History Colorado

Land Rights and Recognition of Place

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

Mestizos

El Movimiento Sigue (the Movement Continues) in Colorado

Largest Hispano and Mexican Neighborhood in Denver

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

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

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

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

The Bracero Program

Vietnam War

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

La Gente: El Movimiento/The Movement

Civics and Government

Social Studies

U.S. History

World History

Since the mainstream press ignored or marginalized the Chicano Movement, Chicano newspapers sprang up around the state.  Some of the earliest examples of Chicano art were created for newsletters, protest banners, posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and t-shirts to support demonstrators and disseminate information throughout the state.


Since the mainstream press ignored or marginalized the Chicano Movement, Chicano newspapers sprang up around the state. Some of the earliest examples of Chicano art were created for newsletters, protest banners, posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and t-shirts to support demonstrators and disseminate information throughout the state.

Small, eight-page newspaper titled, El Malcriado, La Voz del Campesino (the Voice of the Farmworker), No. 33, from April 10, 1966. The newspaper contains information and descritiption about the Delano Grape Strike and march from Delano, California to Sacramento, California, a list of names and photos of participants, and lyrics to a song. Text in Spanish and English.

Newspaper, El Malcriado, La Voz del Campesino (The Voice of the Farmworker)

As the director of the Fiesta Colorado Dance Company, Jeanette Trujillo’s dress is an example of the rich tradition her program strives to showcase. The dress itself is inspired by Spanish Flamenco and traditional Mexican dance. It is a striking red with large white ruffles and a cream sash with red embroidery.


Shawl worn by Jeanette Trujillo-Lucero for her dance performances. The shawl is white with red embroidered flowers and other floral elements. White thread is croqueted into circular pattern around edges. White fringe extends from croqueted elements.

Dress, Worn and Made by Jeanette Trujillo-Lucero

A farm worker struggles with the evils of life in the United States after leaving his family in Mexico in La Carpa de los Rasquachis. El Teatro Campesino performed the play at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1974.


Digital copy of a film negative taken by photographer Juan Espinosa in May 1974. The image depicts El Teatro Campesino actors performing a play, "La Carpa de los Rasquachis," at the Mary Rippon Theatre on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. El Teatro Campesino is a theatrical troupe that was founded in 1965 by the United Farm Workers (UFW) to put on plays about Chicano culture with farmworker actors.

Juan Espinosa was a journalism student at the University of Colorado in Boulder when he took this photograph. He won his first camera in a poker game at Da Nang Air Force Base in Vietnam while serving with the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War and, after his discharge in 1969, learned journalistic photography and darkroom techniques at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado. Espinosa enrolled at CU Boulder in 1971, joined the United Mexican Student Association (UMAS), and worked as a stringer for the Colorado Daily newspaper and as a photographer for UMAS Publications, which published Somos Aztlan magazine and newspaper by the same name. In the summer of 1972, Espinosa founded the El Diario student newspaper during the summer of 1972, which primarily covered the Chicano civil rights movement and UMAS activities on the CU Boulder campus. Between 1971-1974, Espinosa photographed the events and people of the Chicano civil rights movement in Colorado, Arizona, Texas, and California. In 1975, he and his wife Deborah moved to Pueblo, Colo., where they founded and published La Cucaracha, a community newspaper, from 1976-1984. Espinosa later worked as a reporter and photographer for the Pueblo Chieftain newspaper for 22 years.

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

La Gente: El Movimiento/The Movement

Art & Culture

Background Knowledge

Art of the Chicano Movement