So, in this final question of the semester, write an essay that explains the historical and contemporary condition of Chicano communities by exploring the relationship between political power and community agency and engagement. In other words, communities did not sit back and simply accept their conditions, they engaged their agency and pushed back. What does that mean do you think?

Scholarly study of Latino civic and electoral participation, Latino political attitudes, and the political dimensions of naturalization is a relatively new phenomenon. Although there are a few political studies from as early as the 1920s and 1930s, most of the available scholarship postdates the extension of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to Hispanic communities in 1975. This early period in Latino political history is nevertheless important for understanding their contemporary political experience. Although largely unrecognized at the time, several formative political experiences laid the foundation for the extension of VRA coverage to Latinos. In many ways, the 1975 extension of the VRA defines the beginning of the era of a national recognition of and expectations for Hispanic politics rather than the politics of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, or Cuban Americans. Federal legislation alone, however, does not guarantee the existence of a meaningful Latino politics. Instead, I argue that changes in immigration law in the mid-1960s and the dramatic changes in the composition of the Latino population that followed created the foundation for a set of shared interests among Latinos of different origins and ancestries, giving rise to a Latino politics that can be distinguished from the politics of other demographic groups. Both of these phenomena-the shared experiences that underpin national expectations of a singular voice in Latino politics and incentives for Hispanic leaders to organize to link with a seemingly unified voice to express the needs of Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latinos-must be understood as the twin foundations of today's Latino politics.