Publication Date
2021
Collection
Capstones
Contributor
Dr. Charles Cottrell, Mario Compean, Gerald Poyo, St. Mary's University
Advisor
Lindsey Wieck, Gerald Poyo, Amanda Hill
Description
In the 1960s, St. Mary’s University saw an increase in Latino enrollment and a shift in student political attitudes from confidence in established politics in the early 1960s to radical activism at the end of the decade. The transition occurred as students engaged with the Civil Rights movement and then the Chicano movement. St. Mary’s distanced itself from radical forms of protest, as best exemplified by the formation off campus of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) off campus, arguably the lynchpin of the Chicano movement in San Antonio. Attempting a reconciliation, St. Mary’s declared the 1969-1970 school year The Great Southwest Heritage Year, a celebration and investigation of the Mexican American experience, but the effort proved too little too late. Using the St. Mary’s student newspaper, The Rattler, this project chronicles the events of the 1960s from the perspective of St. Mary’s Latino students, using editorials and campus coverage to understand the evolution from traditionalism to radicalism.
Keywords
MAYO, Chicano Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Radical Activism. Mexican American, Latinx, St. Mary's University, The Rattler, San Antonio, The Great Southwest Heritage Year
Document Type
Article
Medium
manuscript
Format
Size or Duration
38 pages
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
City
San Antonio, Texas