22 Revolutionary Chicana Activists You Should Know About

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Photos: Jay Godwin/Public Doman/Flickr// Instagram @officialsandracisneros By Sofía Aguilar March 28, 2025 – 09:00 Chicana activism has a long and storied history in the U.S. though it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. During Women’s History Month , we want to highlight that history, especially when this month frequently prioritizes white women. From Gloria Arellanes , one of the first female leaders in the Brown Berets in the 1960s, to contemporary figures like Carmen Perez , known for her advocacy work against juvenile and youth incarceration, there are so many revolutionary Chicana activists who have done groundbreaking work but are not always included in our history books or greater social, cultural, and political consciousness. That’s why we decided to put together a list of Chicanas that we admire and who have significantly pushed our communities forward. This isn’t an exhaustive list but just a few female leaders who deserve more recognition and visibility. Read on to learn more about 22 Chicana activists you should know and celebrate this Women’s History Month and all year round. Helen Chavez Helen Chavez was a Mexican American labor activist for the United Farm Workers of America (UFWA) and the wife of activist Cesar Chavez. She was the daughter of migrant laborers and was working in the fields alongside her parents by the time she was seven. After she married Chavez, the couple worked to secure better rights for their fellow laborers. It was Helen who convinced her husband to work with a white organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), which later led to him becoming the National Director of the organization. It was she who raised their eight children, completed domestic chores, and helped out in the office with secretarial duties that were integral to the organization and community’s successes. Besides writing her husband’s daily reports by hand as he dictated them to her, she also taught many migrant workers how to read so they vote and helped them become citizens. After her husband started the National Farm Workers Association, she worked in the field picking grapes and later became a full-time administrator for the organization’s credit union, a position she served for more than two decades. However, her efforts, including the four times she was arrested for protesting, went largely unacknowledged and unappreciated due to her husband’s fame and visibility. Today, she should be remembered not only for being Cesar Chavez’s wife but also an influential labor organizer in her own right. Stay connected! Subscribe now and get the latest on culture, empowerment, and more. SIGN ME UP! Este sitio está protegido por reCAPTCHA y Google Política de privacidad y Se aplican las Condiciones de servicio . Thank You! You are already subscribed to our newsletter Dolores Huerta Dolores Huerta is an activist known for her work for farm workers rights. Born in 1930 to a Mexican American family, she grew up in a time of intense racism and discrimination and she continued to witness that into adulthood. As a teacher, she saw many of her students coming to school hungry and decided that she could do more good as an advocate for farm workers. She went on to co-found several organizations including the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), the Agricultural Workers Association, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), and the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW) with Cesar Chavez. Through these organizations, she helped lead voter registration drives, organized the 1965 Delano grape pickers’ strike and other boycotts, advocated for safer working conditions, secured unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers, and negotiated workers’ contracts. She also worked as a lobbyist and advocate for more Latinxs and women to be elected to political office. For her groundbreaking work, she has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Gloria Arellanes Gloria Arellanes was a political activist best known for her work during the Chicano Movement with the Brown Berets. In the 1960s and ’70s, she rose to prominence as the first female Prime Minister of the Brown Berets. She also was in charge of their East L.A. Free Clinic, which offered free services including drug addiction counseling, immunizations, physical exams, STI screenings, abortions, and surgical procedures to the community, especially those who were undocumented. However, she soon became disillusioned by the organization’s machismo attitudes, which enabled men to believe women could only work the clinic and volunteer, while they did the “important work.” She persuaded other female Brown Berets to form their own support group known as “Las Adelitas de Aztlán.” Together with other activists, she advocated for better bilingual education in L.A. for Latinx youth, protested against the Vietnam War, and fought for Chicano rights for all. Later in life, she worked closely with the Tongva people of Los Angeles as a community health advocate and representative. She passed in 2024 and has been celebrated for her significance to many East L.A. communities. Francisca Flores Photo: LA Mag Francisca Flores was born in 1913 in California and spent about a decade in a sanatorium for those suffering with tuberculosis, which she contracted after one of her brothers died from the disease. Though it was confining, she was able to befriend female veterans of the Mexican Revolution and form a political discussion group with them and other women in the sanatorium. Known as “Hermanas de la Revolución Mexicana,” the group inspired Flores to advocate for women’s rights in politics, labor, and daily domestic life. After leaving the sanatorium, she joined the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, which was working to help 12 young Mexican American men falsely convicted of murder in what became known as the Sleepy Lagoon trial. She later helped found the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) and the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, the first national Chicana feminist organization in the United States. Through the organization, she was able to open a job trading center, two bilingual daycare centers, a shelter for domestic violence victims, and 