Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales realized that the future of the Mexican Community should focus on young people and organized the National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in 1969. Out of this conference came the Plan de Aztlan. It called for separate Chicano institutions, community controlled schools, an independent Political Party, and cultural affirmation. They rejected the idea of the American melting pot, where people give up everything about their culture and the dominant society swallows everyone up (Rosales, 1997).

     An ancient Aztec legend said that the Aztec people had migrated from Aztlan to central Mexico. Although there is no evidence that the Aztecs lived in the Southwest. Because the Mexican American was neither Mexican nor fully American. This idea of a homeland called Aztlan (the American Southwest) was appealing and symbolic.

     Another reason the idea of aztlan was appealing to some is that in various different areas of the southwest Mexican Americans were not a minority but the Majority and yet still were treated as less than the Anglos.

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