition of insecurity, instability, or unpredictability, especially in relation to employment, housing, or living conditions. It often describes situations where people lack steady income, job protections, healthcare, or long-term stability—leaving them vulnerable to sudden changes or exploitation. Precarity is commonly associated with gig work, migrant labor, low-wage jobs, and marginalized communities.
What is Resisting the Settler Gaze?
Whitebear examines how the so-called “settler gaze,” the way settler-colonial societies observe, surveil, represent, and dominate Indigenous peoples and lands- has shaped the lived realities of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people in what is now California. The essay analyses both historical figures and contemporary Indigenous feminist-led movements (including responses to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people (MMIWG2S+) crisis) in California.
Who are Los Tigres Del Norte?
They are a Mexican norteño band from San Jose, California. They were originally founded in the small town of Rosa Morada, in the municipality of Mocorito, Sinaloa, Mexico. This band is well known for often writing corridos that bring awareness to social issues impacting the Latino and Mexican community. Professor Armbruster played their song Jaula De Oro at the beginning of the lecture during week 2.
What is the documentary Harvest of Loneliness?
Harvest of Loneliness: The Bracero Program is a 2010 documentary film directed by Gilbert Gonzalez and Vivian Price that explores the history and human impact of the Bracero Program, a U.S. labor initiative that brought millions of Mexican men to work in American agriculture and railroads between 1942 and 1964. The film uses interviews with former braceros, archival footage, and expert commentary to reveal the exploitative conditions, family separations, and emotional toll of the program.
What is Operation Wetback?
a 1954 U.S. government program aimed at mass deportation of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Led by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the operation sought to reduce illegal immigration by forcibly rounding up and deporting hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers, many of whom had entered legally but overstayed or were caught up in sweeps. The campaign involved harsh tactics, including raids and deportations, often without due process, and it led to widespread criticism for human rights abuses.
What is Intersectionality?
a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to help define the various aspects of a person's identity, including gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, and others. Intersectionality allows us to see how these identities can interact and overlap to help shape people's lived experiences of oppression and privilege. Both can coexist at the same time.
What are Leo Chavez's main arguments in his article LTN?
Chavez goes on to talk about the Latino Threat Narrative and different fear-rooted ideologies instilled within society about Latinos, Chicanos, Mexicans, and immigrants. Chavez also goes on to discuss Anchor Babies. This notion that migrant women would come to the USA to have children and benefit from resources through their children.
Who is Paula Crisostomos?
is the central student activist—a high school senior at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles—who spearheads the 1968 Chicano student walkouts (also known as the East L.A. walkouts or Chicano blowouts) to protest systemic injustices in the schools
What is the film A Better Life?
film that tells the story of Carlos, an undocumented Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles who works as a gardener and dreams of providing a better future for his teenage son, Luis. After Carlos’s truck is stolen, he and Luis embark on a difficult journey to recover it while navigating the challenges of immigration, family struggles, and the pursuit of the American Dream. The film explores themes of sacrifice, hope, and the harsh realities faced by many immigrants in the U.S. It’s a heartfelt portrayal of love and resilience within immigrant families.
What is the Sleepy Lagoon Trial?
a group formed in the early 1940s to support the defense of Mexican American youths unfairly accused in the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial in Los Angeles (1942). The committee raised awareness about the racial injustice, organized legal aid, and fought against discrimination and police harassment faced by the Latino community. It became an important example of early civil rights activism, helping to challenge racial prejudice and lay the groundwork for the broader Chicano movement.
What is Genocide?
the deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, either in whole or in part. It involves acts like killing members of the group, causing serious harm, inflicting conditions designed to destroy the group, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children to another group.
What is All They Will Call You?
