* Each of the three articles, written in the 1970s, about Chicana activism raised similar yet also different points about Chicana involvement in the Movement.

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Week 7: March 3 & 5

Weekly Questions and Discussion Points

[in the Reader: Week 6]

1) Acuña, Occupied America, Chap.13 “Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s” pp. 295-

315 & 318-325

Garcia, Chicana Feminist Thought:

2) Anonymous, “La Chicana: Her Role in The Movement”

3) Sosa Riddell, “Chicanas and El Movimiento”

4) Lopez, “The Role of the Chicana within the Student Movement”

2) Acuña, Occupied America, Chap.13 “Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s” pp. 295-

315 & 318-325

1. A number of political and economic changes took place during the exciting Movement Era of the 1960s and 1970s. Among these occurrences were the Chicano student activities, events and organizations. Mention and elaborate on four of these.

2. Considerable labor and community organizing was also taking place during this historic period. Discuss and elaborate on two of these union organizing efforts. Identify the region, key issues and the people involved.

3. In what manner did this baby boom generation reaffirm its ties to its Mexican heritage?

Anonymous, “La Chicana: Her Role in The Movement”

Sosa Riddell, “Chicanas and El Movimiento”

López, “The Role of the Chicana within the Student Movement”

* Each of the three articles, written in the 1970s, about Chicana activism raised similar yet also different points about Chicana involvement in the Movement. In particular, Sosa Riddell focused on how the dominant society’s stereotypes about Chicanos were internalized within the Chicana/o community, while López discussed the Chicanas who created separate organizations which addressed issues of gender. Explain and elaborate on what each of these three authors mentioned in their respective articles.

WEEK 6·

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 295

consider the ending of poverty a worthwhile goal. Euro-Americans increasingly wanted the poor to just go away. According to U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, “The fact is that most people who have no skill have no edu- cation for the same reason-low intelligence or low ambition:’48

Bureaucratic conflict also weakened the War on Poverty. The Department of Labor refused to cooperate with OEO; social workers perceived it as a threat to the welfare bureaucracy and their hegemony among the poor. Local politicians claimed that OEO programs “fostered class struggle.” Meanwhile, as government officials and others quickly gained control of the programs, the participation of the poor declined. By 1966, President Johnson began dismantling the OEO, with Head Start going to Health, Education, and Welfare, and the Job Corps, to the Department of Labor. He then substituted the “Model Cities” program for OEO. Johnson, faced with opposition within his own party over the war in Vietnam, announced that he would not seek reelection. The assassination of Robert Kennedy during the California primary also dealt a blow to Mexican American hope. The election of Richard Nixon in 1968 put the proverbial final nail in the coffin.

Impart of the War on Poverty The impact of the War on Poverty on Chicanos was huge. A study of 60 OEO advisory boards in East Los Angeles-Boyle Heights-South Lincoln Heights, for instance-showed that 1,520 individuals, 71 percent of whom lived in these communities, served on the boards; two-thirds were women. Many Chic;ano activists of the 1960s developed a sense of political consciousness as a result of poverty programs, which advertised the demands and grievances of the poor and created an ideology that legitimized protest. Many minorities came to learn that they had the right to work in government and to petition it. Legal aid programs and Head Start, a public preschool system, also proved invaluable to the poor. The number of poor fell dramatically between 1965 and 1970 as Social Security, health, and welfare payments more than doubled. When the federal govern- ment cut the last of the War on Poverty programs in the 1980s, poverty escalated.49

MAGNETIZATION OF THE BORDER <t–VJ -\\ e….'(‘ -e_ A population boom in Mexico tossed millions into Mexico’s labor pool, thus intensifying the push factors. In 1950, Mexico had a population of 25.8 million; it jumped to 34.9 million 10 years later and was rushing toward 50 million by the end of the 1960s. Driving this increase was the fertility rate of Mexican women, which increased from an average of 1.75 percent in 1922-1939 to 2.25 percent in 1939-1946 and to 6.9 percent in the late 1950s. Mexico had the fastest-growing gross national product (GNP) in Latin America, but it did not offset this increase in population.

The termination of the bracero (guest worker) program in 1964 worsened Mexico’s economic plight, drastically cutting remittances sent by the migrant workers to their families at home. Mexico’s economy simply could not absorb its increasing population. Matters worsened with a decline of ruralism, caused in part by mechanization and the growing commercialization of Mexican farms, which displaced small farmers. Concurrently, the United States was going through good times, attracting underemployed and unemployed Mexican workers. The wartime economy, the Civil Rights movement, and the youth culture temporarily

the common Euro-American citizens so that the heavy migration of undocumented workers went largely unnoticed; and the nation’s racist, nativist tendencies remained dormant.

In the United States, growers pressured the border patrol to keep the border porous, ensuring a contin- ual flood of workers. In this context the phenomenon known as the “runaway shop” took form. Simply said, Mexico became the destination for North American multinational businesses to enjoy special privileges and exploit loopholes provided by law in the United States. The Customs Simplification Act of 1956 allowed the processing abroad of metal goods, which would then be returned to the United States for finishing. Congress broadened this provision in 1963 to include items such as apparel and toys. These runaway shops located along the border cut down on transportation and labor costs. Understandably, U.S. labor opposed these loopholes, but it lacked sufficient power to stop the flow of jobs out of the United States.

Mexico agreed to the Border Industrialization Program (BIP), waiving duties and regulations on the import of raw materials and relaxing restrictions on foreign capital within 12.5 miles of the border (this area has

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continuously been expanded); 100 percent of the finished products were to be exported out of the country and 90 percent of the labor force was to consist of Mexicans. In 1966, 20 BIP plants operated along the border; this number increased to 120 in 1970 and to 476 in 1976. The so-called maquiladoras (assembly plants) did create jobs (20,327 in 1970) but did not relieve Mexico’s unemployment problem. Owners paid the BIP workforce, more than 70 percent of whom were women, minimum Mexican wages. North American employers gave no job security, and the maquiladoras could move at the owners’ whim. Furthermore, the BIP left relatively little capital in Mexico. Like the bracero program, the border program increased Mexican dependence on the United States. 50

The Immigration Ad of 1965 Journalist Theodore White said that the 1965 Amendment to the Immigration Act “was noble, revolutionary- and probably the most thoughtless of the many acts of the Great Society.”51 The act changed immigration policy: basis for admitting immigrants shifted from national origin to family preference; those already having family in the United States would be given higher quota preferences. At the time, legislators expected Europeans to be the main applicants; thus, there was no problem.

The national-origin system of immigration of the 1920s had shielded the United States against the fresh immigration of Poles, Italians, Slavs, and Eastern European Jews. From 1930 to 1960, about 80 percent of U.S. immigrants came from European countries or Canada. The 1965 act opened the country to other races and ethnic peoples, specifically Asians. (Improved conditions in Western Europe had made the United States less of an attraction to European peoples, and few applied.) During the first years of the act, not too many Euro- Americans were concerned, because those applying were highly educated Latin Americans and Asians. Liberals such as Senator Edward Kennedy had sponsored the legislation because they wanted to correct the past injustice of excluding Asians from legal entry. Before the act there had been no quota for Latin Americans; however, the trade-off for taking the exclusion of Asians off the books was the placing of Latin Americans and Canadians on a quota system. The law specified that 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western could enter annually. Until the act, Mexico had been the principal source of Latin American immigration; the new law put a cap of 40,000 from any one nation.52

Mexican American Readion to Nativism During the 1950s Mexican American organizations had supported restricting undocumented workers and had encouraged the government to exclude undocumented Mexicans. Organizations such as the American G.I. Forum and LULAC gave the federal government almost unconditional support. Trade unions support- ing this restrictionist policy rationalized that the exclusion of the Mexican national was necessary to cut unfair labor competition with Mexican American and other U.S.-based workers. Even so, Mexican American organizations had become distressed about the gross human rights abuses, and pro-foreign-born groups concerned with human rights flourished among Latinos. Immigration, however, was not a priority issue among Mexican Americans in 1965.

Yet, the cumulative experiences of old-time activists made some weary about the renewal of racist nativism. La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (the Mexican National Brotherhood), based out of the San Diego area and established in 1951, reflected the tradition of the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign-Born. During the 1960s, Hermandad joined hands with Bert Corona, then the driving force behind MAPA. Corona correctly assumed that, with the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, there would be a recurrence of the nativism of the 1950s. With Soledad “Cole” Alatorre, an L.A. labor organizer, and Juan Mariscal and Estella Garcia, among others, Corona opened a Hermandad office in Los Angeles to protect the constitutional rights of workers without papers. Hermandad functioned like a mutualista of old, offering self-help services. It then opened additional centers known as Centro de Acci6n Social Aut6noma (CASA). At the height of its influence, CASA had 4,000 members. Both Corona and Alatorre were also very active in other aspects of the Chicano political life of the time, and their influence would be felt through the next three decades. In fact, CASA created the progressive template for the protection of the foreign-born.53

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 297

The Road to Delano For many, Cesar Chavez began the Chicano Movement. Chavez and the farmworkers gave Chicanos a cause, symbols, and a national space to claim their presence in the country’s Civil Rights movement.54 On September 8, 1965, the Filipinos in the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) struck the grape growers of the Delano area in the San Joaquin Valley. The Di Giorgio Corporation led the growers. On September 16, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) voted to join the Filipino. The end of the bracero program in late 1964 had significantly strengthened the union’s position. The strike itself dragged on for years, during which time its dramatic events and the brutality of many of the growers attracted millions of non-Chicano supporters. Chavez’s strategy was to maintain the union’s moral authority by employing civil disobedience and fasts to call attention to the causa (cause), following the example of Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King. The strategy of civil disobedience was to actively refuse to obey unjust laws and injunctions. Cesar frequently went to jail and would fast in order to rally his supporters. 55

Born in Yuma,Arizona, in 1927, Cesar Chavez spent his childhood as a migrant worker. In the 1940s, he moved to San Jose, California, where he married Helen Fabela. In San Jose Chavez met Father Donald McDonnell, who tutored him in Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical supporting labor unions and social justice. Chavez met Fred Ross of the CSO and became an organizer for the CSO, learning grassroots organizing methods. He went on to become the general director of the national CSO, but in 1962, he resigned and moved to Delano, where he organized the NFWA.56

Chavez carefully selected a loyal cadre of proven organizers, such as Dolores Huerta and Gil Padilla, whom he had met in the CSO. Huerta was born Dolores Fernandez in a mining town in New Mexico in 1930. She was a third-generation Mexican American, and her father was a miner and seasonal beet worker. When her parents divorced, Huerta’s mother and siblings moved to Stockton, California, where her mother worked night shift in a cannery. Huerta was also a CSO organizer; it was there that she met Cesar Chavez, whom she joined in forming the NFWA.57

By the middle of 1964, the NFWA was self-supporting; a year later, the union had some 1,700 members. Volunteers, fresh from civil rights activities in the South, joined the NFWA at Delano. Protestant groups inspired by the Civil Rights movement championed the workers’ cause. A minority of Catholic priests, influ- enced by the second Vatican Council, joined Chavez.58 Euro-American labor belatedly joined the cause. In Chavez’s favor was the growing number of Chicano workers living in the United States. The changing times allowed Chavez to make the farmworkers’ movement a crusade.

The most effective strategy was the boycott. The NFWA urged supporters not to buy Schenley products or Di Giorgio grapes. The first breakthrough came in 1966 when the Schenley Corporation signed a contract with the union. The next opponent was the Di Giorgio Corporation, one of the largest grape growers in the central valley. In April 1966, owner Robert Di Giorgio unexpectedly announced that he would allow his workers at Sierra Vista to vote on whether the farmworkers wanted a union. However, Di Giorgio did not act in good faith, and his agents set out to intimidate the workers.

Di Giorgio invited the Teamsters to compete with and thus break the NFWA. Di Giorgio held a series of fraudulent elections certifying the Teamsters as the bargaining agent. The NFWA pressured Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., to investigate the elections. Brown needed the Chicano vote, as well as that of liberals who were committed to the farmworkers. The governor’s investigator recommended a new election, and the date was set for August 30, 1966. Di Giorgio red-baited the union and carried on an active campaign that drained the union’s financial resources. This forced Chavez to reluctantly apply for affiliation in the American Federation of Labor and form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), which won the election-573 votes to the Teamsters’ 425. Field workers voted 530 to 331 in favor of the UFWOC.

In 1967, the UFWOC targeted the Giumarra Vineyards Corporation (the largest producer of table grapes in the United States), boycotting all California table grapes. The result was a significant decline in grape sales. In June 1970, when the strike was approaching its fifth year, a group of Coachella Valley growers agreed to sign contracts. Victories in the San Joaquin Valley and other areas followed.

After the victory in grape industry, the union turned to the lettuce fields of the Salinas Valley; growers of the area were among the most powerful in the state. During July 1970, the Growers-Shippers Association and

298 Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s

29 of the largest growers in the valley entered into negotiations with the Teamsters. Agreements signed with the truckers’ union in Salinas were worse than sweetheart contracts. (A sweetheart contract is one made through collusion between management and labor representatives containing terms beneficial to management and detrimental to union workers.) The contracts provided no job security, no seniority rights, no hiring hall, and no protection against pesticides.

By August 1970, many workers refused to abide by the Teamster contracts, and 5,000 workers walked off the lettuce fields. The growers launched a campaign of violence. Thugs beat Jerry Cohen, a farmworker lawyer, into unconsciousness. On December 4, 1970, Judge Gordon Campbell of Monterey County jailed Chavez for refusing to obey an injunction and held him without bail. This arbitrary action gave the boycott the needed publicity; dignitaries visited Chavez in jail. On the face of mounting pressure, authorities released him on Christmas Eve. By the spring of 1971, Chavez and the Teamsters had signed an agreement that gave the UFWOC sole jurisdiction. 59

La Casita Farms Corporation Strike of 1966 and the Aftershocks Texas remained a union organizer’s nightmare. South Texas’s long border ensured growers’ access to a constant and abundant supply of cheap labor. The Texas Rangers, the local courts, and right-to-work laws gave growers almost an insurmountable advantage. However, the Chavez movement in California and the growing militancy after the 1963 Crystal City takeover influenced the Texas farmworkers, resulting in the 1966–1967 strikes. Eugene Nelson (who had been with Chavez in California), Margil Sanchez, and Lucio Galvan formed the Independent Workers Association (IWA) in May 1966. In June, IWA members voted to affiliate with the NFWA and the UFWOC. More than 400 workers voted to strike the melon growers of Starr County on June 1, 1966. From the beginning, it was a violent strike, with the Texas Rangers under Captain A. Y. Allee Jr. spreading a reign of terror. 60

In the concluding days of June 1967, strikers took out on a march from Rio Grande City to Austin, which ended on Labor Day. Over 15,000 people joined the march in its final days, with thousands more greeting the marchers as they made their way to Corpus Christi, to San Antonio, and then to Austin, the capitol of Texas. Not wanting to meet the marchers in the state capitol, Governor John Connally, Speaker of the House Ben Barnes, and Attorney General Waggoner Carr had met the marchers in New Braunfels in August. Connally, who favored agribusiness, tried unsuccessfully to dissuade them from entering the capitol. Tens of thousands of supporters converged on the Texas state capitol. Cesar Chavez and U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough participated. 61

After this action, the marchers wound their way through Starr and Hidalgo Counties. At the Roma Bridge in Starr County, they tried to take control of the bridge to stop the recruitment of undocumented workers to break the strike. Texas Rangers then made mass arrests. On September 30, 1967, a hurricane destroyed the citrus crop, depressing labor conditions and ending all hope of success. Chavez pulled back, saying that the strike had been premature in Texas. Chavez did not have the hberal support that the farmworkers had had in Califomia.62

Moreover, Texas growers were not as vulnerable to a secondary boycott. Chavez left Antonio Orendain, 37, in charge of membership and placement services in Texas. The strike was supported by Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio, and the Congressional Hearings drew attention to the Third World-like conditions in the Valley. Throughout the strike, the Rangers and the state bureaucratic establishment favored the growers.

Inspired by the campesino (farmworker) movement in California, and more directly by the events in Texas such as the takeover of Crystal City in 1963, Chicano activism increased in the Midwest during the second half of the 1960s. Twenty-two-year-old Jesus Salas, a native of Crystal City, Texas, led Texas-Mexican cucumber workers in Wisconsin. In January 1967, Salas orgacized an independent farmworkers’ union called Obreros Unidos (United Workers) of Wisconsin. The organization remained active throughout that year and the next and published La Voz del Pueblo. Financial difficulties and the loss of support of the AFL-CIO led to the end of Obreros Unidos in 1970.63

Michigan used more migrant workers than any other northern state. Led by Ruben Alfaro-a barber from Lansing–migrants, labor, and students from Michigan State marched on to Governor George Romney, hoping to get a commitment from him to support their crusade and veto any legislation that would “take away J

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 299

the human dignity of the migrant workers … ” Michigan attracted more than 100,000 migrants during the harvest season. Romney refused to take a stand. The migrants were supported by the AFL-CIO “in their crusade for better pay, housing, medical care and education for the migrants’ children:’ Alfaro garnered the support of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers (UFW), and of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who sent a telegram that ended with the words “Viva La Causal” They marched from Saginaw to Lansing, announc- ing, “Governor, our feet are sore … Some of us have walked more than 70 miles to tell you about our problems,” and handed the Lt. Governor their petition. A news reporter described the scene:

They held American and Mexican flags, and banners depicting the Virgin of Guadalupe-revered saint of Mexico. Hand-lettered signs carried such slogans as “Viva La Causa,” “Human Dignity for Migrant Workers” and “Chicken Coops are for the Bird.’>64

In 1967 in Ohio, Mexican farmworkers demanded better wages and enforcement of health and housing codes. Some 18,000-20,000 Mexicans worked in Wallace County, Ohio, and throughout the tomato belt that encircled northwest Ohio, southern Michigan, and northern Indiana. Hunt, Campbell Soup, Libby, McNeil, Vlasic, and Heinz controlled production. Baldemar Velasquez, 21, and his father organized a march in 1968 from Leipsic, Ohio, to the Libby tomato plant and a later march to the Campbell Soup plant. They established a newspaper, Nuestra Lucha (Our Struggle), and a weekly radio program. In 1968, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FWC) signed 22 contracts with small growers.65

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest La Raza was mobilizing against economic injustices. During the peak of the harvesting season, as many as 25,000 migrant Mexicans resided in the state of Washington. Migrant children attended only 21 weeks of school, and the Washington Citizens for Migrant Affairs pointed out that the migrant family had a median of five years of education. The heart of the migrant community was in the agriculturally rich Yakima Valley, where in 1965 the Yakima Valley Council for Community Action (YVCCA) was organized to coordinate War on Poverty programs. The next year, Tomas Villanueva and Guadalupe Gamboa from Yakima Valley College, traveled to California where they met with Cesar Chavez. Subsequently, in 1967 Villanueva helped organize the first Chicano activist organization in Washington. The Mexican American Federation was organized that year in Yakima, to advocate for community development and political empowerment in the Yakima Valley. In May 1967, Big Bend Community College raised expecta- tions by receiving a $500,000 grant for the basic education of 200 migrants. 66

The Road to Brown Power In 1968, 91 percent of the students enrolled in institutions of higher learning in the United States were white, 6 percent were African American, and just less than 2 percent were Latinos; probably less than half that number were of Mexican origin. Chicanos did not begin to enroll in college in significant numbers until after 1968 following the school walkouts in California and Texas. What set them apart from other students was that most, if not all, were from working-class families and first-generation college students. The Chicano student revolt beginning in that year challenged and rattled the tactics of middle-class Mexican American organizations.

