Chicana/o and Central American Studies Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key historical events, sociological concepts, border policies, and ethnic studies scholarship from lecture notes.

1994 UCSB Hunger Strike

A nonviolent direct action initiated on April 27, 1994, by nine UCSB Chicanx/Latinx students that concluded with an agreement on May 5, 1994, successfully banning grapes from campus, saving El Centro from demolition, creating an Isla Vista community center, and hiring more Chicana/o Studies faculty.

Body Politics

A form of extreme, spectacular speech or nonviolent protest—such as hunger strikes or self-immolation—that functions as an urgent cry to force authorities to listen.

Proposition 187

A California ballot measure that eliminated health and educational services for undocumented immigrants, driven by political rhetoric blaming immigrants for the economic recession.

Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)

The institutional precursor to ICE that conducted deportation sweeps in Isla Vista prior to its restructuring.

Rubén Salazar

A Mexican-American journalist for the Los Angeles Times and news director for KMEX who was killed on August 29, 1970, when LA County Sheriff Thomas Wilson fired a tear gas projectile into the Silver Dollar Cafe during the National Chicano Moratorium march against the Vietnam War.

Dialectical Relationship (Escobar)

The mutually reinforcing conflict between the LAPD and the Chicano Movement from 1968 to 1971, where police repression, surveillance, and infiltration inadvertently mobilized activists, increased community support, and strengthened Mexican American political consciousness.

U.S. Intervention in Central America

Foreign policy characterized by Alvarado, Estrada, and Hernández as focused on protecting American economic, political, and military interests, such as funding the Contra War against Nicaragua's Sandinista government from 1981 to 1990, resulting in regional destabilization and migration.

Bracero Program

A bilateral labor agreement between the United States and Mexico established on August 4, 1942, and operating until 1964, that brought temporary Mexican agricultural workers to U.S. farms to address World War II labor shortages while subjecting them to low wages and unequal treatment.

Prevention Through Deterrence

A 1990s U.S. border enforcement strategy analyzed by Jason De León that concentrated surveillance and agents in urban sectors to deliberately push unauthorized border crossers into lethal, remote desert environments like the Sonoran Desert.

Operation Blockade and Operation Gatekeeper

Urban border enforcement operations launched in El Paso in 1993 and Southern California in 1994, respectively, which implemented the Prevention Through Deterrence strategy by redirecting migrant traffic into dangerous wilderness corridors.

Media Stereotyping of Central Americans

Representations highlighted by Abrego and Villalpando in which mainstream media and political rhetoric depict Central Americans as violent, dangerous, and communist-aligned, exemplified by 1980s Reagan-era rhetoric and the caricature of Lucy in the 1995 film Clueless.

1968 Edcouch-Elsa High School Walkout

A November 1968 student protest in Texas against institutional discrimination, prohibition of the Spanish language, unfair dress codes, and vocational tracking, demanding Mexican American cultural recognition, academic opportunities, and Chicano educators.

TNB Immigrant Detention Conditions

The abusive environment documented by Minero et al. faced by Trans and nonbinary individuals in detention centers, including transphobic harassment, denial of hormone replacement therapy, spoiled food, forced labor, and prolonged punitive solitary confinement disguised as protective custody.

Marta (Abrego Case Study)

A 21-year-old Salvadoran mother who migrated to Los Angeles in 1993 due to systemic poverty, lack of employment, and domestic abuse, relying on family networks to earn wages to support her children and parents in El Salvador.

Oral History Methodology (Roque Ramírez)

A community history research methodology used by Horacio N. Roque Ramírez involving recorded audio interviews with living queer Latina/o and Salvadoran immigrant subjects to document testimonies, memory, and lived experiences alongside archival texts.

Garifuna

A Black Indigenous maroon population originating on the island of St. Vincent in the fifteenth century, descended from shipwrecked West Africans, Carib, and Arawak peoples who maintained sovereignty through resistance to European colonialism.

UndocuQueer

A political identity fusing undocumented legal status with queer sexual orientation to increase political visibility, though analyzed by Ramirez for potentially imposing fixed boundaries on fluid personal identities.