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Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez (born 1925) is a Chicana feminist
Chicana feminism

Chicana feminism, also called Xicanisma, is a group of social theory that analyze the historical, social, political, and economic roles of Mexican American, Chicano, and Hispanic women in the United States....
 and a long-time community organizer
Community organizing

Community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their common self-interest....
, activist
Activism

Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social change or politics change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversy argument....
, author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
, and educator. She has written numerous books and articles on different topics relating to social movements in the Americas. Her best-known work is the bilingual 500 years of Chicano History in Pictures, which later formed the basis for the educational video ˇViva la Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History. Her work has been hailed by Angela Y. Davis
Angela Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis is an United States political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee....
 as comprising "one of the most important living histories of progressive activism in the contemporary era ...






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Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez (born 1925) is a Chicana feminist
Chicana feminism

Chicana feminism, also called Xicanisma, is a group of social theory that analyze the historical, social, political, and economic roles of Mexican American, Chicano, and Hispanic women in the United States....
 and a long-time community organizer
Community organizing

Community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their common self-interest....
, activist
Activism

Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social change or politics change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversy argument....
, author
Author

An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created....
, and educator. She has written numerous books and articles on different topics relating to social movements in the Americas. Her best-known work is the bilingual 500 years of Chicano History in Pictures, which later formed the basis for the educational video ˇViva la Causa! 500 Years of Chicano History. Her work has been hailed by Angela Y. Davis
Angela Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis is an United States political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee....
 as comprising "one of the most important living histories of progressive activism in the contemporary era ... [Martínez is] inimitable ... irrepressible ... indefatigable."

Life

Martínez graduated from Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College is a Private school, Independent school, Liberal arts colleges in the United States in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students....
 in 1946 with a degree in English. In May 2000, Swarthmore awarded Martínez with an honorary doctorate. Martínez has worked for Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster....
 as an editor and for The Nation Magazine as Books and Arts Editor. Her daughter, Tessa, is an actress and co-founder of San Francisco’s Latina Theater Lab.

Activism

Martínez began her political work in the early 1950s. She worked in New York
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
 for the United Nations Secretariat
United Nations Secretariat

The United Nations Secretariat is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and it is headed by the United Nations Secretary-General, assisted by a staff of international civil servants worldwide....
 as a researcher on colonialism
Colonialism

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
 and decolonization
Decolonization

Decolonisation refers to the undoing of colonialism, the establishment of governance or authority through the creation of settlements by another country or jurisdiction....
 in Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
.

During the 1960s, Martínez served full-time in the Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)

The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the reform movements in the United States aimed at abolishing racism against African Americans and restoring suffrage in Southern states....
 with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the South and as a coordinator of its New York office. In 1968, she moved to New Mexico
New Mexico

New Mexico is a U. S. State located in the Southwestern United States of the United States. Inhabited by Native Americans in the United States populations for many centuries, it has also has been part of the Spanish Empire viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S....
 to start a newspaper to support the Alianza Federal de Mercedes
Alianza Federal de Mercedes

Alianza Federal de Mercedes, which in English translates to Federal Land Grant Alliance, was a group led by Reies Tijerina based in New Mexico in the 1960s that fought for the land rights of Hispanic New Mexicans....
. Along with lawyer Beverly Axelrod, Martínez thus founded the bilingual movement newspaper El Grito del Norte
El Grito del Norte

El Grito del Norte was a bilingual newspaper based in Espa?ola, New Mexico. Co-founded by activist Elizabeth Martinez and attorney Beverly Axelrod in 1968, the paper was originally the publication of the Reies Tijerina's Alianza Federal de Mercedes, an organization dedicated to recovering the lands of dispossessed Hispanos....
, which she worked on for five years. In 1973, she co-founded and directed the Chicano Communications Center, a barrio
Barrio

Barrio is a Spanish language word meaning district or neighborhood. The word has come into use in English language mostly through the large Hispanic populations on both coasts of the United States....
-based organizing and education project.

Since moving to the Bay Area in 1976, Martínez has organized around Latino
Latino

The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American or Spanish-speaking descent."...
 community issues, taught Women’s studies part-time, conducted anti-racist training workshops, and worked with youth groups. She ran for governor
Governor

A governor is a governing official, usually the Executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state. In federations, a governor may be the title of each appointed or elected politician who governs a constitutive state....
 of California
California

California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
 on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket in 1982 and has received many awards from student, community, and academic organizations, including Scholar of the Year 2000 by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. In 1997, she and Phil Hutchings co-founded the Institute for MultiRacial Justice, which "aims to strengthen the struggle against white supremacy by serving as a resource center to help build alliances among peoples of color and combat divisions." In 2004, she served on the advisory board for the group 2004 Racism Watch
2004 Racism Watch

2004 Racism Watch was an organization founded in January 2004 that called upon the 2004 George_w_bush#2004_Presidential_candidacy to change or pull a political ad they deemed offensive from the air....
. . She is also an adviser to the Catalyst Project, an anti-racist political education organization that focuses on white communities.

Selected publications

  • De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (1998) ISBN 0-89608-583-x
  • 500 years of Chicano History in Pictures (1976) ISBN 978-0963112309
  • The Youngest Revolution: A Personal Report on Cuba (1969) ISBN 9780273314349
  • Letters from Mississippi (1964) ISBN 9780939010714


Further reading

  • from El Grito del Norte (1966-1972)
  • Martinez, Elizabeth "Betita" (1998)
  • Martinez, Elizabeth "Betita" Monthly Review (2002)
  • Martinez, Elizabeth "Betita" (1998)
  • Vidal, Mirta