The Chicano Movement was a civil rights movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. It denounced racial discrimination, inequalities, and working conditions Mexican-Americans suffered, amongst other claims.
Chicano, a term originally used in the 1930s in a disrespectful way, was co-opted by groups of young Mexican-Americans to proclaim their pride in their ancestry. Chicano began to be used in the 1960s to reaffirm Mexican ancestry exalting their indigenous ties.
Poets, novelists, and many visual artists were an integral part of “el movimiento”, creating art that continues to be of relevance today.
In San Diego, the murals of Chicano Park are a great example of the legacy of the Chicano Art Movement. Chicano Art Movement was so fundamental in the fight to save Barrio Logan — a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood where Yolanda López grew up- from the construction of the I-5 that tore through it. Chicano Park is still an important cultural meeting place for Chicanos and Chicanas.
Male artists often featured portraits of icons from the Mexican revolution, such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. They also depicted representations of “family values” in which women were depicted as passive or as caretakers.
Chicanas faced their own struggles and injustices within the “movimiento” and played an active role in bringing changes to Chicana’s realities.
The patriarchal family romance portrayed in park murals, such as the one executed by José Montoya and the Royal Chicano Air Force, Farmworker Family, depicting a man standing behind a woman and child with a protective gesture toward them, did not coincide with Yolanda López’s feminist views nor those of the Chicana Femenist Movement.
The Chicana Feminist Movement challenged many culturally held ideas of the role of women as well as fought stereotypes both within Mexican and American societies.
Chicana Feminist Movement and other US Third World feminists of color, fought against forms of oppressions such as race discrimination, that were not represented by the Feminist movement at the time who were focused on reproductive rights, birth control, reproductive health care, etc.. Chicanas also fought for labor rights and immigration rights. They were conscious of the many layers of oppression they were systemically suffering!
While studying at UCSD López continued to develop a feminist voice, focusing on the bodies of contemporary Chicanas and Latinas as the site of liberation. As the only woman of color in her department while studying in UCSD, the artist’s work and writing of the time attests to the challenges of survival at a predominantly white institution.
López took a reflexive approach to her experiences, channeling them into ¿A Donde Vas, Chicana? Getting through College (1977), in which she laces feminist allegory with institutional critique. In her first year at UCSD, López began cross-country running, an endeavor that saw her navigating the university’s eucalyptus-lined paths as well as the brutalist-style buildings that had been newly constructed around campus.
For López, running was a “revelation” that allowed her to embrace self-care and physical training as a feminist act. Continuing to work on reams of butcher paper, she produced seven acrylic-and-oil paintings in which the Runner—López herself—is a picture of strength, vitality, and movement, set in contrast to the concrete backdrop of modernist architecture, through which the artist figures the institution and its oppressive structures.