Third parties have colored the political landscape of the United States since the 1820s. Their raison d’être has been rooted in their disenchantment with the politics of the dominant two parties. Although political scientists debate their impact and efficacy, few disagree that third parties have acted as safety valves for the discontent of some alienated constituencies of the electorate at both the state and federal levels. Third parties have always been the David battling the Goliath of the nation’s monolithic two-party system. Unlike David, third parties have usually lost the battle, at least at the ballot box.

The reality is...

As a third-party movement, the Raza Unida Party (RUP) made its greatest impact in Texas. There, the Méxicano¹ electoral revolt against the hegemony of the nation’s two major parties and internal colonialism was at its most intense and intractable.² Nowhere else in the country was the RUP perceived as a real threat to the Democratic and Republican monopoly—particularly in Texas, since the Democratic Party controlled state politics. The emergence of the RUP in 1970 and its electoral victories in Crystal City, Cotulla, and Carrizo Springs set off thunderous roars heard throughout Aztlán and beyond.³

In spite of the harsh...

The November defeats did not impede the Raza Unida Party’s expansion to other parts of Texas, especially to South Texas. At the core of its expansion was the Mexican American Youth Organization’s (MAYO) commitment to build RUP into a viable political party. During 1971, much of RUP’s expansion beyond the four-county area was attributable to MAYO. For the next two years, MAYO became the primary force statewide in organizing RUP. Many of RUP’s top leaders came from MAYO’s leadership ranks, among them José Angel Gutiérrez, Luz Gutiérrez, Mario Compean, Ramsey Muñiz, Carlos Guerra, Alberto Luera, and Lupe Youngblood. Moreover, MAYO...

The years 1970 to 1974 were the golden era of the Raza Unida Party’s organizing in Texas. These were history-making years, when thousands of Méxicanos repudiated the Democratic Party’s dictatorship. Of the RUP organizing efforts in the Southwest and Midwest, that in Texas was the strongest. In four years as a third party there, RUP had shaken up the party power structure by winning several local races, getting on the ballot, becoming a certified political party, and running candidates in two statewide elections. But after the 1974 state elections, RUP began to lose its organizing momentum. Declining effectiveness brought its...

As the Raza Unida Party (RUP) was emerging in Texas in 1970, almost simultaneously it emerged in Colorado as well. Next to the experience in Texas, no other organizing effort impacted RUP’s expansion as greatly as that in Colorado. Headed by the charismatic leader of the Crusade for Justice, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, it became in many respects a coequal catalytic organizing force to that of José Angel Gutiérrez’s Texas RUP. While in Texas the Mexican American Youth Organization was RUP’s predecessor, in Colorado it was Corky Gonzales’s Crusade for Justice.

Organizations, like political movements, are products of people. Equally important,...

Impelled by the electoral successes of the Raza Unida Party (RUP) in Texas, particularly in Crystal City, and encouraged by its emergence in Colorado, Méxicanos in California’s San Bernardino and Riverside Counties leapt on the bandwagon. After two years of intensive work under the aegis of the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), emphasis shifted in October 1970 from education and other social justice issues to political empowerment and building a political party, RUP. This became part of what I call the Cucamonga Experiment in community control. I was its main organizer, from 1968 to 1973.

By the late sixties, the...

At about the same time that the Raza Unida Party (RUP) was being formed in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, Chicano activists from Northern California were likewise exploring the possibly of setting up an alternative to the Democratic and Republican Parties. The unprecedented developments in Texas and Colorado were fostering a contagious excitement, interest, and hope among some Chicano Movement (CM) activists. From 1970 to 1972, numerous RUP organizing efforts sprang up throughout the state—what I describe here as RUP’s two golden years of organizing, 1971 and 1972.

By late 1970, the political conditions in California were auspicious for...

Driven by rising expectations that the Raza Unida Party (RUP) could succeed in becoming a political alternative to the Democrat and Republican Parties, Chicano activists in California by 1973 had created a semblance of organization, established a leadership, begun developing an organizing plan of action, and run a number of candidates. From then on, RUP in California entered a decline that by 1981 would leave it moribund, despite developments in the Los Angeles County area, where RUP took the lead in organizing the Raza Unida Party statewide.

In 1973, RUP in California entered a period of conflict that was the...

The states of Texas, Colorado, and California were the pace setters in the development of the Raza Unida Party (RUP). However, by 1971 activists in New Mexico joined in the struggle to build a Chicano political party as an alternative to the major parties. The formation of RUP in New Mexico occurred at a time when the Chicano Movement (CM) was at its apogee and increasingly had taken a posture of political empowerment.

The experience of Méxicanos in New Mexico was unique. Whereas in Texas, Colorado, and California, Méxicanos suffered from an internal colonial history of political oppression, disenfranchisement, and...

Arizona was not immune from the Chicano Movement’s contagion. The state’s Chicano activists became involved in the struggle to form the Raza Unida Party (RUP), even though Arizona did not have the large Méxicano population concentrations of Texas, California, and New Mexico. The Chicano Movement (CM) turned many of Arizona’s activists off to the nation’s two major parties and turned them on to the idea of forming a Chicano political party. Arizona has a rich tradition of labor andmutualistaactivism (mutualistarefers to a brand of self-help, fraternal organizations). The news of the Cristal, Texas, takeover and of RUP’s...

The Midwest and Utah never became a fertile political region for organizing the RUP¹. Historically, the Midwest had not been part of Mexico’s lost territories. It was never colonized by the Spaniards or occupied by Mexico. The colonizers had been the French, and most of the Midwest had been part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Displacing the indigenous peoples, White settlers by the latter part of the nineteenth century had consolidated their power. It was not until the early 1900s that Méxicanos in search of work began to settle in the Midwest and Utah.

With the emergence of the...

After two years of struggling to build the Raza Unida Party (RUP) into a viable political party, in 1972 its national leadership also began to expand its presence in both the national and international arenas. Driven by the organizing dynamism of the Chicano Movement (CM) as well as its own successes, RUP held, in EI Paso, Texas, a national convention. Activists from eighteen states gathered for the purpose of transforming and expanding RUP into a national partido. They were not satisfied with merely building a county or state party, they sought to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic and Republican...

Until 1970, at no time had Méxicanos ever opted to rebuke the nation’s two-party dictatorship by forming their own political party. While some electoral flirtations with third parties had occurred—for example, the United People’s Party in the 1890s and the People’s Constitutional Party in 1968—these experiments were multiethnic, coalitional, and reform oriented. From 1970 until its demise in 1981, the Raza Unida Party (RUP) was indeed an unprecedented third-party movement, in that Méxicanos organized it for Méxicanos. For eleven years, RUP labored to give Méxicanos a political alternative to the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Like other third-party movements...

In spite of the powerful legacy left by the Raza Unida Party and the Chicano Movement, upon entering the new millennium, Mexicanos and other Latinos find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that is a result of the liberal capitalist system and its two-party dictatorship. This political reality raises two interrelated questions: (1) How is it possible to effect change within the confines of the liberal capitalist system? And (2) how is it possible to effectively challenge the omnipotent power and control of the nation’s two-party dictatorship? For Latinos, in particular, it is critical that during the next...