20 chapters across the state. She also served as the editor of Regeneración , a Mexican feminist magazine where she wrote about Chicana women’s struggles and oppression under the community’s patriarchy. Today, she continues to be remembered as a groundbreaking Chicana feminist who worked to liberate her fellow Chicana women through reproductive rights, education, and labor rights. Enriqueta Vasquez Enriqueta Vasquez was born in 1930 as the daughter of politically aware parents. As a child, she and other Mexican American children were segregated from white children in the classroom and on the playground, which encouraged her to pursue a career in activism. After graduating high school, she secured a job in the U.S. attorney’s office, where she became the only and first Mexican American in the Justice Department. She worked to ensure fair trials for Chicano folks in the court system. Later, she served as the assistant director of SER (Service, Employment, and Redevelopment) to help her community get jobs and secure labor rights. While living in Vincent Ranch, she also founded her own newspaper known as El Grito del Norte where she ran her own political column to spread awareness to her community about different issues in the Chicano movement and around the world. When law enforcement claimed the group was training guerilla soldiers at the ranch, she was tailed by police, their library was burned down, and she and other members were frequently doxxed. However, she persevered, and worked as a journalist, traveled around the world, and became an advocate for socialism and cultural pride. To this day, she continues to write and paint, creating murals that celebrate her community. Martha Cotera Martha Cotera is a Chicana feminist scholar who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1938. In 1946, she immigrated to the U.S. After receiving a BA in English and MA in education, she began working as a librarian in El Paso, where she became involved with the Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations and the farmworkers movement. She also co-founded Texans for Educational Advancement for Mexican Americans (TEAMS) in order to help students who were striking and protesting in schools; The Jacinto Trevino College to train Mexican American teachers to excel in bilingual classrooms; and the Chicana Research and Learning Center to work with women of color to secure grants for their community projects. She was also integral to the locating and archiving of important documents related to Mexican American history and figures for the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas, including the history of Chicanas in the U.S. Though her position was terminated in 2009, she continues to spotlight Chicana history in all aspects of her activism and work. Anna Nieto-Gómez Anna Nieto-Gomez is a Chicana scholar, journalist, and author born in 1946 in San Bernardino, California. She became aware of social injustice from a young age having grown up in a segregated community where power dynamics between her parents were based in equality rather than patriarchal values. In college, she was an active student organizer, counseling and mentoring other students and creating the newspaper Las Hijas de Cuauhtemoc. Later, she founded the feminist journal Encuentro Femenil to highlight Latina issues like childcare, reproductive rights, and poverty. She was also integral to the establishment of the first Chicana Studies curriculum in the Chicano Studies department at Cal-State Northridge, writing curriculum for four Chicana-focused classes on history, contemporary social issues, global identity, and family. Today at 78 years old, she continues to be a social activist and researcher of workers’ rights, higher education, welfare rights, sexuality, reproductive rights, and political policy. Judithe Hernández Born in 1948, Judithe Hernández is a Chicana artist, educator, muralist, pastel artist, and painter. She rose to prominence in the 1970s as a muralist, which incorporated pastel work, Indigenous imagery, and commentary on gender roles. She also became known as the only woman in the East Los Angeles Chicano artist collective, later joining the art collective, Centro de Arte Público. During the mural renaissance in L.A., she encouraged Chicanos to organize, raise awareness, and fight for their civil rights. Since then, her art has been exhibited in prestigious institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art. It’s also been installed in the streets of downtown L.A. In 2018, she became the first American-born Latina to open a solo exhibition at the Museum of Latin American Art. For her groundbreaking work and contribution to Chicana art, she has received the Sor Juana Legacy Award. Elizabeth Martinez Photo: Brittanica Born in 1925, Elizabeth Martinez was a Chicana feminist, community organizer, activist, author, writer, and educator. When she was in her 20s, she became the first Latina student to graduate from Swarthmore College, receiving a BA in history and literature. After graduating, she worked for the United Nations as a researcher on colonialism and decolonization in Africa. As a political activist, she raised awareness about racism, poverty, and the military. As a staff member for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she was only one of two Latinas. She founded several political newspapers including the bilingual newspaper El Grito del Norte, as well as the Chicano Communications Center to organize and educate communities living in barrios and the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, to fight against white supremacy and empower communities of color. She is best remembered for her bilingual book 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures , which pioneered the documentation of Chicano history and culture. She is also credited as the creator of the term “Oppression Olympics.” For her decades of activist work, she won Scholar of the Year 2000 from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Gloria Anzaldúa Gloria Anzaldua was a renowned queer Chicana scholar and writer best known for her book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza , based on her experiences growing up on the Texas-Mexico border. She received a B.A. in English and began working as a preschool and special education teacher, then later as a creative writing teacher