Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino.

[7] Two years later, in 1963, Valdez's first full-length play, The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa, was produced by the drama department and debuted at SJSU.

[7] These two techniques greatly influenced Valdez's development of the basic structure of Chicano theatre: the one-act presentational acto (act).

In 1965, Valdez returned to Delano, where he enlisted in Cesar Chavez's mission to organize farm workers into a comprehensive union.

Valdez believed that humor was a major asset to his plays in El Teatro Campesino as it was a tool to lift the morale of strikers.

[4] In 1973, he published his poem Pensamiento Serpentino, which drew on Mayan and Aztec philosophical concepts and argued that Indigenous ways of knowing were essential to the spiritual and material liberation of Chicana/os.

The poem was later used in the highly successful Mexican American Studies Department Programs at Tucson Unified School District.

[12] Luis Valdez is a founding faculty member and director (c. 1994) of the California State University, Monterey Bay Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department.

He is credited with assisting in the development of a university program that prepares students in the entertainment industry: filmmaking, writing, sound, cinematography, and the like.

The film, about Ritchie Valens, a popular Chicano 1950s rock and roller, "was an overwhelming box office success" according to BookRags.

[19] On August 26, 2024 it was announced Valdez will serve as an executive producer and writer José Rivera is attached to write the script on an updated La Bamba.