In this valuable study, Lorena V. Márquez tells the story of the Chicana/o movement in the Sacramento Valley from the perspective of the “foot soldiers” who participated. Using oral histories of everyday people, La Gente examines their uneven political activism during the late 1960s and 1970s in Sacramento. Márquez focuses on a series of events in the region but begins with a historical overview exploring the experiences of Sacramento's Mexican community before the 1960s. Subsequent chapters explore the desegregation of a local elementary school, the organizing of cannery works, and the creation of Deganawidah Quetzalcoatl University, known as D-QU, a Sacramento community college. Márquez defines la gente, everyday common people, as “working-class folks, males and females, U.S. born and foreign born, documented and undocumented—whose lives were governed and anchored in work and the protection of their families” (p. 4). Márquez highlights everyday people's uneven activism in the Sacramento Valley. She argues everyday people engaged with the Chicana/o movement at critical junctures in their lives and through constant negotiated acts of defiance when they, their families, and their homes were at risk and became principal advocates for their rights (p. 4). Each chapter highlights everyday common people's political activism and the particular issues and needs that drove them into political action.La Gente argues that working-class people sought self-determination on their own terms, in often contradictory ways. Chapter 2 focuses on a battle over a local elementary school that highlighted a larger issue of self-determination for ethnic Mexican residents of Sacramento. Parents wanted to decide their children's educational future and went against civil rights leaders and school board officials who wanted to integrate the schools. Parents rejected desegregation plans because they believed members of the Sacramento school board based their plans on a false premise that the “white schools” were better than their local neighborhood school, Washington Elementary. Instead, parents wondered if their school did not better serve their children and their communities. Washington Elementary doubled as a community agency that provided medical care to students, adult education courses in the evening, and a park. Parents attacked the desegregation plans as unfair to their children. White students were not being bussed and removed from their environments. Second, parents did not want to further reinscribe their children's inferiority complex. Instead, parents demanded the school board either rebuild or rehabilitate Washington Elementary, and they wanted improvements across the system-wide curriculum. The Washington Elementary incident adds a nuanced layer to the historical understanding of civil rights, school segregation, and who supported integration and why. Márquez rightly points out the topic awaits further exploration.The parents of Washington Elementary were unsuccessful in stopping desegregation. But working-class, first-generation college students achieved a more lasting, but ultimately doomed, victory. In 1970, Native American and Chicana/o college students and community members worked together to create an institution of higher learning, D-QU, that let them have self-determination over their futures. Through D-QU, Márquez explores Chicana/os claims to an Indigenous identity and cross-ethnic alliances based on a shared history of conquest and oppression. Through its discussion of D-QU, La Gente challenges the view of the Civil Rights Movement as organized around a single race or ethnic group and instead highlights how Chicana/os built solidarity with Indigenous people. La Gente weaves the narrative of D-QU with a discussion about the meaning of mestizaje, la raza cosmica, and Chicanismo to explain the roots of D-QU's eventual closing in the 2000s.One small criticism of La Gente lies in its organization. At times, La Gente is disjointed and not a cohesive narrative of the Chicana/o movement in the Sacramento region. Was there no crossover between Chicana/os in the desegregation of Washington Elementary school and the cannery workers, or the larger issues of the community? The events all happened within a relatively brief window of time, but there was little interaction between the various actors in La Gente. Perhaps that is intentional, as so much of everyday people's experiences with activism are not always cohesive and easily followed. This is a minor issue that does not detract from a marvelous study of the Chicana/o movement in Sacramento that poses questions about self-determination, activism, and everyday people's political participation. La Gente is a significant contribution to the historiography of the Chicana/o movement.
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Open Access
Oct 27, 2023
Kalfin + 2
