La Voz de Aztlan, May 5 1969
Item
Title
La Voz de Aztlan, May 5 1969
Creator
Associated Students of Fresno State
Relation
La Voz de Aztlan (Daily Collegian, California State University, Fresno)
Coverage
Fresno, California
Date
5/5/1969
Format
PDF
Identifier
SCUA_lvda_00001
extracted text
LA
MORENA
MONDAY, MAY 5, 1969
Chicano-Black Student Supplement
la Semana de la Raza Bronce y •••
El Cinco de Mayo
Every fifth of May Puebla, the original •city of the
Angels" in the Western Hemisphere awakens to a
glorious day, a day which has won her the proud name
of •Puebla la heroica." For this is the commemoration
of the Batalla del Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 1862, when
Puebla repulsed a French attack. Around eleven in the
morning the school children of Puebla, decked out in
their uniformes de gala (dress uniforms) decorated with
identifying ribbons, march for four hours in a five mile
long parade through the center of the city. When the
parade reaches the zocalo (central plaza), the units of
the various schools march past the state and municipal
officials and salute them. The rest of the day is spent
in a grand fiesta with many of the citizens gaily dressed
i n regional costumes, while bands play throughout the
city. There is dancing in the zocalo and other plazas.
At ten in the evening, the "combate de fiores• (the
fl ower battle, an ancient Aztec tradition) takes place.
People throng to the zocalo and adjoining streets throwing flowers at each other and presenting bouquets to
frien ds and strangers alike, Later, there are many
glitteri ng private parties to cap the festivities.
During the day, the Mexican Army stages a sham
battle on the Cerro de Guadalupe, atop which stands the
fort, now a historical museum, which was the core of
Puebla's defenses.
Throughout the Mexican Nation similar events take
place; and, in the ancient Aztec village of Penon (the
rock), in the suburbs of Mexico City, a classic play is
enacted with a cast of public officials, soldiers, and
musicians. Not only does the long drama follow closely
the hi stor ical events, but it contains long quotations from
the various diplomatic pronouncements and treaties which
preceeded and followed the battle.
One may well ask why all the festivities, and thereby
hangs a glorious and interesting tale of intrigue, adventure, derrtng-do, and heroic patriotism. From 1858
to 1861 , Mexico was wracked by a sanguinary and destructive civil war, the Guerra de la Reforma or Guerra
de Tres Anos. The conflict was a showdown between
the J acobin radicals who called tt1emselves puros and
the ultraconservative religious elements. They were all
catholics, but they disagreed violently on the relations
between Church and State, as well as on the nature of the
state itself. The Liberals (as the puros were officially
called), favored a federalized republic and rejected their
Indo-Spantsh-Catholic culture in favor of the Anglooriented-Protestant one of the United States. The Conservatives preferred a unitary republic on the French
model or a recreation of the Spanish monarchial state,
as well as the Europeonization of Mexican culture. To
bring about their ends, both sides courted foreign intervention: the Liberals that of the United States, the Conservatives that of France.
At the conclusion of the Guerra de la Reforma, which
the Liberals won with the aid of the United States, President Benito Juarez surveyed-the sorry state of his country, drained physically and emotionally and utterly
devastated by a fratricidal war. Small surprise, then,
that President Juarez declared a two-year moratorium
on the payment of Mexico's foreign debt. Although the
decis ion was dictated by absolute necessity, it was catastrophic , for it furnished a pretext for foreign intervention. The time was propitious, for the United States, itself embroiled in the bloody struggle between the Union
and Confederate forces, was in no position to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine which not only decried intervention
by non-American powers, but specifically banned the
further extension of the monarchical system inAmerica.
Napoleon III , Emperor of the French, had long dreamed
of a Catholic Latin American Empire which would counteract the Protestant Anglo-oriented United States. Also,
he was influenced by the dazzling vision of Mexican
riches dangled before his eyes by such Mexican exiles
as the ex- Liberal General Juan Almonte, the royalist
Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and the ambitious Jose
Manuel Hidalgo who had distinguished himself against
the Amer ican invaders at the Battle of Churubusco in
1847. He was also influenced by hisbastardhalf-brother,
the Duc de Morr.y, who was a partner of J.B. Jecker,
a Swiss banker who held Mexican government bonds
worth fifteen million pesos .
Napoleon II prevailed on Britain and Spain to agree on
forcibly pressing their respective claims against Mexico
by means of a joint diplomatic mission backed by a powerful punitive expedition • . • a form of international
intimidation of small powers by large ones commonly
referred to in diplomatic and military cfrcles as "showing the flag." When indulged in between major powers,
it is known less euphemistically as "rattling the sword."
His plan was ratified officially in the London Convention
on October 31, 1861. By this agreement the contracting
parties pledged themselves to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. There were no provisions for changing Mexico's form of government.
On January 9, 1862, the tripartite envoys , Count Dubois
de Saligny, General Juan Prim, and Sir Charles Wyke
met at Vera Cruz to discuss their claims. It soon became
clear that Spain and Britain's claims were just, whereas
France demanded the honoring of the Jecker bonds (the
Due de Morny was to get thirty per cent) and an additional twelve million pesos in cash. France wanted no questions asked. She was unwilling or unable to furnish
valid proof.
