Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist - Softcover

Orozco, Cynthia E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1477319875 ISBN 13: 9781477319871

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2022

Synopsis

Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association

The essayist Adela Sloss-Vento (1901–1998) was a powerhouse of activism in South Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley throughout the Mexican American civil rights movement beginning in 1920 and the subsequent Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. At last presenting the full story of Sloss-Vento’s achievements, Agent of Change revives a forgotten history of a major female Latina leader.

Bringing to light the economic and political transformations that swept through South Texas in the 1920s as ranching declined and agribusiness proliferated, Cynthia E. Orozco situates Sloss-Vento’s early years within the context of the Jim Crow/Juan Crow era. Recounting Sloss-Vento’s rise to prominence as a public intellectual, Orozco highlights a partnership with Alonso S. Perales, the principal founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Agent of Change explores such contradictions as Sloss-Vento’s tolerance of LULAC’s gender-segregated chapters, even though the activist was an outspoken critic of male privilege in the home and a decidedly progressive wife and mother. Inspiring and illuminating, this is a complete portrait of a savvy, brazen critic who demanded reform on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

About this title

About the Author

Cynthia E. Orozco is a professor of history and humanities at Eastern New Mexico University, Ruidoso. She is the author of No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement and coeditor of Mexican Americans in Texas History.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1477319875
• ISBN 13: 9781477319871
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272