LOS ANGELES (AP) 鈥� Rodolfo 鈥淩udy鈥� Acu帽a, a pioneering political activist, academic and historian who founded one of the first Chicano Studies programs offered by a major U.S. university, has died at 93.
Acu帽a鈥檚 landmark 1972 textbook 鈥淥ccupied America: A History of Chicanos鈥� continues to be taught in schools.
He died Monday, said Carmen Ramos Chandler, a spokesperson for California State University, Northridge, where he taught for nearly half a century.
Although Acu帽a described himself as a teacher, he was also a prolific writer who authored more than a dozen books, several dozen academic papers and scores of essays and opinion pieces.
He founded one of the first Chicano Studies departments in the U.S. at California State University, Northridge, in 1969.
Acu帽a oversaw the department鈥檚 growth as it came to offer more than 170 courses as well as bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees. It is now called the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.
Colorful and often controversial in both his writings and lectures, Acu帽a angered white liberals and conservatives alike, and sometimes Chicanos, when he railed against injustices he saw carried out against U.S.-born Chicanos by a white power structure that excluded them and by well-off Latinos he believed made attempts to leave their poorer peers behind.
In one section of Acu帽a鈥檚 鈥淥ccupied America,鈥� entitled 鈥淯S Invasion of California,鈥� he criticized both the conquering Yankee armies that forced the surrender of Mexican forces in Los Angeles in 1847 and the Mexican-born Californians, called Californios, who he said set a standard of brutality against other minorities before their white conquerors arrived.
鈥淐alifornios compounded their wrongs by violence against Indians,鈥� he wrote.
He said their brutality with people the Californios viewed as inferior gave their white oppressors a blueprint for committing the same kind of violence against them.
An engaging lecturer with razor-sharp wit, Acu帽a was revered by students, although he sometimes seemed to enjoy riling up his audiences just to make a point.
鈥淚 wish the people here were more antagonistic,鈥� he told students at Pennsylvania鈥檚 Swarthmore College in 2003. 鈥淚n Chicago one guy called me a liar and we got in a fistfight.鈥�
In 1991, he tangled with fellow Chicano academics when he sued the University of California, Santa Barbara, claiming racial, political and age discrimination when the university denied him a tenured position in its Chicano Studies Department.
A judge dismissed the racism and political allegations, but Acu帽a, who was 59 when he applied for the job, prevailed on the age issue. He was awarded more than $325,000 but denied the professorship after the judge concluded he had so alienated the Chicano Studies faculty that no one there wanted to work with him.
Acu帽a used the money to set up a foundation that offers Chicano Studies scholarships to California State University, Northridge, students.
The son of Mexican immigrant parents, Rodolfo Francisco Acu帽a was born May 18, 1932, in Los Angeles. His father worked as a tailor and he grew up in South Los Angeles and the city鈥檚 blue-collar East Side.
He attended Loyola High School, a private Jesuit institute near downtown, before earning a bachelor鈥檚 degree in social sciences and a master鈥檚 in history from California State University, Los Angeles.
He taught at high schools and community colleges in Los Angeles for several years before earning a doctorate in Latin American Studies from the University of Southern California in 1968.
The following year, he was recruited to found CSUN鈥檚 nascent Chicano Studies program and quickly began sparring with other academics over the teaching of American history, sociology and other subjects in classes that he said ignored the contributions of Latinos.
鈥淔or the past 25 years, I have been at war with American historians,鈥� he once told the American Historical Society. 鈥淢y disenchantment with these scholars sprang from the 1960s and what seemed a profession more interested in the past than the present.鈥�
It particularly irked him that until the rise of Chicano Studies programs in the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American students seemed to have been taught almost nothing of their history in the United States.
He mellowed somewhat in later years, saying he discovered that setting himself apart from the academic mainstream was to a degree the same kind of elitism he had accused other academics of practicing.
鈥淎s my influence grew within Chicano studies, and indeed within the larger Latin community, my view of the profession became less harsh,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 appreciated that my training as a historian contributed greatly to my ability to bridge the chasm between the humanities and the social sciences within the field itself 鈥� the truth be told, history has two heads.鈥�
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Rogers is a retired AP journalist.
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