El Centro de la Raza

El Centro de la Raza in Seattle, Washington, United States, is an educational, cultural, and social service agency, centered in the Latino/Chicano community and headquartered in the former Beacon Hill Elementary School on Seattle's Beacon Hill. It was founded in 1972 and celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2007. El Centro de la Raza continues to serve clients in Seattle, King County and beyond. It is considered a significant part of civil rights history in the Pacific Northwest.

Their website points out that they are "probably the only organization in the world to hold the Nicaraguan '10th Anniversary Medal of the Sandinista Revolution' (1989), and the 'Thousand Points of Light' award (1991) from the Bush administration." El Centro founder Roberto Maestas (July 9, 1938 - September 22, 2010) was the 2004 "Seafair king", the first Latino ever to receive this civic honor. On April 25, 2011, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to rename the segment of South Lander Street between 16th Avenue South and 17th Avenue South (immediately south of El Centro) as South Roberto Maestas Festival Street.

El Centro was founded October 11, 1972 by Americans of Mexican ancestry calling themselves Chicanos, a socio-political term made popular in the 1960s, and other Latinos and people of different ethnic backgrounds. The militants occupied Beacon Hill School in Seattle, which had been closed due to declining student enrollment. The building was built in 1904. The group was inspired, in part, by the 1970 occupation by Native Americans of the decommissioned Fort Lawton in Seattle's Magnolia district, which had resulted in the founding of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center. The initial spark for the occupation was the fact that about seventy Latino students and ten staff of the Chicano: English and Adult Basic Education Program at the Duwamish branch of the incipient South Seattle Community College had found themselves without an educational home.

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