La Causa Newspaper
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Gloria Arellanes and Las Adelitas de Aztlán
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This page examines the Chicana feminists behind the August 1970 Moratorium, spotlighting the remarkable organizing and leadership of Gloria Arellanes. Not only did Arellanes serve for two years as the first female minister for the Brown Berets, but she mobilized thousands of Chicanos while working for the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against the Vietnam War in 1969 and 1970. Working with the Brown Berets, Arellanes and other women faced a stifling male-dominated macho culture and ultimately dropped their memberships in February 1970 to form their own organization, Las Adelitas de Aztlán, led by Arellanes. #chicanx #feminism #movement #moratorium #activism
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[The] Brown Berets [were] a good group of young people who wanted to make changes; who were tired of the police brutality; were tired of not being able to go to college; were tired of not getting good jobs; living in poor housing; knowing that people around them, their own family, needed healthcare and didn’t have that. These were all things that touch my heart and I have passions for (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
Passionate about helping her Chicanx community and others, Gloria Arellanes pursued a life of activism and service. In her early twenties, she became the first and only woman minister of the Brown Berets and led the first free East L.A. community health clinic, El Barrio Free Clinic. When it later shut down, she opened another clinic providing free basic services, including reproductive healthcare. She also mobilized Chicana activists, creating the feminist group "Las Adelitas de Aztlán" and played an instrumental role planning the historic Moratorium on August 29, 1970 alongside the National Chicano Moratorium Committee. Today, her health clinic continues to serve the community as AltaMed. Her other contributions have had an equally lasting effect on Chicanx communities.
In 1968, the Brown Berets appointed Gloria Arellanes Minister of Finance and Correspondence. As the only woman minister, however, she held little to no decision-making power. In fact, if not for her “big-mouthed” and physically large presence—at 300 pounds at five-foot-eight-inches—she likely would have never entered Brown Beret leadership at all. Still, the title “Minister of Finance and Correspondence” meant little more than “glorified secretary,” according to Arellanes, who recalls receiving mostly administrative work (Juan Herrera, 2015). Brown Beret male leadership, for instance, allotted Arellanes and the women with assembling their newsletter, titled La Causa. Unfortunately, however, scant financial resources severely limited production and distribution (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.).We were not accepted. It was very difficult. When people learned about Brown Berets as time went on, they looked at it as militant troublemakers…So, we were told, “You’re going to come across people that don’t like you, and you’re just going to have to take it." (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
In spite of the organization’s economic struggles and macho culture, Arellanes persevered. Just as she had to rise above the Brown Berets’ reputation as “militant troublemakers” to win neighborhood support, she tried to get along with Brown Beret members. Having become sufficiently accepted by their community in 1969, the Brown Berets opened the East L.A. Free Clinic, later to be known as El Barrio Free Clinic, on Whittier Boulevard (Juan Herrera, 2015).
David Sanchez, the Brown Beret prime minister, asked Arellanes to run it. Even with no medical training or expertise whatsoever, she rose to the occasion, acquiring volunteering doctors, nurses, and technicians as well as medical equipment. As Arellanes later stated in a 2016 interview by the Southern Oral History Program, “No one had ever done that in East L.A." (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
Once established, community members constantly filled the clinic, worked exclusively by women. Despite high demand, however, the Clinic’s high-demand services were short-lived. Brown Beret men consistently came to the Clinic at night to party, leaving behind a mess for the women to clean. Ultimately, Arellanes says she gave Sanchez an ultimatum: “‘I will leave if you don’t change this, and I will take all the women with me, and maybe some of the younger men” (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016). In February 1970, the Brown Berets lost virtually all their female membership (Juan Herrera, 2015).
The women did not give up their activism along with their membership—far from it. Under the leadership of Arellanes, they formed Las Adelitas de Aztlán, a group for Chicana’s rights named after La Adelita, the revolutionary woman who fought alongside the men in Mexico’s Revolution (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.). By this time, Arellanes had also joined the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, helping coordinate marches protesting the disproportionate drafting of young Chicanos in the Vietnam War. Her contributions to the August 1970 moratorium cannot be understated. Without her instrumental outreach in the North California Bay Area region, traveling, making phone calls, and distributing flyers (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.), the Moratorium’s participants may not have reached twenty or thirty thousand (Carlos Francisco Parra, 2020).
Arellanes also played a leading role in the Moratorium procession. Flying a banner from her father’s truck, she sat on the back shouting chants into a megaphone. Later, she got up on the stage to speak. Soon after, however, she was tear-gassed. The police had arrived, helicopters circling above the peaceful march. Everything became a blur. Stampedes of panicked people pushed through the hot summer air in search of safety.We’re trying to listen to the news, and then all of a sudden, we see from the direction of Whittier Boulevard, the smoke going up. And people are crying. They can’t believe that such a beautiful event ended so tragically terrible. Because it took so much work to bring people out... It was the largest gathering I had ever seen the Chicano people do. And not only Chicano people—there was all kinds of people there... It was a real unifying force, and it was destroyed like that (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
The violent aftermath of the march marked the end of Arellanes' involvement with the Moratorium Committee and the Chicano Movement altogether (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016). Even removed from the Chicano Movement, Arellanes continued to pursue her passion in providing free community healthcare. About six months after the August Moratorium, she opened another clinic on Atlantic Boulevard, which supplied free medical services to the community, just as the Brown Berets' Barrio Free Clinic did before shutting down. It also provided important reproductive care and abortion counseling to women. Although Arellanes resigned from the board in 1972, the clinic continues to serve East L.A. inhabitants as AltaMed (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.).
A fearless trailblazer and skilled organizer, Arellanes made enormous contributions to the Brown Berets and the Moratoriums. Standing up for her fellow Chicanas in the face of machismo, she co-founded "Las Adelitas de Aztlán," a fierce feminist force in the Moratorium marches. She also relentlessly pursed her passion for community health, running El Barrio Free Clinic, the first free clinic to serve East L.A., and later forming her own clinic after its closure. In areas of heath care and grassroots organizing alike, Arellanes' activism propelled the Chicanx movement well-past the 1970s.
Works Cited
Carlos Francisco Parra. (2020, August 20). The Chicano Moratorium 50 Years Later: Retracing the Mexican American Struggle Against the Vietnam
War. http://www.nomadicborder.com/the-chicano-moratorium-50-years-later.html
Chicano Moratorium Flyer. (n.d.). https://www.lucypr.com/theater/august-29/august-29-photos/
Gloria Arellanes. (2016, June 26). Civil Rights History Project Interview completed by the Southern Oral History Program under contract to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Library of Congress, 2016 [Personal communication].
Gloria Arellanes facts for kids. (n.d.). https://kids.kiddle.co/Gloria_Arellanes#Las_Adelitas_de_Aztl.C3.A1n
Juan Herrera. (2015, March 26). ¡La Lucha Continua! Gloria Arellanes and Women in the Chicano Movement. KCET. https://www.kcet.org/history-society/la-lucha-continua-gloria-arellanes-and-women-in-the-chicano-movement
La Causa Newspaper. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Letter Resignation. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Marching with Brown Berets. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Oscar Castillo. (mid 1970s). Free Barrio Clinic Signage.
Taylor Davidson. (n.d.). Gloria Arellanes. Chicana Por Mi Raza. https://chicanapormiraza.org/chicanas/gloria-arellanes
Vanessa Martínez & Julia Barajas. (2020, August 23). The Chicana Revolt: Las Adelitas de Aztlán. The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc.