Fifteenth Annual National Association of Chicano Studies Conference

Abstract

Chicanos now comprise a large segment of the American work force. Histor ically, Chicanos have been among the most poorly paid and the most severely exploited workers, yet they have long played a key role in class struggles in the Southwest, and they have been in the front ranks of the current labor battles. Through collective action based in class and community solidarity, Chicano workers have fought against plant closings, phase-downs, and the deplorable working conditions of low-wage industries caused by the restructuring of the American economy. One of this decade's longest strikes thus far was waged by Chicano Phelps-Dodge copper miners in Arizona. In northwest Ohio, the Chicano migrant farmworker organization, the Farm Labor Organizing Com mittee (FLOC) engaged in a seven-year boycott of the Campbell Soup Compa ny. Through a powerful labor-community coalition of Chicanos, blacks, and Asian Americans, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 645 in Van Nuys, Cali fornia successfully contested the power of General Motors to close the local plant. In 1987, Chicana and Mexican women frozen-food workers in Watson ville, California won an eighteen-month strike for fair wages and benefits. Chicano labor activists are leading drives to organize undocumented Mexican workers in the low-wage, nonunionized sweatshops, underground operations, and service industries, where working conditions resemble those in the Third World. These and other experiences of the Chicano population, a people whose historical past has been omitted from the overall narrative of American history, are being researched and documented by Chicano scholars. Since 1972, Chicano scholars from across the United States have gathered for the annual conference of the National Association for Chicano Studies (NACS) to share research on Chicano life and culture. The fifteenth annual NACS conference was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, from April 9-11, 1987. More than 120 Chicano scholars from the Southwest, Midwest, and Northeast attended the conference. In keeping with the NACS' desire to make the study of Chicanos accessible, local Chicano community members were invited. The theme of the NACS conference?Chicano Renaissance?: Can Chicanos Sur vive Their Decade? refers to the public attention given to Chicanos (and other Latinos) as America's fastest growing minority group. Through continued im