¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!: Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War Era

Fascinating look at how Civil Rights transformed Chicano Patriotism

Lorena Oropeza has authored an outstanding study of the Chicano Civil Rights movement through the lens of patriotism and protest during the Vietnam war era. Her primary goal of the study is to demonstrate that the war in Vietnam fundmentally shaped the Chicano movement's challenge to long held assumptions about the history of Mexican-American people and their role in society (p. 5).

The evidence selected by Oropeza primarily stems from two states - California and New Mexico (this is the lone weakness of the book, in my opinion - virtually no mention of events in Arizona and little mention of Texas). She looks at protests and activism in these states.

Given my personal interests, I found her link between the land-grant movement in New Mexico (Reies Tijerina's activism) and the Vietnamese people to be the most persuasive argument in the book - Oropeza compellingly explained how the Chicano/as in New Mexico bound themselves with the Vietnamese emotionally, thus... read more