The first challenge to the old guard by Chicano students came from Texas, where students organized in Kingsville at Texas A&I University in 1964. Jose Angel Gutierrez, Ambriocio Melendez, and Gabriel Tafoya, among others, formed the A&I student group, focusing on the usual issues of admission discrimination, segregated dorms, and poor housing. Organizers emphasized forging a Mexican student community in order to develop broader political power among the Mexican student community as a whole. In 1964, A&I Mexican students attended the PASO state convention, where they met Mexican students from Austin who had similar goals. The students successfully lowered the eligibility age for PASO membership from 21 to 18.67

Tejano students formed MAYO at St. Mary’s College in San Antonio in 1967. They had been energized by PASO’s 1963 Crystal City takeover. It was PASO’s involvement in La Casita Farms Corporation strike of 1966 in the Rio Grande Valley that Tejano historian David Montejano calls the catalyst for the Chicano Movement in Texas–especially for Mexican American students from Texas A&I and future MAYO leaders throughout the state. It was in the heat of the Casitas strike in the spring of 1967 that MAYO was formed in San Antonio. The

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organizers included Jose Angel Gutierrez, Nacho Perez, Mario Compean, and Willie Velasquez. Most of the founders were graduate students at St. Mary’s they were well aware of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), strategies of its leader Stokely Carmichael, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Port Huron statement. MAYO played an pivotal role in bringing about civil rights for Mexican Americans and developed a master plan to takeover boards of education and city councils throughout South Texas. Soon after its formation, other university and high school students started MAYO chapters mostly as a result of planned high school walkouts beginning in the spring of 1968 and extending into the 1970s. The strat- · egy was to build a cadre of organizers using charismatic leaders from the various school districts and establish beachheads in the campaign to seize political control. As the more than three dozen school walkouts rocked Texas, MAYO formed local chapters, which attracted Chicanas such as Choco Meza, Rosie Castro, Juanita Bustamante, Vrviana Santiago, and Luz Bazan Gutierrez who played leadership roles and helped build consensus in MAYO and later in La Raza Unida (the United Race) Party,68

MAYO differed from Mexican American student organizations in California. For example, in the mid-1960s there were few Chicano college students in California and elsewhere in the Southwest, whereas Texas, comparatively speaking, had a larger number of second-, third- and fourth-generation students attending college. In 1964, there were about 1,030 Chicano students, or 25 percent of the total student body, at Texas A&I-not a significant number, but in relation to California or Colorado, for example, substantial. By contrast, San Fernando Valley State (now California State University at Northridge) had less than a dozen Chicanos. Rampant discrimination and enforced social constraints unified Chicanos at Texas A&l. Though not ideologically united, they socialized together, eventually forming informal networks. This pattern was also evident at other universities, where racism encouraged group organizing. By marked contrast, California institutions favored a dispersion of Mexican students until about 1967.69

The next challenge came from California, where Mexican American youth were the most urbanized in the Southwest and thus were subject to fewer institutional and social constraints. When California youth entered the Chicano Movement, they did not have to deal with large entrenched organizations such as the American G.I. Forum or LULAC. However, the black and white radical student movements as well as the farmworkers movements around them politicized California students. They listened to radio broadcasts teeming with music of social protest. By the mid-1960s, youth in California had become more politically aware–partly because of the national youth revolution and partly because the Mexican American movement itself had pushed educational issues to the forefront.

By 1967, more students of Mexican-origin began filtering into the colleges. That year, students at East Los· Angeles Community College formed the Mexican American Student Association (MASA) and on May 13, 1967, Chicano students met at Loyola University (Los Angeles) and founded the United Mexican American Students (UMAS). Most were first-generation college students; most were the children of immigrants.70 On December 16-17, 1%7, the second general UMAS conference was held at the University of Southern California campus.

Majority of Chicano students identified with the UFW; its successes and tnbulations became their own. On campus, they joined with the black student movement and the SDS. By the spring of 1969, Chicano college student organizations were beginning to spread throughout California. Priority issues included public educa- tion, access to universities, Mexican American studies programs, and the Vietnam War. Speakers such as Corky Gonzales71 and Reies L6pez Tijerina72 added to the momentum.

Almost simultaneously, Chicano student associations formed throughout the country-in places like Tucson, Phoenix, Seattle and the Midwest-in large part motivated by the UFW boycott and the alienation on campus.73 In 1968,Alfredo Gutierrez, who had been with the grape boycott since 1%5 and a student at Arizona State University at Tempe, along with graduate student Miguel Montiel, led the Mexican American Student Organization (MASO). Early members included Maria Rose Garrido and Christine Marin. MASO developed strong ties with Gustavo Gutierrez and the Arizona Farm. In 1967, in Tucson, Arizona, Salom6n Baldenegro, a student with a strong sense of justice and identification with the Civil Rights, antiwar, and labor movements, organized the Mexican American Liberation Committee at the University of Arizona, where he recruited RaUl Grijalva, Isabel Garcia, and Guadalupe Castillo, who were high school students; the committee advocated bilingual and Mexican culture classes. This organization evolved into the Mexican American Student Association (MASA).74

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 301

In New Mexico, students at Highlands University organized to demand the end of the suppression of Spanish, history classes that reflected the Mexican American experience, more Mexican American teachers, and school counseling programs. By 1968 the protests were taking place against the schools at Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Espanola, Portales Rosewell, and Santa Fe. That year the Brown Berets and the Black Berets began operating in Albuquerque. The same year in the northern part of the state, El Grito del Norte began publica- tion.75 Also MAYA (later the Chicano Youth Association) began to appear on campuses. Meanwhile, small numbers of Chicano students began filtering into the colleges of the Pacific Northwest and Midwest.

The Making of a Movement In California and elsewhere the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) gave Chicanas and Chicanos a tremendous boost; as mentioned, before 1968 colleges could count the number of Chicano students in the dozens. For the first time, many received financial aid and were recruited to go to college–much the same way as athletes were. The added presence of Chicano youth on campuses nurtured the considerable discontent festering in the barrios themselves. On the campuses and in the barrios, the injustice of the Vietnam War took on an added air of urgency. As mentioned, many white and black students were from middle-class backgrounds and thus were very much involved with the Civil Rights and antiwar movements. Many of the white student rad- icals were red diaper babies, that is their parents had been involved in radical politics; many African-American .students had been involved through their churches. The political involvement of Chicano students was new.

The Vietnam War split many Mexican American organizations with those opposing the war being accu5ed of unpatriotic motives and even cowardliness. In California in 1966, largely through the work of peace activists, the MAPA executive board passed a resolution condemning the war in Vietnam. In Texas, Chicano public leaders such as Commissioner Albert Pena Jr., State Senator Joe Bernal, Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, and Archbishop Robert Lucey opposed the war by 1967, although Hector Garcia of the G.I. Forum continued to support I.BJ, sending representatives to the airport to greet the coffins of dead Mexican Americans.

As with the movement as a whole, the 1960s’ veteranos/veteranas worked alongside recent converts and aided the socialization process. Dolores Huerta became vice president of the UFW, while East Los Angeles Chicana activists like Julia Luna Mount and her sister Celia Luna de Rodriguez, active since the 1930s, continued working for social change. Luna de Rodriguez, a key organizer in the Barrio Defense Committee, spoke out against police abuse. Julia Luna Mount, active in the 40th Assembly District chapter of MAPA, often criticized MAPA leadership. Julia was a driving force in the antiwar movement even before the mid-1960s. She unsuccess- fully ran for the Los Angeles School Board in 1967, and was a founding member of the Peace and Freedom Party. Her daughter Tania was a leader in the 1968 East L.A. school walkouts.76

The Formation of Core Groups Beginning in 1963, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission-staffed by Richard Villalobos, Mike Duran, and others-sponsored annual Chicano junior high and high school student conferences, which pushed identity politics. The commission conducted seminars and invited speakers to motivate student leaders. At these sessions, students not only discussed identity but also compared the grievances they had against their schools. For example, Chicanos had an over 50 percent high school dropout rate: 53.8 percent of Chicanos dropped out at Garfield and 47.5 at Roosevelt. Many of the seminar participants went on to become leaders in the 1968 student walkouts. High school students such as Vicki Castro, Jorge Lic6n, John Ortiz, David Sanchez, Rachel Ochoa, and Moctesuma Esparza attended the 1966 conference at Camp Hess Kramer, sponsored by the County Human Relations Commission. These students formed the Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA) in May 1966. In 1967, the Young Citizens worked for the election of Julian Nava to the Los Angeles School Board.

Student leader David Sanchez was recruited to go to Father John B. Luce’s Social Action Training Center at the Church of the Epiphany (Episcopal) in Lincoln Heights. The center associated with the CSO. Luce introduced Sanchez to Richard Alatorre, a staff member of the Los Angeles Community Services Program, who helped him get an appointment to the Mayor’s Youth Council. Mpctesuma Esparza, another veteran of the Hess Kramer conference, was also a member. Meanwhile, <?ther members of the Youth Council became more

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politicized by the Training Center, and by meeting people like Cesar Chavez. This transition is reflected in the name change of their organization to the for Community Action.

Also emerging from the Church of the Epiphany’s’ advocacy efforts was the La Raza (The Race, or The People) newspaper, founded by Eleazar Risco, a Cuban national. Risco had helped publish El Malcriado, the farmworker newspaper. Risco arrived in Los Angeles in 1967 to help organize a grape boycott and soon after- ward formed the Barrio Communications Project. Although it had a populist flavor, La Raza had a clear focus on barrio issues. 77 Father Luce’s Social Action Training Center attracted other activists, such as Lincoln Heights Teen Post director Carlos Montes.

The East L.A. Walkouts By the 1968-1969 academic year, Latino students in East Los Angeles made up 96 percent of Garfield High School, 83 percent of Roosevelt, 89 percent of Lincoln, 76 percent of Wilson, and 59 percent of Belmont. Sal Castro, a teacher at Lincoln High School, was well known among students, helped them articulate their discontent. As early as September 1967, Castro spoke to students at the Piranya Coffee House (which the YCCA had established in October 1967), about the failure of the schools to provide quality education, access to the latest college prep courses, and counseling. By early 1968, the group formed the Brown Berets, led by David Sanchez. Their goal was to put an end to the discrimination and other injustices suffered by Chicano students. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles sheriffs department harassed them; consequently, the Berets led demonstrations against the police. Sanchez was arrested at a February 20, 1968 demonstration, following which he spent 60 days at Wayside Maximum-Security facility.

Meanwhile, high school and college students held strategy sessions and discussions on the blowout (walk- out). As a result of Castro’s involvement, the students articulated clear demands. Castro, during the planning stages of the blowouts, worked very closely with UMAS students who were a bridge to the high school students.

Castro had been in trouble at Belmont High in 1963, when he encouraged Mexican-origin students to form a slate and run for student government. When the slate won, administrators accused Castro of being divisive for telling the students to say a couple of words in Spanish-as John F. Kennedy had done at Olvera Street during his presidential campaign. The transfer of Castro from Belmont to Lincoln High had caused community uproar. School officials thought that Castro and not the schools were the problem.

In March 1968, nearly 10,000 Chicano students walked out of five Los Angeles high schools-Lincoln, Roosevelt, Garfield, Wilson, and Belmont-following their example, students at Jefferson, a predominately black school, also walked out. Although high school students formed the core of the walkouts, Chicana college students like Vicki Castro from California State University, Los Angeles, and Rosalinda Mendez (later Gonzalez) from Occidental College, as well as the leadership of UMAS chapters also provided leadership. Tanya Luna Mount, a student organizer at Roosevelt High School and a junior, encouraged her fellow students to boycott; she witnessed and wrote about the senseless overreaction of police. Paula Crist6stomo, a senior at Lincoln High, who had previously attended the Camp Hess Kramer Youth Conference, and Margarita Mita Cuar6n, a sophomore at Garfield High School urged students to walk out. Police targeted the Brown Berets, who were present only for security, using them as a pretext to brutally suppress the walkout participants. (One of the leaders, Moctesuma Esparza, produced a film, Walkout (2006), memorializing the events.)78

Prior to the walkout, the school system had pushed out more than 50 percent of the Chicano high school students, through either expulsion or transfers to other schools. Eastside schools were overcrowded and run- down compared with Euro-American and black schools. The students demanded racist teachers to be removed, charging that school authorities had implemented a curriculum that purposely obscured the Chicanos’ culture and programed students to be content with low-skilled jobs. In 1967, only 3 percent of the teachers and 1.3 per- cent of administrators had Spanish surnames, and many of these were white women married to Latinos. Whites made up 78 percent of the teachers, 91.4 percent of the administrators, and 54 percent of the students-more than 20 percent of the students were Latinos. Chicano community leaders and supporters formed the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee (EICC) to defend the students and to follow up on their demands.

It was clear that sheriffs’ deputies and police had overreacted and treated the protests as insurrections. Police authorities wanted to make an example of Mexican Americans and control and subjugate them. Many

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activists were caught by surprise; however, moderates began to question the fairness of the justice system and were radicalized by the events. They were moved by Sal Castro, who said he had walked out with his students, because in good conscience he could not remain inside the school, because the demands of his students were legitimate. 79

On June 2, 1968, a Los Angeles grand jury indicted Castro and other activists on charges that included conspiracy to commit misdemeanors. (After two years of appeals, the courts found the counts unconstitu- tional).80 The California Department of Education attempted to revoke Castro’s credentials, and he was subject to frequent and arbitrary administrative transfers. Meanwhile, on September 1968, several thousand protesters, led by the EICC, marched in front of Lincoln High School, demanding Castro’s reinstatement to Lincoln. During these confrontations, unexpected help came from the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, who met with Chicano leaders. Kennedy had enlightened Chicanas such as Lupe Anguiano and Polly Baca on his campaign staff, and he was one of the few politicos of any race to reach out to youth.81

Chicana/o Student Militancy Spreads The Los Angeles walkouts, because of the size of the blowouts and the location, called national attention to the Chicanos’ plight in education, and encouraged other walkouts throughout the Southwest and the Midwest. On March 20, 1968, students walked out of classes at Denver’s West Side High School. They made demands for Mexican teachers, counselors, and courses, as well as for better facilities. Twenty-five people were arrested, including Corky Gonzales.

The perfect storm hit Texas as more than 39 separate walkouts of students hit Texas. As mentioned, MAYO agitated throughout Texas from the spring of 1968 through the early 1970s. The first walkout in Texas occurred at Lanier High School in San Antonio on April 9, 1968. The student council elections triggered the strike when teachers did not approve the nominees and suspended student council member Elida Aguilar for insubordination. Willie Velasquez of MAYO, persuaded the students to form a coordinating committee and to incorporate larger concerns into their demands. Seven hundred students walked out demanding more academic courses, the right to speak Spanish and more democracy. More pungent was the students’ demand for Mexican American history and culture classes. The importance of the walkouts was that it generated considerable com- munity support. Among early supporters were the Neighborhood Youth Corp, the Bishops Committee for Spanish Speaking, State Senator Joe Bernal, County Commissioner Alberto Pefia, and Councilman Felix Trevifio.82 Pefia received a standing ovation when he said “We’re handicapped because we have an educational system that doesn’t understand bilingual students:>S3

On May 16, students rose once again against racist administrators. A young Willie Velasquez-then a graduate student at St. Mary’s University, and later an activist who would earn a national reputation- exhorted the students:

With the education you get at Edgewood, most of you are going to wind up either in Vietnam or as a ditchdigger … At Jefferson, Alamo Heights or Lee, there is a chance that you’ll go to college. But 85 per cent of you will not go-$80 a week is the most you will earn the rest of your life … Tell Stemhauser this is the problem.»84

The walkout was 80 percent effective. The students ended the boycott on Sunday, May 19, to show that they were not walking out on education. 85 Fundamental to the strike was the district’s inability to attract qualified teachers. The all-Mexican Edgewood high spent $356 per student annually versus $594 at Alamo Heights which was predominately white. On June 30, Demetro Rodriguez, Martin CantU, Reynaldo Castafiono, and Alberta Snid tiled a suit against San Antonio in the Federal District Court citing the inequality in funding. 86

Meanwhile, MAYO based its campaign on a brand of Tejano nationalism calculated to take political control of South Texas. Tejano nationalism was based on the Texas experience: a blend of Mexican history, fam- ily values, Tejano music, and the Spanish language.87 The next stepping stone was at Edouch-Elsa High (and middle) school in Hidalgo County. This was the first strike in the rural Iqo Grande Valley.Chicano students there suffered numerous indignities. By mid-October 1968, students and parents had pegun informal meet- ings, with a few MAYO members, VISTA volunteers, and PASO members in att,endance. The chair was Jesus

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Ramirez, a MAYO member. It was supported by State Senator Joe Bernal, and Dr. Hector Garcia, the founder of the G.I. Forum, was present. On November 13, the students rose from their desks and walked out. The school officials bypassed the local police and reported the walkout to county sheriffs, who arrested the walkout lead- ers. Meanwhile, the superintendent suspended 168 students for three days.ss Here again students objected to the “No Spanish” rule and wanted classes on Mexican American contributions to Texas history. The students demanded courses and counseling that would prepare them for college. They demanded an end to discrimina- tion. s9 When the students were expelled, the recently organized Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) filed a suit, and board policy was ruled unconstitutional.90

According to Jose Angel Gutierrez, MAYO led or participated in at least 39 walkouts before the December 1969 Crystal City walkout. Beachheads were established at these venues with local MAYO members leading walkouts in communities where they grew up. The walkouts hit a common nerve that many of the adults identified with. They demanded the right to speak Spanish, the right to learn about , Mexican American history, the right to get a quality education, and schools that were free of discrimination. The walkouts made them a movement-it had brought to the surface the community’s moral outrage.

Elsewhere on May 5, 1970, Chicano students walked out of Delano Joint Union High School in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Protest was centered on the denial of a Chicano speaker at an assembly. On May 7, police encircled the school. The walkout lasted till the end of the school year. Police arrested the strikers when they attempted to enter graduation ceremonies; protesters were beaten up and dragged into padded wagons.91 The perfect storm, which spread throughout the Southwest, had a tremendous impact on the participants; many of the students remained activists and went on to receive higher education.

The Brown Berets and White Angst The group causing the maximum overreaction from police authorities was the Brown Berets. Law enforcement authorities actually believed that the Brown Berets were capable of overthrowing the government. The police and sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles abandoned reason in harassing, intimidating, and persecuting the Brown Berets, a treatment that few other Chicano organizations have experienced in recent times. Police and sheriffs’ deputies raided the Berets, infiltrated them, hbeled and slandered them, and even encouraged counter- groups to attack members. The objective was to destroy the Berets and to invalidate them in the public eye.

The police and sheriff’s departments made the Brown Berets scapegoats, branding members as outside agitators while playing down the legitimate grievances of Chicano students. A grand jury later indicted 13 Chicanos on conspiracy charges stemming from the walkouts; 7 were Brown Berets. The defendants appealed, and the appellate court ruled the case unconstitutional, but only after years of legal harassment.

