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  • Chicanas of 18th Street: Narratives of a Movement from Latino Chicago by Leonard G. Ramírez
  • Brandon H. Milá
Chicanas of 18th Street: Narratives of a Movement from Latino Chicago. By Leonard G. Ramírez. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. 224 pp. Hardbound, $80.00; Softbound, $27.00.

Leonard G. Ramírez brings together a collection of interviews that provides rich personal accounts of six female activists’ motivations, initiatives, and experiences in the neighborhood of Pilsen, Chicago, during the Chicano Movement [End Page 430] of the 1960s and 1970s. His work reveals the convictions and approaches that these women were forced to make when organizing for Mexican American social reform and also the ways in which education, immigration, religion, identity, and acculturation affected the movement. Ramírez conducted a series of individual and group interviews with the six women over an eleven-year period (1998–2009); the sessions either covered themes related to the events and politics of the period or focused on specific aspects of the movement itself. Interestingly, Ramírez always tried to have at least one other woman present during the personal interviews in order to create what he felt was a more supportive environment and so that the other female activist present could assist in the recollection of important details from the period. Each chapter of the book is directly based upon the interview of an individual activist; overall, though, the book functions both as the histories of the interviewees and their Pilsen network of activists (which came to be known as the Comité) and as a history of the Chicano Movement in Chicago.

Ramírez begins with an introduction to Yenelli Flores—a steadfast activist who ran down an aisle while shouting antiwar slogans at a private gathering of President Richard M. Nixon’s reunion party—and each of the Comité’s most important leaders, all of whom also happen to be the book’s fellow contributors (and whose intent was to develop a comprehensive history of the Comité through their participation in this project). Ramírez then recounts Flores’s childhood and early life, which included her Middle Eastern mother’s and Mexican father’s private activism, being an outcast in a primarily Jewish high school, and how strong an impact college had on her life. Gang warfare overtook Flores’s neighborhood, contributing to her decision to leave Pilsen, but, as the author notes, by being outspoken and taking action, Flores contributed to many community reforms.

Next Ramírez discusses the life of Isaura González, a Mexican born with congenital heart disease, who later became a radical activist and then a core founding member of the Comité. In this chapter the reader learns about many of the Comité’s activities, which involved displacing Eastern Europeans, vandalizing clothing, clashing with police officers, and forming an occasional picket line. Additionally, González’s story provides an account of the unraveling of the Comité due to the group’s loss of direction and drive. Ramírez then turns to María Gamboa, one of the few Comité activists who outright identified herself as a Chicana and who was part of the Compañia Trucha, a theater group whose members saw themselves as popular educators helping people understand what opportunities they could take advantage of and in what issues to get involved. Gamboa’s story, though, begins with a detailed recounting of the Froebel Uprising, a controversial and violent event in which a group of Chicano activists seized control of the Froebel branch of Harrison High School. After the Chicago police arrived and tried to regain control, a scuffle ensued and a policeman was taken captive. Gamboa tells this story, as Ramírez assures us, in [End Page 431] order to highlight the beliefs and intent of the Comité: the Comité denounced the activists that initiated the Froebel Uprising. Gamboa’s chapter ends with her explanation of how moving to the Mexican community of Pilsen was a huge change for her, especially coming from the Polish community in which she was raised (and which she considered racist) and of how she and her friends created Compañia Trucha.

The next three chapters cover the...

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