Chicana 1977
Many events happen in 1977, marking this year as the most prolific for Chicana voice and political action during the run of the NWPC Chicana Caucus. The most significant event of the year occurs in November, with the Observation of International Women's Year National Women's Conference (IWY NWC), where 20,000 women gather in Houston to agree upon a plan of action for a decade of advances highlighting the specific needs of American Women.
1977 also offers a number of state conferences to pick delegates for IWY NWC including meetings in California and Texas--states with the largest and most vocal contingents of Chicana/Latinas. Martha Cotera, Diana Camacho, Lupe Anguiano, Olga Soliz and Elma Barrera are among hundreds of Tejana Chicanas working on parallel strategies through a working group entitled, "The Chicana Advisory Committee for IWY Concerns." The group is able to recruit over 600 women to attend the state conference meeting in Austin.
In California, Francisca Flores, Gloria Molina, Margaret Cruz, Sandy Sewell, Sally Martinez, Gloria Nieves and Gracia Molina De Pick will lead the Chicana/Latina charge recruiting women from both southern and northern California--a group working together, but clearly separated by geography, ideology and history. The California delegation reflects the intergenerational divides of identity and definition of self--Margaret Cruz, elder stateswoman of both the Chicano and women's movement finds the term Chicana, "messy" qualifying her resistance to adoption of the term as generational.
The California and Texas delegations agree to partner on issues specific to Chicanos--reforms in migrant labor, immigration, welfare and bilingual education, however on issues specific to Women, sexual freedom being one of the more contentious, negotiations reflect the varied and divided positions of Latina culture.
There is a third delegation of women, based in Washington D.C. and representative of the rising numbers of Latinas employed in government and corporate industry. The Mexican American Women's National Association (MANA) charted in 1974, recruits women from areas of the country, (mostly west of the Mississippi) and from a demographic defined by class and geography (read urban and professional, often college educated, politically moderate).
