When did Hispanics first start to organize, and when did the strongest push for Hispanic rights begin? What tactics did Hispanics borrow from the African American civil rights movement?

Question

What did Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta do? Explain why MALDEF was created. How successful has the Hispanic movement been in securing rights for Hispanic people? Give an example of a success and an example of a setback.

Answer 1

Answer: An ideal response will:
1. Identify that although the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was formed in 1929, the strongest push for Hispanic rights began in the mid-1960s, when a wave of Cuban immigrants settled in Miami and altered the political and social climate there.
2. Discuss how the new movement, marked by the establishment of the National Council of La Raza in 1968, incorporated many of the civil disobedience tactics African Americans had used, such as sit-ins, boycotts, and marches.
3. Describe how Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organized migrant workers into the United Farm Workers Union, and led them in a strike against produce growers in California, as well as organizing a national boycott of various farm products.
4. Explain that the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) was created in 1968 to bring test cases before the Supreme Court that would challenge discrimination in education, employment, and politics.
5. Give an example of a success, such as when the national boycott on farm products led producers to give in to worker demands or the 1989 Supreme Court case that MALDEF won in which the state's method of financing public schools was declared unconstitutional, and an example of a setback, such as the 1973 Supreme Court case that refused to find a Texas law for appropriating funds to schools discriminatory or the resistance to current efforts to oppose restrictions concerning driver's license requirements for undocumented immigrants.