Quinto Sol

Quinto Sol was the first fully independent publishing house to surface from the Chicano movement in the Sixties. Editorial Quinto Sol (Quinto Sol Publications) was founded in 1967 at UC Berkeley by Octavio I. Romano, a professor of Behavioral Science and Public Health, in collaboration with Nick C. Vaca and Andres Ybarra. The goals of the publication house included "cultural unity and self determination" and the publishing house, its authors, and the works they produced were centrally important in the Chicano Movement in the 1970s.

Beginning in 1967, Quinto Sol published the interdisciplinary El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought. This was the first national academic and literary journal ever published in the United States. Quinto Sol released Voices: Readings from El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, which was a compilation of the most important works published in the journal. The first Premio Quinto Sol was awarded to Tomás Rivera, an associate professor of Spanish at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, Texas, in 1971 for y no se lo tragó la tierra (And the Earth Did Not Devour Him). It was published with Quinto Sol as a bilingual edition, the Spanish and English versions printed side to side in the first publications. After being awarded the prize, Rivera worked closely with the Quinto Sol editors throughout the early 1970s. in 1975 for her collection of short stories, Rain of Scorpions. and contributing to the formation of a Chicano(a) literary canon. It served as a self sustained creative and intellectual space for the participants of "El Movimiento." The latter later became Tonatiuh Quinto Sol (TQS) Publications.

In 2012, a commemorative organization was founded at the University of California, Berkeley by Gustavo Buenrostro, Javier Huerta, Wanda Alarcón, Joseph Rios and Patricia Velazquez to pay tribute to the literary achievements of Quinto Sol called "Quinto Sol Remembered." On April 6 and 7, 2012 a symposium featuring several Chicano(a) writers and academics took place to commemorate the Chicano publishing house. Important Chicano voices who participated include Alex Saragoza, Alurista, Edel Romay, Gustavo Segade, Hector Calderón, Juan Carrillo, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucha Corpi, Malaquías Montoya, Nick Vaca, Rosaura Sánchez, Rudy Anaya (by video), and Sergio Elizondo.