Law enforcement agencies infiltrated the Berets with informers and special agents iria bid to entrap the members by encouraging acts of violence. Police purposely subverted the Berets, keeping them in a state of flux and preventing the organization from solidifying. Meanwhile, Berets dealt with the immediate needs of the barrios-food, housing, employment, and education. The conflict and the street molded their ideology. On May 23, 1969, the Berets began publishing a monthly newspaper called La Causa (The Cause), which became a vehicle to attract new members. Chicanas, such as Gloria Arellanes, the Brown Berets’ Minister of Finance and Correspondence, assumed key roles in the establishment and operation of La Causa. In addition, Arellanes, along with Andrea Sanchez, organized a free medical clinic, managed by Chicana members of the Berets. (Other Beret chapters also established free clinics and free breakfast programs.) The clinic raised issues of control and strained relations between Sanchez and other women, eventually leading to a schism; these women left the Berets.92

Brown Berets chapters spread through the Mexican barrios of San Antonio, Albuquerque, El Paso, Denver, Seattle and San Diego-indeed, no one yet knows how many barrios had chapters, only that the chapters were small.93 However, to white America they were the symbols of Brown Power and terrorism. It is unimaginable how reasonable people could see young men and women wearing their brown berets and kaki uniforms and be struck with so much terror and exaggerate their numbers. Texas A&M graduate student Jennifer G. Correa obtained 1,200 pages of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Surveillance Files, focusing on East Los Angeles, under the Freedom of ln&.rmation Act. The documents reveal, among other information, that in 1968 FBI Director J Edgar Hoover had

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decided to fully investigate the Brown Berets in order to find out if they were a “threat to national security of the United States;’ admonishing agents in Sacramento and San Diego for not gathering enough information on the Berets. Agents responded that the Berets were under “continuous and aggressive investigative attention.” Considering the small numbers of berets, the FBI reaction can only be labeled as delusional, and their actions as an abuse of authority, since they were directed at spying and controlling a movement.

However, this abuse mirrored the fears of American society. As late as July l, 1976, the Syracuse Herald- Journal in New York carried headlines such as “Brown Beret Alert Cancelled: Police Playing Down Border Terrorist Warning:’ The Herald-Journal warned its readers about the Brown Berets, a little-known, but according to the newspaper, a heavily armed radical group that reportedly vowed “to kill a cop:’ Brown Berets were allegedly driving around the East Coast in broad daylight in vans. According to the article, the New York State Troopers were in touch with the FBI concerning the Berets and their possible threat to the Montreal Olympics. 94

Tlatelolco, Mexico On October 2, 1968, in the Tlatelolco (once an Azteca stronghold) district of Mexico City-just ten days before the opening of the XIX Olympiad-a massacre occurred, which resulted in a tightening of the Chicanos’ emotional bonds with Mexico. Soldiers and riot police opened fire on a demonstration held by thousands of citizens, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Mexicans, most of them students. The Mexican government tried to play down the slaughter, claiming that “only” a dozen or so were murdered; more conservative estimates put the figure at more than 500 dead or missing.

Student activists exposed the atrocities in documentaries such as The Frozen Revolution, which were played in classrooms and halls throughout the United States. La matanza (the massacre) led to movements such as that of Rosario Ibarra, who demanded to know the fate of the more than 500 desaparecidos (the disappeared), including her son. Chicano youth supported the Mexicans’ struggle, and students hung posters reviving memories ofTlatelolco and, even farther back, the Mexican Revolution. Tlatelolco added to the anger and experiences of Chicano youth, who identified with the Mexican youth.95

“Wild tribes of … the inner mountains of Mexico” On January 27, 1960, Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission: “Some of these people [Mexicans] were here before we were but some are not far removed from the wild tribes of the district of the inner mountains of Mexico.” It caused an uproar, but Police Commissioner R. J. Carre6n Jr. said that he had heard Parker’s story and ordered the Mexican American community to drop the controversy. Local newspapers excused Parker, and they went as far as to censure Edward R. Roybal for demanding an apology and/or Parker’s resignation, accusing Roybal of demagoguery.

Parker’s racist attitude was replicated in many instances of police brutality that came about in the succeeding years. In 1966, for example, the L.A. police called for a backup team when an angry crowd gathered as police attempted to make an arrest. Police fired two warning shots into the crowd. In July, the Happy Valley Parents Association organized a monitor.ing of police. In September of that year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in cooperation with the CSO, opened a center in East Los Angeles. (From September 1966 to July 1968, the ACLU had investigated 205 police abuse cases, 152 filed by Chicanos.)%

In the summer of 1967 some 300 Chicanos attended a conference on police-community relations at Camp Hess Kramer. Police-community relations in Los Angeles had readied a new low, and the participants asked the federal government to intervene. The failure of the federal government to protect the rights of the community worsened the situation. Meanwhile, the political consciousness increased throughout California. Older activists of MAPA, CSO, LULAC, and the American G.I. Forum, as well as youth, professionals, and poverty workers, criticized the schools and the government’s treatment of Mexican Americans. Many new organizations such as the Association of Mexican Educators (AMEA, 1965) and UMAS (1967) advertised the community’s frustrations. Mexican;Americans; concerned about their lack of gains made in comparison with African Americans, insisted that more attention be paid to their needs. Nationalism expressed itself as a pride in identity and a rejection of assimilation as a goal. 97 .

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Meanwhile, tensions rose even higher as the Vietnam War sabotaged Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. By 1966, the government’s commitment to ending poverty was sliding backward; it spent $22 billion on the war in Southeast Asia compared with about $1.5 billion to fight poverty. Nevertheless, as late as 1967, Hector P. Garcia assured LBJ that, “As far as I know, the majority, if not the total Mexican American people, approve of your present course of action in Vietnam.”98

Gringos and Tejanos On March 30, 1969, some 2,000 Chicanos assembled at San Felipe Del Rio (about 160 miles west of San Antonio) to protest Governor Preston Smith’s cancellation of a VISTA program. Smith had canceled the program because VISTA workers participated in a demonstration against the police beatings of Uvalde resident Natividad Fuentes and his wife. The G.I. Forum, LULAC, and other organizations supported the mass rally.

Jose Angel Gutierrez, 24, a MAYO speaker at Del Rio, demanded reinstatement of the VISTA program and protested inequality, poverty, and police brutality throughout Texas. At the rally Gutierrez said, “We are fed up. We are going to move to do away with the injustices to the Chicano and if the ‘gringo’ doesn’t get out of our way, we will stampede over him.” Gutierrez gave vent to his anger with the gringo establishment at a press conference and called upon Chicanos to “Kill the gringo,” by which he meant that the white rule of Mexicans should end, and not literally killing the white people. Nevertheless, Representative Henry B. Gonz3lez from San Antonio, who called for a grand jury investigation of MAYO, attacked Gutierrez.99

Gutierrez was a product of Texas culture-a Confederate state with a tradition of southern racism and historical exclusion of Mexican Americans. Texans had never come to grips with the fact that Mexicans had won at the Alamo. Texas also spawned national leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council. In the 1960s, whites could still count on the Texas Rangers to keep Mexicans in their place in South Texas, one of the most deprived regions of the country. Gutierrez and the “we’ve had enough” rhetoric appealed to many whom society had marginalized. Ranger Joaquin Jackson, a long-time adversary, says of Gutierrez, “He radiat- ed cunning, resourcefulness, intelligence, and charisma. A tireless worker and a gifted, passionate speaker, he was further armed with the conviction that he was right.” In his book, Jackson also acknowledges the merit of the Chicano grievances against the system. 100

Tex-Mexicans lived in a string of dusty, neglected towns on the “wrong side of the tracks:’ Mexican Americans resented their status and poverty. The intensity of racism fostered nationalism among them, causing frustration at the moderate way older organizations such as LULAC and the G.I. Forum dealt with the gringo establishment. A nucleus of Chicano students was tired of being docile; they knew what black militancy had achieved, and they were influenced not only by the black literature of the time but also by a handful of progres- sive white professors. Jose Angel Gutierrez was one of the leaders, who expressed the frustrations of the MAYO generation. His contribution to the Chicano cause was indispensable; it influenced Chicanos throughout the country. IOI

On June 20, 1969, Luz Bazan Gutierrez, 102 Jose Angel Gutierrez, and several young volunteers moved to Angel’s hometown of Crystal City (population 8,500), Texas, to organize politically and launch the Winter Garden Project (WGP), which was oriented toward community control and committed to the decolonization of South Texas.103 Although Chicanos composed more than 85 percent of its Wmter Garden area, a white minority, who owned 95 percent of the land, controlled the city’s politics. The agribusiness income in Durnrnit, La Salle, and Zavala Counties totaled about $31 million; yet, in Zavala County, the median family income was $1,754 a year. The median years of education was 2.3 grades for Chicanos. More than 70 percent of the Chicano students dropped out of Crystal City High School. School authorities vigorously enforced a “no-Spanish” rule. Few Mexicans held offices or were professionals; those who received an education moved away. Euro-Americans considered themselves racially and culturally superior to Chicanos. The Texas Rangers patrolled the area, terror- izing Mexicans. Adding to the plight of the Chicanos, a substantial number of them were migrants who had to follow the crops. Many Mexicans routinely left the Wmter Garden area in late spring and did not return until the fall. Small hamlets of the region became ghost towns during this period.

A school crisis at Crystal City in November 1969 gave the young volunteers the ideal issue with which to confront the gringo. Although Chicanos comprised the majority of students in the system,

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school policy excluded them from participating in much of the extracurricular activities. When students complained,. the school board ignored them, refusing to even discuss the grievances. Left with no other alternative, parents and students organized a school boycott in December. Student leader Severita Lara published and distributed leaflets and agitated the students. Here again, polemics played a role in agitating parents, and MAYO and the Gutierrezes were an indispensable part of this discourse on political vocabulary building. Over 1,700 Chicano students participated in the walkout; the students and their parents formed a citizen’s organization and decided that Mexicans would take over the school board in the spring election of 1970.104

Meanwhile, during the first quarter of 1970, LRUP emerged from the citizen action group. Intensive mobilization took place, and in April 1970, LRUP won four of the seven seats on the Crystal City Board of Education; all of the Chicano candidates for city councils in Carrizo Springs, Cotula, and Crystal City also won the elections. Cotula also had its first Chicano mayor. The box score for Chicanos in the Wmter Garden area was 15 elected with two new mayors, two school board majorities, and two city council majorities. Only one gringo won election. The Cristal (Crystal City) victory used the MAYO Plan for Aztlan as a template. They intended to use Cristal as the lynchpin across the Trail” -the migrants’ trail from Texas throughout the Midwest and Northwest-to spread their political revo!t. 105

The Land Struggle The history of the land grant is rooted in the past and memorialized by Spanish law, which in New Mexico institutionalized common land usage. In this system, the holding of land and the peasant farmers’ place in the society were central to their identification and social status. The ejido (communal land) operated alongside private grants to individuals, with villages holding common lands such as forests or pastures. The community of peasants collectively owned the common land. The ejido has been romanticized in Mexican history on both sides of the border, with historical figures such as Emiliano Zapata immortalized for calling for the redistribu- tion of latifundio (a large plantation) lands to the peasants. New Mexicans at the same time idealized the ownership of communal lands and lamented the loss of ancestral acreage.

The U.S. conquest marked an end to this way of life, as private developers took control of the water, common lands, and finally the villagers’ farms. Memories of the past remained strong in the minds of many New Mexicans, who alleged that the gringo had taken the land from them in violation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). Emotions run high to this day.

In 1963, local activist Reies Lopez Tijerina formed La Alianza Federal de Mercedes (The Federal Alliance of Land Grants), invoking the Treaty of Guadalupe in the struggle to hold on to common lands. The Alianza’s membership jumped from 6,000 in 1964 to 14,000 one year later. A basic premise of the Alianza’s demands was that people don’t “give away” their lands or rights in treaties. For them, forcing a defeated nation to “sell” territory under duress was intrinsically unjust.

Reies Lopez Tijerina was born in 1926, in Fall City, Texas, where his family lived a marginal existence. Tijerina became a preacher and wandered into northern New Mexico, where he witnessed the poverty of the people. El Tigre (the Tiger), as Tijerina was called, became interested in the land-grant question. He studied the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and became convinced that the national forest in Tierra Amarilla belonged to the Pueblo de San Joaquin de Chama. Ejido land belonged to the people in common and could not be sold. Villagers had the right to graze their animals and cut and gather timber in these forestlands. 106

The Forest Service through the early 1960s had ardently restricted the number of cattle permitted to graze in forestlands. For dryland ranchers, having a permit was a matter oflife and death. During the first part of the decade, Alianza members staged protests, petitioned government, appealed to public opinion, and sought alliances with African Americans and Native Americans among others. The Alianza raised the cry of “Tierra y Libertad!” (Land and Liberty!).

On October 15, 1966, Tijerina and 350 Alianza members occupied the Echo Amphitheater in the national forest campground, claiming the ejido rights of the Pueblo de San Joaquin de Chama. On October 22, Alianza members made a citizens’ arrest and detained two Rangers for trespassing and being a public nuisance. The “Alianza court” found them guilty but suspended the sentence.

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After Tijerina was charged with illegal trespa.sSing on national forest land and other crimes, 20 Alianza members entered TierraAmarilla to make a citizen’s arrest of District Attorney Alfonso Slinchez. In doing so, the members wounded a jailer. The government sent 200 military vehicles (including tanks), almost 400 soldiers, and scores of police and lawmen to hunt down Tijerina. On November 6, 1967, Tijerina stood trial. A jury convicted him of two counts of assault, and the judge sentenced him to two years in a state penitentiary. Tijerina immediately appealed the verdict.

In May and June of 1968, Tijerina participated in the Poor People’s Campaign, threatening to pull the Chicano contingent out if black organizers did not treat them as equals. In the fall, he ran for governor of New Mexico on the People’s Constitutional Party ticket In mid-February 1969, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the Amphitheater conviction; Tijerina’s lawyer immediately appealed to the Supreme Court.107 In June, El Tigre again attempted to occupy the Kit Carson National Forest at the Coyote Campsite. Tijerina stood trial in late 1968 for the Tierra Amarilla raid at which Tijerina acted in his own defense. Much of the trial centered on the right to make a citizen’s arrest. Tijerina proved his point, and the jury entered a verdict of not guilty.

The higher court denied Tijerina’s appeal on the Amphitheater case, and Tijerina went to prison. For seven months, prison authorities kept him in isolation. Tijerina became a symbol, convicted of political crimes rather than crimes against “society.” Authorities released him in the summer of 1971.

The Crusade for Justice Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales symbolized the struggle for control of the urban barrios. Born in Denver on June 18, 1928, the son of migrant sugar beet workers, Gonzales grew up the hard way-using his fists. A Golden Gloves champion who turned professional, he was a featherweight contender from 1947 to 1955. He later started a bail bonds business and opened an auto insurance agency. During the 1960s, Gonzales became increasingly critical of the system. In 1963, he organized Los Voluntarios (The Volunteers), who protested against police brutality. Two years later he became a director of Denver’s War on Poverty youth programs, but he was fired for his involvement in the Albuquerque EEOC walkout. He published his own newspaper, El Gallo: La· Voz de la Justicia (The Rooster: The Voice of Justice).

Gonzales’s epic poem, “I Am Joaquin,” was the most influential piece of Chicano Movement literature written in the 1960s.108 Luis Valdez of the Teatro Campesino made the poem into a film documentary. Conditions differed in barrios such as Denver and Los Angeles, where an identity crisis had developed after World War II. Corky Gonzales understood and summed up this identity crisis in his poem.

Gonzales went on to form a new Denver advocacy organization called the Crusade for Justice; it operated a school, a curio shop, a bookstore, and a social center. The Denver school, named Tlatelolco: La Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Tlatelolco: The Plaza of the Three Cultures), had about 200 students, from preschool to college age. On June 29, 1968, the Crusade led a march on Denver police headquarters to protest an officer-related killing of 15-year-old Joseph Archuleta. In 1969, the Crusade backed and participated in a walkout at West Side High School, with parents in support. That same year, the Crusade organized the First Annual Chicano Youth Conference at Denver, where participants adopted El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan-a revolutionary plan that promulgated the term Chicano as a symbol of resistance.109

Every political movement is driven by moral outrage and symbols that inspire unity. Alurista (Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia), a poet and activist, wrote the Plan using the symbol of Aztlan as confrontational, saying to white America, “we were here first, so if you don’t like it go back to where you came from!” 110 Aztlan was the mythical or legendary homeland of the Aztecas. It is significant to point out that the Disturnell Map (1847), considered the most authoritative map of its time, was used as the official map to designate the boundary between the United States and Mexico; it noted the Antigua Residencia de los Aztecas, which it placed north of the Hopi Indians, so this was hardly Alurista’s invention.111 (The Chicano Movement was very adept at using symbols which some would label nationalistic. One of the most interesting collectives was based in Sacramento, California, and called itself the Royal Chicano Air Force [RCAF]. It was comprised of artists and poets, the most prominent of whom was Jose Montoya; a poet, artist, and musician. Even the name of the group was in society’s face.)112

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Meanwhile, the Crusade worked with Native American organizations such as the American Indian Movement (AIM), supporting AIM during the Native Warriors”‘ Era oflndian Power:’ It maintained close ties with AIM cofounder Dennis Banks and supported AIM in 1972 as it launched its Trail of Broken Treaties caravan, calling attention to the plight of Native Americans. The Crusade perceived Mexicans as native peoples–pointing out that 60 percent of Mexicans were mestiws and another 30 percent were full-blooded Indian. (Less than one percent of Euro-Americans have Native American blood.) The Crusade also strongly supported black activist and scholar Angela Davis. Gonzales and the Crusade assisted in establishing the Colorado branch ofLRUP, which ran candidates for state and local offices on November 4, 1970.113

El Grito del Norte The Chicano Movement attracted activists such as Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez from the Civil Rights movement Martinez brought in experiences that helped define oppression in the context of multinational struggle. In the late 1950s, Martinez worked for the United Nations as a researcher on colonialism. In the l 96!)s, she participated in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi and became coordinator of SNCC’s New York office. Martinez played a key role in this movement, editing and discussing the works of major Civil Rights activists. She also worked with the Black Panthers. In 1968, she moved to New Mexico, where she cofounded and published El Grito Del Norte (The Call of the North) for five years, while working on various barrio projects. El Grito Del Norte was the first internationalist and nationalist Chicano newspaper published and almost totally staffed and run by women. The newspaper was based in Espanola, New Mexico, which is significant in view of the historic independence of women in this region. New Mexico was a natural starting place, since it was a classic colony. Among other books, Martinez coauthored Viva la Raza: The Struggle of the Mexican American People with Enriqueta Vasquez. A theme in Martinez’s works is a critique of capitalism and the effects of exploitation.114

Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez was a New Mexican activist, who coedited El Grito Del Norte. Vasquez, born in Colorado of farmworker parents, had been involved with Denver activist Corley Gonzales and the Crusade for Justice. 115 Her passionate columns denounced capitalism, the military, the Catholic Church, and “gringo” society. Vasquez wrote vigorously about women’s issues, highlighting that women’s liberation was possible within the Chicano movement. Some Chicanas later criticized her writing on femi- nist issues as “loyalist;’ alleging that she was loyal to male networks of power. However, others point out that Vasquez was working within the Chicano movement at the time, attempting to change it, and that she was one of the first Chicanas to publicly take on the issue of Chicana oppression in the mainstream press as well as in the alternative press. In her column jDespierten Hermanos!Vasquez encouraged the total liberation of both men and women and drew the connection between racism and capitalism.116

Other Movement Voices Discussing all the varied voices of the time would be impossible. There were literally scores of newspapers, magazines, and independently published poems and essays. Further, there were conjuntos (small musical groups) that played and composed movement songs. Visual artists like Malaquias Montoya produced politically inspired posters that have become classics. One of the best-known cultural artists was Luis Valdez of the Teatro Campesino, who contributed greatly to the growth of the new consciousness and to the formation of other teatros (theaters). Starting as a farmworker group, the Teatro Campesino publicized in one-act plays the strug- gle of farmworkers and of Chicanos in general. It played corridos that popularized the Chicanos’ struggle for liberation in the United States. 117 Also important was the publication of El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought, which began in the fall of 1967. It was published by Octavio Romano, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who organized Quinto Sol, a publishing collective. El Grito pub- lished, in addition to poetry and art, scholarly articles challenging U.S. scholarship and criticizing its effect on Chicanos. Meanwhile, an active Chicano art movement was formed by the discourse of the times, heightening cultural awareness.118 Finally, there was a plethora of local activist magazines and newspapers. One of them was published by Francisca Flores, an activist for all of her life; she worked on the Sleep Lagoon case, consulted

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with Carey Mc Williams on North from Mexico, and edited Carta Editorial in the early and mid-60s. She was a leader in la Asociacion Mexico Americana and a critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy. During the 1960s she opposed the Vietnam War and founded Regeneracion, named after the Partido Liberal Mexicano’s newspaper. Francisca played an important role in pushing the progressive agenda of Chicanos during the 1960s and into the 1970s. Based on her experience she brought a clear vision of societal problems and what was to be done. She was at the vanguard of feminist expressions of the time.119

Arts flourished during this period. Influenced by the artists of the Mexican Revolution Chicana/o artists wanted to paint murals with strong political messages; they were also influenced by public murals painted under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. The art was often raw with strong political messages attached to the UFW and political currents such as the Crusade for Justice and La Raza Unida. Frequent themes were la Virgen de Guadalupe, Che Guevara, Zapata, la adelitas and Pancho Villa. The Mural Movement took off in the early 1970s when it entered a semiprofessional stage. More atten- tion has to be paid to murals painted in the late 1960s, like that of Sergio Hernandez at San Fernando Valley State, which were painted over. (Sergio also authored a comic strip with Con Safos, a barrio literary maga- zine.) Guillermo Bejarano was also an early muralist who worked with the Mexican master Siqueiros. In Texas there were Festival de Flory Canto and Canto al Pueblo, as well as many young artists. No one locale had a monopoly on this artistic production that remains one of the most significant footprints of the Chicano Movement.120

THE CHICANO YOUTH MOVEMENT GAINS STEAM In March 1969, Chicano students from throughout the Southwest and Midwest met in Denver and held the First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference. The conference adopted El Plan Espiritual de Aztldn, setting the goals of nationalism and self-determination for the Chicano Youth Movement: At this conference, the students also adopted the label “Chicano;’ partly in response to the Black Power movement, which had changed its identification from “Negro” to “Black.” The adoption of”Chicano” was an attempt to dedicate the movement to the most exploited sector of the U.S. Mexican community, those whom traditional Mexicans and Mexican Americans pejoratively called “Chicanos.”

Shortly after the Denver Conference, the newly formed Chicano Council on Higher Education ( CCHE), which was mostly based in California, gathered college and university students, faculty, staff, and community activists at the University of California at Santa Barbara to draw up a plan of action for higher education, called El Plan de Santa Barbara. At that conference, Mexican American student organizations changed their name to El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA: the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan).121 The militancy of students reinforced attitudes already expressed in the community, and their mass entry into the movement electrified events. At the 1970 Denver Youth Conference, Gonzales pushed for active antiwar involvement.122 MEChA was at the forefront of the establishment of Chicano Studies in California and throughout the nation. Today Chicanas/os owe the entitlements students have to this organization. (See Chapter 14 for Chicana/o Studies.)123

Where Is God? In 1969, 65 percent of the Catholics in the Southwest were Mexicans; yet there were fewer than 180priests of Mexican extraction, and there were no Chicano bishops. In Los Angeles, Cardinal James Francis Mcintyre, with support from the diocese’s Catholic elites, censured priests who participated in Civil Rights activities. The attitude of the powerful Monsignor Benjamin G. Hawkes was “The rich have souls, too.”

In November 1969, Ricardo Cruz, a young law student from Loyola University (Los Angeles) formed Catolicos Por La Raza ( CPLR).124 Its members became infuriated over the closing of Our Lady Queen of Angels Girls’ High School, a predominantly Mexican school, allegedly owing to lack of funds. Cardinal Mcintyre had just spent $4 million to build Basil’s Church in the exclusive Wilshire district of Los Angeles. On Christmas Eve 1969, members of CPLR protested in front of St. Basil’s Church. The picketing was peaceful and orderly. When the mass began, demonstrators attempted to enter the church, but sheriffs’

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deputies posing as ushers locked them out. When a few did gain entry, armed deputies expelled them. Police units arrested 21 demonstrators, 20 of whom stood trial for disturbing the peace and assaulting police officers. The so-called “people” convicted Ricardo Cruz of misdemeanor, and on May 8, 1972, he began serving a 120-day sentence for his conviction.125

Simultaneously, changes were taking place within the Chicano clergy itself. Because of the heated discourse surrounding the unequal treatment of Mexicans by the Catholic Church, Mexican American priests in San Antonio formed the group PADRES (Padres Asociados para las Derechos Religiosos, Educativos, y Sociales), and in October 1969, 50 Spanish-speaking clergy developed the agenda for a national meeting. Diocesan priests Ralph Ruiz and Henry Casso, Francisco Manuel Martinez, and Jesuit Edmundo Rodriguez were among the leaders. PADRES held its first convention on February 2-5, 1970, in Tucson, Arizona. It successfully lobbied the Church for the appointment of Father Patricio Fernandez Flores as the first Chicano bishop in the United States. The group also played a role in resolving labor disputes, establishing various grassroots organizations-among them the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, founded by Father Virgilio Elizondo, who was a major influence in PADRES.126

Las Hermanas was founded in 1970 in Houston by Gloria Gallardo, SHG, and Gregoria Ortega, OLVM. Both sisters had been heavily involved in community work. In the spring of 1971 they sent out a call to other nuns to join them in Houston for their first organizational meeting. Their primary objective was to raise awareness of the needs of the community and to work for social change. Its first national meeting was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in November of that year. Hermanas were influenced by Liberation Theology and the Vatican Reform. They were committed to the comunidades de base concept of empowering the people; and worked closely with the UFW. 127

The nuns, While recognizing that racism existed in their orders, were more concerned with service to the poor. The Hermanas organization furnished them with a network to expand their world vision; some sisters studied liberation theology in Quito, Ecuador, where they forged religious and intellectual bonds with Latin American nuns and clergy. The new awareness led to even more involvement with the poor, and many nuns became advocates for the people. Las Hermanas were among the founders of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio in 1972, which sensitized priests and nuns throughout the country to the needs of Mexican Americans. Many members of Las Hermanas became involved in the Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio, established in 1974 by Ernesto Cortes, a native of San Antonio, and others. The nuns’ involvement in social issues represented a new sense of identity among Chicanas/os, which fueled activism. However, the nuns in the Church were especially vulnerable since at that time the Church did not pay into social security; many were expelled from their respective orders because of their activism and had to live out old age in poverty.

Violence at Home Judge Gerald S. Chargin of Santa Clara County (California) Juvenile Court on September 2, 1969, called a 17-year-old Chicano–who had allegedly committed incest-an animal and ordered that he should be sent back to Mexico. The judge concluded: “Maybe Hitler was right. The animals in our society probably ought to be destroyed because they have no right to live among human beings:’128 Throughout the Southwest Mexicans were deprived of defense counsels and representation on juries. In the County of Los Angeles, where the Chicano population numbered about 1 million, only four Mexicans served on a grand jury in 12 years (grand jurors were nominated by judges). In adjacent Orange County, which had more than 44,000 Mexicans, there had been only one Chicano on the grand jury panel in 12 years. No Chicano had served on the grand jury of Monterey County from 1938 through 1968.

The Mexican American community lacked a legal infrastructure to take on these issues. Tejanos had just formed the MALDEF in 1968. In the late 1960s, the federal government funded a program called California Rural Legal Assistance ( CRLA). Although the CRLA did not handle criminal cases, it represented the poor in various other matters. In Kings County, for example, growers received $10,179,917 from the government in the form of farm subsidies not to grow certain crops, but Kings County spent less than $6,000 on food for the poor. The CRLA sued the county on behalf of the poor, charging that it was violating

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federal statutes. As complaints mounted against the CRLA by reactionary elements such as the California growers, Governor Ronald Reagan became more incensed about the federal government’s support of an agency that sued private enterprise. In December 1970, Reagan vetoed the federal appropriation to CRLA, and the work of the agency was curtailed.129

Chicanas/os Under Siege The universities played a major role in spreading the antiwar message and transforming public opinion about the Vietnam War. Lea Ybarra, later a professor of Chicano Studies at Fresno State and Johns Hopkins, was active on the Berkeley campus with her friends Nina Genera and Maria Elena Ramirez, performing actos (one-act plays) that criticized the war. The women offered Chicanos draft help through the American Friends Committee, and published an antidraft pamphlet. Betita Martinez was another early voice in comparing the plight of the Vietnamese people to the Chicano experience. Ideas spread like wildfire. Moral outrage against the war in Southeast Asia spread among Chicanos, propelling militancy in the Chicano barrios. The anti-Vietnam War movement united Mexicans and moved even the middle-class and flag-waving groups like the Forum to the left. In Los Angeles, the Congress of Mexican American Unity ( CMAU), consisting of some 300 Los Angeles organizations, supported the antiwar effort.

Chicano activists began organizing protests against the war. Rosalio Munoz, a former student body president at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); Sal Baldenegro of the University of Arizona; Ernesto Vigil of the Crusade for Justice in Denver; and Manuel Gomez, a former member of MASA at Hayward State College, refused military induction. Munoz had initially set out to organize protests against the draft, not the war. Ramses Noriega, a fellow student at UCLA and an artist, accompanied Munoz.

The Brown Berets formed the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, holding its first demonstra- tion on December 20, 1969. Rosalio Munoz joined as cochairperson with David Sanchez. On February 28, 1970, the group staged another protest, in which 6,000 Chicanos participated braving the pouring rain.

Simultaneously, mobilizations were taking place outside Los Angeles. In Marcp, the Second Annual Chicano Youth Conference was held in Denver. A series of Chicano moratoria, climaxing with a national moratorium in Los Angeles on August 29, were planned. Meanwhile, police-community tension increased. On July 4, 1970, a demonstration held at the East Los Angeles sheriff’s substation, protesting the death of six Mexican American inmates in the preceding five months, clashed with police. Windows of buildings along Whittier Boulevard were broken; a youth was shot by the police. Twenty-two arrests were made before the rebellion was quelled by 250 deputies and members of the California Highway Patrol. Tension increased as August 29 approached.

Organizational work gathered momentum during the days preceding the August 29 moratorium. According to Rosalio Munoz, the women of the Brown Berets were especially dedicated. In different locations, mini-moratorium groups were formed to organize the bases; campuses became centers of activity. Chicanas like Irene Tovar, who ran San Fernando Valley College’s Community Center, worked relentlessly. Irene had been active in community organization since her teen years. She was a cofounder of the Latin American Civic Association in 1961 and was part of a vast personal network of friends and leaders of organizations. A long-time advocate for quality education for Mexican American children, she testified on behalf of bilingual education throughout the 1960s. It was this credibility of the leaders that drew many from the San Fernando Valley to the protest-this scenario was replicated up and down the state of California.

On the morning of the August 29, contingents from all over the United States started arriving in East Los Angeles. By noon, participants’ number swelled to just below 30,000. Conjuntos blared out corridos; Vivas and other shouts filled the air; placards read: “Raza sf, guerra no!” and “.Aztlan: Love it or Leave it!” The march ended peaceably as the parade turned into Laguna Park. A minor incident at a liquor store-a block away from Laguna Park-where teenagers pilfered some soft drinks, sparked a major confrontation. The police, instead of isolating this incident, rushed squad cars to the park, and armed officers prepared to enter the park area. Their hostile behavior caused a reaction, and a few marchers angrily threw objects at the police. Authorities saw that conference monitors had restrained the few protesters. However, police had found a pretext to break up the demonstration. 130

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Deputies rushed into the arena, trapping men, women, and children, and causing considerable panic. Wielding dubs, they trampled spectators, hitting those who did not move fast enough. In the main section of the park, the crowd was caught unaware. Numbering more than 500, the deputies moved in military formation, sweeping the park. Wreckage could be seen everywhere: the stampede trampled baby strollers into the ground; four deputies beat up a man in his sixties; tear gas filled the air. The number of police escalated to more than 1,200. Mass arrests followed and sheriffs kept prisoners, chained together in fours, in two buses at the East Los Angeles substation. Sheriffs’ deputies did not allow them to drink water or go to the bathroom for about four hours. Deputies killed a 15-year-old boy at Laguna Park.

Late in the afternoon Ruben Salazar and two coworkers from KMEX-TY, the Spanish-language television station, stopped at the nearby Silver Dollar Bar for a beer. Problems for television journalist Ruben Salazar had begun on July 16, 1970, when five Los Angeles detectives and two San Leandro police officers burst into a hotel room in downtown Los Angeles, shooting and killing two Mexican nationals-Guillermo Sanchez, 22, and Beltran Sanchez, 23, who came to be known as the Sanchez cousins. Police claimed it was a case of “mistaken identity:’ In the weeks to follow, Ruben Salazar exposed the inconsistencies in police reports. Law enforcement officials called on Salazar and ordered him to tone down his television coverage, alleging that he was inciting the people to violence. A federal grand jury issued an indictment against the officers involved in the Sanchez shootings for violating the civil rights of the two men. When the city of Los Angeles paid for the defense of three of the police officers, a storm of protest arose. A federal court later acquitted the officers.

Now, a month after his expose of the police brutality issue, Salazar again inadvertently found himself caught in the crossfire, this time literally. Deputies surrounded the bar, allegedly looking for a man with a rifle. When some occupants of the Silver Dollar attempted to leave, police forced them back into the premises. Police claimed that deputies broadcast warnings for all occupants to come out; witnesses testified that they heard no such warning. Sheriffs shot a 10-inch tear-gas projectile into the bar. The missile could pierce 7-inch-thick plywood at 100 yards, and it struck Salazar in the head. Another shot filled the bar with gas. Customers made their way out of the establishment. About 5:30 p.m., two reporters frantically informed deputies that Salazar was still in the bar. Deputies refused to listen, and it was not until two hours later that Salazar’s body was discovered.

On September 10, 1970, a coroner’s inquest probed the circumstances surrounding Ruben Salazar’s death. Officers testified as to the Chicano community’s riotous nature. Testimony showing the malfeasance of the deputies was restrained. La Raza magazine reporters, eyewitnesses to the events at the Silver Dollar Bar, contradicted the deputies’ testimony. For example, deputies claimed that they did not force the customers of the Silver Dollar to return to the bar. La Raza produced a photo showing that they had. Shortly afterward, La Raza published a special issue featuring the photos taken on August 29. The Los Angeles Times obtained permission from the barrio publication to reprint many of the photos. 131

Four inquest jurors found “death at the hands of another”; the three remaining jurors decided “death by accident:’ After their verdicts, the jurors questioned the officers’ recklessness and wondered if they would have acted in the same manner in Beverly Hills. Los Angeles District Attorney Evelle J. Younger announced on October 14, 1970, that he would not prosecute, and there was dearly a cover-up. Many Chicanos posited that Younger had decided not to try the officers responsible for Salazar’s death out of political opportunism. A candidate for California state attorney general (he was elected), Younger knew the law-and-order mentality of Californians who demanded this response. As usual, the Los Angeles Times supported Younger.

On September 16, 1970, a peaceful Mexican Independence Day parade ended in violence when police attacked the crowd as marchers reached the end of the parade route. TV newscasters Baxter Ward and George Putnam inflamed public rage against the demonstrators. Then, on January 9, 1971, Chicanos protested against police brutality, marching to the Parker Center, the LAPD Headquarters. Police incited a riot and arrested 32 people. Chief Davis blamed “swimming pool Communists” and the Brown Berets for the riot.

Numerous minor incidents followed; the last major confrontation took place on January 31, 1971. Contingents arrived at Belvedere Park in East Los Angeles from the four major barrios in the Los Angeles. The demonstration was peaceful, and as the rally ended, Rosalio Munoz told supporters, numbering around 5,000, to disperse. Some, however, marched to the sheriff’s substation on Third Street and staged a rally. A confronta- tion ensued, which left one man dead and 19 people wounded by buckshot, two with stab wounds, and numerous with broken bones. Property damage was estimated at more than $200,000.132

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THE PROVOCATEURS In October 1971 Louis Tackwood, a black informer, stunned the Los Angeles public by testifying that the Criminal Conspiracy Section ( CCS) of the Los Angeles Police Department paid him to spy on militants. The LAPD assigned Tackwood to a group of officers who, in cooperation with the FBI, planned to provoke a disrup- tion of the 1972 Republican convention in San Diego by militants; they planned to kill minor officials to force President Richard Nixon to use his powers to break the militant movement. Tackwood named Dan Mahoney ( CCS) and Ed Birch (FBI) as the supervisors of the operation. In private conversations he also described how the police used drug pushers as informers in return for protection from prosecution.