In 1948, a plane carrying 28 Mexican farmworkers (along with the American pilot, co-pilot, and an immigration guard) crashed near Los Gatos Canyon, California. The American crew members were named in newspaper reports, but the Mexican passengers were not, and they were simply referred to as “deportees.” Guthrie wrote his song to protest that injustice. Decades later, author Tim Z. Hernandez sets out to discover who those unnamed passengers were. The book chronicles his years-long investigation to uncover their identities, tell their stories, and trace their families across the U.S. and Mexico. It’s both a humanizing act of remembrance and a meditation on migration, identity, and dignity, bridging art, history, and personal testimony.
Who is Esperanza Quintero?
She was the wife of a Mexican-American Zinc Miner who, in the film Salt of the Earth, went from being a subservient wife to an empowered leader. Her character explores themes of workers' rights and women's rights. Throughout the film, she challenges Gender roles and fights for community rights.
What is the film Salt of the Earth?
At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.
What is Mendez vs. Westminster?
(1947) was a landmark federal court case that challenged racial segregation in California public schools. The case was brought by Gonzalo Mendez and other Mexican-American parents who fought against the segregation of their children into separate "Mexican schools" that offered inferior education. The U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Mendez, declaring that segregating Mexican-American students was unconstitutional and violated their civil rights. This case helped pave the way for the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954 and was an important early victory in the fight against school segregation and for Latino civil rights in the United States.
What is Settler Colonialism?
a process by which settlers exercise colonial rule over an environment and its Indigenous peoples. It is enacted through practices like the creation of reserves, residential schools, enfranchisement, and abduction into state custody, as well as practices like the extraction of natural resources through mining, pipelines, and more. In settler colonialism, colonizers impose their own cultural values, religions, and laws, and make policies that do not favor the Indigenous Peoples.
What is L.A. Interchanges?
a memoir by Lydia R. Otero, published in 2023, that weaves together personal autobiography, archival material, and social history. Otero recounts their coming-of-age as a Brown (Latinx) and queer person in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and 1980s.The memoir situates that personal journey within the context of activism, highlighting the formation and work of organizations such as Lesbians of Color, Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), Lesbianas Unidas (LU), and Bienestar: A Gay Latino AIDS Project.
Who is Josefina Fierro de Bright?
a Mexican-American civil rights activist and community organizer active primarily during the 1930s and 1940s. She played a key role in fighting against discrimination and segregation faced by Mexican Americans, especially in California. Fierro de Bright was involved with the Spanish-Speaking People's Congress, an organization dedicated to advocating for Latino civil rights, labor rights, and social justice.
What is the film Walkout?
tells the true story of the 1968 East Los Angeles student walkouts (also called the Chicano Blowouts). The film follows Paula Crisostomo, a Mexican-American high school student who organizes protests with her peers against unequal and discriminatory conditions in their schools—like overcrowding, lack of bilingual education, and biased treatment. Through courage and community support, these students challenge the school system, sparking a broader movement for educational and civil rights for Mexican Americans. The movie highlights youth activism and the fight for social justice in the Chicano civil rights movement.
What is the Great Depression and Repatriation?
the worst and longest-lasting economic downturn in modern history. It began in the United States in 1929 and lasted through most of the 1930s, eventually affecting economies all around the world. The Great Depression led to the mass deportation of many Mexican immigrants and Mexican American citizens because the U.S. government blamed them for the economic downturn.
What is the Latino Threat Narrative?
a concept coined by sociologist Leo R. Chavez that refers to a recurring and harmful storyline in U.S. media and political discourse that portrays Latinos—especially immigrants—as a danger to American society. According to this narrative, Latinos are seen as unwilling to assimilate, illegal by default, and part of a “brown invasion” that threatens national security, cultural values, and the economy. This narrative fuels xenophobia, anti-immigrant policies, racial profiling, and the criminalization of Latinx communities. Chavez argues that the Latino Threat Narrative is not based on facts, but on fear and racialized assumptions, and it serves to justify exclusion, surveillance, and social inequality.
Where was your TA born, and where was she raised?
Born in Tepic, Nayarit, MX, and raised in San Marcos, CA