Hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans called the American Southwest home, and many had family histories that preceded their Anglo-American neighbors' residencies in the area. Yet they had continually been subject to second class citizenship, and exploitation since the signing of the Treaty of Hidalgo in 1848. Worst of all, Mexican-Americans did not receive an adequate public education in regards to their own history. For many, cultural assimilation was viewed as a means of social mobility. In Mexico too, indigenous customs were regularly stifled in favor of Spanish traditions. Perpetually foreign in their homeland, mestizo people in the United States and Mexico would finally find empowerment in the reclaiming of their cultural and historical narrative. Myths like the Aztec origin story, which places the Aztec homeland in the North American Southwest, became powerful calls to action for people that had previously felt as if they had no history. The reclaiming of a biased historical narrative and the refusal to assimilate was an integral aspect of the Chicano movement, but it has a history that spans back even further. This paper seeks to detail and contextualize a rich history of dissent and endurance from Mexican indigenous peoples. Though a large portion will discuss the Chicano movement of the sixties, resistance of the cultural hegemony manifests prior in the Pachuco movement of the forties, in the larger “Tortilla discourse” of nineteenth-century Mexico, and it later echoes in the cholo culture of the eighties and nineties. Prominent secondary sources utilized include: Mytho Historical Interventions: The Chicano Movement and Its Legacies, and ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales!. Primary sources include specific works of literary significance, and excerpts from public speeches by the movement’s leaders such as Cesar Chavez, and Rodolfo ``Corky” Gonzales.