Officer Fernando Sumaya also worked as an undercover agent for the LAPD. In the fall semester of 1968 he attempted to infiltrate the UMAS chapter at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University at Northridge) during campus protests there. He was ousted from the group because he was unknown and because he came on too strong. Sumaya then moved to East Los Angeles, where he infiltrated the Brown Berets. In the spring of 1969 he was involved in the Biltmore Hotel affair, where Chicanos were accused of disrupting a speech by Governor Ronald Reagan at a Nuevas Vistas Education Conference, sponsored by the California Department of Education and archreactionary California Superintendent of Schools Max Rafferty. Thirteen Chicanos were arrested on the charge of disturbing the peace; 10 of the 13 were charged with conspiracy to commit arson. After two years of appeals the defendants were tried. The key witness for the prosecution was Sumaya. The defendants all denied any involvement with the fires. Some charged that Sumaya set the fires. The jury found the defendants not guilty. Meanwhile, Carlos Montes, a Brown Beret, and his wife, Olivia Montes, had left the area and he was not tried. The Monteses remained at large until the mid-1970s. The LAPD destroyed records documenting Strtnaya’s role in the Biltmore fires. After relentless hounding, the Montes family was caught, and Carlos was tried. In November 1979, a jury found Montes not guilty-‘–evidently the jury questioned Sumaya’s and the LAPD’s suspect role. Also questioned by the Berets’ La Causa was the suspect role of Sergeant Abel Armas in the Special Operation Conspiracy of the LAPD. Freedom of information documents obtained by Professor Ernesto Chavez reveal that the FBI was extremely active in investigating the Berets.133

In a press conference on January 31, 1972, Eustacio (Frank) Martinez, 23, revealed that since July 1969 he had infiltrated Chicano groups. A federal agent for the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division (ATF) of the Internal Revenue Service recruited Martinez, who, in return for not being prosecuted for a federal firearms violation, agreed to work as an informant and agent provocateur. He infiltrated the MAYO and the Brown Berets in Houston and Kingsville, Texas. He admitted that he committed acts of violence to provoke others. From September 1969 to October 1970 he participated in many protest marches and during the one in Alice, Texas, tried to provoke trouble “by jumping on a car and trying to cave its top in!’ He attempted to entice militants to buy guns and to provoke police. He was rebuked by the MAYO members.134

In October 1970 ATF agents sent Martinez to Los Angeles, where he worked for agents Fernando Ramos and Jim Riggs. Martinez began spreading rumors against Rosalio Mufioz, accusing him of being too soft, and in November 1970 Martinez ousted Munoz and became chair of the Chicano Moratorium Committee. Martinez later named officers Valencia, Armas, Savillos, and Dominguez of the CCS as contacts. In other words, when Martinez took part in the Los Angeles rebellions on January 9 and 31, 1971, the Los Angeles police knew of his involvement. He continued in this capacity until March 1971, when he returned to Texas. There Martinez became a member of the Brown Berets and, according to informants, went around waving a carbine and advocating violent tactics.

Upon his return from Texas he was instructed by Ramos and Riggs to infiltrate La Casa de Carnalismo to establish links between Carnalismo and the Chicano Liberation Front.(CLF), which had been involved in numerous bombings. Martinez reported that the main functions of Carnalismo were to eliminate narcotics, to sponsor English classes, and to dispense food to the needy; he could find no links with CLF. The officers told him that his “information was a bunch of bullshit.” He was to find evidence by any means necessary. They then instructed him to use his influence to get a heroin addict by the name of “Nacho” to infiltrate Carnalismo. Martinez refused to take part in the frame-up. He finally became disillusioned when, on the first anniversary of the Chicano National Moratorium, agents told him to plead guilty to charges of inciting a riot. He had been promised protection from prosecution.135 ·

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and also to attract money by way of grants. Ernesto Galarza, “La Mula No Nacio Arisca:’ Center Diary (September-October 1966): 26-32, reprinted in Acufia and Compean, Voices of the U.S. Latino, 813-18.

40. Graciela Gil Olivarez [sic], Arizona Women’s Heritage Trail, http://www.womensheritagetrail.org/women/GracielaGilOli varez.php (accessed November 8, 2009). Mowry and Brownell, Urban Nation, 221-22. William O’Neil, An Informal History of America in the 1960s: Coming Apart (New York: Quadrangle, 1980), 130-31. For general background on the War on Poverty, see Biliana Maria Ambrecht, “Politicization as a Legacy of the War on Poverty: A Study of Advisory Council Members in a Mexican American Community” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1973). V. Kurtz, “Politics, Ethnicity, Integration: Mexican Americans in the War on Poverty” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1970). This section draws specifically from Greg Coronado, “Spanish-Speaking Organizations in Utah,” in Paul Morgan and Vince Mayer, eds., Working Papers Toward a History of the Spanish Speaking in Utah (Salt Lake City: American West Center, Mexican American Documentation Project, University of Utah, 1973), 121. Vernon M. Briggs Jr., Walter Fogel, and Fred H. Schmidt, The Chicano Worker (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977), 38. Forumeer (March 1967) states that the Forum almost dropped sponsor- ship of SER because LBJ was hedging on the White House con- ference. Pycior, LBJ, 152-53, 159, 161.

41. Pycior, LBJ, 164, 170, 178-82. Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 17. Forumeer (October 1967). The Forum supported the conference and said nothing about the demonstrations. See also John Hart Lane Jr., “Voluntary Associations Among Mexican Americans in San Antonio, Texas: Organization and Leadership Characteristics” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 1968), 2. Richard Gardner, Gritol Reies Tijerina and the New Mexico Land Grant War of 1967(NewYork: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 231-32. Craig A. Kaplowitz, LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005), 98-104.

42. David Nieto, “A Brief History of Bilingual Education in the United States,” Perspectives on Urban Education (Spring 2009): 61-72.

43. Anguiano was a former nun who had been a national organizer for the United Farm Workers. She later founded, along with Gloria Steinen and BellaAbsug, the National Women’s Political Caucus (1971). Jasmin K. Williams, “Lupe Anguiano-A Tireless Warrior Woman,” New York Post (March 12, 2007). Lupe Anguiano Archive Event, UCLA Chicano Research Center, http://www.chicano.ucla,edu/center/events/ Anguiano. htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

44. Prycior, LBJ, 183-87. 45. Voting Rights Act, 1965, United States Department of Justice,

Civil Rights Division, http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/ intro_b.htm (accessed November 8, 2009). Mexican Americans were not initially entitled under the Act.

46. Watts Riots Project, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJUS9 aaOYms&feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009).

47. Davis, City of Quartz, 101-06. Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), an excellent presentation of the causes of the uprisings. Oropeza, “La Batalla;’ 95, 100-01. Meyer Weinberg, A Chance to Learn: A History of Race and Education in the United States (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 17 4.

48. Quoted in James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty 1900-1980 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 145-46. Kaplowitz, LULAC, 98, 108, 125, 220.

49. Acuna, Community Under Siege, 145. Patterson, America’s Struggle, 148.

50. Morris Singer, Growth, Equality and the Mexican Experience (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 31. Maria Fernandez- Kelly, For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), 24, 132, 134. Lamar Babington Jones, “Mexican American Labor Problems in Texas” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 1965), 33. Devon G. Pefia, The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender & Ecology on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1997). “Mexican American Labor;’ 35-37 Avery Wear, “Class & Poverty in the Maquila Zone,” International Socialist Review (May-June 2002 ), http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Mexico/Class_ Poverty_MaquilaZone.html (accessed November 8, 2009). maquiladoras, (accessed November 8, 2009) http://www. youtube.corn/watch?v=08AVCAw_-ZA&feature=related.

51. Theodore White, America in Search of Itself (New York: Harper Collins, 1984), 363.

52. “The Immigration Act of 1965: Intended and Unintended Consequences of the 20th Century;’ (April 3, 2008), http:/1 www.americagov/ st/educ-english/2008/ April/20080423214226 eaifas0.9637982.html (accessed November 8, 2009). Basically, this Act got rid of the racist restrictions on Asian immigration imposed by the 1952 Immigration Act, which also imposed national origins quotas favoring white western Europeans. The 1965 Act gave family preferences, that is, priorities to those who have close family members in the United States.

53. James Fallows, “Immigration: How It’s Affecting Us;’ The Atlantic, 252, no.5 (November 1983): 45-68. Acuna, Anything but Mexican, 114. Mario T. Garcia, Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona (Berkeley: University of California, 1994), 290-300. David G. Gutierrez, “Sin Fronteras? Chicanos, Mexican Americans, and the Emergence of the Contemporary Immigration Debate, 1968-1978,” in David Gutierrez, ed., Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 175-209. Miriam J. Wells, Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class, and Work in California Agriculture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 63; the success of the Civil Rights Movement and antipoverty programs enhanced the vulnerability of noncitizens and their utility to employers. “Obituaries; Funeral Services for Labor Activist Bert Corona,” Los Angeles Times (January 19, 2001). Corona passed away in January 2001.

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Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 319

54. The farmworker struggle was not a simple trade union. Chavez was a civil rights leader much on par with the Rev. Martin Luther King and therefore used movement symbols to attract a wider constituent. The symbols he used spelled out his moral authority. Farmworker Movement Documentation Project, http://www.farmworkermovement.us/phorum/read.php?l,93 3,940 (accessed November 8. 2009). For the farmworkers’ use of photos, films, and their newspaper El Malcriado (the bratty one), see Center for the Study of Political Graphics, http:// www.politicalgraphics.org/home.html (accessed November 8, 2009)

55. National Farm Workers Association Collection, Records, 1960-1967, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/collections/hefa_22 l- ufW.htm (accessed November 8, 2009). Cesar Chavez NFWA, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kln VXM5CEpc (accessed November 8, 2009). Farm Worker Poverty I %2, http:/ /www. you tube.corn/watch?v-=ZWU!z51o1WA&feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009). Cesar Chavez-Fasts, http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=cnDPjj2gcKk (November 8, 2009).

56. Richard W. Etulain, ed., CESAR CHAVEZ: A Brief Biography with Documents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), &-IO. “The Fight in the Fields, Cesar Chavez and the Farm- workers’ Struggle,” PBS, http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fightfields/ (accessed November 8, 2009), http://www.pbs.org/itvs/ fightfields/cesarchavez.html (accessed November 8, 2009). Richard Steven Street, “Poverty in the Valley of Plenty: The National Farm Labor Union, Di Giorgio Farms, and Sup- pression of Documentary Photography in California, 1947–66;’ Labor History 48 (February 2007): 25–48.

57. Dolores Huerta: Labor Leader and Social Activist, http:// Jatino.si.edu/virtualgallery/OJOS/bios/bios_Huerta.htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

58. Vatican 11 – Urgent & Essential, http://www.vatican2voice. org/default.htm (accessed November 8, 2009 ).

59. Peter Matthiessen, Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (New York: Random House; 1969), 41, 50–51, 333-34. Joan London and Henry Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap (New York: Crowell, 1971), 146–49. Mark Day, Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers (New York: Praeger, 1971), 54, 55. Hedda Garza, Latinas: Hispanic Women in the United States (New York: Franklin Watts, 1994), I 1-13, I I 4. Vickie Ruiz, From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in TWentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 134-35. Margaret Rose, “From the Fields to the Picket Line: Huelga Women and the Boycott, 1965-1975;’ Labor History 31,no.3 (Summer 1990): 272. Samuel R. Berger, Dollar Harvest: The Story of the Farm Bureau (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1971), 161-63. Forumeer (May 1966). Gregory Dunne, Delano (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967), 51, 144-45, 147-48. Ronald B. Taylor, Chavez and the Farm Workers (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975), 157, 251, 259, 261–69, 287. Day, Forty Acres, 42. Sam Kushner, Long Road to Delano (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 173.

60. This move was not popular among all the Jexans; Sanchez and Galvan bolted, forming. the Texas Independent Workers Association. Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers (Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press, 2007), 238–45. “Farmworkers ask help against ‘terror campaign'” Texas Farm Workers Support Committee, http:// chavez.cde.ca.gov/ResearchCenter/DocumentDisplayRC.aspx? rpg=/chdocuments/docurnentdisplay.jsp&doc=S6d6ce%3Aeae6 3c6e4f%3A-7e83&searchhit=yes (accessed November 8, 2009). Sons of Zapata: A Brief Photographic History of Fai:m Workers’ Strike in Texas, http://www.farrnworkermovement us/ufWarchives/ elmalcriado/Frankel/Strike.pdf (accessed November 8, 2009); it is one of the best visual documents of the strike.

· 61. David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 284. Charles Cotrel Interviewed by Jose Angel Gutierrez (Tejano Voices, University of Texas, Arlington, San Antonio, July 2, 1992), 4, 6, 9, 16, http://hbraries.uta.edu/tejanovoices/interview. asp?CMASNo=020# (accessed November 8, 2009). “Priests Active in Valley Strike,” San Antonio Express (July 7, 1966).

62. Gilbert Padilla 1962-1980, Interview, 2 http://www.farm- worhrmovement.us/essays/ essays/005%20Padilla_ Gilbert. pdf (accessed November 8, 2009). “U.S. Senate Sub- Committee hearings,” San Antonio Express/News (July 1, 1966). Gary Garrison, “Valley Strike Pondered;’ Lubbock Avalanche Journal (December l, 1966); La Casita Farms strike was called a complete failure. “Farm Strike Could Turn into Social Movement,” Big Spring Herald (Texas, July 17, 1966). Jose Angel Gutierrez, The Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Crystal (Madison: University of Wisconsin,1999), 105. Youth joined La Casita Farms strike by joining the picket Jines. “Melon Packers Did Cross Picket Line,” Brownsville Herald (July 13, 1967); union melon pack- ers from California crossed picket lines … The packers at first refused to cross the picket line but did so after calling El Centro, California. Timothy Paul Bowman, “What About Texas? The Forgotten Cause of Antonio Orendain and the Rio Grande Valley Farm Workers, 1966- I 982,” (Master’s Thesis, University of Texas, Arlington, 2005), 7-10, 45-55. “Orendain Sparks UFWOC Organizing Drive in Texas,” El Malciado, 3, no. 11 (August IS-September 15, 1969): 13. http://www.farmworkermovement.us/ufWarchives/elmalcriado/ 1969/ August%20l5%20-%20Sept%2015, %20 l 969%20No% 201 l_PDF.pdf (accessed November 8, 2009).

63. Mark Erenberg, “Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin;’ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review 91 (June 1968): 20–23. National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, Farm Labor Organizing, 1905-1 %7: A Brief History (New York: National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, 1967), 59. Dennis Nodin Valdes, Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917-1970 (Austin: University of Texas, 1991), 189-92. James Maraniss, “Wautoma: New Season, Same Woes,” The Capital Times (July 31, 1967). The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin, January8, 1967). Oshkosh Daily Northwestern (August 15, 1966). The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin, January 8, 1967).

320 Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s

64. Hob Voces, “Long March Converges on Capitol Steps,” The News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan, March 27, 1967). “Migrant Unit Gets Hearing with Romney; Record Eagle, (Traverse City, Michigan, April 5, 1967). “Romney Aide Works with Migrants:’ The Holland (Michigan, Evening Sentinel, April 5, 1967. “Migrants to Ask Romney to Intervene,” The Holland, (Michigan, Evening Sentinel April 13, 1967). “Saginaw to Lansing March,” Michigan Minutes, http://www.michigantelevision. orglmi_minutes/ (accessed November 8, 2009).

65. National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, 60. Barbara Jane Macklin, Structural Stability and Cultural Change in a Mexican American Community (New York: Arno Press, 1976), vi. Speaking Truth to Power, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= FkoXtnOfUKE (accessed November 8, 2009). Farm Labor Organizing Committee AFL-CIO, http://www.floc.com/ (accessed November 8, 2009).

66. “Governor to Get Report on Migrant Workers;’ Walla Walla Union-Bulletin (May II, 1967). Timeline: Movimiento from 1960-1985, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, http:// depts.washington.edu/ civilr /mecha_ timeline.htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

67. Dr. Jose Angel Gutierrez, Tejano Voices, http://libraries.uta. edu/tejanovoices/gutierrez.asp (accessed November 8, 2009).

68. Viviana Santiago Cavada, Interview, Tejano Voices, http:// libraries.uta.edu/tejanovoices/interview.asp?CMASNo=066 (accessed November 8, 2009). “Mexican American Youth Organization,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www. tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/weml_print. html (accessed November 8, 2009).

69. Armando Navarro, Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 80-97. J. Gutierrez, The Making of a Chicano Militant, 79. Karen O’Connor and Lee Epstein, “A Legal Voice for the Chicano Community: The Activities of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1968-1982,” in F. Chris Garcia, ed., Latinos and the Political System (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1988), 255-68.

70 .. United Mexican-American Students Symposium-UCLA February 1968, Pacifica Radio Archive, http://www.archive. org/details/UnitedMexican-americanStudentsSymposium- UclaFeburaryl968 (accessed November 8, 2009).

71. Rodolfo Corky Gonzales 1928-2005, Escue/a Tiatelolco, http:// www.escuelatlatelolco.org/website/ corky _bio.html (accessed

. November 8, 2009). Rodolfo Corky Gonzales Commemoration, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpm6wHLGIYU ·(accessed November 8, 2009). Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, I Am Joaquin, http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/latinos/joaquin.htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

72. Chicano-Quest for a Homeland-Part 1 in 6 parts, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=uia5mrXBGUg&feature=Play List& p=CB66C2C0925EC852&index=O&playnext= l ( acce- ssed November 8, 2009).

73. Rosales, Chicano!, 211-13. Pedro Acevez, MEChA de UW, Interview, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor Project, http://depts.

washington.edu/civilr/acevez.htm (accessed November 8, 2009). Erasmo Gamboa MEChA; UFW Grape Boycott; Historian; UW Professor, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor Project, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Erasmo_Gamboa. htm (accessed November 8, 2009). Roberto Maestas, El Centro de la Raza, Seattle Civil Rights and Labor Project, http://depts. washington.edu/civilr/maestas.htm (accessed November 8, 2009). Yolanda Alaniz, MEChA de UW, Radical Women, Freedom Socialist Party, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/ alaniz.htm (accessed 8, 2009).

74. Rosales, Chicano!, 211-13. In the Superior Court of the State of Arizona in and for the County of Maricopa, Adolfo Romo, Plaintiff vs. William E. Laird, J.H. Daniel and IJ Waterhouse as members of and constituting the Board of Trustees of Tempe School District N0.3 and G.W. Persons, Superintendent of Tempe School District No.3, Defendants. No. 21617, Judgment and Findings of Fact and Order, October 5, 1925. Francisco A. Rosales, ed., Testimonio: A Documentary History of the Mexican American Struggle for Civ11 Rights (Houston, Texas: Arte PUblico Press 2000), 126-27. Dan Pavillard, “Minorities Like Taste of Honey-Huerta Says; Tucson Daily Citizen (October 20, 1967). Programs such as Tucson Neighborhood Youth Corps also cre- ated a climate for activism. Its director John L. Huerta told a group of mental health advisors, “Minorities are through with being spoon-fed by a smug American middle class with a guilty conscience, through with inferior education, through with lack of … opportunities for employment, promotion and. the lack of adequate housing.” Maritza De La Trinidad, “Collective Outrage: Mexican American Activism and the Quest for Educational Equality and Reform: 1950-1990” (PhD Dis- sertation, University of Arizona, 2008), 150, 162, 183, reviews the history of the fight for bilingual education in which Tucson . was a leader. She concentrates on Maria Urquides, a teacher who had graduated in 1928 from Arizona State Teachers’ College and who beginning in 1955 led th.e fight against the “no Spanish” rule. Urquides worked closely with the NEA. She campaigned for the Bilingual Education Act.

75. Enriqueta Vasquez Dionne Espinoza (Editor), Lorena Oropeza (Editor), Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito Del Norte (Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 2006).

76. Navarro, Mexican American Youth, 55-66. Juan G6mez- Quifiones, Mexican Students por La Raza: The Chicano Student Movement in Southern California 1967-1977 (Santa Barbara, CA: Editorial La Causa, 1978), 17-18, 22-23. Gerald Paul Rosen, “Political Ideology and the Chicano Movement: A Study of the Political Ideology of Activists in the Chicano Movement” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1972), 248. Also in Los Angeles, Francisca Flores, a veteran activist, and Ramona Morin (women’s aux- iliary of the Forum) cofounded the California League of Mexican American Women. Flores published and edited La Carta which reported on political activism in the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s, Flores published Regeneraci6n, an activist magazine focusing on women’s issues.

