"The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a Legacy of Conflict
               by Richard Griswald del Castillo

Chapter 9, The Chicano Movement & The Treaty

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the most important document concerning Mexican Americans that exists. from it stem specific guarantees affecting our civil rights, language, culture, and religion.

         Armando Rendon, Chicano Manifesto

During the 1960s and 1970s a new generation of Mexican Americans sought to redefine their position within the United States using, in part, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. they called themselves Chicanos, a term previously used as a derogatory reference to working class Mexican-immigrants. Sparked by a growing civil rights and anti-war movement, Chicano political militants sought to focus world attention on the failed promises of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Beginning with an agrarian revolutionary movement in New Mexico and a farm workers strike in California, the newly born Chicano movement resurrected the treaty as a primary document in the struggle for social justice. Continued.....