In so doing, this group of young people used the system of labor migration to move as activist workers across networks that expanded outward and integrated Mexican American farm workers from similar South Texas towns, Milwaukee, and eventually other southwestern states by drawing on the unique culture of migration operating between Crystal City, Texas, and Wisconsin cities. In that traditional family, men were the breadwinners and women were helpmates whose role was to raise the children and maintain the home. A group of Lutheran, Catholic, and Protestant church groups, directed by Wisconsin Anglos, had worked since the early 1950s to develop programs to assist Texas-based migrant workers. 24�Bill Smith, interview with author, 23 April 2000, Madison, WI, recording in author’s possession (hereafter Smith interview). 4 The youthful spirit of the event continued after the speeches, as children, young adults, and their parents took to the dance floor to hear the music of the Roberto Lopez Band. 1�Journalist’s description of Crystal City youth activism from “Gutiérrez Slate Wins in Crystal City,” San Antonio Express, 5 April 1970. The AFL-CIO provided a slim outlay of funds to support OU efforts in comparison to similar urban drives, even complaining about the 1967 OU budget of $11,000. 1. Although the union failed at the Burns plant, the activists had built up a strong labor organization that allowed the union to prosper in the following years. In this way, migrant and non-migrant youth organized across communities and across the various Mexican American classes in the name of civic membership and majority rule. We began to see that even though we were ninety percent Chicano here at school it was always three Anglos and one Mexican American cheerleader.

For Chicano, Anglo, and African American activists, the post-march request of the workers forced them to directly engage social justice issues. In the spring semester of 1969, Lara and other students began to agitate for change in the high school, knowing that there were two spots available on the pompom squad. But it wasn’t until the outbreak of the civil rights movement in the 1960s that the term “Chicano” became popular. 23�Quoted in Mark Erenburg, “Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin,” Monthly Labor Review 91, no. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History. 59 Building from the ground up in early 1970, Gutiérrez took over a managing role in the Youth Association and began to create the framework for a second and permanent political take-over in the city itself. A Chicana rights project gathered information about the economic, educational, and employment status of Chicanas and litigated cases for women. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

Borrowing this labor recruiting practice, Salas and several organizers entered the migrant stream that winter, months before the harvest season was to start, making several trips between Wisconsin and Texas.

60�De La Fuente interview; Navarro, “El Partido de La Raza Unida in Crystal City,” 141. 57�Benny L. Parker, “Power-in-Conflict: A Chicano Political Party’s Definition of Social Disequalibrium and Anglo-Chicano Power Relationships Expressed through a Situational Analysis of Public Address in Crystal City, Texas, in 1972,” (Ph.D. [18] Salas drew a clear link between the effort of Los Cinco in 1963 and his pursuit of migrant civil rights in Wisconsin: I don’t see that you could have the organizing of farm workers or the development of [the] farm worker’s union if that hadn’t happened—if Los Cinco hadn’t come to the fore in the political arena when they did. 71�José Angel Gutiérrez Papers, 1954–1990, Box 24, “Salazar” File, 1972, 2, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin. To link to this article in the text of an online publication, please use this URL: https://historycooperative.org/chicano-movement/. 11�Alberto Avila, interview with author, 18 August 2002, Milwaukee, WI, recording in author’s possession; Juanita Ortiz, interview with author, 29 August 2002, Crystal City, TX, recording in author’s possession; Seldon Menefee, Mexican Migratory Workers of South Texas (Washington, DC, 1941); Dennis Nodín Valdés, Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917–1970, (Austin, 1991), 137–8; Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on Human Rights, Migratory Agricultural Workers in Wisconsin (Madison, 1950); Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, A Study of Migratory Workers in Cucumber Harvesting, Waushara County, Wisconsin, 1964 (Madison, 1966). The migrant network was obvious throughout the organization, as the supervisor of the UMOS “roving counselors” was another Salas brother, Carlos Salas, forwarded for hire by Medina. In 1959, Manuel Salas Sr., Jesus’s father, long engaged in migrant contracting for Wisconsin firms and the successful owner of a café and tavern in Crystal City, established a similar bar and restaurant operation in the migrant agricultural town of Wautoma, Wisconsin. In March 1963, the federal government entered the voting rights fray to protect the rights of African American voters in Greenwood, MS, as it dispatched agents to Crystal City to investigate claims of discrimination and voter harassment. See also José Angel Gutiérrez “Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies,” in La Causa Política: A Chicano Politics Reader, ed. For example, Los Cinco candidate Juan Cornejo’s younger brother Robert Cornejo—in order to recruit student canvassers and pamphleteers from among his cohorts—used this kith and kinship network.