History.com: How the Chicano Movement Championed Mexican American Identity and Fought for Change

Chicano activists took on a name that had long been a racial slur -- and wore it with pride. In the 1960s, a radicalized Mexican-American movement began pushing for a new identification. The Chicano Movement, aka El Movimiento, advocated social and political empowerment through a chicanismo or cultural nationalism. As the activist Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales declared in a 1967 poem, "La raza! / Mejicano! / Espanol! / Latino! / Chicano! / Or whatever I call myself, / I look the same."