50 years ago today, thousands of Chicano high school students across East Los Angeles walked out of their campuses in what has become known as the Blowouts. It's one of the pivotal moments in Chicano history, and the coming weeks will spark many commemorations, lectures, workshops, and articles to commemorate the event.
Everyone will rightfully hit the obvious highlights: the courageous role Lincoln High School social science teacher Sal Castro played in helping to corral the energy of student leaders as they planned the walk out. The arrest of Castro and others on charges of conspiracy in what became known as the East L.A. 13 case. The list of demands students gave to the Los Angeles Unified School District board of trustees. The many protests and sit-ins activists continued through the fall of 1968. The alumni: producer Moctezuma Esparza, former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles Unified School District trustee emeritus Vickie Castro.
There is one angle, however, that most scholars have historically overlooked: food.
Specifically, Mexican food, the lack of it at schools, and the role it played in organizing and sustaining those who participated. The best analysis of the blowouts remains the appropriately titled 2014 book Blowout!: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice, by UC Santa Barbara Chicano Studies professor Mario T. Garcia. The profe (one of the most unsung Chicano studies authors out there) specializes in oral histories, and he masterfully got Castro to talk about his upbringing in Boyle Heights, his teaching career, and an insider's account of what happened during the blowouts.
Castro had a lot to say about food. He complained that racist counselors in the early 1960s tracked Chicanas mostly into home economics classes that severely impacted their chances of getting into college. In them, instructors forced them to make what Castro dismissed as “Anglo food” like hotcakes.