“Sana sana, colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.”

My mother repeated the rhyme like a ritual, not just for me, but for herself. A quiet hope that I would heal, and that we could avoid the cold uncertainty of a system that wasn’t made for us.

Eventually, I did heal. But when the time came for us to step into a doctor’s office in the U.S, the coldness of this system became real.  As the youngest of three, and the most assimilated, the most gringa of the family, per se, I was usually the one to go into the doctor's exam room with my parents. I became the translator, the cultural interpreter, the bridge.

But when we moved from the icy white winters of Connecticut to Los Angeles, everything shifted. We entered a different world. For the first time, my parents met a healthcare provider who could speak to them in Spanish. This doctor didn’t just prescribe medicine, he became a lifeline. He is still their doctor to this day, and he is one of the mere “5 percent of primary care providers in California who are Latino” (The Chicano Boom: Healing California 1965-1985).

What my family found in him didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was the result of decades of community-led health justice organizing born from Latinx movements that demanded not just healthcare, but recognition. As documented in The Chicano Boom: Healing California, the 1960s and 70s saw an explosion of activism in response to systemic medical exclusion. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and lived injustice, Latinx organizers pushed for culturally and structurally competent care and helped build California’s first community-based health centers.

The Center of the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities (Critical Study HLC) continues that fight today. Through my work with the Critical Study HLC, I focused on the legacy of the United Farm Workers, led by figures like Dolores Huerta and César Chávez. By studying clinical records and testimonial archives, I saw how the UFW linked the struggle for labor rights to the right to health. Farmworkers organizing for fair wages also demanded access to care, exposing how those who fed the country were routinely denied basic medical treatment. Their organizing laid the foundation for clinics that would go on to serve working-class Latinx communities across California.

One of the most powerful examples of that legacy is La Clínica de La Raza, founded in 1971 in Oakland. Born out of the Chicano Movement, La Clínica redefined what community-rooted, bilingual care could look like. These clinics were never just about medicine. They were political spaces where farmworkers, students, and neighborhood residents came together to reimagine health as a collective right, not a privilege. They responded to both medical neglect and state violence, and marked a turning point in California’s public health history by building trust and offering care that spoke our language.

The creation of these clinics opened the door to healthcare for Latinx communities in California and, over time, for all communities of color. This movement, rooted in language, love, and community, ran parallel to the Black freedom struggle. While Latinx activists were fighting for culturally grounded care, the Black Panther Party was building its own network of free health centers across the country. These clinics were revolutionary not just in what they offered–screenings, treatment, education–but in what they represented. Like their Latinx counterparts, the Panthers knew that health is political, and that access to care is a form of power.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman.” Both the Latinx health movement and the Panthers took that truth seriously, and they acted. What connected them was not just a timeline, but a shared goal: la apertura del acceso a la salud. Opening the gates to care. Demanding systems that not only treated, but respected and reflected the people they served.

That legacy still beats in our communities today. While working at the Critical Study HLC, I saw the love in the eyes of those who gave everything to this fight. Through interviews and documentation, I witnessed the power that built this story, and that is still waiting to be heard. I recognized the same love I felt the moment I walked out of that doctor’s office, and the relief I saw in my parents’ eyes. And I met the people who fought to make that moment possible.

“Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.”

Both the Latinx and Black health movements fought for that mañana. They believed in the love of community, in the radical idea that healing wasn’t just individual, it was collective. And they knew: if we do not heal today, we will heal tomorrow. Because we keep showing up. We keep building. We keep fighting.

Written By: Dafne Faitelson 

University of California, Berkeley
Research Assistant at the Center of the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities