The Mexican American also desires to revive and absorb into himself the best of the past in order to confront the future with an equilibrium of purpose and motivation. The Chicano understands that he has been denied his past, his language, and his culture by the Anglo-American system of education, the end product of which is mediocrity, with the Anglo as the lowest  common denominator. He knows that his land has been stolen and his rights and rightful opportunities withheld by the Anglo system of laws and courts, which foster prejudice and discrimination above justice and compassion. Now he seeks to retrieve those basic values of his past. Zapata, the rebel is a symbol of that desire. Although not yet fully realized, but here and there promised in some men, that desire may soon be embodied in a Chicano Zapata. Perhaps there will be a Zapata in the South and a Villa in the North as well. At any rate, Chicano historians of the next decade will have to gather the bits and pieces of history which are fragmented today in order to portray the new revolu-tionary hero or heroes. For the time being, the only true hero of the Chicano revolt that is just beginning is the Chicano people. If gigantic heroes are to emerge, the Chicano people will create them and establish their names, just as in the past decade the people have begun to test and shape leaders according to their need.
Pg. 101 Chicano Manifesto by Armando B. Rendon

To many Anglo-Americans, no revolution is yet in evidence from the Southwest, and as far as they are concerned. Mexican American is a term describing a dirty little war that the United States fought with Mexico over some land. A few Mexican Americans still don’t know who they are or what their fellow Mexican Americans are shouting about. But now that Chicanos have made Basta Ya! a war cry and Viva La Raza! a ralling call, much of that indifference and ignorance will change. After decades of intimidation that have forced many Mexican Americans to forsake their background, many agringados are returning to the Chicano fold. They realize the hypocrisy of their Anglo role-playing and the self-denigration it has involved, and now seek to reunite themselves with the raza they once denied. They have a long path to retrace.
Pg. 102 Chicano Manifesto by Armando B. Rendon

These first  skirmishes in the Chicano struggle for self-conception and self-determination were grounded in efforts in the early sixties, when Chicano sophistication about his rights and power burgeoned, and his determination to change his destiny through his own efforts, even making his own mistakes, deepened into an obsession. The Chicano revolution is not merely the product of a world-wide reassertion by poor and oppressed peoples of their dignity and rights, nor is it only an imitation of the black movement, If there had been no blacks in this country, the Chicano revolt would still have occurred because we have been at least as oppressed and even more ignored than the blacks.
Pg 105 Chicano Manifesto by Armando B. Rendon

One of the most fascinating witnesses to Chicano self-preservation techniques and community insulation through embryonic organizing is the Beneficencia Society, barrio groups which sprang up, whenever Mexican people congregated, to assist one another when sickness or death struck. Beneficencia (or Mutualista) members contributed a small sum each month as membership dues; the funds collected would be used to tide over a family hit by sickness or calamity, or to pay part or all expenses of funeral. Such groups still operate here and there, and occasionally while traveling through the Southwest, I have seen a paint-chipped store front office with a faded sign above the door attesting to the existence in the days gone by such a neighborhood insurance society. The innate sense of organization and terrible need and isolation that generated them is a story in itself. Postwar groups cleared away much of the debris which had lain around for generations, predating the activities of today’s black activists; they helped expose the deeper problems that existed. Not until the sixties, however, did the job begin of radicalizing the Chicano community and rooting out those really massive, adamantine barriers of Anglo prejudice and indifference, as well as our own self-distrust and self-assertion. The calculated revolt that we now observe is but a continuation of struggle Chicanos have maintained through a century and a half of oppression. Certain development in the last decade have only accelerated our cause.
Pg. 107-108 Chicano Manifesto by Armando B. Rendon