For Our Rights
We want a school truly representative of the community.
Rudy Lozano quoted in the Chicago Tribune 29 March 1973
Inspired by the Black Freedom Movement, the Chicano movement in the U.S. Southwest, and liberation movements in the Global South, young Mexicans in Pilsen began organizing their own struggle for community control. Activists wanted access to better education, jobs, and living conditions. They also wanted political power, a say in how things were run at school, in the neighborhood, and at City Hall.
Rudy Lozano began his career as an activist and organizer while he was a student at Harrison High School in Pilsen. He led a campaign to push the school to teach Latinx history and to hire Latinx teachers. When Lozano was a student at UIC he joined a growing movement that called on the university to recruit more Latinx students and establish a cultural center for the Latinx community on campus. Although Lozano and fellow UIC students faced resistance to their demands and were even arrested during protests, their activism helped create the Latin American Recruitment and Educational Services Program (LARES) and the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center.
Remaining active in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods, Lozano also helped mobilize community demands for a new high school. The Chicago Board of Education agreed in 1973 to build Benito Juarez High School to better serve students in the area.
