Gloria Arellanes
Gloria Arellanes (born March 4, 1946 - October 12, 2024) was a political activist known for her involvement with the Brown Berets during the Chicano Movement and has been influential in the development of Chicana feminism.
As the first female Prime Minister of the Brown Berets, Arellanes worked to include the Chicana perspective in fighting for Mexican rights in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s.
Similar to the Brown Berets, Las Adelitas de Aztlán strived to assist its community members in creating awareness for better bilingual education in Los Angeles as well as protesting against the Vietnam War.
Arellanes was also a prominent figure in the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, leading Las Adelitas de Aztlán to participate in marches against the violence of the Vietnam War.
Fights would break out in her high school constantly until a counselor named John Bartan held a Human Relations Club where white and Latino kids could work through their problems.
[3] The Brown Berets worked to raise their community by calling for improvement on education and employment, demanding more resources for the Chicano/a movement, and exposing police brutality against the Mexican-American people.
[4] The first important move the Brown Berets made was their involvement in the 1968 East L.A. blowouts, which Arellanes had been forced to sit out by her boss at the time.
[3] Arellanes organized marches during her time with the Brown Berets in partnership with the East L.A. Blowouts, in opposition to policy brutality against Chicanos, and for El Barrio Free Clinic.
[5] Arellanes headed the clinic for the Brown Berets, partnering with professionals that offered medical services "including drug addiction counseling, immunizations, physical exams, STI screenings and even small surgical procedures.
[6] Coordinating El Barrio Free Clinic, Arellanes had helped better the name of the Brown Berets, who had been seen as an outrageous radical group, as many had viewed the Black Panthers during this time.
[9] Led by co-chairs, Ramsés Noriega and Rosalio Muñoz, the East L.A. demonstrations formed in protest of the war in Vietnam and injustices it placed on the Mexican-American.
[10] In their first demonstration, Arellanes was still in the Brown Berets and was asked to attain permission from the LAPD for the Moratorium to march down the streets of East Los Angeles.
[3] In attendance of these East Los Angeles demonstrations, Las Adelitas de Aztlán, led by Gloria Arellanes, seen to be the first instance of a Chicana group protesting in their own right.
[9][3] On the Moratorium Committee Arellanes would handle clerical work like taking phone calls and also outreach in the North California Bay Area region.
She traveled to the Bay Area to motivate Northern Californian Chicanos to participate in the Moratorium and to community centers in East L.A. to hand out flyers.
[3] The march of August 29, 1970, in the chaos that ensued with the police intervention, resulted in arrests and deaths that drove Arellanes away from participating in the moratorium.
