The question comes up constantly, in classrooms, in comment threads and across kitchen tables: is cholo just another word for Chicano? The two words do not sit on the same scale. One was adopted at a specific conference in a specific month by people who wrote down what they meant by it. The other was already in print as an insult more than three centuries earlier, in a book about Peru.
Start with the dates, because they do most of the work. In March 1969, about 1,500 young Mexican Americans met in Denver at the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, organised by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and the Crusade for Justice. The conference produced El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a manifesto of cultural nationalism and self-determination. A month later, in Santa Barbara, a second gathering produced El Plan de Santa Bárbara and founded MEChA, the student organisation that carried the politics onto campuses. Chicano stopped being a regional slang term at that point and became a claim, with a text attached.
