Las Adelitas de Aztlán was a short-lived Mexican American female civil rights organization that was created by Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes in 1970.
Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes were all former members of the Brown Berets, another Mexican American Civil rights organization that had operated concurrently during the 1960s and 1970s in the California area.
[1] All three original founders of Las Adelitas de Aztlán, Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes had formerly been a part of the Brown Berets, but had felt that the male-dominated leadership was ignoring the demands and concerns of their female members.
With the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s women across the racial spectrum beginning expressing a type of gender consciousness that rejected notions of passiveness or submission to male domination in civil rights circles.
[1] Arellanes had set a precedent that had echoed along with other second wave feminists at the time that despite being a member of an oppressed class of people, the female component of the Mexican American community had often been sidelined via male dominance.
As a group, Las Adelitas de Aztlán discussed how they were treated as women, and talked about Machismo, specifically the macho mentality of Mexican American males.
The post World War two political economy had caused great demographic shifts in the Los Angeles area and even allowed some Mexican American families like her own to have access to social mobility, as well as middle-class lifestyles.
Arellanes experienced these tensions first hand and sought community organization and guidance as a way to find a sense of security and comfort from police brutality and vigilante attacks.
[3] The Las Adelitas de Aztlan advocated heavily for women's reproductive rights and care, such as having access to free or reduced birth control, abortions, sex education, and even childcare.
However, women in the Mexican-American community faced unique challenges being members of a historically oppressed class of citizens, and focused on issues that carried with it racial and ethnic components.
Women such as Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes often worked in concert with the larger Chicano civil rights movement in order to achieve their goals.