 | |||||||||
 |  | ||||||||
Network Aztlan Latino Chicano Comunidades Transnacionales | |||||||||
 | |||||||||
 | | | | | | | | | |
Amigos of Aztlannet.com Ralph Urbina López
The National Chicano Moratorium, which was scheduled to take place in East Los Angeles' Laguna Park on August 29, 1970, was a massive protest against the legality and excesses of the Viet Nam War; a war Chicanos and Americans across the nation saw as an illegal and senseless war against the Vietnamese people. While many Chicanos shared this view, they were particularly incensed by the fact that Chicano GIs in Viet Nam were dying in obscene numbers relative to their size in national population, representing more than 20% of the casualties while making up only 6% of the American population. Ironically, while Chicano GIs were sacrificing life and limb in the steamy jungles of Viet Nam, their families in America continued to be treated like second-class citizens. This was a bitter pill to swallow--the more so because the National Chicano Moratorium never really got off the ground.
An incident at a nearby liquor store outside Laguna Park was the slim pretext the Los Angeles County Sheriffs needed to justify their marching lockstep into the park, black batons at the ready, to begin breaking up what up to that moment had been a crucial, yet, in typical Chicano fashion, a festive, family oriented affair. Until that riotous point in time, the hopes and aspirations inspired by the Chicano Movement, which sought a redress of grievances that had been suffocating in our memories for nearly a century-and-a-half: the freedom to exercise our right of self-determination; the right to identify ourselves according to covenants of faith and historical truths that we as a people deem valid; and the right to confront and wrest away from a long-standing racist establishment our fair share of political, social, educational, economic, and cultural power, an agenda that had rocketed our spirits to an apogee of expectations unrivaled in Chicano history … an agenda momentarily chilled by the police overkill at Laguna Park.
On that fateful day, the warriors amongst us, that is, the men, women, and children armed only with picket signs, magazines, flyers, purses, bottles, fists, and feet gallantly withstood the brutal onslaught of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs, fiercely resisting this unprovoked attack against our First Amendment right of free speech and our right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, but as police reinforcements from surrounding municipalities or jurisdictions streamed into the battle zone with sirens blaring, those who weren't beaten into submission or arrested had little alternative but to scatter helter- skelter from the męlée, joining the stampede of thousands of shocked, angry, and outraged Chicano anti-Viet Nam War protestors.
At day's end on August 29, 1970, an estimated 30,000 Chicano souls—great numbers of whom had traveled to East Los Angeles from cities and barrios across the nation were gone; only the debris of those victimized by the police riot lay strewn on the park green … a haunting reminder of the foul blow struck against Chicano liberation and empowerment, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and American democracy. But shock soon turned into outrage as Chicanos awoke to the dangerous implications of the foul injustice perpetrated against them by a racist establishment, and the Chicanos struck back, torching and overturning police cars; smashing storefront windows; and torching buildings on Whittier Boulevard. By the time the smoke cleared, hundreds of Chicanos had been injured Chicanos and/or hauled off to jail, and three Chicano patriots murdered, including Lyn Ward, Brown Beret, Angel Diaz, and KMEX TV journalist, Ruben Salazar. The smoke plumes rising from the embattled ruins of our peaceful moratorium on the Viet Nam War signaling the people of Southern California that disaster had once again befallen East Los Angeles. This was indeed … a bitter pill to swallow--but, not an uncommon experience for Chicanos.
In the weeks that followed, outraged Chicanos rallied again, this time organizing a march to commemorate the untimely deaths of Ruben Salazar, Angel Diaz, and Lyn Ward, while unleashing a passionate campaign to change the name of Laguna Park to Salazar Park. Ruben Salazar was, of course, the Chicano journalist whose assignment it was to cover the Chicano Moratorium at Laguna Park. Irony of ironies, little did he know that while he sat quaffing a beer at the Silver Dollar Bar--taking a brief respite from an event of hope, empowerment, and joy suddenly turned violent, shocking, and tragic-- that a Sheriff's ill-intended missile would snuff out his life and that Laguna Park, the site of this seminal event in Chicano history would soon bear his name.
In 1989, concerned Chicanos realized that this miscarriage of justice, this heroic and tragic event in Chicano history must not be allowed to lapse into oblivion; that the memory of its noble and empowering mission, the establishment's racist repression of the event, the thousands of Chicanos who traveled far and wide to participate in the event, and the racist establishment's brutal attack and murder of Chicanos engaged in the lawful, peaceful, and joyful exercise of their First Amendment Rights must be kept alive for generations to come.
