Chicanas in Charge: Texas Women in the Public Arena (review)

Chicanas in Charge is a collection of individual profiles of significant women in Texas politics and activism from the 1940s to the present. The book is arranged in four parts—“Adelitas: Warrior Trailblazers,” “The Chicano Movement Activists,” “Puentes y Lazos: The Hispanic Connectors,” and “Twenty-first Century Entorchas/Torchbearers.” Each part features a short introduction that identifies the period’s historical zeitgeist, identifies similar themes in the women’s stories, and points out unique aspects of the leaders followed by from five to eight individual profiles.

The profiles of each woman are somewhat concise: they include a sketch of the background of the narrator (year of birth, location, parents’ occupations), a brief discussion of the narrator’s educational experiences, how the narrator became involved in politics, and some key insights drawn from their journey to leadership. Identified by the editors as “mini-ethnographies” and summaries, rather than biographies, the chapters are condensed from a series of longer oral histories conducted between 1996 and 2003. With the exception of one interview with Rosa Tijerina and Maria Escobar, the full-length versions of the videotaped and transcribed interviews are archived at the University of Texas, Arlington Special Collections Library. Many can be accessed online ( http://libraries.uta.edu/tejanovoices/ ).

Part One, “Adelitas: Warrior Trailblazers,” highlights six women. The former wife of well-known political official Alberto Peña, Jr., Olga Ramos Peña, is herself an influential political figure in the 1950s and 1960s as one of the first Mexican members of the Democratic Women’s Club and as officer manager to a series of successful campaigns. Virginia Muzquiz, whose life story is long overdue, represents the increasing visibility of Chicanas as political actors on their own terms and the continuity between members of the “Mexican American” generation and the “Chicano” generation. A surprising inclusion in this section is the mother-daughter woven narrative of Rosa Tijerina and Maria Escobar, the daughter and first wife, respectively, of Reies Lopez Tijerina, New Mexico’s land grant leader. Their story is a reminder of the family’s origins in Texas and also a poignant reminder of the toll that activism can take on women, children, and families.

Part Two, “The Chicano Movement Activists,” explores the trajectories of women who were La Raza Unida Party activists. Key women figures appear here such as Alma Canales, the first Chicana candidate for lieutenant governor as a member of La Raza Unida Party, 1972; Irma Mireles, the first Chicana elected to the San Antonio River Authority; and Severita Lara, who, years after her high school student days leading school walkouts for educational reform, was elected mayor of Crystal City. These women opened the door to increased Chicana political candidacy, as evidenced by the higher number of Chicana and Latina political officials since the late 1960s.

The introduction to Part Three, “Puentes y Lazos: The Hispanic Connectors,” identifies a break between this group of women and the previous two cohorts. Where the political lineage of the first two cohorts is clearly based in or traced to the Chicano civil rights movement, this third cohort of women leaders finds themselves in a more conservative political context, but also one deeply informed by the door-opening the earlier women made possible. This section includes Elvira Reyna, the only Republican woman in the book, who represented a majority white district. A compelling figure in this section is Socorro “Coco” Medina, the first Hispanic woman appointed county commissioner in Potter County, TX. She lobbied to develop a women’s shelter, managed and eventually owned the area’s first Spanish-language radio station, and founded an immigration rights office. This section’s profiles show that despite the conservative climate, Chicanas continued to engage in significant political battles that often involved confronting gendered power dynamics.

Finally, Part Four, “Twenty-first Century Entorchas/Torchbearers,” profiles eight women leaders who, just...