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 321

77. H. Gutierrez, “Chicano Education Rights:’ 53. G6mez- Quifiones, Mexican Students Por La Raza, 17. Rosales, Chicano!, 186-88.

78. “Walkouts,” HBOFilms, http://www.hbo.com/films/walkout/ (accessed November 8, 2009).

79. Blowout Panel 3, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt 8IJZhTM4 (accessed November 8, 2009).

80. Salvatore B. Castro et al. v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 9 Cal. App. 3d 675; 88 Cal. Rptr. 500; 1970 Cal. App. LEXIS 1985,July 17, 1970.

81. Dolores Delgado Bernal, “Chicana School Resistance and Grassroots Leadership: Providing an Alternative History of the 1968 East Los Angeles Blowouts” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997), 84-85. Ernesto Chavez, “Creating Aztlan: The Chicano movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994), 65, 73. Carlos Mufioz, Jr., Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (London: Verso, 1989), 64, 68, 132. Rosales, Chicano!, 190, 191, 192-94. Sanchez was Prime Minister; Carlos M6ntes, Minister of Information; and Cruz Olmeda, Minister of Discipline. They had approximately 30 members by mid-1968. H. Gutierrez, “Chicano Education,” 4-5, 56. Gutierrez observes that one of the strategies was the formation of the Mexican American Education Commission within the LA. schools. According to Gutierrez, the effect was to transfer a significant portion of the leadership of the EICC to the commission, which was an appendage of the school dis- trict bureaucracy. G. Rosen, “Political Ideology,” 143-45. Avelardo Valdez, “Selective Determinants in Maintaining Social Movement Organizations: The Case Studies from the Chicano Community,” in F. C. Garcia, Latinos and the Political System, 236-54. Along with Castro, Eleazear Risco, editor of La Raza newspaper; Joe Razo, co-editor; Patricio sanez, commu- nity activist; Moctezuma Esparza of UCLA UMAS; David Sanchez, prime minister of the Brown Berets; Carlos M6ntez, minister of communications for the Berets; Ralph Ramirez, minister of defense, Fred L6pez of the Berets; and Richard Vigil, Gilberto C. Olmeda, and Henry G6mez were indicted. The latter three were activists in War on Poverty program. Pycior,LBJ, 220-21.0ropeza, “La Batalla;’ 94.

82. Juan A. Sepulveda, Life and Times of Willie Veldsquez: Su Voto Es Su Vos (Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 2005), 69-72. Doris Wright, “Lanier High Students Get Civic Leader Support,” San Antonio Express (April 11, 1968).

83. Fern Chick, “Miller Seeks to Calm Lanier ‘Revolt’ ” San Antonio Light (April 16, 1968). “Miller Replies to student Demands,” The San Antonio Light (April 17, 1963). Fern Chick, “Lanier Group Plans to Press Protests,” The San Antonio Light (April 18, 1968).

84. Ron White, “3,000 Ask Reforms in Walkout,” San Antonio Light (May 16, 1968). “School Chieflnsists It’s Classes as Usual v. Meet TheSanAntonioLight(May 17, 1%8).

85. Ron White, “Edgewood Rally Held;’ San Antonio Light (May 21, 1968). “Edgewood Hearing in Recess,” The San Antonio Light (May 24, 1968); to get the restraining order on two teachers

lifted. Frank Trejo, “Board Promises Solution to Grievances:’ The San Antonio Light (May 24, 1968). Frank Trejo, “School to Act on Grievances:’ San Antonio Light (May 28, 1968).

86. Baldemar James Barrera, ” ‘We Want Better Educationt’ The Chicano Student Movement for Educational Reform in South Texas, 1968-1970″ (PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2007), 102. Richard R. Valencia, Chicano Students and the Courts: The Mexican American Legal Struggle for Educational Equality (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 92-103.

87. Elaine Ayala, “The Year Latino Students Stood up, Walked out,” San Antonio Express News (May 07, 2008), http://archives. chicagotribune.com/2008/may/07 /news/ chi-latino-fill- 0507may07 (accessed November 8, 2009). On March 21, 1973, the Supreme Court in a five-to-four decision ruled against Rodriguez, stating that the system of school finance did not violate the federal constitution. Texas should resolve the issue.

88. “Valley School Hit By. Boycott;’ The Odessa American (November 14, 1968), blames the MAYO movement. “Five Arrested in School Boycott:’ Galveston Daily News (November 16, 1968) reported as arrested Mirtala Villarreal, Homer Trevino, Freddie Sainz, Arnulfo Sustaita, and Xavier Ramirez. Nolene Hodges, “Edcouch-Elsa Students in Class Revolt,” Brownville Herald (November 14, 1968). Norma R. Cuellar, “The Edcouch-Elsa Walkout;’ Mexican-American History 2363, Dr. Rodolfo Rocha (June 29, 1984), I. http://www. aaperales.com/school/files/walkout/eewalkout.doc (accessed November 8, 2009).

89. Cuellar, “The Edcouch-Elsa Walkout,” 3. 90. “Refuses Boycotting Pupils,” Big Spring· Herald (Texas,

November 19, 1968); Eelcouch-Elsa High School had about 820 students. Principal J. L. Pipkin estimated 96 per cent of the student body and about 70 per cent of the faculty as Mexican

Gary Garrison, “Return to School Sought,” Corpus Christi Times (November 19, 1968). “Edcouch-Elsa Board Hears Each Student.” Brownsville Herald (November 20, 1968). “Edcouch Student Hearings Scheduled for Wednesday,” Bownsville Herald (November 26, 1968). “Valley Students Stage Walkout:’ Big Spring Herald (Texas, November 14, 1968 ). Xavier Ramirez identified as the leader of the walkout. Group guided by MAYO. Kenneth Clark,”VISTAs Tied to Boycott;’ Brownsville Herald (November 25, 1968). Cuellar, “The Edcouch-Elsa Walkout,” 6-8.

91. Oscar Acosta, “The East L.A. 13 vs. the Superior Court,” El Grito 3, no. 2 (Winter 1970): 14. London and Anderson, So Shall ye Reap, 25. William Parker Frisbie, “Militancy Among Mexican Americans: A Study of High School Students” (PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1972), 4, 143. Forumeer (October, December 1968). Eugene Acosta Marin, “The Mexican American Community and Leadership of the Dominant Society in Arizona: A Study of Their Mutual Attitudes and Perceptions” (PhD dissertation, U.S. International University, 1973), 12. Ian F. Haney-L6pez, Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

322 Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s

92. David Sanchez, Expedition Through Aztlan (La Puente, CA: Perspectiva Press, 1978). Rona M. Fields and Charles J. Fox, “Viva La Raza: The Saga of the Brown Berets” (uJJpublished manuscript). See also G. Rosen, “Political Ideology.” David Sanchez himself remained anti-Communist throughout his career. Other factions of Berets had a revolutionary focu&- such as La Junta, led by Cruz Olmeda and influenced by the writings of Mao Zedong. Olmeda broke away in July 1968. Sanchez’s attention remained the recruitment of high school students, whereas La Junta recruited former gang members and aligned themselves with adult leftists. Marguerite Marin, Social Protest in an Urban Barrio: A Study of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1974 (Lanham, MD: University Press of ,America, 1991).

93. There have been few studies on the berets; moSt of them have been on berets in Los Angeles. University of California Berkeley scholar David Montejano has a book on the berets in San Antonio, which is about to go to press, and UCLA doctoral student in history Milo Alvarez is doing his dissertation on the berets nationally.

94. Jennifer G. Correa, “Chicano Nationalism: The Brown Berets and Legal Social Control,” Thesis, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, Texas,2006), 79-97, quoted FBI File# 105-178715: March 27, 1968. FBI File# 157-2163: March 7, 1968 reported on the ELA Walkouts. Correa also quoted FBI File# 105-178715: February25, 1969.

95. Patrick J. McDonnell, “1968 Massacre in Mexico Still Echoes Across Nation; Activism: Killing of Students Just Before Olympics Radically Chariged Country and Questions Continue,” Los Angeles Times (October 2, 1993). Kate Doyle, “The Tlatelolco Massacre U.S. Documents on Mexico and the Events of 1968,” Posted October 10, 2003, National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB99/ (accessed November 8, 2009). Mexico City 1968, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUHM-MjmeCI (accessed November 8, 2009). 2 de Octubre; Fotos Ineditas; Mexico; Tlatelolco, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= hmTtzkG7lJ4&feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009) .

. 96. Armando Morales, “A Study of Mexican American Perceptions of Law Enforcement Policies and Practices in East Los Angeles” (DSW dissertation, University of Southern California, 1972), 87, 89, 90. New York Times (October 25, 1971). Christopher Rand, Los Angeles: The Ultimate City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 131. Joan W. Moore, Mexican Americans, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 93. G.I. Forum News Bulletin (March-April 1960). Eastside Sun (Los Angeles, February 4, 1960). Eastside Sun, (February 4 and 11, 1960), see Martin J. Siesl, “Behind the Badge: The Police and Social Discontent in Los Angeles Since 1950:’ in Norman M. Klein and Martin J. Siesl, 20th Century Los Angeles: Power, Promotion and Social Conflict (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1990),153-94. Eastside Sun (February 11, 1960). “Roybal Comments on Crime Reports of East Los Angeles,” Eastside Sun

(March 10, 1960). “Police Maltreatment Subject at Conference at Biltmore Hotel,” Eastside Sun (June 16, 1960).

97. Morales, “Mexican American Perceptions,” 89, 90. New York Times (October 25, 1971 ).

98. Oropeza, “La Batalla:’ 109, 113. 99. Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez’s Congressional Speech of

April 22, 1969, Congressional Record, 9lst Cong., 1st Sess. (April 22, 1969). Josh Gottheirner, ed., Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003), 331-39.

100. H. Joaquin Jackson and David Marion Wilkinson, One Ranger: A Memoir (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 46, 63-75.

101. Jose Angel could have remained active for a few years and rested on the laurels of one or two small achievements. Angel, how- ever, has reinvented himself countless times and in the process has accumulated a PhD from the University of Texas Austin and a law degree from the University of Houston. He remains politically active, at the same time being a scholar and a public personage. He has accumulated two significant archives: Jose Angel Gutierrez, Tejano Voices, Oral History Collection, University of Texas Arlington, and The Jose Angel Gutierrez Papers, 1959-1991, University of Texas at San Antonio; both are priceless for Chicano research. These collections alone establish him as a leading scholar. He is also the author of countless books and articles and the founder of the Mexican American Research Center at University of Texas Arlington.

102. Vicki Ruiz and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, eds., Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), 305.

103. Crystal City 1969, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C fsFr5Rr08 (accessed November 8, 2009). Jose Angel Gutierrez, Nation of Aztlan, http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=RM9uH4Xg0ml (accessed November 8, 2009).

104. Severi ta Lara, Crystal City Walkout Leader, http://www.you tube;com/watch?v=sQicz_2HgkE&feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009). MAYO document, “Jose Angel Gutierrez files, Crystal City, Texas,” in Rosales, ed., Testimonio, 387-88.

105. Jackson and Wilkinson, One Ranger, 69. David G. Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 186-87. Navarro, Mexican American Youth, 100. J. Gutierrez, The Making of a Chicano Militant, 103. Forumeer (February, May 1969). Castro, Chicano PllWer, 156-57. Jose Angel Gutierrez, “Aztliin: Chicano Revolt in the Winter Garden,” La Raza 1, no. 4 (1971): 34-35, 37, 39-40. John Staples Shockley, Chicano Revoh in a Texas Town (South Bend, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 119-21. Jose Angel Gutierrez’s speech at a meeting in San Antonio, on May 4, 1970, “Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies,” www.clnet.ucla.edu/research/docs/razaunida/ control.htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

106. The TierraAmarilla Courthouse Raid, http:/ lwww.youtube.com/ watch?v=phF376VK3ek&feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009).

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 323

107. Malcolm Ebright, Land Grants & Lawsuits in Northern New Mexico (Albuquerque: Uni-versity of New Mexico Press), 11, 14. Fred Rosen, “Tue Fate of the Ejido (threats to existence of system of communal ownership of agricultural land),” NACLA Report on the Americas 26, no. 5 (May 1993): 3ff. Gardner, Tijerina,

129-30, 208, 265-79. Peter Nabokov, Tijerina and the Courthouse Raid (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1%9), 19, 28, 30, 250-66. Oark Knowlton, “Guerrillas of Rio Amba: Tue New Mexico Land Wars.” in F. Chris Garcia, ed., La Causa Politica: A Chicano Politics Reader (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 333. Reies L6pez Tijerina, “A Letter from the Santa Fe Jail,” Reies L6pez Tijerina Collection, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

108. Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, “I am Joaquin,” http://www. escuelatlatelolco.org (accessed November 8, 2009). Corky Gonzales Speaking to Students, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sDkU3rUqGTo (accessed November 8, 2009).

109. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/ mecha/archive/plan.html (accessed November 8, 2009). On the word Chicano see “The Word Chicana/o,” http://forchicana chicanostudies.wikispaces.com/Chicana+Chicano+ Public+ Scholar (accessed November 8, 2009). Articles by Ruben Salazar and Frank Del Olmo included in Web Site.

110. I am paraphrasing the Plan of Aztlan, http://studentorgs. utexas.edu/mecha/archive/plan.html (accessed November 8, 2009). Alurista, http://xroads.virginia.edu/-ugOl/voss/ alurista.html (accessed November 8, 2009).

111. [Aztlan) AZ The 1847 Disturnell map inspires a documentary, http://www.famsi.org/pipennaillaztlan/2006-January/001585. html (accessed November 8, 2009). Roberto Rodriguez & Patrisia Gonzales, “The Story of Maps: Mesoamerica in North America,” http://www.chavez.uda.edu/ Aztlanahuac/ About% 20the%20Aztlanahuac%20exhibit.htm (accessed November 8, 2009).

112. Guide to the Montoya, Jose Papers 1969-2001, http://www. library. ucsb.edu/ speccoll/ collections/ cema/pdf/ montoya_jose_papers.pdf (accessed November 8, 2009). Jose Montoya, In Formation: 20 Years of Joda (San Jose, CA: Chusma House Publications, 1992). Jose Montoya, Artist and Poet, Sacramento, CA, .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= szOZ¥_KFMHo (accessed November 8, 2009). Jose Montoya reads “Irish Priests and Mexican Catholics” http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=m_3oLiUhCoc (accessed November 8, 2009).

113. Stan Steiner, La Raza: ‘.(‘he Mexican Americans (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 378-92. Christine Marin, A Spokesman of the Mexican American Movement: Rodolfo “Gorky” Gonzales and th.e Fight for Chicano Liberation, 1966-1972 (San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1977), l-3, 5. Forumeer (November 1965, June 1966). The Militant (December 4, 1970). The best book on the Crusade is Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government’s Wai’ on Dissent (Madison: University of Press, 1999); Vigil was a dose insider.

l l 4. Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, United students/Innercity Struggle Honors Betita for Her Work in Journalism, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=fSEQF _rLn7U (accessed November 8, 2009). 2007 WAVE Honoree-Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vMu YSZMU-O&feature= PlayLlst&p=B927416Al547EEDD&playnext=l&playnext_fro m=PL&index=5 (accessed November 8, 2009). Activist Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez Speaks at Michigan State, http:// www.vimeo.com/12Il392 (accessed November 8, 2009). Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez and Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez, Viva la raza! The struggle of the Mexican-American people (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974).

ll5. Haney-L6pez,Racism on Ttial, 225. 116. Alma M. Garcia, ed., Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic

Historical Writings (New York: Routledge, 1997). Naomi Helena Quinonez, “Hijas de la Maline (Malinche’s Daughters): The Development of Social Agency Among Mexican American Women and the Emergence of First Wave Chicana Cultural Production” (PhD dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, 1997), 153. Elizabeth Martinez,” ‘On Tune’ in Mississippi: 1964-1994: Confronting Immoral Power with Moral Power,” Z Magazine (September 1994): 37″-40. Elizabeth Martinez, De Colores Means AH of US: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998). Dionne Elaine Espinoza, “Pedagogies of Nationalism and Gender: Cultural Resistance in Selected Representational Practices of Chicana/o Movement Activists, 1967-1972” (PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1996), 147-201. Telephone conversation with Betita Martinez, November 22, 1998.

117. Luis Valdez Profile, http:/lwww.youtube.com/watch?v=ClY y-lqDijo (accessed November 8, 2009). Luis Valdez speaks at Chico State, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZdOkTdq DAg& feature=related (accessed November 8, 2009). El Teatro Campesino 2008 Actos Promo, http-J/www.youtube.com/watch? v=8Sr4P6woodk (accessed November 8, 2009).

118. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, “Octavio Romano and the Chicano Literary Renaissance,” Chicano Literature Latino Literature- Pluma Fronteriza, November 6, 2006, http://plumafronteriza. blogspot.com/2006/11/octavio-romano-and-chicano-literary. html (accessed November 8, 2009).

Il9. Bill Flores, “Francisca Flores:l913-1996,” http://clnet.ucla. edu/research/francisca.html (accessed November 8, 2009).

120. Maria Cardalliaguet G6mez-Ma!aga, The Mexican and Chicano Mural Movements, Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, http:// www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2006/2/06.02.0l.x.html (accessed November 8, 2009). Tue Chicano Park Historical Documentation Project, http:/ /www.inkworkspress.org/artide. php?id=l38 (accessed November 8, 2009). Malquias Montoya, http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.07 .97 /art- 9732.html (accessed November 8, 2009). http://www.malaquias- montoya.com/(accessed November 8, 2009). Chicano Park Documentary, http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql Upzodz7cs (accessed November 8, 2009). Boyle Heights· Murals – Brooklyn Ave · Footage, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5f9gCGRjvg

324 Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s

(accessed November 8, 2009). Tucson: the City of Murals, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ksyDL37QI (accessed November 8, 2009).

121. El Plan de Santa Barbara, MEChA, Pan American University, http://www.panam.edu/orgs/MEChA/st_barbara.html (accessed November 8, 2009).

122. Oropeza, “La Batalla,” 115-18, 232-33. The L.A. Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion also supported the antiwar effort Delfino Varela, “The Making of Captain Medina,” Regeneraci6n l, no. l {1970): 8-13. Navarro, Mexican American Youth, 41-42, 66-70. Espinoza, “Pedagogies of Nationalism:’

123. The Making of MEChA: The Climax of the Chicano Student Movement, http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/mecha/archive/ research.html (accessed November 8, 2009).

124. Ricardo Cruz, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ricardo_ Cruz (accessed November 8, 2009).

125. Guide to the Cruz, Ricardo/Cat61icos Por La Raza Papers 1%7-1993, University of California Santa Barbara, http”J/www. library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/collections/cema/pdf/cruz.pdf (accessed November 8, 2009). Albert L Pulido, “Are You an Emissary of Jesus Christ? Justice, the Catholic Church, and the Chicano Movement,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies, 14, no. 1 (January 1991): 17-34. Preceding the Los Angeles St Basil’s confrontation, in San Diego in I %7, activists calling themselves Cat6licos por la Ram took over Camp Oliver, which was owned by the Sisters of Social Service, and renamed it the Campo Cultural de La Raza. They made demands of the bishop, insisting that the Church become more responsive to the Chicano community. The impasse lasted for several weeks; the group eventually met with the bishop and elicited promises of more social services and other reforms within the Church. Acuna, Anything but Mexican, 35 .. Los Angeles Times (September 23, 1985). Interviews and conversations with Ricardo Cruz; Cruz passed the California bar, but had to fight to be certified because of his conviction. Cruz practiced in East Los Angeles. See “Law Students Seek Signatures; Petition Protests Denial of Certification by Bar for Chicanos Active in Barrios,” Belvedere Citizen (Los Angeles, March 16, 1972). Cruz continued as an activist attorney till his death in the 1990s from cancer. Throughout his life he remained at war with the Church, bitter that it did not do more in the fight for social justice.

