Whether we are Cuban, Puerto Rican, Bolivian, or Mexican-American we have uncannily similar historical backgrounds, including an American or Caribbea… - Martha P. Cotera

Instead of optimisim, I am inspired by Erma Bombeck, universal humorist, whose words seem singularly directed to us: "If life is a bowl of cherries, what are we doing in the pits?"

Both movements and both decades provided impetus, opportunities and vehicles for women's development, although, unfortunately, in both cases development was selected and often controlled by others-by our men in the Sixties and by Anglo women in power in the Seventies.

Some of the women who led the movement in its early days were Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, Alicia Escalante with the Welfare Rights Organization, and Gracia Molina de Pick and Anna Nieto-Gómez with feminist activities. Women politicians like Virginia Muzquiz of Crystal City, Texas, Mariana Hernández, and Grace Davies put Chicanas in the political forum. Like these women, there have been hundreds of others who, in the late 1960s and 1970s, have proved that Chicanas have come of age politically in this country.