To achieve this end, Chicanos founded the National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC) and immediately moved to organize an Aztlán-wide mobilization of Chicanos for the purpose of commemorating the 20th anniversary of the August 29th, 1970 National Chicano Moratorium at Salazar Park. We must recognize and applaud the Chicanos involved in this initiative, for their foresight and planning brought about a mobilization of raza unseen since the protest marches and rallies of the late sixties and early seventies. To wit, August 25, 1990 saw some 8,000 Chicanos mass in East L.A. to commemorate this important historical event, the marchers proudly retracing the steps taken by the original marchers.
The Chicano Movement of the sixties and seventies evolved from numerous social and political revolts originating in Chicano barrios across the nation. The problems these communities faced had deep historical roots; a history during which Chicanos were victimized by a virulent form of Nazi-like racism that characterized Mexican Americans as a mixed-blood and thereby inferior race; a savage race given to laziness, filthiness, lechery, drunkenness, revelry, thievery, and a belief in the infallibility of the Pope.
Unfortunately, this demeaning stereotype is deeply rooted in the Euro-American psyche; its origins can be traced to a patchwork of impressions noted down by alien Anglos with a strong appetite for Mexican land. Then as now, it takes little time for immigrants who come to America from every continent and island of the world to become indoctrinated to this insulting caricature of Americans of Mexican descent. What is amazing about this stereotype is its archetypal endurance in the psyches of several generations of Americans. My mother once told me that "everybody has to have a dog to kick." It seems that in America we are that dog. How else can one explain or justify the history of racist abuse suffered by Chicanos in the United States of America? Our poverty, our low income households, our low-wage labor, our substandard education, and social services; the police abuse inflicted on members of our communities; the violations of our civil rights by elected or appointed public officials … these are the products of a racist establishment that has mustered all of its arsenal to keep us in our place.
Mexican Americans born in the thirties reached full maturity in the sixties, at the dawning of the Age of Media. It was an age rife with social, political, and cultural movements across the length and breadth of the nation. An age when media sage, Marshall McCluhan, the father of modern communications, wrote the immortal words, "The medium is the message." Considering the current state of media influence on our lives, I think it's safe to say that the medium is now the media.
Today, our world's become the lap dog of media power. Save for the influence of our familias, no other force has impacted our lives as has the media; it envelops us like an electronic membrane. As independent Mexican American revolts coalesced in the Chicano Movement throughout America, the Media fell upon us in all its habits, print, radio, and television, and main-frame computers. Although a large majority of Chicano activists sought to redress grievances and bring about institutional changes beneficial to Chicanos by working within the system, that is, through the exercise of rights and freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the "Movement" attracted Chicano individuals and groups with diverse political and cultural agendas, including liberal intellectuals, poets, visual artists, taggers, lawyers, budding politicians, centrists, Maoists, Ché disciples, indigenists, and angry, unforgiving separatists ready to resort to violence to accomplish their ends. Needless to say, media focus on the radical elements of the "Movement" was tantamount to inviting federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to infiltrate the "Movement" and hound some of its more vocal or active members.
From 1965, the year Cesar Chavez and the National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) led a strike of California grape-pickers to demand higher wages and encouraged all Americans to boycott table grapes as a show of support, on through the high school "Blowouts of 1968; the incarceration of the "East L.A. 13 by L.A. District Attorney, Evelle Younger, on the ludicrous charge of conspiring to commit a misdemeanor, a felony; the protest demonstrations at the L.A. County Jail, where the "East L.A. 13" were incarcerated; the protest demonstration at Parker Center and the march and rally at Olvera Street; the legal battles at the L.A. County Courthouse; Zeta's challenge against the jurisdictional power of the L.A. County Grand Jury on the grounds of its discriminatory selection and unrepresentative character of the Superior court judges who refused to inquire into the alleged criminal conduct of the "East L.A. 13"; the Chicano confrontation of the Catholic Church: Chicano activists admonishing the Church to ally itself with the Chicano community in resisting the discrimination and exploitation practiced against them by a racist establishment; and the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, a massive effort by Chicanos across the nation to bring an end to the horrific bloodletting and death of American soldiers in Viet Nam--an inordinate number of whom were Chicanos. The Chicano Movement was not exclusively a political movement as revisionist writers of recent vintage have tried to characterize it. It was a collective catharsis driven by five hundred years of racist abuse and repression; a chronicle of suffering and despair so vile that some of us have unconsciously grown numb to it, while others of us have consciously played dumb to the havoc it's wreaked on our spirits and souls. Yet, the memory of this vile history has imposed itself in every cell and fiber of our being; a memory so vast that even the collective unconscious has yet to show it can contain it. The Chicano Movement was merely a servant of its premonitions, the catalyst that freed its pent up energy, the warrior spirit that pulled the plug on our collective unconscious, releasing to the world a thunderbolt infused with the anger, tears, love, kinship, courage, purpose, unity, organization, leadership, creativity, and pride of our people; a bolt of lightning that's lit up our precious homeland while America sleeps and the world wonders.
