Political Comadrazgo: Chicana Networks, Gender Politics, and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

Mayra Avitia
History
UC San Diego

This dissertation examines 1970s Los Angeles as middle-class Chicana activism forged new political strategies, agendas, and mobilizations based on their particular location as ethnic women rooted in political experience and disconcerting positions in the Chicano movement and mainstream American feminist movement.  The new political position of Chicana activists’ was women-centered and aimed to tackle overlooked issues of unemployment, childcare, women’s reproductive control, environmental discrimination, and a lack of Chicana leadership. Through the establishment of political networks or political comadrazgos, building from traditions of mutualism known in Spanish as compadrazgo (extended fictive kinship networks), Chicanas shared political aspirations, provided mutual support, and served to gain access to the political realm. The project explores both the new possibilities and limitations inherent in ethnic and gender-specific mobilization analyzing the ongoing tensions and divisions created by the introduction of these important new actors in California regional politics.