Aztlán Arizona: Mexican American Educational Empowerment, 1968–1978 by Darius V. Echeverría (review)

In Aztlán Arizona, Darius Echeverría investigates the activism of “Arizonan-Mexicans” during the 1960s and 1970s around educational inequalities in the Arizona school system and higher education institutions. He draws from an array of primary sources such as newspapers, oral histories, and files from university archives to stress how Arizonan Mexicans challenged their second-class citizenship status amid political, cultural, and historical discrimination. The battles for equality in Phoenix, Tempe, and Tucson by students, parents, and the larger community between 1968 and 1978 connect to the current political climate in Arizona. Echeverría indicates that the 2010 HB2281 law banning ethnic studies at the K–12 level demonstrates a need for scholars to understand the historical linkages informing the debates. The text also seeks to fill Chicana/o historiography, lacking an analysis of states besides Texas, California, and Colorado, which are often associated as the focal points for the dominant leaders of the Chicana/o movement. Echeverría argues Arizonan Mexicans produced their own local movements that were connected to the larger national mobilization of Mexican Americans, but those unfamiliar with the national Chicana/o movement historiography will be disappointed to find he primarily focuses on the events within Arizona.

The first section explores the variety of ways that Mexican Americans in the first half the twentieth century in Arizona encountered structural problems embedded in the state’s educational system. Arizonan Mexicans faced academic segregation, track placement into Americanization courses, and higher dropout rates. These factors, among others, promoted Euro-centered curricula and limited opportunities for what the author calls “partially educated people” (43). Echeverría situates the Arizona educational experience to those of other Mexican Americans around the country, following both national and state court decisions against academic segregation. The demands for equal education by Arizonan Mexicans included victories such as Romo v. Laird (1925), which deemed segregation “illegal not because of racial concerns but because the schools were separate yet not equal” (17). Chapter 2 highlights the abysmal graduation rates and percentages of students entering college, as well as the lack of Mexican American teachers, tailored curriculum, and resources Arizonan Mexicans faced while attending segregated public schools. It is amid these daily reminders of inequality during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that the conditions for equal education battles began to take shape in Arizona.

The three chapters in section 2 detail the grassroots activism of students, parents, and community members across Arizona high schools and college campuses from 1968 to 1978. The various protests at Tucson High School, Phoenix Union High School, the University of Arizona (UA), and Arizona State University (ASU) portray the agency of countless actors in the fight for equal education. Echeverría introduces new leaders within Arizona communities, such as Joe Eddie López, who sought a seat on the Phoenix Board of Education in 1970. Activists utilized a variety of strategies such as presenting demands to school boards, creating makeshift community schools, and birthing “minority” studies courses to improve the conditions of students in Arizona schools. The radicalization of students intensified at the college level with the establishment of Chicano organizations across the nation, including Movimiento Estudantil Chicano de Aztlán. Political mobilization by students, parents, and community members reveals that a multilayered movement for the improvement of de facto segregated schools was vital to confront structural discrimination.

One of Echeverría’s overarching arguments is that a new sense of ethnic worth connected the struggles of Arizonan Mexican communities to the national Chicana/o movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. High school students walked out of their campuses around the state to boycott the lack of resources provided at their schools (chapter 3). College students at ASU and UA prioritized the creation of Chicano studies courses, cultural centers, and research collections to challenge the unfair practices at their respective campuses (chapters 4 and 5). The establishment of minority studies...