From its onset, the Chicano Movement encompassed a cultural phenomenon that, in my opinion, has gotten short documentary shrift in the public record. In fact, the explosion of visual, literary, and performance art permeated, accompanied, and gave powerful expression to the "Movement's" goal of achieving political, social, and cultural justice for Chicanos. Not since the muralist movement of the Mexican Revolution had art served the political, social, and cultural needs of a community as powerfully as the art of the Chicano Movement. For what happened in Los Angeles was a microcosm of what was happening in cities and barrios of America. Media coverage of the "Movement" brought national and global attention to the plight, latent power, and creative ability of Americans of Mexican descent.
Nor has the energy released by the Chicano Movement disappeared in a time warp. That energy is alive and viable in the collective unconscious of every single one of us. Today a new generation of Chicanos is assuming the mantle of power generated by the Chicano Movement. A generation whose time has come to shepherd that power. A power fueled by our collective memory, encompassing all the fundamental truths (positive or negative) veiled by the contradictions accompanying our journey across the landscape of history. Our ancestral memory knows no boundaries. Nothing less than a truthful account of our history must inform our ancestral memory. Nor does our ancestral memory recognize political borders. We do not dump our ancestral memory at the border simply because we exchange political allegiances. Politics is certainly an important aspect of our ancestral memory but our memory is a vast repository of knowledge and wisdom that is vital to our spiritual and psychological well-being. Without that knowledge we grow muddled and contentious about our identity. Without this knowledge, we grow weak and vulnerable and much easier to exploit by people who would do us harm. We elders understand that it is our duty to pass on to the next generation our witness, experience, knowledge, and wisdom of what it has meant to be Chicano in our generation.
Más Caras/Aztlannet.com has understood for a long time that the various fronts of the Chicano Movement shared one important idea, the social, political, and cultural empowerment of our people. The pursuit of empowerment was a powerful unifying principle in the sixties and we at Más Caras/Aztlannet.com believe we should make it our rallying cry in the present day. While we applaud the accomplishments of educated professionals and gifted lay-persons, their feats are dwarfed by the poverty and suffering of a majority of our people. Gregory Rodriguez informed us in a recent article published in the Opinion Section of the Sunday Edition of the L.A. Times, of the failure of educated Chicano professionals and gifted lay-persons to build powerful and enduring human service institutions in our community; foundations or nonprofit organizations fully capable of addressing the needs of Chicanos today.
While I generally disagree with most of Rodriguez's revisionist babble on Chicanismo, it's obvious, with notable exceptions, that Chicano professionals and gifted lay-persons have generally turned right and browned-out in Chicano middleclass enclaves or white-washed their mongoloid spots in ex-burbs to gain the consolation prize of acceptance as creatures of a "different" stripe than that of the barrio rabble from whence they came. Still, if our hearts are better for a remedy of our own, we must forgive their errant ways and welcome a change of heart, and whatever skills or know-how they can contribute in helping us build permanent public organizations dedicated to the empowerment of our people.
