Rodolfo Acuña facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rodolfo Acuña
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Acuña in 2007
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| Born | May 18, 1932 |
| Other names | "Rudy" Acuña |
| Occupation | Historian, educator, and professor |
| Known for | Occupied America and Chicana/o Studies |
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. 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.
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.
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:
When and why the Latino identity came about is a more involved story. Essentially, politicians, the media, and marketers find it convenient to deal with the different U.S. Spanish-speaking people under one umbrella.
However, many people with Spanish surnames contest the term Latino. They claim it is misleading because no Latino or Hispanic nationality exists since no Latino state exists, so generalizing the term Latino slights the various national identities included under the umbrella.
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.
"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. In 2002, Acuña opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada, a Honduran immigrant, to the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court.
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.
Legacy
Acuña's archives are held in the Special Collections and Archives section of the Library at California State University, Northridge.
Honors
- Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE Magazine for Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600–1933, 2009
- National Hispanic Institute, Lifetime Achievement Award, Austin, Texas, 2008
- Community Coalition South Central Los Angeles, 9th Annual Gala Dinner, Activist-scholar award, 2008
- The Labor/Community Strategy Center Award, May 2007
- Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), Historian of the Lions Award at 18th Anniversary Dinner in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 13, 2007
- National Hispanic Hero Award, March 11, 2006, Chicago, 24th Annual National Conference. United States Hispanic Leadership Institute,
- LA Weekly LA People 2006, April 21–27, 2006, p. 108, Featured as one of 100 LA shakers and movers
- Symposium on the Works of Rodolfo F. Acuna, California State Northridge, May 2005
- Selected As One of the "100 Most Influential Educators of the 20th Century," Black Issues In Higher Education
- Recipient of the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America
- Distinguished Scholar Award, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies
- Homenaje University of Guadalajara Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalupe and the State of Guadalajara Mexico for the Outstanding Scholar of U.S.-Mexico Studies
- Emil Freed Award for Community Service, Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research
- Founder's Award for Community Service, Liberty Hill Foundation
- American Council of Learned Societies Award
- Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship
