This ethnography focuses on a Chicano community in South Texas and its struggle to establish school reform during the cultural nationalist movement of the 70s. During this movement, members of the Chicano community formed La Raza Unida, an alternative political party that initiated a variety of reform programs, the most prominent of which was a comprehensive pre-kindergarten through 12th grade bilingual/bicultural education program. Through this program, Chicano leaders sought to reverse the effects of assimilative Anglo schooling and cultivate a new Chicano worldview. However, resistance against this new schooled ethnicity developed within the teaching ranks and among the community.

Many outside of the South Texas region believe Crystal City continues to be a radical Chicano stronghold where educational programs have fostered radical ethnic consciousness. This study shows, however, that as the Raza Unida Party was transformed and the initial educational reforms institutionalized, bilingual/bicultural education evolved in a variety of unexpected ways. While several studies have focused on the Chicano Movement in relation to schooling during the height of nationalism in the 1970s, none has examined the historical relationship of the Movement to the continued snuggles for community empowerment since then. Highlighting the success of the Chicano Movement in creating and sustaining bilingual/bicultural education and community empowerment, this study expands our awareness of the role that bilingual education played in the Movimiento and the empowerment of a Mexican American community.

First published in 1999. This study looks at the relationship between the quest for Chicano community empowerment in the Winter Garden region, the development and implementation of the bilingual/cultural education program in Crystal City, Texas, and bilingual education policy change.