Chicanos started calling the American Southwest (land that was part of Mexico before the Mexican-American War) Aztlán in the 1960s. The term affirmed stolen history and land that bonded a group of people and forged their spirits.

Somos Aztlan bumper sticker made by Emanuel Martinez. Sticker is white with red text. Outline of three-face "mestizo head" is in the center. Brown paper backing.

Bumper Sticker, Somos Aztlán

History Colorado

Aztlán refers to the ancestral homeland and creation story of the Mexica (Aztecs) in Northern Mexico.  The Mexica capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, ruled a large empire when the Spaniards arrived in 1519. In 1969, “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” was drafted at the National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver. Chicanos emulated the Mexica, declaring that Aztlán, their ancestral homeland, is the American Southwest. Chicanos adopted the term Aztlán to describe their homeland—one lost through war, racism, and oppression.

Digital copy of a film negative taken by photographer Juan Espinosa, documenting Chicano land rights activists and their families marching to reclaim their traditional rights to land at Taylor Ranch in the San Luis Valley in Colorado in 1981. The march was part of a decades-long battle between the descendants of Hispanic land grant holders, who claimed rights to access and use the land at Taylor Ranch for water, hunting, grazing and firewood, and ranch owner Jack Taylor, who barred their access to his ranch lands.

Negative, Land rights march at Taylor Ranch

Digital copy of a film negative taken by photographer Juan Espinosa, documenting Chicano land rights activists and their families demonstrating at Taylor Ranch in the San Luis Valley in Colorado in 1981 to reclaim their traditional rights to its land. The demonstration was part of a decades-long battle between the descendants of Hispanic land grant holders, who claimed rights to access and use the land at Taylor Ranch for water, hunting, grazing and firewood, and ranch owner Jack Taylor, who barred their access to his ranch lands.

Negative, Protestors at Taylor Ranch - 1

Negative, Protestors at Taylor Ranch - 2

Negative, Protestors at Taylor Ranch

The Chicano homeland of Aztlán —once part of Spain, then Mexico, then the United States—had been granted to their ancestors and then taken away. Not having access to land they owned meant generations of discrimination for their people. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and promised to protect the property and civil rights of Spanish speakers in the new American territory, but land grants were often broken up and people violently forced off communal lands.

Digital copy of a film negative taken by photographer Juan Espinosa, documenting the descendants of Hispanic land grant holders at Taylor Ranch in the San Luis Valley in Colorado in 1981. Pictured are land rights leaders Apolinar Rael (3rd from right), co-founder of the Land Rights Council of the San Luis, and Juan LaCombe (3rd from left). The gathering at the ranch was part of a decades-long battle between the land grant holders, who claimed rights to access and use the land at Taylor Ranch for water, hunting, grazing and firewood, and ranch owner Jack Taylor, who barred their access to his ranch lands.

Negative, Land grant descendants at Taylor Ranch

In 1863, landowner Carlos Beaubien gave Chicano ancestors common rights to use the resources of La Sierra, the mountain near San Luis. In 1960, Jack Taylor bought 77,000 acres and fenced it off. For the first time, they couldn’t use their land.

The fight for their land took forty-two years. One judge argued, in 1965, that his ruling against their community would “bring those Mexicans into the 20th century.” Finally, in 2002, the Colorado Supreme Court recognized the rights of land-grant heirs to graze livestock and gather wood there.

Standards for Land Rights and Recognition of Place

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework