In this essay, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto traces the origins and paths of the Chicano Movement and the Chicano Art Movement from their inception in the 1960s through the 1990s. Both movements sought political self-determination. The Chicano Art Movement also sought to link lived reality to the imagination, and to ensure that viewers were edified by both the aesthetics and social reality mirrored in the artists’ works. In creating this “new art of the people,” artists took advantage of shared experiences and communal art traditions, attempting to eradicate the distinctions between “fine art” and “folk art,” and tapping into vernacular sources of inspiration, such as almanaques [calendars], religious images, posters, and youth culture. Hence, Chicano Movement artists also drew strength from consistent group attitudes such as rasquachismo, a term which denotes an underdog perspective that embraces an aesthetics of resourcefulness and adaptability. By 1975, the author writes, goals of the Chicano Art Movement that had been achieved included creating a core of visual signs; the maintenance of alternative structures, spaces, and forms; as well as the continuation of mural programs. At the same time, the Chicano community had undergone intense changes. The national Chicano Art Movement and collective political action had receded, and more Chicanos had entered the professional class and were affected by the phenomenon of social mobility. One new agenda that struggled to emerge was, indeed, the consideration of the Americas as a continent and not a country. Meanwhile, the art establishment found uneasily accommodating Chicano art under the rubric of pluralism; that is, while recognizing diversity, also serves to commodify art and ensure that its new ideas can be discarded once such a moment has passed. Ultimately, the Chicanos in the United States activated complex mechanisms of cultural negotiation. In Ybarra-Frausto’s view, two strategies were vying for ascendancy: one, an attempt to break the mainstream consensus with a defiant “otherness,” and the other one, recognition of new interconnections.