Princeton-bound graduate uncovers Chicano activism targeting addiction

CLASS OF 2021

MAY 10, 2021 — Matt Hinojosa ’19 wants to become a professor so he can uncover the larger history of Chicano activists who during the 1970s brought attention to addiction and its link to social inequality.

Now as he’s about to graduate with his second degree from UTSA, a master of arts in history, he’s chosen a career path in academia where only 3% of all professors are Hispanic males.

Despite this, he has already been accepted at Princeton University with a full scholarship to pursue his doctorate and then teach.

“I received incredible mentorship at UTSA from folks in the Mexican American Studies Program.”

His UTSA undergraduate research addressed difficult topics such as substance use disorders. He published Anonymous in San Anto: Chicano Identity and Alcoholism/Addiction Recovery in the Alamo City in the university’s journal. Later, he wrote La Cultura Cura: Cultural Nationalism and Addiction Recovery in the Alamo City, 1969-1980.

This research traces the glue-sniffing epidemic in the city, the establishment of the Chicano-centric and Christian-based recovery movements such as Victory Outreach, and the local Chicano films of Efraín Gutiérrez that brought national attention to drug use and addiction in Mexican American barrios.

“The Chicano Movement and the cry for unity and Chicano Power that brought together such a wide variety of people in the 70s — from gang members, drug addicts, Chicano radicals, Evangelicals, and filmmakers — was about improving their material conditions in the barrios of San Antonio,” explained Matt, a first-generation college student.

While Matt has carved out a career path in academia, he also has a personal stake in this line of work. 

“I’m a recovering alcoholic myself, and as a consequence I’ve had to deal directly with the criminal justice system and the carceral state,” Matt said. “I’ve been sober now for more than five years.”

His first encounter with alcohol was in high school. Then, in his freshman year at UTSA, his alcohol abuse disorder took a toll on his grades and he had to leave the university.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), teenage drinkers are the only group whose consumption is on the rise with double-digit binge drinking rates. Despite Matt’s abuse disorder, he was committed to continuing his education and enrolled at Northwest Vista College. Then came his arrest for driving under the influence, which triggered the American court probation system.

“I had to drop out of school to pay the fees,” Matt recalled. “That’s the aspect of probation people do not think about. It puts your life on hold.”

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, people on supervision serve longer terms than are necessary for public safety. The state of Texas ranks No. 13 in the U.S. for having one of the longest probation terms.

“This experience and my general experience as a Chicano in Texas turned me on to the inequities faced by Mexicans and Chicanos in the U.S., and inspired me to look historically for the origins of these systems of inequity and violence that our people face,” Matt said.

It was in 2015 that he finally went into recovery. In 2016, he transferred to UTSA.

“I’d never really thought about history before,” Matt said.

For a class assignment, he wanted to focus on ethnographic research of Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s when he first met with associate professor of history Jerry Gonzalez, who gave him an academic focus. Gonzalez pushed him to take a wider view and investigate Chicano activism history—specifically, the addiction/recovery movement, which is rarely discussed in Chicano studies.

“I received incredible mentorship at UTSA from folks in the Mexican American Studies Program,” Matt said. “Somehow, no matter how busy folks over in MAS and History were, they always had time for my peers and me. At UTSA, there are Chicana and Chicano scholars who do incredible work both for their fields and especially for their students. I’d also like to give gratitude to those professors that have helped me out in my journey including Jerry González, Harriett Romo, Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Marco Cervantes, Keta Miranda, Sonya Alemán, Lilliana Saldaña and Andrew Konove.”

At Princeton, Matt plans to focus on the history of addiction and recovery as it transforms into advocacy and political mobilization within other minority groups. He has already chosen one event to study: “Putting down the needle, putting down the bottle,” a call to action by some indigenous people to join the movement against the construction of the Dakota Pipeline in the Sioux Tribe Reservation.

Although his tenacity has been a guiding force, Matt owes much of his success to the support he received in the past five years from several university resources and programs, including the UTSA Mexico Center, the Mellon Humanities Pathways fellowship, and the McNair Scholars Program, which helped him secure crucial educational funding.

“It’s the most stability I’ve had in my life,” Matt said. “A lot of us are first-gen. We are not even aware of the opportunities in education that are out there.”

— Milady Nazir