Hey, Shireen here. You're listening to Code Switch and I couldn't let this year get away without shouting out a story.

I absolutely loved that you may have missed. It ran on NPR's, it's been a minute podcast and it was told by producer Andrea Gutiérrez.

It's a story about the 50th anniversary of the Chicano moratorium, but it's so much more than that.

It's about two sisters trying to learn about who they really are and where they come from.

Dad was a storyteller. I think that's the best way to put it. Dad was a storyteller.

That's my sister Monica and she's right. My dad was a storyteller. Usually stories from his life.

He had a whole repertoire and we kids asked for his greatest hits a lot. Dad tell us the one about grandpa and the Rio truck.

Dad, what about the time father guys old told you to get a haircut.

But there was one thing he never really talked about much. His involvement in the Chicano moratorium.

Monica and I met up recently to go over these memories of Dad and to get to the bottom of them all.

But before we get to that, I want us to know can you tell me what you know about it and how you know about it?

I know it's part of the Chicano movement 60-70s, but it was protest against the high number,

the disproportionate number of Chicano youth being sent to Vietnam and dying.

Lots of people were protesting the Vietnam War.

But like my sister said, Mexican Americans were dying in large numbers.

About twice their proportion of the population.

That's why the movement was called a moratorium.

Protesters and organizers wanted to end this loss of life.

So this was the Chicano movement's main argument that as a slogan said at the time,

La Vataya Stake are our struggles here, our war is here, and we should be addressing inequities on the home front,

not dying in Vietnam.

That's Lorena Orapaza. She's a professor of history at the University of California Davis.

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