126. Richard Edward Martinez, PADRES: The National Chicano Priest Movement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 55. Jay Dolan and Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., eds., Hispanic Catholic Culture in the U.S.: Issues and Concerns (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 224-26. The reaction of individual priests to the St. Basil’s demon- strations was mixed. Fr. Luis Olivares told the author that demonstrations were negative since they had little impact on the Church and that changes occurred from within, that is, the growing consciousness of Mexican American clergy. Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, “The Emergence of a Sacred Identity Among Latino Catholics: An Appraisal,” in Dolan and Deck, eds., Hispanic Catholic Culture, has a different take. He states that the demonstrations became a symbol of

the Church’s insensitivity and contributed to an awakening. Martin McMurtrey, Mariaichi Bishop: The Life Story of Patrick Flores (San Antonio, TX: Corona, 1987). Juan Romero, “Charisma and Power: An Essay on the History of PADRES,” U.S. Catholic Historian 9 (Spring 1990).

127. Lara Medina, “The Challenges and Consequences of Being Latina, Catholic and Political,” in Gaston Espinosa, Virgilio Elizondo, and Jesse Miranda. eds., Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 97-108. Lara Medina, Las Hermanas: Chicana! Latina Religious-Political Activism in the U.S. Catholic Church (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2004). Las Hermanas. Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaon- line.org/handbook/online/articles/LL/ixl3.html (accessed November 8, 2009). Lara Medina, “Las Hermanas: Chicana/ Latina Religious-Political Activism, 1971-1997” (PhD disser- tation, Claremont Graduate University, California, 1998). Ana Marfa Diaz-Stevens, “The Saving Grace: The Matriarchal Core of Latino Catholicism,” Latino Studies Journal 4, no.3 (September 1993): 60-78.

128. Quoted in Morales, “Mexican American Perceptions; 43. Ruben Salazar, “State Calls for Probe of Judge in Latin Slurs,” Los Angeles Times (October 3, 1969), 3.

129. See previous editions of this volume where the treatment of this topic is considerably longer. Morales, “Mexican American Perceptions,” 43, 103-07. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970),4-5,37-38,40.LaRaza l,no.2(1970):18-19.Forumeer (October 1968). On September 1, 1%8, Jess Dominguez, 41, was beaten by at least 15 officers and charged with assaulting an officer. On November 9, 1968, Salvador 13, was beat- en by Los Angeles police and received a head wound requiring 40 stitches. On May 5, 1969, Frank Gonzales, 14, of Los Angeles was skipping school and was shot and killed by Officer Thomas Parkham. On September 8, 1968, in Fairfield, California, Sergeant David Huff shot and killed Jose Alvarado. Forumeer (January 19, 1970; March 1970). “Roybal Demands Removal of San Jose Judge,” Belvedere Citizen (October 16, 1969). “Judge’s Intemperate Outburst Against Mexicans Investigated,” Eastside Sun (October 9, 1969). Ideal, (February 12-15, 1970). Los Angeles Times (February 7, 1972). Justicia 0 l, no. 3 (January 1971). Gerard J. De Groot, “Ronald Reagan and Student Unrest in California, 1966-1970,” Pacific Historical Review, LXV, no. 1 (February 1996): 107-29.

130. Quoted in Oropeza, “La Batalla,”133–36, 171-72, 175, 180, 212-16, 221, 226, 228. Mario T. Garcia, ed., Ruben Salazar, Border Correspondent: Selected Writings, 1955-1970 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Los Angeles Times (July 17, 1970). Gene Blake and Howard Hertel, “Court Won’t Drop Case Against Officers in ‘Mistake’ Slayings,” Los Angeles Times (April 27, 1971). Letter from Manuel Ruiz, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to Herman Sillas, chair- person of the California State Advisory Committee to the Commission, September 14, 1970, in “A Report of the

Chapter 13 • Goodbye America: The Chicano in the 1960s 325

California State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil· Rights: Police-Community Relations in East Los Angeles, California” (October 1970), New York Times (December 18, 197l);LosAngeles Times (December 18, 1971). Ralph Guzman, “Mexican American Casualties in Vietnam,” La Raza 1, no. 1 (1971): 12. Forumeer (November 1969). In “Population Control-Weedirig out Chicanos in Vietnam War?,” Forumeer (April 1970), David Sierra asked why the United States should care about Vietnam if Australia did not. In the Southwest, out of 2,189 casualties, 316 were Chicanos. Forumeer (July 1970). Ralph Guzman, “Mexican Americans Have Highest Vietnam Death Rate,” Belvedere Citizen (October 16, 1969). Information about the moratorium is also drawn from the Belvedere Citizen (July 9, 1970).

131. Ruben Salaur, http://wwW.youtube.com/watch?v–qh7YQtjP4uo (accessed November 8, 2009). Chicano Moratorium, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=beQkgupCwSI& feature=PlayLlst&p= 8752B7 A3F30C5EB7&playnext=l&playnext_from=PL&index= 5 (accessedNovember8,2009).EnriqueHankL6pez, “Overkill at the Silver Dollar,” The Nation (October 19, 1970), 365-68.

132. La Raza,, 3 (Special Issue 1970) features a photo essay of the moratorium, documenting police repression. Armando Morales, Ando Sangrando! I Am Bleeding (Los Angeles: Congress of Mexican American Unity, 1971), l 05, ll 7.,Chavez, “Aztlan,” 118-19, 124; Putnam’s transcript on file. “Police Chief Davis Claims Latin Youths Being Used by Reds,” Belvedere Citizen (January 21, 1971). Eastside Sun (February4, 1971).An important work that attempts to synthesize the ideology of the 1960s is Ignacio M. Garcia, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997). Rosales, Chicano!, 198-207.

133. Chavez, “;\ztlan,” 82-91; those arrested were Chris Augustine, Luis Arroyo, Jaime Cervantes, Adelaida R Del Castillo, Ernest Eichwald, Montesuma Esparza, Reynaldo Macias, Francisco

Martinez, Rene Nunez, Frank Sandoval, Victor Resendez, James Vigil, Thomas Varela, and Petra Valdez. The ten indicted were Anthony Salamanca, Esmeralda Bernal, Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, Thomas Varela, Rene Nunez, Ernest Eichwald Cebeda, Juan ‘Robles, Moctezuma Esparza, and Willie Mendoza. Aside from Sumaya, Abel Armas and Robert Avila were listed as infiltrators. Others were Sergio Robledo and Frank Martinez. Carlos Montes et aL v. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, l 0 Cal. App. 3d 343; 88 Cal. Rptr. 736; 1970 Cal. App. LEXIS 1845 August 7, 1970.

134. Tackwood’s conversation is on a tape in the possession of a colleague who remains anonymous for obvious reasons; Los Angeles Times (July 27, August 18, 1971). Valley News (Van. Nuys, California, November 27, 1979). Frank Del Olmo, “Provoked. Trouble for Lawmen, Chicano Informer Qaims,” Los Angeles Times (February 1, 1972). Los Angeles Free Press (February 4-10, 1972).

135. LosAngelesFreePress(February4–10, 1972). Throughout 1971 a series of bombings took place, with a group calling itself the Chicano Liberation Front taking the credit. Banks, chain stores, government buildings, squad cars, and so on were the targets. See “Chicano Liberation Front Group Claims Bombing Credit,” Belvedere Citizen (August 19, 1971). “Officials Probe, Seek Links in East LA Bombings,” Belvedere Citizen (May 6, 1971). “Roosevelt High Bombings Linked to Series of Explosions in Area,” Belvedere Citizen (June 10, 1971).

136. Briggs, Fogel, and Schmidt, The Chicano Worker, 5, 34, 36-38, 44, 53-54, 59-60, 68. Moore, Mexican Americans, 60. Los Desarriagados (Winter 1976-1977): 6. Castro, Chicano Power, 210-11, stated that nationally Latinos comprised 7 percent of the population, but only 2.9 percent of federal employees. D. Gutierrez, Walls and Mirrors, 183. Yen Le Espiritu, “Immigration and the Peopling of Los Angeles,” in Riposa and Dersch, City of Angels, 75.

Edited by Alma M. Garcia

17 La Chicana: Her Role in The Movement*

ANONYMOUS

At the December 4th [ 1971 J Raza Unida Party Conference held at San Fernando high school, there was a workshop on La Chicana and the role she would play in La Raza Unida Party. It is an understanding that Chicanos, as a whole people cannot be liberated if one sector of its whole is still in bonds. The question of La Chicana’s liber- ation lies in the definition of this term. We are speaking of the liberation which gives the Chicana “a freedom of choice” in roles she plays within the society. She may have the freedom of choice to become a doctor, a lawyer, to run for a political office, be- come a Congresswoman or she may choose to become a housewife, a mother.

The Chicana workshop dealt with six major themes which concern all Chi- canas whether she is a student, wife, mother, divorced or single. It must be realized that she could be a combination of roles mentioned and there are legitimate problems confronting Chicanas. Self-awareness and understanding of these problems can enable her to function more easily with the politics of La Raza Unida and together with the men realize the full potential strength of the party.

Creation of community controlled Child Care Centers would profit both the working mother and the child by allowing the married or divorced woman to seek em- ployment to support herself and her child. In the area of employment there seem to be problems with working conditions, equal pay, and maternity leave. It was brought out that job counseling was needed to steer the high school Chicana into professional roles rather than as domestic help. The third theme, education, is related to the second theme by enabling the Chicana (with the proper counselling) to choose professions. In fields such as lawyers,judges, and politicians. La Chicana needs to gain a self-awareness of her- self and for this she needs the creation of classes and career advisement to aid her. Fourth, there is the need for health education. There must be more Chicanas hired on the staff of organized free clinics to aid the Spanish-speaking women who need instruction on birth control, abortion and general information on the prevention ·of disease.

When these first four needs are met the Chicana can concentrate more heavily on politics. Women a.re affected directly by policy changes made by. the government. We can readily see this change: higher prices in supermarkets and stores. For these reasons a Chicana should choose to hold a political office and not be discriminated against by the men in the party. La Chicana needs the representation in every platform decision making committees of both La Raza Unida and other government agencies.

*From El Popo,Vol. 4, No. 2, 1971: p. 2.

79

92 ADALJIZA SOSA RIDDELL

REFERENCES

t. Longeaux y Vasquez, Enriqueta. “La Chicana,” Magazfn (San Antonio), Vol. 1, 4, April 1972:66-68.

2. De Paz, Jose, “Letter to the Editor;• Popo Feme11il, Chicano Student Newspaper, California State University at Northridge, February. 197 4: p.3.

3. Anonymous, “Chicanas Take Wrong Direction;• Popo Femenil, Chicano Student Newspaper, Special Edition, California State University at Northridge, May, 1974: p. 13.

4. Ibid., p. 13. 5. Borjon, Patricia, “Chicana Symposium;• LA Raza Newspaper, Dec. 1969: p.5. 6. Nieto-Gomez, Anna, “Chicanas Identify!” Hijas de Cuaulitemoc,Vol. 1. No. 1, 1971: p. 3. 7. Borjon, op.cit., p. 5. 8. Longeaux y Vasquez, Enriqueta. “Soy Chicana Primero;· El Grito Del Norte.April 26, 1971: p. 11. 9. Nieto-Gomez, op. cit. p. 3. 10. Cetera, Marta, “Mexican Feminism,” Magazin,Vol.4, No. 9, September, 1973: p. 30. 11. Ibid, p. 30. 12. Ibid, P. 31. 13. Mujeres Unidas-Chicano Studies Workshop, San Fernando, October, 1971. 14. Nava, Yolanda, “Myths, the Media, Minority Groups and Women’s Liberation: An Overview,”

Speech presented at Santa Monica College Women’s Week, March 21, ·1973. 15. Cotera, op.cit., p. 32. 16. Ibid, p. 33. 17. Vidal, Mirta,”Chicanas Speak Om;• Pathfinder Press, 1971: p. 5. 18. lbid.pp.11-12. 19. Guibert, Rita, “The New Latin Wave: Interview with Octavio Paz;’ I11tellectua/ Digest, Decem-

ber, 1972

22 Chicanas and El Movimiento* ADALJIZA SOSA RIDDELL

The Chicano t movement is the all-encompassing effort to, on the one hand, articu- late and intensify the Chicano existence, and, on the other hand, to articulate and al- leviate the suffering which has accrued to Chicanos precisely because of that exis- ‘I ‘Tho <=n Clrlano will ho =I dm <h>pt« ;n <ho g=ri< ll«hIDv< of nulo •nd IC- .. __ ;.—:-_·_,·,:··· male, unless otherwise specified or used in companionship with Chicana. From Aztlan, vol. 5, 1974: PP· : 155-166.

·:::

CHICANAS AND EL MOVIMIENTO 93

tence. Of the important issues it faces, that of Las Chicanas is perhaps the most prob- lematic. Ordinarily, when the issue of Chicanas is raised, whether it be by Chicanos, Chicanas, or by those outside of the Chicano context, the concern is with the status and role of Chicanas within the Movimiento in general, within specific activist orga- nizations, and within Chicano society. This is particularly unfortunate because expres- sion of interest in Chicanas thus inspires a defensive attitude on the part of Chicanos included within any of those categories. These defensive Chicanos are not too differ- ent from the Mexican-Americans who, in the early days of the newly articulated Movimiento defended the status quo situation either because they had invested so much time and energy into attaining a certain status within it, or because they had reasoned, along with the Anglo ·social scientists, that there was something innately wrong with the Mexican culture which resulted in the conditions within which the Chicano existed in the United States.

The tragedy of this situation is simply an extension of the all-too-familiar syn- drome under which Chicanos have suffered. Chicanos are induced to define and de..: scribe their very being and e:x;stence in terms of external constraints and conditions imposed upon them by their colonizers or neo-colonizers. Thus, what we have is the acceptance of certain externally-imposed stereotypes about Chicanas acting as a re- straint upon actions or suggestions for changes among Chicanas; actions and changes which would not conform to the stereotypes or act to destroy the stereotypes.

Many of the stereotypes have been equated with aspects of Mexican-Chicano culture. Social scientists describe la Chicana as, “ideally submissive, unworldly, and chaste,” or “at the command of the husband, who [keeps] her as he would a coveted thing, free from the contacts of the world, subject to his passions, ignorant oflife.” 1 Social scientists also describe “machismo” as a masculinity syndrome particularly at- tributable to the Latin male, and thus, by extension, to the Chicano male. These atti- tudes are echoed by Chicanos themselves in such c0ntexts as in the song, “The Fe- male of Aztlin,” by the Dominquez family: “your responsibility is to love, work, pray, and help … the male is the leader, he is iron, not mush;’ and by statements such as those made at the Denver Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in 1969 emphasiz- ing the role ofla Chicana in the Movimiento was to “stand behind her man:’2 More problematic, however, are the large numbers of Chicanas and Chicanos who have come to accept these descriptions and syndromes as part of their daily lives.

Obviously these stereotypes have little meaning to those who have lived the re- ality of the Chicano existence. Within each of our memories there is the image of a father who worked long hours, suffered to keep his family alive, united, and who struggled to maintain his dignity. Such a man had little time for concern over his “masculinity.” Certainly he did not have ten children because of his machismo, bpt because he was a human being, poor, and without “access” to birth control. We cer- tainly remember mothers and sisters who worked in the fields or at menial labor in addition to doing the work required at home to survive. Submissiveness, chastity, and unworldliness are luxuries of the rich and/ or nearly rich. Machismo is a myth propa- gated by subjugators and colonizers who take pleasure in watching their subjects strike out vainly against them in order to prove themselves still capable of action.

The term macho is not applied to the Anglo-society itself. Chicanos are faced with stereotypes of themselves which are standards they are goaded into emulating and expected to achieve in order to be accepted by the dominant society. Strenuous efforts to achieve these externally imposed goals may thus result in excesses that can then be blamed, by outsiders, on cultural traits. Conversely, failure to achieve them can result in the same syndrome, that is a view of a culture as somehow inferior and inflexible. Thus,

94 ADALJIZA SOSA RIDDELL

to talk about change becomes a very real threat to Chicanos who wish to retain what they have defined as their culture. The stereotypes, the acceptance of stereotypes, and the defensive postures adopted by “culturalists” become the problems for Chicanos striving to bring about some changes, rather than the problems being defined as they more adequately could be, in terms of external forces.3 Chicano activists, in turn, tend to define the changes they wish to see in internal terms rather than external terms so that we see articles written by Chicanas with such titles as:”Machismo No! Igualdad Si!” [Equality, Yes!].The clashes thus continue unabated over Chicana roles, and the Chicana continues to feel guilty about what she is, or is not, doing for her people, to and for, her man. The important point is that Chicanos have had and continue to have, very little control over their self image, cultural awareness, and self definition.

Chicanos and Chicanas and the Movimiento must now address themselves to these realities. If Chicanos act in such a way as to ignore the condition of double-op- pression under which Chicanas suffer, we must face the fact that they are not only perpetuating the stereotypes and the conditions which those stereotypes ·support, but they are also guilty of intensifying those conditions and their negative results. We should articulate specific proposals and goals which relate to the Chicana and should direct ourselves to relieving some of the unique burdens which the dominant society places upon Chicanas, thus separating her from her male counterparts.

Many Chicanas find the Women’s Liberation movement largely irrelevant be- cause more often than not it is a move for strictly women’s rights. While women’s rights advocates are asking for a parity share of the “American” pie, Chicanas (and Chicanos) are asking for something other than parity. The end which is desired by Chicanas is the restoration of control over a way of life, a culture, For a Chicana to break with this goal is to break with her past, her present, and her people. For this reason, the concerns expressed by Chicanas for their own needs within the Movimiento cannot be considered a threat to the unity of the Movimiento itself.

One of the questions to which Chicanos should be addressing themselves is what goals within the Movimiento can be constructed to relate to Chicanas in partic- ular. If we recognize the external imposition of much of what defines and delineates the conditions for Chicanas, then it is obvious there must be a special effort to remove some of these unique burdens. To end the division by including Chicanas as an inte- gral, not subordinate, part of the group we call Chicanos. is to also diminish the abili- J ty of outside groups to manipulate and exploit us. This should be one of the goals of the Chicano movement. ·I

I 1. The first example is from Arthur Rubel, “The Family;’ in John H. Burma (ed.), Mexican Ameri-1

cans in tlze United States, p.214.The second example is from Alfred White, TheApperceptive Mass of Foreign- ers as Applied toAmericanization:The Mexican Group.Thesis. University ofCalifornia, 1923,p.31. {j

2. The Denver Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was held in 1969 and one workshop :i which dealt with the question of Chicanas issued the statement that Chicanas did not want to be liberal- :fj ed. This is. akin to saying that Black slaves loved their masters and worse, saying this with pride. (;I

3. Culturalists in this chapter are defined as those who wish to preserve certain aspects of the Chi- cano the concern with of culn:ral characteristics a sta-,.-11 tus quo pos1t1on as 1f cultures never change.At other tunes, culturabsts border on tradinonalists, that 1s, who wish to go back to an earlier era, as if in that era .. culture” was somehow pure and unadulterated by contact with Anglo society. The reality for the Chicano is that the contact has already occurred and much :;iii of what was his past was no better than his present. The Chicano, then, exists in that diversity of trUths. ;I which poses a problem for analysts who would like to define once and for all what Chicano consists 0£

‘ti ;;’!