at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Florida Atlantic University. She also co-edited This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color with Cherríe Moraga and edited Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation . Passionate about exploring feminism, cultural theory, queer theory, language, and cultural marginalization, she remains an important figure in feminist, Chicana, and queer studies. She’s known for having used the concept of Nepantla, (Nahuatl for “in the middle”) to describe the experience of being a Chicana. She died in 2004 at the age of 61. Carmen Perez Carmen Perez is a Chicana activist and feminist with a focus on civil rights issues related to mass incarceration, women’s rights and gender equity, violence prevention, racial healing and community policing. Born in 1977, she first began her activist journey in 2001 working with the Santa Cruz Youth Community Restoration Program to support juvenile offenders with alternatives to incarceration. Through the years, she has founded the young mentoring program Reforming Education Advocating Leadership (REAL); co-founded the Girl’s Taskforce to support girls on probation in Santa Cruz County; and co-founded Justice League NYC to bring together criminal justice experts, direct service providers, activists, advocates, artists, and formerly incarcerated individuals bringing their resources to reform the criminal and social justice system in New York. Today, she serves as the President and CEO of The Gathering for Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to ending child incarceration and eliminating the racial disparities in the criminal justice system through nonviolent direct action, artist and cultural leader engagement, policy creation, and service providing to juvenile facilities. For her courageous frontline work, she has been named one of Time ‘s 100 Most Influential People in 2017, Fortune’s 50 Top World Leaders, Glamour’s Women of the Year, and “Latina of the Year” in 2017. Ester Hernandez Ester Hernández is a Chicana visual artist and activist for farm worker rights, and cultural, political, and Chicana feminist issues. Born to farmworker parents of Yaqui and Mexican heritage, she became known in the 1960s for her critical work during the Chicano Arts Movements, infusing her artwork with social justice issues surrounding civil rights, women’s rights, and the Farm Worker Movement. Much of her works are also inspired by Frida Kahlo, Dolores Huerta, and Lydia Mendoza. Since the ’70s, her work has been exhibited or housed in dozens of national and international museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the National Museum of Mexican Art, and the Stanford University Library’s Department of Special Collections. Cherríe Moraga Cherríe Moraga is a Chicana feminist writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright with a focus on gender, sexuality, race, and class, as well as the experiences of Chicana and Indigenous women. She is best known for co-editing the anthology This Bridge Called My Back with Gloria Anzaldúa, which is considered a critical text in feminist, queer, and Chicana studies. After receiving a BA in English, she became active in the feminist movement in San Francisco, later earning an MA in Feminist Writings from San Francisco State University. She helped found La Red Xicana Indígena, a network and social justice activist group that fights for education, cultural, and Indigenous rights and co-founded Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Practice at UC Santa Barbara. Today, she works as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is still celebrated for her groundbreaking work in the feminist and Chicana movements. Vicki L. Ruiz Photo: UC Irvine Vicki Lynn Ruiz is a Chicana historian who has studied for many decades on Mexican American women in the 20th century. Born in 1955, she studied Chicano Studies at Florida State University and Stanford University. While at school, her professors introduced her to female-led labor activism, which led her to research and write about Mexican American female cannery workers in California, focusing on female kinship networks and relationships that empowered women to get jobs, fight against racism, and engage in political and labor activism. She has served as the president of many organizations including the American Historical Association (AHA), the American Studies Association (ASA), the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), and the Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA. For her contributions to the study of Mexican American history, she received the National Humanities Medal in 2015. Sandra Cisneros Chicana poet, novelist, and essayist Sandra Cisneros is best known for her best-selling and critically acclaimed novel The House On Mango Street (1983). The novel centers on a young Mexican American girl growing up in Chicago and it went on to sell millions of copies and become a staple in classrooms. Her poetry works and novels frequently focus on cultural hybridity, economic inequality, poverty, and misogyny. Her accessible prose style has been critically acclaimed and her books are frequently taught in classrooms across the U.S. In 1998, she established her own writing workshop known as the Macondo Writers Workshop to support emerging and established writers, as well as the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation to support Texas-based writers. The National Medal of Arts recipient has also released a memoir and multiple novels and collections of poetry including her latest, Woman Without Shame. Since she debuted on the literary scene in 1983, she is now considered an icon of Chicana literature and Mango Street remains a pivotal and relevant book. Chela Sandoval Chela Sandoval is a Chicana studies professor at UC Santa Barbara with a focus on postcolonial feminism and third world feminism. In the ’70s, she participated in the Santa Cruz Women’s Media Collective to provide TV programming, though she later switched her focus to philosophy and activist theory. She rose to prominence for her 1991 essay U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World , which established her as a voice in the decolonial feminist space. She’s also responsible for pushing conversations around differential oppositional consciousness, where minorities in the U.S. experience fluidity in their identities. Her work has been highly influential to the second-wave feminist movement and she continues to generate new discussions based on her writings. Carla Trujillo Photo: UC Berkeley Carla Trujillo is a Chicana lesbian fiction writer, professor of Women’s and Ethnic Studies, and administrator at UC Berkeley. Her experiences growing up in California and Nevada, including when her grandmother’s grocery store was destroyed to create a highway, inspired her early novels about class and gentrification. She earned a BA in human development from UC Davis and a PhD in Education Psychology from the University of Wisconsin. She is best known for her debut semi-autobiographical novel What Night Brings , about a Chicana lesbian growing up in a conservative Catholic family in the 1960s. She is also the editor of Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About , featuring essays and articles from Chicana lesbian writers. It went on to win the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Anthology. She also edited Living Chicana Theory , an anthology that featured contributions from Teresa Córdova, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Antonia Castañeda and explored colonialism and Chicana identity construction. In all of her work, she frequently explores patriarchy, racism, identity, and homophobia within Chicano culture, and advocates for greater visibility of Chicana lesbians in literature. Norma Alarcón Norma Alarcón is a Chicana feminist, author, and publisher. Born in 1943, she earned a BA in Spanish literature and comparative literature and a PhD in Spanish literature. In 1979, she co-founded Third Woman Press, which started as a journal that then transformed into an independent press that focuses on queer and feminist works by authors of color. She has taught at Purdue University and UC Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic/Indigenous Studies, Women’s Studies, and Spanish. She currently teaches Chicano/Latino Studies at UC Berkeley and continues to be celebrated for her contributions to postmodern Chicana feminism. Ana Castillo Born in 1953, Ana Castillo is a Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator, and scholar. She earned a BS in art with a minor in secondary education and an MA in Latin American Studies. She has taught at Santa Rosa Junior College, Malcolm X Junior College, and Sonoma State College. In her writing, she explores socio-political issues concerning race and gender using oral and literary traditions. She is best known for her debut novel The Mixquiahuala Letters and has since written over 15 books, many of which play with magical realism. For her work on identity, racism, homophobia, sexism, and classism, she is considered to be a critical and pioneering voice in Chicana literature and feminism, known as Xicanisma, and has received multiple honors including the Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. She is currently the editor of La Tolteca , an arts and literary magazine. Mariana Ortega Photo: Penn State Mariana Ortega is a professor and researcher of Women of Color and Latina Feminisms, 20th Continental Philosophy, Phenomenology (Heidegger), Philosophy of Race, and Aesthetics. Throughout her work, she explores identity, race, gender, and sexuality. She is known for her book In-Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self that explores Latina feminisms and Heideggerian phenomenology. She has also edited Theories of the Flesh, Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation and Resistance and Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader. She is the founder of the Latina/x Feminisms Roundtable and is currently researching photographic theory, race, and the epistemology of ignorance. She is well-respected in her field and continues to generate groundbreaking work in the Chicana feminist space. Denise Chavez Photo: New Mexico PBS Denise Chávez is a Chicana author, playwright, and stage director. Born in 1948 in New Mexico, she began writing from an early age and received a scholarship to study drama at New Mexico State University, where she earned her BA degree. She went on to receive an MA in Theater from Trinity University and an MFA from the University of New Mexico, studying with notable Latino authors like Rudolfo Anaya ( Bless Me, Ultima ). She later taught creative writing at New Mexico State University, New Mexico Community College and at the University of Houston. She is known for founding the Border Book Festival and is spearheading the development of the Borderland Art and Resource center to archive the history of her community. For her work, she has received many awards including the American Book Award and and the 2003 Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature. She continues advocating for Chicana visibility in literature and currently serves on the advisory board for Chasqui, a Latin American and Latinx literature, philosophy, and arts journal. Lorna Dee Cervantes Photo: Library of Congress Lorna Dee Cervantes is a Chicana poet and activist of Mexican and Chumash ancestry born in 1954 who is known as one of the most significant writers of Chicana poetry. Growing up in San Francisco, she was only allowed to speak English, which, in conjunction with the works of Shakespeare, John Keats, and Lord Byron, inspired her poetry along with Black female poets. She wrote her first collection of poetry when she was 15 and performed her work at a theater in Mexico City. Her poem “Refugee Ship” was later published in a Mexican newspaper and included in her first published poetry collection Emplumada . She earned a BA in Creative Arts from San José State University and studied at UC Santa Cruz for a PhD in History of Consciousness. She went on to found her own literature journal, MANGO , which focused on publishing the works of influential Chicano/a writers like Sandra Cisneros and Luís Omar Salinas. In the 2010s, she participated in the Librotraficante Movement, which smuggled books to students that were boxed up and taken away from classrooms during class time. She has gone on to publish five books of poetry, including her collection Sueño , which was shortlisted for the Latin American Book Award in poetry. She continues to write and publish today, advocating for the inclusion of Chicana poets in literature and publishing. 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