And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
From: "CATHERINE DAVIDS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: The University of Michigan - Flint
FROM UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
FOR RELEASE: WEEK OF JUNE 25, 1999
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS by Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez
ANTI-CHICANO MOVEMENT REVEALED
When did the secret law enforcement campaigns against civil and
human rights movements in the United States finally cease? Some will argue
that they never did. And others will argue that these campaigns ceased being
secret when it became respectable and socially acceptable to be a bigot once
again.
Some will mark that date of retrenchment sometime in 1978 when
prospective medical student Alan Bakke charged that the University of
California had discriminated against him because he was white. Others say it
was when Ronald Reagan was elected president.
Several new books from the University of Wisconsin Press deal with
one of those movements -- the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s -- and
the secret war against it. These books should interest not simply history
buffs, but also those who long suspected governmental foul play. "The
Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent,"
by Ernesto Vigil, is certain to stir up bad memories and debate over the
propriety of government infiltrating social movements.
Of course, those familiar with social movements of that Cold War era
know that the governmental war against dissent targeted anyone with a voice
who was struggling for human rights. One could argue that the war against
dissent is long forgotten, except that the chaos it left behind still lives,
not the least of which is a trail of suspected assassinations, including the
killings of many activists.
Even today, speaking on the subject and dealing specifically with
names and incidents will cause people's hair to rise. That legacy can be
paralyzing, but it can also be used as a "teaching moment."
Vigil writes about one of the most respected civil rights
organization in the country, Crusade for Justice, and about how it was
wracked by extralegal violence and eventually decimated by the strain of
constant violence, court trials and infiltration.
What was the government afraid of? The reclaiming of the Southwest
by Chicanos? The unification of people of color and all the social
movements? Or was it simply afraid of the Constitutional right to dissent?
In the case of the Crusade for Justice, it appears from the secret
government files that Vigil uncovered that the government was most afraid of
an alliance between Chicanos and American Indians.
A generation later, it seems that those concerns are still there,
but are no longer secret and are not restricted to the government. A
generation ago, people in high places generally did not speak publicly about
their disdain for nonwhites. The 1980s reversed that reality, creating an
environment that made it acceptable to publicly blame the victim.
In another University of Wisconsin book, "The Making of a Chicano
Militant: Lessons from Cristal," author Jose Angel Gutierrez, founder of the
Texas La Raza Unida Party (The United People's Party), notes that when the
people rebelled in Texas, they did so to empower themselves as actors of
history and change, rather than as victims.
Both books detail how the movements in the Southwest rose up as a
result of Jim Crow conditions and extreme violence. In Colorado, the Crusade
for Justice was instrumental in crafting a nationalist philosophy that
fought for self-determination. In Texas, La Raza Unida Party was
instrumental in giving lessons to the country about electoral successes and
community control.
California contributed to this movement by being home both to the
farm worker's and immigration rights struggles. There was so much
in-fighting within each organization and between each state -- beyond the
three states mentioned here -- that to this day, it is argued whether the
fighting was instigated or was a natural process of trying to bring
disparate movements together. Again, Vigil shows that these conflicts were
exacerbated by infiltrators.
Some people think that the Chicano movement died or was killed in
the 1970s. We've long maintained that it never died, but that even if it
did, something else was reborn -- something much stronger, with more hope
and faith after the death of farm-worker leader Cesar Chavez in 1993.
Perhaps the hopelessness of a movement decimated by extralegal
forces gave way to a sense of renewal. Hard feelings still exist, memories
are long, and there are still many unsolved cases that will never be closed.
However, the movement by people of all cultures and colors toward peace,
justice and human dignity is alive and well throughout the world with no
signs of abating.
That's a great legacy of optimism and hope.
COPYRIGHT 1999 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
* Other recent books by the University of Wisconsin Press include: "The
Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control, Armando Navarro
(also the author of Mexican American Youth Organization: Avante Garde of the
Chicano Movement)
* Both writers are authors of Gonzales/Rodriguez: Uncut & Uncensored (ISBN
0-918520-22-3 UC Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library, Publications Unit.
Rodriguez is the author of Justice: A Question of Race (Cloth ISBN
0-927534-69-X paper ISBN 0-927534-68-1 Bilingual Review Press) and the
antibook, The X in La Raza II and Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human. They
can be reached at PO BOX 7905, Albq NM 87194-7904, 505-242-7282 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gonzales's direct line is 505-248-0092 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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