Chicano club pushes for change
By Genevieve Schlosser
schlosse@mscd.edu

   Chicano activism has a long, rich history in Colorado, and the students who belong to the club Los Herederos de Change y Esperanza want to capture it and make it part of their education.

   “ Instead of students being consumers of ideas in the classroom, they want to be producers,” club president Daniel Salcido said.

   The club, whose name translates to “the Heirs of Change and Hope,” was developed while working on “Symbols of Resistance,” the club’s first book.

   Students gathered information for the book by interviewing people who were strongly involved in social activism for Chicano people throughout the years. “Symbols of Resistance” has been adopted as a textbook for several Chicano Studies classes.

   Salcido interviewed Abelardo ‘Lalo’ Delgado, a former Metro professor of Chicano Studies and a successful poet, before he died in July 2004.

   Delgado worked with Cesar Chavez in the farm workers movement of the ‘60s and was involved in the Colorado-based movement, Crusade for Justice. He was named Colorado’s first poet laureate the year after his death.

   Los Herederos also published “The Struggle for La Sierra,” a book about the existing land-right struggle between the Chicano community and local government in southern Colorado.

   Next semester the club is looking to publish a book based on videos of different speakers put together by United Mexican American Students, an organization at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

   Although individual members of Los Herederos are involved in the current political activism of the Chicano community, they are not involved as members of the club. The purpose of the club is to provide information.

   “ Our mission is to transform Chicano Studies and education in general, to make students active members who produce learning,” Salcido said. “Ultimately, that leads to discussion and change.”