Rodolfo Acuña Explained

Rodolfo Acuña
Birth Date:18 May 1932
Birth Place:Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California
Other Names:"Rudy" Acuña
Known For:Occupied America and Chicana/o Studies
Occupation:Historian, educator, and professor

Rodolfo "Rudy" Francisco Acuña (born May 18, 1932) is an American historian, professor emeritus at California State University, Northridge, and a scholar of Chicano studies. He authored the 1972 book Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, an approach to the history of the Southwestern United States with an emphasis on Mexican Americans. An eighth edition was published in 2014. Acuña has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Herald-Express, La Opinión, and other newspapers. Acuña is an activist, and he has supported numerous causes of the Chicano Movement.[1] He currently teaches an online history course at California State University, Northridge.

Early life

Acuña was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1932 to Alicia Elías who was from Sonora, Mexico. His father was from Cocula, Jalisco.

Career

In 1958, Acuña began teaching at San Fernando Junior High, transferring later to Cleveland High School, where he taught social studies until 1965, when he received a tenured position at Los Angeles Pierce College. He also taught adult high school to pay for his doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, during which time he was active with the Latin American Civic Association and the Mexican American Political Association. He was the founding chair of the California State University, Northridge's Chicano/a Studies department, and he began teaching at the university in 1969.

In 1989, Acuña was a founding member of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, a civil rights advocacy group. Two years later, he traveled to El Salvador as a correspondent for the Texas Observer covering its presidential elections. He had sought to know "how accurate were the interpretations of historians of the past". His books and lectures analyze this query.[2]

Acuña calls himself a Chicano. The Chicana/o Public Scholar argues that the word Chicana/o best describes the area of studies called Chicana/o Studies.[3]

U.S. Latino issues

At a 2003 lecture celebrating the release of his book US Latinos: An Inquiry (Greenwood Press, 2003), he addressed U.S. Latino Issues and the Latino label or identity. In his book, he wrote about the "mistaken trend" of describing a large and heterogeneous group like people of Latin American descent in the U.S. under labels like Latino:[4]

In 2008, Acuña and his wife, Guadalupe Compeán, edited a three-volume anthology titled Voices of the U.S. Latino Experience (Greenwood Press). The work is the basis of his history of Chicana/o Studies at CSUN entitled In the Trenches of Academe where Acuña—based on over 2000 documents on Latinos living in the United States—concludes that as yet there is no Latino History. He loosely builds on the points raised in Marx's National Question. His 2007 Corridors of Migration: Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 (Arizona, 2007) used documents on both sides of the border.[5]

"Is Antonio Banderas Latino?"

During a lecture titled "Is Antonio Banderas Latino?" at Swarthmore College, his studies of the race, age, history and class of the Chicano identity were compared and contrasted to the definition of the alleged Latino identity of U.S. His question of "should a Spaniard get affirmative action for Latinos without the life experience?"—where life experience meant that one needed to suffer discrimination—was answered no.[6] In 2002, Acuña opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a Honduran immigrant, to the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court.[7]

Lawsuit

In 1992, Acuña sued the University of California, Santa Barbara, for 'discrimination'; the judge dropped the race discrimination cause of action; the political cause of action had previously been dropped because it missed the statute of limitations filing. A jury stated that Acuña had been discriminated against on the basis of his age, but Federal Judge Audrey Collins refused to compel the university to hire him, instead awarding him a monetary compensation of $325,000, which Acuña states that he and his wife will use to help the victims of employment discrimination in higher education. The For Chicana Chicano Studies Foundation recently launched a web site. The foundation gives an average of $7,500 annually in scholarships.[8]

Legacy

Acuña's archives are held in the Special Collections and Archives section of the Library at California State University, Northridge.[9]

Honors

References

  1. News: Bonk . Valerie . October 29, 2018 . National Portrait Gallery adds 28 famous faces . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20221014175051/https://wtop.com/dc/2018/10/national-portrait-gallery-adds-28-famous-faces/ . October 14, 2022 . WTOP.
  2. Acuña, Rodolfo F. "Why Become a Historian?" American Historical Association. Retrieved January 15, 2007. Archived from the original on September 9, 2013. – via the Wayback Machine.
  3. Web site: The Word Chicana/o . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090506004409/http://forchicanachicanostudies.wikispaces.com/Chicana+Chicano+Public+Scholar . 6 May 2009 . Chicana Chicano Public Scholar . Centro de la Raza, Seattle.
  4. http://www.csun.edu/~hfoao102/press_releases/summer03/acuna.html News Release Rodolfo Acuna's Book Focuses on Issues Facing Today's Latinos -California State University, Northridge
  5. Fitzgerald, David. (2009) "Review: Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933." Bulletin of Latin American Research 28(2), 321.
  6. Web site: Mills . Megan . September 19, 2003 . Rodolfo Acuna speaks about "Latino" culture . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20051124093612/http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/daily/archive/fall_2003/20030919.html#n1 . November 24, 2005 . The Daily Gazette.
  7. "Nominacion de Estrada: Un latino contra los latinos," La Opinion, May 10, 2002. Also published in Miami Herald, San Diego La Prensa, Los Angeles Daily News, and various other newspapers.
  8. News: Quiñones . Ben . A Liberated Chicano . L.A. Weekly . 2006-04-19 . 2006-04-20 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20060425102538/http://www.laweekly.com/la-people-2006/the-liberated-chicano/13199/ . 2006-04-25 .
  9. Web site: . 2020 . Guide to the Rodolfo F. Acuña Collection . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20230703233932/https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8zc851j/entire_text/?query=Acu%C3%B1a%20(Rodolfo%20F.)%20Collection . July 3, 2023 . July 3, 2023 . Online Archive of California . California Digital Library.

Publications

External links

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