Important developments marking the growth of nationalist Consciousness and militancy in the Mexican-American, or Chicano, community have been the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference of Aztlan held in Denver in March 1969, and the organization of an independent Chicano party. The youth conference adopted a program entitled El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan which raised the concept of Aztlan, including all of the southwest United Stales which originally belonged to Mexico: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California. This symbolizes the Chicano people's struggle for self-determination and national liberation.
The development of a Chicano party has gone the furthest in Texas. There the successes of La Raza Unida Party mark the first electoral victories for an independent Chicano party.
The present pamphlet contains two speeches about these developments by Mario Compean, chairman of the Mexican-American Youth Organization MAYO), and Jose Angel Gutierrez, La Raza Unida Party leader, which were delivered at a San Antonio mass meeting called by MAYO on May 4, 1970. They are reprinted from The Militant of June 19, 1'970, together with an introduction, expanded for this pamphlet, by Antonio Camejo, instructor in the Latin and Mexican-American Studies Department at Merritt College, Oakland, California, and Socialist Workers Party candidate for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction.