Near the end of her sophomore year, Jessica Arevalo Ontiveros noticed a lack of space on campus for students to organize and make meaningful social change. So when rumors of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA)’s return to campus started circulating early last year, she jumped at the chance to join.
Now a senior and one of MEChA’s Coordinators, Arevalo Ontiveros hopes to build on the foundation set last year and make MEChA a place for activism to grow beyond raising awareness.
“At least for me, there was a really strong need for there to be somewhere to have student organizing and student activism,” Arevalo Ontiveros said. “MEChA naturally came to be, especially with Trump being elected and all the political turmoil happening around the time that we started back up.”
MEChA is a nationwide student-run organization that grew out of the historic Chicano Movement. At large, the organization advocates for education accessibility and economic prosperity for all. At UP, the chapter focuses on social justice and advocacy, according to Arevalo Ontiveros.
The desire to go past raising awareness is reflected in the events the club has planned for the year. Their first event, hosted on Sept. 10, was a training on becoming a volunteer for Portland’s Immigration Rights Coalition (PIRC). In addition to verifying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity across Portland, PIRC offers different resources relating to immigration issues.
MEChA’s future plans include a “Know Your Rights” training hosted in collaboration with the Moreau Center for Service and Justice and Campus Safety. The training will be held on Oct. 6 at 5 p.m. The location for the event is still being decided.
UP’s MEChA chapter was first started in the early 2000s. However, a lack of student involvement caused it to go on hiatus. Last year, students banded together to bring it back amid the rising political divide from the national election, according to MEChA Coordinator Benjamin Barrero.
Additionally, the club bridges the gap between celebrating Latinx culture and acknowledging the hardships the community is currently facing.
“There needed to be spaces to talk about the political climate right now,” Barrero said. “Everyday, there’s more and more antagonism towards our families, our people, and we need to figure out how we deal with that.”
MEChA advocates for open dialogue, where current events are not sugar coated, according to MEChA member Angel Perez.
"I've noticed that when it comes to celebrating our community on campus, [the celebrations are] very surface level,” Perez said. “We’ll share our food and our music, and don’t get me wrong, those are important parts of us, our joy is very important to us. But what is even more important is you caring about the hardships we go through, you realizing it and acknowledging it.”
As of July 2025, over 8 million people have been detained by ICE. The vast majority of those detained originate from Latin America. With new laws being passed everyday that target the Latinx community across the country, people are scared for their futures.
Perez sees this as a call to action to not only raise awareness to the issues faced by Latinx peoples, but also to engage in activism that makes tangible change.
“If we are suffering as a community, we should be loud about it, it should be known,” Perez said.
Barrero believes that college students already have the ability to organize and advocate for their causes. He hopes MEChA can be a place where students realize the skills they already have and learn about the resources in place to support them, as well as the importance of giving back to the community.
“All of us have the power to do something, especially us as students,” Barrero said. “We have all these skills, we have all this information on our hands, all these professors, all these resources. How can we pass that on? How can we give back to our communities, to our families?”
To learn more about the club and its future events, click here.
Samantha Zavala is the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at zavala27@up.edu
