5.7: Chicana and Latina Feminism

Labor Organizers

Chicanas have been a part of the fabric of the United States since the Southwest was acquired by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. However, it was not until the 20th century that the Mexican American population grew significantly and spread throughout the country. Chicanas and Latinas were active in labor union movements in the 1910s and 1920s in the Southwest as well as Chicago and New York City, demanding higher pay and better working conditions in mines, sweatshops, and other dangerous industries where they worked. In the 1930s, Texas labor leader Emma Tenayuca was jailed for organizing strikes against the pecan industry. While her efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, pecan producers replaced workers with machines; Tenayuca’s activities show that Chicanas were visibly active in the labor movement.

Perhaps the most famous female labor union organizer is Dolores Huerta, who was a leader and negotiator for the United Farm Workers beginning in the 1960s. Huerta led strikes and attended negotiation meetings, often with her young children in tow, partly out of convenience but partly because she realized that seeing her children humanized her in the eyes of management. The UFW won higher pay, humane working conditions, health care access, and an end to pesticide spraying with workers in the fields largely because of Dolores Huerta.

Health Care

Medical abuse has long been a problem among Women of Color in the United States, and all feminists of color have worked to bring attention to this issue. In the 1960s and 70s, hospitals in the Los Angeles area often sterilized Latinas without their consent or even knowledge by requiring them to sign waivers in order to receive pain medication during labor: “Under the severe pain of labor, and after being assured that the operation could be easily reversed, she signed these forms and was sterilized.” (Madrigal 1978) A group of Latinas sued and won in the case of Madrigal v. Quilligan in 1978. Although they won their case, Latinas continue to experience abuse or neglect at the hands of health care providers, who often believe that Latinas do not feel pain as much as their White counterparts and don’t take their health concerns seriously.

Immigration Advocacy

In 1965, the Federal government passed a new immigration law that lifted limitations on people entering the United States from non-European nations. The result of the Immigration Act of 1965 was a steady increase in immigrants of color, including those from Mexico and Latin America, over the next fifty years. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 focused on reunifying families of mixed immigration statuses, such as undocumented parents of citizen children. Chicana activists and feminists were at the forefront of supporting the passage of these laws in order to keep families together and create a more humane immigration policy in the United States. Chicanas and Latinas continue to be vocal critics of inhumane border policies, such as the “Zero Tolerance” policy in 2018 that resulted in the detention of children separate from their parents and the detention and deportation of non-criminal undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025.

Chicana Feminist Writers

Since the 1980s, Chicanas have become a force in literature, publishing both fiction and non-fiction works that explore what it means to be Chicana. In 1981, Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga wrote A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, which was one of the first books of its kind to discuss Chicano culture within the framework of feminist theory. Since A Bridge, Anzaldua, Moraga, and other Chicana feminists have written and published dozens of articles, short stories, poems, and books, some sharing their personal stories of growing up Latina, being gay in Latino culture, and Indigenous spirituality. These writers have given voice to a group of women who had been forgotten by both White feminists and the Chicano movement.