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Network Aztlan Latino Chicano Comunidades Transnacionales | |||
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Chicano Moratorium
Viviana Montes
Thirty-two years in Chicano/a history is a capsule of the long history of activism in the Chicano/ Mexicano community. Three decades ago the largest Chicano/a mobilization to protest the Vietnam War was seen as a threat from the peoples movement that questioned US foreign policies and the high casualty rate of Chicanos killed, in Vietnam, negative effects it had on its community at home. Chicanos were sent in large numbers to fight a war against the peoples of Vietnam in their fields and lands of subsistence. Just like at home Chicanos tried to raise awareness that the destruction of another nations homeland was the same as the destruction of the Chicanos in the barrios of Los Angeles, California, Nuevo Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and many other Southwest lands.
Youth, families, children and organizers joined the first National Chicano Moratorium in 1970 to denounce US involvement in Vietnam and to point to the ills the US causes to oppress nations even with-in its own created borders. The over 30,000 raza demonstration showed the opposition and resistance of an organized struggle of Chicano/as and Mexicano/as who understand the effects of U.S. invasion. These same US forces took its ancestors lands with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo more than 150 years ago here in the US (Southwest) in 1848. In 1970, the descendants of the those very same Southwest lands, that Chicanos came from, were demonstrating at Salazar Park in East Lost Angeles.
An outspoken journalist Ruben Salazar was killed on this same day of August 29th, 1970 because he depicted the plight of Chicanos. Salazar's killing, by an LA County Sheriff, showed a brutal censorship of the recognition of the Chicano/Mexicano Community, a clear repression of the identity of Chicanos and the urgency of the US police state to silence the economic, educational and political realities that Chicanos were uniting to fight. Many of the Chicano Moratorium participants were tear gassed, battoned and beaten that day by Los Angeles Police.
US aggression foreign policies are at its high once again with US military forces in the Philippines, Columbia and the Middle East. After September 11th 2001, a new "foreign terrorist" has been targeted and the focus has turned back on the invisible community to fight the "war on terrorism". The Chicano youth in the barrios and high schools of East LA are being immediately targeted to join the military industrial complex. The reality speaks for itself as the count of college counselors are few on high school campus but the Army recruiting office is right across the street from a local high school in East Los Angeles. These are the attempts to enlist and gear Chicano youth right back into fighting another US created war, like it did for Vietnam and numerous other wars.
Salazar pointed to these contradictions in his articles and the Chicano/a Peoples conclusions were a deep analysis of how US priorities were building a unnecessary war and not addressing the home issues of education and well being. But instead, building ruthless military powers at the cost of peoples of color. This holds true for the recent attacks on Palestine, the Philippines and others while the Prison Industrial Complex at home is imprisoning Chicano youth and men for no cost labor and exploiting immigrant labor that includes the hands of many Latina/Mexicana women for corporate profit and imperialist gains.
The Latino/a immigrant community is heavily being scape-goated across the country characterized as foreigners or "suspected terrorists" causing an even greater number of their jobs being taken away and allowing for sub-standard living wages that organized efforts and unions have been fighting against. Many are being fired on the spot from airport jobs because they are not naturalized citizens; but regardless of their migratory status they are allowed to enlist into the army.
On May 1st 2002 over 15,000 demonstrators including the Centro CSO's East LA Anti-War Action Committee, with a contingency opposing US aggression and the war on Palestine, showed mass protest of immigrant scape-goating and repression of Latinos, Blacks, South-east Asian and Native American. The efforts of many Chicano organizers is to call out US Capitalist and Imperialist to make them accountable for the repression of oppressed nations; and to demand to revitalize these communities by reestablishing the Chicano/ Mexicano Nation, its people and its economic and political self-determination.
The demands include basic rights that continue to be denied by Bush and the US who is once again demonizing and making excuses to fight "terrorism" in Afghanistan and abroad to build the US war machine like it did in Vietnam calling it the "Vietcong."
The Chicano/a community and many oppressed nations today are organized and continuing the struggle and resistance for the very same demands the Moratorium raised in 1970. The organized people call for: Self Determination of the Mexican@-Chican@ People Union jobs and decent wages Housing and health-care An end to police/INS abuses and terror Relevant and Bilingual Education No Police State in the neighborhoods; and US forces out of Latino America, the Middle East, the Philippines and Colombia as an added list.
Black, Pilipino, Asian, and Native American resistance like the high-school students in the high-school walk-outs, the Brown Berets, the Crusade for Justice, Mechistas, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, the Centro CSO and the Boyle Heights communities continue grassroots organizing through community teach-ins and developing Chicano/Mexicano leadership in the community.
Today from August 29th 1970 to August 29th 2002 Centro CSO calls the community of resistance to organize and struggle for Self-Determination in the Southwest. Join the Struggle!
El Centro CSO 511 Echandia St., Boyle Heights, California 90033 (323) 221-4000 | ||
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