Beginning with the Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 2002, Más Caras/Aztlannet.com. and its friends plan to celebrate the personal achievements of individuals, organizations, and seminal historical events. Más Caras is a 501 (c) (3) Private Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation dedicated to promoting, supporting, and showcasing Chicano arts and letters. We are not a political organization, per se, but we strongly believe that arts and letters should serve both an individual's fancy and the political, social, and cultural needs of the community. Más Caras/Aztlannet.com was founded in the belief that art empowers individuals as well as communities. This year, Más Caras/Aztlannet.com is collaborating with a consortium of individuals and groups to commemorate the 2002 Chicano Moratorium in Highland Park. The event will present all of us the opportunity to celebrate a seminal event in the rise to power of our people while providing an exposition of arts or cultural achievements that have accompanied our empowerment. Join us on this historic celebration! We welcome all people of goodwill in Highland Park and the community at large to join us in commemorating this important chapter in Chicano history. Bring your families and the kids! | Moratorium History Rosalio Munoz
The protest drew on a study by professor /activist Ralph Guzman which showed the percentage of Spanish surnamed casualties in the Vietnam war were nearly twice the percentage of Spanish surnamed people in the population. In a statement made in front of the draft center that day Munoz said that the disproportionate death rate was a form of genocide resulting from discriminatory draft laws and other forms of institutional racism in the political, educational, law enforcement, social services, and employment practices. He called for draft deferments for "all Chicano youth who serve our people" and for the government to provide "the money and support that would make such work meaningful in social political and economic terms."
Munoz' statement was read at Chicano movement celebrations at in other locations like Denver Colorado and Albuquerque New Mexico. The demonstration got major print & electronic coverage in Los Angeles, and was put on the Associated Press bulletin for the day which was printed by several papers across the country.
The demo was the launching of an effort to build an "antiwar anti draft current" in the growing Chicano movement to encourage Mexican Americans to find ways to stop being cannon fodder for an "unjust war". Leading the effort were Munoz and close associate Ramses Noriega a painter and organizer who was a graduate student in fine arts at UCLA and had worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers.
In October Munoz quit his job as a recruiter for the Clarmont Colleges to work full time to antiwar /antidraft work within the Chicano movementis cause. He was given office space at the Euclid Community Center, directed by Rev Antonio Hernandez a staff person for the Congress of Mexican American Unity and umbrella group for Mexican American groups and agencies in the greater Los Angeles area.
TURNING POINT The turning point in the Chicano anti war work was the November 14 national moratriums against the war in Vietnam held in San Francisco and Washington D.C. Between 500,000 to 1 million Americans demonstrated against the war that day. Among them were thousands of Chicanos. Chicano leaders Rodofo Corky Gonzalez of the Denver based Crusade for Justice, Dolores Huerta of the United Farmworkers, Abe Tapia of Mexican American Political Association, and draft resistor Munoz spoke at the San Franciso protest.
Munoz remembers "when we saw the coverage of the event we saw a native American chief in traditional garb, Black Panther David Hilliard, and antiwar Republican Senator Wayne Morse featured, we Chicanos were invisible". Munoz adds "we realized that we helped build opposition to the war which resulted in more mainstream American youth to find ways to refuse to fight in an unjust war, leaving the draft boards to fill their quotas with more minorities and the poor. It was clear to us we needed affirmative action on the issue, a peace movement for the barrios". On November 18 at a protest in front of the downtown L.A. induction center Ramses Noriega told the L.A. Times (quoted Nov. 19) "we are talking of holding a Chicano moratorium. Independently the Los Angeles based Brown Berets had also decided to take action on the Vietnam issue. A few days later a committee was formed to organize a Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles. Brown Beret leader David Sanchez and Noriega helped lead the meeting. A demonstration was planned for Dec 20.
Meanwhile Munoz was carrying the Chicano antiwar message nationwide. On November 20-22 Munoz led an antiwar workshop at a church funded national conference of Chicano organizations, activists and leaders from around the country. The conference was held in Kansas City, Kansas and was convened by Presbyterian Minister, a score of chicano activists from around the country signed up to work with Munoz for future anti/war anti draft work. Among them was Los Angeles activist Bob Elias who committed to working with Munoz full time. The two both planned to attend a New Mexico wide Chicano conference the following week, While Munoz traveled to Tucson and back to Los Angeles to continue organizing, Elias agreed to make contact with Corky Gonzalez to enlist the Crusade for Justices support of the budding Chicano antiwar/
At the Nov 28 New Mexico Conference Munoz announce that a national Chicano meeting to plan antiwar anti draft actions was to be held at the Denver Crusade for Justice on December 6-8. In between trips Munoz attended the 2nd meeting of the committee organizing the Dec 20 Chicano Moratorium in East L.A.
At the Denver meeting delegates from Texas, New Mexico, Northern & Southern California, Chicago and Colorado attended. Support for the Dec 20 L.A. moratorium was approved. | |||
| | | | |