100 SONIA A. LOPEZ

ated with white women. They are called reactionaries and therefore a threat to the group’s survival. . ··

For example, if Chicana classes and feminism are defined as reactionary elements in Chicano Studies, students will not take the classes and continue to rem_ain ignorant on the women’s question.

Feminists are harassed and ridiculed as man-haters and degenerates. Many times these women become alienated from the group. Rather than relying on emotion in order to do the right thing, a continual process of investigation, research, discussion, and analysis should be a means of defining positions and action. Conflict should be seen as a struggle to develop.

In the last seven years women involved in discussing and applying the women’s question have been ostracized, isolated, and ignored. It is time to evaluate this histori- cal trend. It is time for all to study the women’s question and to develop an analysis which is applicable to the Chicana and Chicano. Therefore, if there are any criticisms in respect to this presentation, do not hold it against me. Instead, let us study the issues together-criticism can be a seed to growth.

25 ,,. I

The Role of the Chicana within the Student Movement* SONIA A. LOPEZ

Introduction

Women have traditionally been confined to the home to maintain the family struc- ture. This does not negate that at the same time women have also been part of the la- bor force. But, their role as laborers has simply been considered a supplement to that of men. Yet whether in the fields or factories, professional or skilled occupations, women have worked by the side of their husbands and sons. And just as their contri- bution to the labor force has been neglected, their importance in other social organi- zations has also been, as a general rule, minimized.

_Within the Chicano movement, women have also participated in the struggle

*From Essays on LA Mujer (Los Angeles: UCLA. Chicano Studies Center, 1977: pp. 16-29).

THE ROLE OF THE CHICANA WITHIN THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 101

alongside the men. However, Chicanas were active from the inception of the move- ment, they were generally relegated to traditional roles played by women in society. It was the realization of this oppressive situation and their secondary roles within the movement which led many Chicanas to initiate a process by which they could begin to resolve the inconsistencies between male/female roles.

To examine the political development of Chicanas within the Chicano student movement and the subsequent formation of Chicana groups and organizations throughout the Southwest, is the intent of this paper. But to understand the historical content it is essential that we first review briefly the historical development of the Chicano student movement itself, before proceeding with the specific analysis.

The Chicano Movement

Throughout the 1960s the Chicano population, as the second largest minority within the United States, continued to provide the main source of cheap labor in the South- west, not only in the urban centers where Chicanos worked in factories and canner- ies, but also in agribusiness. The relative prosperity created by the production of war material in the middle of the 1960s brought more comforts to the middle class, and deepened the sharp contrasting differences between middle class neighborhoods and the barrios and ghettos of Chicanos, Blacks, and other minorities.

The stimulus of militancy within the black movement in the United States, to- gether with the socioeconomic and political factors, provided conditions which gave rise to the Chicano movement. Though the phenomenon of Chicano organizations was not new, the Chicano movement of the 1960s represented a break with the tradi- tional approach towards resolving the problems facing Chicanos. At this time, con- frontation tactics and direct action were substituted for the integrationist politics of the 1940s and 1950s.

The Chicano student movement, inspired by the militancy of the black move- ment and political activities of Chicanos in the barrios and agriculture fields, directed their political activity towards forming student organizations. Some of the these were: MASC, MAYA, united Mexican-American students, Mexican-American youth orga- nization and PASO. The issues they raised were basically of the same nature as those of Chicano community groups and politicians. They centered around police brutality, poor housing, unemployment, poor health care services and substandard education. However, their main emphasis was on education for Chicanos, and their activity re- volved around the institutionalization of Chicano studies and supportive service pro- grams for Chicano college students.

A major turning point in the Chicano student movement in California came in the Spring of 1969 with the convocation of a statewide student conference in Santa! Barbara. At this conference, Chicano students, faculty, administrators, and community representatives formulated El Plan de Santa Barbara, a plan based on unity of will to demand and implement programs necessary for Chicanos in institutions of higher ed- ucation. According to El Plan de Santa Barbara, these programs would begin the process of self-determination and liberation for the Chicano.

In retrospect, though cultural nationalism resulted from the general denial of the Chicano’s historical and cultural heritage contributions, it becomes a common base for Chicano groups and organizations with diverse goals and objectives. It succeeded in obtaining some concessions in school integration and affirmative action programs. But cultural nationalism, with its limited analysis, also led to the containment and co- optation of the movement.

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Thus, the years 1968 to 1970 can be viewed as the “pyik” years of the Chicano student movement due to many activities occurring at that dme. Conferences, march- es, sit-ins, demonstrations, development of Chicano studies departments, and other services for Chicanos at the colleges and universities were on the upswing. However, certain questions are posed as the objectives and outcome of these activities and the concessions given, both in the educational institutions and in the barrios. Were these programs initiated to bring about concrete changes in the economic status of Chi- canos? Did they push class consciousness and prepare the way for genuine revolution- ary change? To what degree have they succeeded in solving the problems within the Chicano communities? Were these activities a liberating force within the community and university? What kinds of changes were they designed for?

It is true that at the time many involved in the Chicano student movement viewed it as revolutionary. Chicanos thought self-determination could be achieved by understanding institutionalized racism and taking systematic steps to combat it. How- ever, under close examination and by keeping the precious questions in mind, several points can be seen. Though some changes did occur in the areas of awareness of racism among the general public and the revival of cultural pride for certain sectors of the Chicano community, these activities and programs, local, state, or federally-fund- ed, have been successful in appeasing the Chicano community, especially the one- time militant element, by creating token social service programs and a few high-pay- ing jobs. Mexican communities still have a high rate of drug abuse, poverty, unem- ployment, low quality health care, low educational achievement, and no political power.

As with other subordinate groups in the country, Chicanos are burdened with racist policies. Like racism, sex too has been used as a basis for dividing working class men and women; for example, women have traditionally received lower pay than men for doing the same job.Women have been channeled into the domestic sphere, where they serve as laborers. During the industrial revolution, women were incorporated into the industrial labor force, often times performing the same type of work they performed in the home. These included work in food-processing, clothing, and textile manufacturing. But minority women, because of their sex and ethnic origin, are the lowest paid sector of the class.

As active participants of the Chicano movement, on campuses Chicanas also be- came involved in the struggles for programs and recruitment of Chicano students, fac- ulty, and staff. However, within movement activities and responsibilities, Chicanas generally continued to fill the traditional roles assigned them within the Mexican cul- ture and the American-Anglo society. A woman’s role has traditionally been defined in terms of her biological reproduction capacity, which is also the reproduction of the labor force, her role in the education and care of children and her role in the care of the sick and the elderly.

The ideal women within the Mexican culture has been defined as faithful, passive and obedient. Because these traditionally defined female roles continued to exist, Chi- cano student organizations were male dominated. Meetings were conducted as if the goal of ending oppression of Chicanos could only be initiated and carried out by men.

The lack of Chicana participation in leadership roles has its origin in a socializa- tion process which asserts that men are “naturally” superior to women. Being exposed to the same socialization process both men and women give credibility to this belief system, until experience lead to the realization of the mutual oppressiveness of the sit- uation. This idea is reinforced and perpetuated by either formal or informal institu- tions in this society, and are divided into the following areas:

THE ROLE OF THE CHICANA WITHIN THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 103

1. The family structure in the traditional Chicano household is headed by the husband, who exercises authority. He is the main provider in the family, consequently, the eco- nomic situation of the woman is directly related to her dependency on him. In Mex- ican culture, the role of the Mexicana/Chicana, whether single or married, has been to serve her famiIY, particularly the men: her father, brothers, husband, and sons. In short, the role of Chicana abuelitas [grandmothers] mothers, and tlas [aunts], with few exceptions, has been to bear children, rear them, and be good wives.

2. Religious institutions and Christian ideology, with its tales of Adam and Eve, theVir- gin Mary and reference to sex roles in the Bible, has served to maintain and perpetu- ate women’s inferior position. The Catholic Church, in particular, has been influen- tial in cultivating this aspect of the Mexican culture and accordingly has relegated women to an inferior status.

3. In educational institutions women have historically been geared towards “feminine study courses;’ home economics and clerical or secretarial classes, which prepare women for domestic and subservient work; professional careers are stressed for men. These attitudes manifest themselves in the Mexican culture in such common sayings as the following:” Para que quieres educarte si de nada te va a servir cuando te cases.” [“Why do you want to educate yourself if it won’t be any use to you when you get mar- ried?”] .

4. In legal institutions women have been and continue to be discriminated against in property ownership, divorce, employment, and welfare laws.

These concepts and attitudes concerning the roles of women, and particularly Chicanas, prevailed and were reinforced in the Chicano student movement. In the or- ganizing of conferences, symposiums, meetings, and publications of newspapers, and magazines, Chicanas usually provided their invisible labor by being the cooks, secre- taries, and janitors. Oftentimes a Chicana’s recognition was established by being the wife, girlfriend, or party mate of a “heavy.” But as Chicanas became more politically aware, they began to question assigned roles on the basis of sexuality in the Mexican culture and in the movement.

As early as the Spring of 1969, at the Chicano Youth Conference held in Den- ver, Colorado, a few vocal Chicana activists raised the issue of the traditional role of the Chicana in the Movement and how it limited her capabilities and her develop- ment. However, the majority of the Chicanas participating in the workshop which discussed the role of the Chicana, did not feel the same. One Chicana observed that, “when the time came for the workshop report to the full conference, the only thing that the representative had to say was this-“It was the consensus of the group that the Chicana woman does not want to be liberated:’1

This outcome can be viewed in two ways; either the majority of Chicanas at- tending the conference did not see or understand the contradiction of the sexual roles between Chicanas and Chicanos, or they simply did not want to alienate the men.

This blatant internal contradiction, between the professed goal of liberation from oppression and the fact that with.in the Chicano student movement Chicanas were relegated to traditional roles, became more obvious.A lack of Chicana leadership existed in student organizations, Chicano studies departments, and in administration of Raza programs. Their assignments were clerical in nature in the organizations, and domestic in the household of movement men.

By 1970, Chicanas began to form groups on campuses in order to analyze, and propose solutions to the problems they encountered as women involved in a political movement. Such groups as “la Chicanas” from San Diego State University, and “Hijas de Cuauhtemoc” from Long Beach State University, were among the first groups to ap- pear. Not all Chicanas on the campuses nor in the Movirniento Estudiantil Chicano

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de Aztlan (M.E.Ch.A) participated in these groups. This may be attributed to the fol- lowing factors: ·

1. Lack of political awareness to perceive the oppressed status of Chicanas and the working class women as a distinct group within the social, economic and political structure;

2. Fear of being labeled a “vendida” [sell-out] if she rejected the traditional role of the Mexicana;

3. The idea that supporting the “women’s movement,” which consisted mainly of white middle-class women, meant supporting a separatist and reformist movement which saw “men” as the enemy, and had as its main goal becoming part of the system, to gain equality in jobs;

4. Reaction of many men in the movement towards Chicana groups was that they, the Chicanas, were.trying to divide the movement.

The contradictions of the role of “la mujer” in the movement, were crystallized at the First National Chicana Conference held in Houston, Texas in May 1971, where more than 600 Chicanas from 23 states participated. After two days of forums and di- alogue, the four main workshops produced the following resolutions:

1. Sex and the Chicana-That free legal abortions and birth control in the Chicano community be provided and controlled by Chicanas and that double standards be eliminated.

2. Choices for Chicanas in education and occupation-That educational institutions encourage Chicanas towards pursuing higher education.

3. Marriage, Chicana Style–That the traditional role of the Chicana within the mar- riage context no longer be acceptable due to her involvement in the movement. In order to facilitate and encourage Chicana involvement and provide services for working Chicanas, child care centers should be promoted and established in the Chi- cano communities.

4. Religion-That as mujeres de la Raza [women of the Raza], Chicanas recognize the Catholic Church as an oppressive institutions and oppose any institutionalized reli- gion.2

The purpose of these resolutions was to serve as guidelines for workshops, sem- inars, groups, and organizations relevant to the immediate needs of Chicanas. Howev- er, about half the women involved in the conference did not support the resolutions. This group felt that Chicanas had no business sponsoring a Chicana conference with the help of the Young Women’s Christian Association [YWCA), considered by them to be a racist organization, or discussing “Chicanos oppressing Chicanas.” They felt that emphasis should be placed on issues which revealed that “our enemy is the “gava- cho” [whites] and not the “macho” and stressed work in prison, protesting the Viet- nam War, denouncement of immigration laws, and works with the farm workers’ struggle. Accordingly they said, if Chicanas are to be politically involved, this involve- ment must not detract from their family commitment. Chicanas must then make an extra effort to do both jobs, in the home and in the movement. This culminated in a split with half the women that opposed the resolutions leaving the conference to meet in a nearby park.

The differences that developed at the First National Chicanas Conference were indicative of those evolving in the Chicano student movement as a whole, but not yet clearly defined. Although there were many Chicanos and .Chicanas who prioritized issues such as prison reform and immigration, there were also those who gave more

THE ROLE OF THE CHICANA WITHIN THE STUDENT MOVEMENT 105

importance to taking a critical and analytical look at the internal contradictions of the Chicano movement. Those contradictions which were becoming more obvious were:

.1. Unclear objectives and goals-some groups were pushing for institutional changes while others were advocating separate institutions for and by Chicanos. This was an outgrowth of having only a superficial analysis of problems facing Chicanos which made it impossible to create concrete alternative measures consistent to a given polit- ical direction. It became clear that the Chicano student movement was willing to deal with problems, events, and issues spontaneously. It would attack problems with- out analyzing the interrelated factors of the situation and its implications.

2. Lack of practice in COIJliflunity involvement although spoken of frequently. Practice is the involvement of an individual or a group of individuals in direct action to change given objective conditions.

3. Present was the romantic notion in the Chicano student movement, as expressed in an idealization of colleges and universities as places of revolutionary activity.This was a contradiction in reality, given the oppressive nature of the institutions themselves.

4. Opportunism became prevalent in cases where Chicanos used the movement for their own socioeconomic and political advancement.

5. Existence of a hierarchy within the movement which gave Chicano men superior status over Chicana women, while at the same time espousing liberation rhetoric.

Because the Chicana was involved in the Chicano student movement from the beginning, even though she was not visible and little credited for her efforts at that point, we cannot isolate her political development from that of the Chicano student movement itself. Two trends in her development were evident as early as 1971. The split was between those Chicanas who did not see the importance of dealing with sexual contradictions as they existed between Chicanas and Chicanos in the move- ment. Rather, they concerned themselves “movement issues;· and in maintaining and perpetuating the traditional roles, such as seeking approval from males and being passive. These attitudes connotate the “ideal Chicana.”

The other Chicanas saw the need to organize Chicana groups due to the incon- sistencies between liberation rhetoric of the movement and the reality as it existed for Chicanas within the movement-that of being exploited by their own people for their labor and sexuality.

The Chicanas who voiced their discontent with the organizations and with male leadership were often labeled as “women’s libbers;’ and “lesbians:’This served to isolate and discredit them, a method practiced both covertly and overtly. In the more politically advanced M.E.Ch.A. organizations, lip service to Chicana demands and needs were given, and a “selected few” Chicanas were given leadership positions in organizations, boards, and committees. Yet in practice the men continued to be the! “jefes” [bosses] in decision making policies and political direction. Chicanas who be- longed to Chicana groups came to be seen as a clique by those Chicanas who were not involved in any type of Chicana awareness process. This division, more often than not, was used by those men who felt their “machismo” threatened, pitting one group against the other. This situation often created a breakdown of communication among women in the organizations. It hindered their working together as companeras [sisters]. A saying, .. Las Chicanas con pantalones,” [The Chicanas with pants) was often used to ridicule and tease Chicana activists. Often, even though they contributed much of their time and labor, these Chicanas were not fully accepted into organizations. This caused many Chicanas to drop out of the M.E. Ch.A. organizations. The formation of Chicana groups, therefore, became the only vehicle through which some Chicana ac-

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tivists could receive moral and political support. At Long Beach State University, for example, a Chicana group by the name of Hijas de Cuauthemoc, separated from the M.E.Ch.A. organization. They not only created support for Chicana activists, but also organized other Chicanas in the struggle of their people. In this particular case, some of the male members of the M.E.Ch.A. organization reacted to the formation of the women’s organization by conducting a symbolic funeral to make their dissatisfaction known.

The period 1970 to 1972 can be considered the years in which Chicana aware- ness emerged.This resulted not only in Chicana campus groups, such as those formed at Fresno State College, San Diego State University, Long Beach State University, and Stanford University, but also Community based groups and organizations. Some of these were Comisi6n Femenil Mexicana Nacional, National Chicana Political Cau- cus, and MARA (Chicana organization at California Institute for Women). These groups and organizations were instrumental in organizing and sponsoring local, re- gional, statewide, and national meetings and conferences. These conferences included the First National Chicanas Conference held in the Spring of 1971 in Houston, Texas; the Chicana Regional Conference held in the Fall of 1972 at Whittier, Califor- nia; La ConferenCia Femenil held in the Spring of 1972 in Sacramento, California; and a few programs and projects for barrio women, such as the Chicana Service Ac- tion Center in Los Angeles.

In looking at the development of Chicana awareness, one must keep in mind that this phenomenon occurred mainly among a small percentage of the Chicana women who were involved in the Chicano student movement. It was their direct par- ticipation in the movement that made them aware of the Chicanas’ double oppres- sion. Chicana activists channeled their efforts in working towards educational reform, such as establishing Chicana classes, Chicana counselors and Chicana teachers. It was felt that if Chicana women had the proper role models and classroom courses, eventu- al solutions to many of the socioeconomic problems confronting them could be found. Chicana activists, therefore, failed to direct their energies in educating and or- ganizing the sector of Chicanas most oppressed and exploited; those Chicanas in the fields, factories, and service jobs. This is not to ·say that the need for Chicana models and classes is not important, as is the need for Chicano Studies and bilingual-bicultur- al education. But these innovations in themselves did not change the social conditions for Chicanos.

If Chicanas are committed to bringing about social change not only for their people, but for all oppressed people in a class society, they must begin to analyze ob- jectively existing conditions that give rise to exploitation, poverty, and misery. To do this they need to see class society as the basic problem. They need to do a great deal of political studying together, in groups, in order to develop the political understanding necessary to correctly guide organizing in their work places and communities.

NOTES

1. Enriqueta Longeaux y Vasquez, in Sisterhood is Powerful (New York: Vintage Book, 1970), p. 379.

2. La Verdad, “National Chicanas Conference:’ (San Diego, 1971) p.15