A New Kind of Democracy? Political and Cultural Developments in the 1960s 437to child labor. The big farm owners, not surprisingly, refused, so Chavez and
others took direct action. In agriculture, time was essential–if crops did not
make it to market quickly, they would rot and be worthless. So Chavez called
for the tactics of la huelga, or the strike. Workers would refuse to pick the
crops and let them rot, which angered the farm owners and led them to call
out police, vigilante groups, and “scabs” [men who would take jobs from
workers who were on strike]. Along with the strikes, Chavez called for boy-
cotts of key crops like strawberries, grapes, and lettuce, asking people all over
the country not to purchase those goods to show their solidarity with the
farm workers and to financially hurt the farm owners. It took awhile, but by
the later 1960s, some of the growers began to settle with the union and rec-
ognize the UFW as the representative of the migrant farm workers.
Some Chicanos, like black nationalists, were more radical than Chavez and
the UFW and called for a return to their roots, and a return of their land. In
New Mexico, Reies Tijerina wanted the U.S. government to give the land it
had taken in the Mexican-American War and after to the original owners, the
Chicanos. Tijerina and his comrades actually raided a courthouse and were
arrested and jailed, but he gained a reputation as a Chicano “Robin Hood”
[in Colorado, Corky Gonzales had a similar role]. In East Los Angeles, Chicanos
formed the “Brown Berets,” a group that marched in public and was similar
to the Black Panthers. In south Texas, in Crystal City, Chicanos organized a
boycott of white businesses and formed La Raza Unida [“The People United”]
which branched out into a political party and won control of the local school
board in 1970. Still Chicano farm workers labored in poverty and poor con-
ditions, and many Chicanos still lived in barrios. The Mexican American
movement did not have the impact of the Black Civil Rights Movement in
the 1960s, but the efforts of Chavez and others clearly improved life for many,
and made it clear that Chicanos [or, as also called, “Hispanics” or “Latinos”]
would be a force in American politics and society.
The “Art” of Protest in the ‘60s
Just as John Biggers, Gordon Parks, George Tooker, and Richard Hamilton
used art to critique, in biting ways, the culture of the 1950s, artists in the fol-
lowing decade would do the same. Political art took many forms—tradi-
tional works like paintings and sculpture, but newer types of art building on