History Colorado

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.

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Somos Aztlán bumper sticker

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Land Rights and Recognition of Place

Vietnam War

Digging sugar beets, cutting lettuce, and picking fruit: all are grueling tasks. Factory work can be equally hard. Relegated to the worst jobs, people of Mexican descent toiled for long hours under terrible working and living conditions.

Farm Workers and Labor

Staff of Life by Emanuel Martinez, 1976, Acrylic on cement, donated by Chicano/a Murals of Colorado Project

Mestizos

The Art of the Chicano Movement was an effort to continue the tradition of storytelling to describe a non-Western narrative of Mestizaje--mixed heritage--ancestry, history, and culture through poetry, theatre, dance, art, and public art, specifically murals in Chicano neighborhoods.  Chicano artists embraced their Indigenous ancestry by incorporating traditional storytelling, pictography, and symbolism in their art.

Art & Culture

The Bracero Program

Chicanos had grown angry with their history being left out and with racism in schools. By the 1960s and ‘70s, as students demanded equal treatment, schools became battlegrounds across the state. 

Student Movements

Largest Hispano and Mexican Neighborhood in Denver

Inspired by the Mexican Mural Movement in the mid-1900s, young Chicano artists began to paint murals in historically marginalized neighborhoods.  Emanuel Martinez, pioneer of the mural movement in Colorado, began painting murals in the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood in 1969.  Resident of the Lincoln Housing Projects, Emanuel, with the assistance of youth in the community, painted murals on the swimming pool buildings in various Denver parks and in the Lincoln housing projects.  The murals gave the community a sense of space and served as historical textbooks describing the rich history of Black, Indigenous, Hispanos, Chicanos, Mexicans, and others in Colorado.  

The Chicano Mural Movement

El Movimiento Sigue (the Movement Continues) in Colorado

Beginning in the 1690s, the Spanish gave large tracts of land to individuals or groups in New Mexico.  The Spanish settlers were isolated and had limited access to goods from Mexico City and became increasingly dependent on trade with Puebloan groups and other Indigenous tribes.  The settlers, also known as Hispanos, established distinct traditions and customs in the Spanish Empire’s Northern Frontier.  After Mexico won their independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico granted land to Mexican citizens in the present-day states of Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. The land grants were meant to encourage settlement in Mexico’s northern boundary, where the United States was also interested in expanding. Hundreds of land grants were given out, mostly by the Mexican government to Hispanos and Mexicans.

Land Grants

A community advisory committee helped develop El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement in Colorado. The exhibit shares the story from their point of view, in their voices. History Colorado is honored to work with the committee, people who stood up for human rights at the height of the Movement in the 1960s and ‘70s, and who continue the fight for education and equality.

The Chicano Movement—El Movimiento—changed lives. Years of racism and discrimination that kept Mexican Americans poor, marginalized, and often invisible would not be tolerated anymore. The battle for justice and equality intensified in the 1960s and ‘70s, particularly in Colorado. 
Chicanos demanded better working conditions, housing, education, and representation. They called for an end to war in Vietnam. In cities, they stood up against police brutality; in rural areas, they fought to reclaim land. El Movimiento forced change, and the struggle continues.




Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964

Colorado Chicano Movement History: Portal 

The Wonderful World of the Chicano Experience

Chicano Murals in Colorado: The First Decade

Su Teatro: Cultural & Performing Arts Center

When a Colorado governor declared martial law and blocked poor New Mexicans at the border

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

La Gente: El Movimiento/The Movement

Land Rights and Recognition of Place