"A Social Movement in Fact": La Raza and El Plan de Delano. Issue 1 (1st January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Izaguirre, José G.
• Is Part Of: Rhetoric Society quarterly. Volume 50:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 53
• Page End: 68
• Publication Date: 2020-01-01
• Subjects: Chican@ movement -- farm workers -- la raza -- Plan de Delano -- racial imperative; Rhetoric -- Periodicals; 808.005
• DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2019.1685125
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0277-3945

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay revisits the rhetoric of El Plan de Delano, a pivotal document in the farm workers movement and the broader Chican@ movement. Composed and circulated during their peregrinación from Delano to Sacramento, California in 1966, the manifesto stretched the topography of race in the 1960s, both geographically and bodily, as it publicized the farm workers' struggle during their wage-strike. My reading of the visual and verbal rhetorics of the pamphlet of El Plan de Delano surfaces race as an energizing topos . I show how El Plan de Delano (re)fashioned a racial identity for farm workers and parlayed that identity in its appeals.