Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon

With Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon, Glenn Anthony May makes a major contribution to the literature on Oregon and Chicano history.

On one level a biography of Oregon’s leading Chicano activist, the book also tells the broader story of the state’s Mexican American community during the 1960s and 1970s, a story in which Sonny Montes, a former migrant farmworker from South Texas, played an important part.

Montes was the key figure in the birth of a Chicano movement in Oregon during the 1970s, a movement that coalesced around the struggle for survival of the Colegio Cesar Chavez, a small college in Mt. Angel, Oregon, with a largely Mexican American student body. Montes led the college community and its supporters in collective action—sit-ins, protest marches, rallies, prayer vigils. This campaign received wide media attention, making Sonny Montes a visible public figure.

By viewing Mexican American protest between 1965 and 1980 through the prism of social movement theory, May’s book deepens our understanding of the Chicano movement in Oregon and beyond. It also provides a much-needed account of the emergence of the state’s Mexican American community during that period.