La resistencia a la “muerte de la diversidad”: Un análisis histórico de la creación del Centro César E. Chávez para la Educación Superior en Cal Poly Pomona, 1990-1995

Abstract

This article chronicles the strategies and efforts Chicana/o and Latina/o student activists employed in the demand and creation of the Cesar E. Chavez Center for Higher Education (CECCHE) at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) between 1990 and 1995. We situate the center’s establishment as the result of student activism. CPP served as a stage whereon students resisted negative campus racial climate by institutionalizing the CECCHE as a counterspace. Student activism at CPP reflected broader resistance efforts in California in the 1990s. The student leaders, like activists from California’s social movements, resisted conservative rhetoric and systemic racism by mobilizing cross-racial coalitions and enacting public protest. Using critical race history, we analyze ten oral histories of students, faculty, and administrators involved in the establishment of CPP’s first Chicana/o and Latina/o cultural center. We situate the formation of the CECCHE as an example of student of color commitment to antiracist activism in higher education.