Editing MEChA (section)

== Geography ==
In 1969, MEChA was founded in Santa Barbara, California where Chicanos adopted "El Plan de Santa Barbara."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.chicanxdeaztlan.org/p/about-us.html |title=About MEChA |website=MEChA Website |access-date=15 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170513195954/http://www.chicanxdeaztlan.org/p/about-us.html |archive-date=13 May 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The manifesto provided a strategy to establish Chicano Studies Departments within colleges and universities. By consolidating students' political power, MEChA became a significant on-campus political force and the name signified a position to challenge social injustices and to reject assimilation through radical activism on-campus and in the community.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans.|last=Garcia|first=Ignacio|publisher=University of Arizona|year=1997}}</ref>
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:MEChA 1967-2012.jpg|thumb|left|alt=A map showing MEChA chapters founded between 1967 and 2012.|A map showing MEChA chapters founded between 1967 and 2012 from the [https://depts.washington.edu/moves/MEChA_map.shtml Mapping American Social Movements] project at the University of Washington.]] -->

While the student-led organization formed in California, MEChA became a national organization with chapters in junior middle schools, high schools, community colleges, and universities. Yet MEChA's geographic expansion was rather uneven. From 1969 to 1971, MEChA grew rapidly in California with major centers of activism on campuses in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and the Riverside-San Bernardino area.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://depts.washington.edu/moves/Chicano_geography.shtml|title=Chicano Movements: A Geographic History|last=Estrada|first=Josue}}</ref> Other early chapters were also established in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. In these years, new chapters were founded at universities and colleges exclusively. The activist [[Maria Luisa Alanis Ruiz]] joined the Oregon chapter while a student as part of her life as both an activist and academic in [[Chicana feminism]].<ref>{{Cite web|date=2007-10-31|title=A path to success|url=https://archive.psuvanguard.com/a-path-to-success/|access-date=2021-06-03|website=Vanguard|language=en-US}}</ref>

By the early 1970s, a few MEChA chapters were founded in the East but mainly at Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Brown University. MEChA largely remained a West coast organization. Expanding further in the 1980s, MEChA chapters began to appear in community colleges and high schools, but again predominantly in California and especially Southern California.

The organization did not catch on in Texas.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|url=https://depts.washington.edu/moves/MEChA_map.shtml|title=MEChA and Chicano Student Organizations 1967-2012|website=Mapping American Social Movements Through the 20th Century}}</ref> A Mexican American Student Organization (MASO) was active at the University of Texas from 1967 until at least 1972 and students at St. Mary's College in San Antonio joined MAYO but there are no signs of MEChA chapters or other student groups in Texas until the mid-1980s.

As for Florida and other southern states, There are found no information about any chapters in this part of the country despite the growing Mexican American presence on campuses and in the region's cities. But if MEChA's geography was limited, its ability to survive and expand in California and other western states was remarkable. Student organizations rarely last very long. But MEChA has expanded each decade.

During the 1990s, MEChA experienced a decade of slow growth yet in the 2000s the organization saw an incredible upsurge of new chapters.<ref name="auto"/> High schools students led the charge predominantly within California and likely attributed to the anti-immigration (H.R. 4437) legislation proposed in the mid-2000s. Much like when MEChA was established, student mobilization has propelled and maintained the organization relevant for nearly fifty years.

MEChA was one of the many organizations and groups that sponsored the [[Cinco de Mayo]] movement, the others included the Chicano student groups that were on campus and the community. The Cinco de Mayo movement was one of many big cultural events.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Garcia|first1=Mario T|title=The Chicano generation: Testimonios of the movement|date=2015|publisher=University of California|pages=263–264}}</ref>