Gloria Arellanes

Gloria Arellanes (March 4, 1946 – October 12, 2024) was a political activist known for her involvement with the Brown Berets during the Chicano Movement and has been influential in the development of Chicana feminism. As the first female prime minister of the Brown Berets, Arellanes worked to include the Chicana perspective in fighting for Mexican rights in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s.

Conflicts of covert "macho attitude" within the delegation of labor in the Brown Berets led Gloria Arellanes along with other female Brown Berets to leave the organization and create Las Adelitas de Aztlán. Similar to the Brown Berets, Las Adelitas de Aztlán strived to assist its community members in creating awareness for better bilingual education in Los Angeles as well as protesting against the Vietnam War. Arellanes was also a prominent figure in the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, leading Las Adelitas de Aztlán to participate in marches against the violence of the Vietnam War.

Early life and education

Arellanes was born in East Los Angeles, and a few years later her family moved to El Monte, California. Gloria's father, César Barron Arellanes, was a Mexican immigrant. Her mother was Aurora Arellanes. Gloria identified her mother as being of Indigenous Mexican descent from present-day Azusa. William (Bill) Cesar was Gloria's brother.

Gloria attended El Monte High School from 1960 to 1964, which is where her political consciousness began to develop. Her high school had a large mix of white and Chicano population. The Chicanos, although from different barrios, often stuck together and supported each other. Fights would break out in her high school constantly until a counselor named John Bartan held a Human Relations Club where white and Latino kids could work through their problems. Through this engagement and community-building, her identity as a Chicana began to grow. She identified many racist aspects of her high school, including discriminatory arrests made in school, teachers ignoring Chicano/a students when they raised their hands, and tracking Chicano/a students into vocational classes. After graduating high school, Gloria enrolled in East Los Angeles College but quit after one year. She went on to become involved in community work and got a full-time job with the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project, an anti-poverty program where she organized Black and Chicano communities and worked on voter registration.

Brown Berets In 1967, Arellanes and some of her friends visited La Piranya, a coffeehouse owned and operated by the Brown Berets. Arellanes met future Prime Minister of the Brown Berets, David Sánchez, and was encouraged by Sánchez to join the Berets at the coffeehouse. She began attending community meetings and events, and eventually decided to join. In 1968, Arellanes was named the Minister of Finance and Correspondence, the first female minister of the Brown Berets. The first important move the Brown Berets made was their involvement in the 1968 East L.A. blowouts, which Arellanes had been forced to sit out by her boss at the time. However, limited resources and funds made the production and distribution of the paper difficult.

Coordinating El Barrio Free Clinic, Arellanes had helped better the name of the Brown Berets, who had been seen as an outrageous radical group, as many had viewed the Black Panthers during this time. The group combined its activism for the Mexican-American and the women, focusing on women's rights for Chicanas. The group takes its name from the revolutionary woman who fought alongside the men in Mexico's revolution, La Adelita. "Las Adelitas de Aztlán" were a combined group of women from the Brown Berets and other similar organizations created to support one another in their goals to fight for Chicano rights and aid one another in their obstacles as women in the Chicano movement. The goal of this group was not to be a formal organization, but rather a "discussion and support group." Anti-war sentiments towards the Vietnam War were increasing amongst the Mexican-American youth in Los Angeles as they rallied to focus on the social justice issues at home, rather than the war in Vietnam. Led by co-chairs, Ramsés Noriega and Rosalio Muñoz, the East L.A. demonstrations formed in protest of the war in Vietnam and injustices it placed on the Mexican-American. In their first demonstration, Arellanes was still in the Brown Berets and was asked to attain permission from the LAPD for the Moratorium to march down the streets of East Los Angeles. The women marched in the second moratorium, the "March in the Rain" of February 28, 1970 brandishing white crosses of Chicano men from L.A. that had been killed in the war, Arellanes toting a cross with the name of her own cousin, Jimmy Vásquez. La Clínica Familiar del Barrio opened on Atlantic Boulevard on March 15, 1971. Her knowledge in coordinating the free clinics in East L.A. aided her role as a community health advocate as well as a speaker on Tongva issues.

Personal life Arellanes lived in El Monte, California, and had two sons and a grandson.