Nevertheless, President Juarez and his representatives treated the tripartite expedition with courtesy and
consideration. Not only did he allow them to occupy Vera
Cruz unopposed but, by the Treaty of La Doledad, allowed the foreign troops to move from the oppressive
heat of the disease- ridden " Hot Land" to the healthier
climate of the Mexican Plateau, near Puebla. The allies
agreed to retreat to Vera Cruz, should hostilities break
out.
France's exorbitant demands and the rudely inflexible
attitude of Dubois de Saligny, who was a stooge of the
Due de Morny, soon caused a personality clash between
the French envoy and General Prim. Sir Charles Wyke
sided with the Spanish general. Tempers reached the
breaking point, when the French landed General Almonte
and other Mexican imperial agents to engage in subversive activities under the protection of the flag of
France. At the urging of their representatives, Spain and
Britain recalled their expeditionary forces.
Napoleon III then ordered the Commander in Chief of
his invading army, General Charles F. Latrille, Count
of Laurencez, to take Mexico City and overthrow the
Government of Mexico. On this occasion, as in almost
every instance in the French Intervention in Mexico,
France forgot her vaunted devotion to honor. General
Laurencez violated the treaty of Soledad and marched
directly towards Puebla, where an army under General
Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the way to the capital.
Juarez's choice of General Zaragoza to repel the
French invasion was both surprising and intuitive. He
might have selected General Jose Lopez Uraga, tor example, a trained soldier of great technical knowledge
and proven skill since 1947. He knew European military
strategy and had distinguished himself in action during
the War of Reform. General Zaragoza, on th e other hand,
was a brilliant but untutored guerilla tactician from Coahuila. However, no one knew the militar y ability and
the limitations of the Mexican soldier better, or had
greater confidence in his her oic endurance and courage,
It 1s interesting that Za r agoza in addressing his unpaid,
underfed, poor ly clothed and armed troops never spoke
of winning or dying heroically, as Antoni o Lopez de
Santa Ana often had. Zaragoza spoke confidentl y only of
total triumph.
General Laurencez, on the contrary, had formed a poor
concept of the Mexican soldier. When the bedraggled men
of the Cons ervative guerilla leader, General Lorenzo
Mar quez, str aggled into his camp, the French general
noted they were barefooted, half-naked , and ill-armed.
Never having s een them in action, he concluded that
Mexico could easily be conquered With six thousand
Volume 1, Number 1
French regulars. so contemptuous was he of Mexican
mllltary ability, so sure that the Conservative and
deeply religious citizens of Puebla would betray the army
of the radical government of Juarez, that he decided on
a frontal attack of the two hills where General Zaragoza
had deployed his men, Cerro de Guadalupe and Cerro de
Loreto. Also, Lurencez could not know that the general
ln hls twenties who led the flanking attack for Zaragoza.
was the mllltary genius who would eventually destroy
the armies of Emperor Maximilian. His name was General Porfirio Diaz and this was his first major command. Before the battle, General Laurencez wrote his
government: "We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organt zation, discipline, morality, and
high ideals that even now, at the head of our valiant six
thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico.• Famous
last words!
A popular American historian has briefly and fairly
acurately described the action that ensued:
"General Laurencez, commanding 6000 well-trained
and handsomely uniformed dragoons and foot soldiers,
was given orders to occupy Mexico City. On the path of
his march to the capital was Puebla, defended by 4000
Mexicans armed with l antiquated guns--many of which
had seen service at the battle of Waterloo fifty years
before, and had been bought at a bargain by Mexico's
ambassador to London back in 1825. Commander of
Puebla's forces was Ignacio Zaragoza, an amateur
in tactical warfare, as were most of his officers, but a
seasoned warrior in guerrilla fighting. Laurencez, to
show his contempt for that ragtag army, called for a
charge up the middle of the Mexican defenses at zaragoza 's most strongly fortified position. The charge
carried
his cavalry through soggy ditches, over a
crumbling adobe wall, and up the steep slopes of the
Cerro de Guadalupe. But their drive petered out before
reaching its objective, and over one thousand Frenchmen
were left sprawled on the field, dead or dying. Laurencez
paid for his contempt. The Mexican army held , and then
Zaragoza led a counter-attack that drove Laurencez
back to Orizaba and, after a short reprieve, attacked
him again and drove the remnants of his army to the
This was the first time French troops had
coast.
met defeat in nearly half a century, and it was handed
them not by a major power of Europe but by the penniless, war-torn republic of Mexico. This battle for
Puebla, fought on May 5, is yearly commemorated in
Mexico by a national holiday, and there is hardly a
Mexican village, town , or city that does not call its
main s treet Cinco de Mayo."
But the Cinco de Mayo did more than give Mexicans
their most glorious national holiday. A Mexican history text comments on its significance as follows:
"The victory of the Mexican Army in the Battle of
Cinco de Mayo had far-reaching consequences, national
as well as international.
With regard to the national consequences, the belief
that the French were invincible in war was destroyed,
a belief the, Conservative traitors themselves had used
to demoralize the defenders of the nation. Furthermore
the victory made the entire nation thrill with enthusiasm
and patriotism, thus encouraging the Mexican people to
continue their struggle against the invader without
flagging ••By this victory, the Mexican Army also gained
an additional year in which to reinforce and reorganize
itself, forming new mtlitary cadres, in which almost
all the political elements of the nation were represented.
As regards the international consequences, the defeat
of the French had r esounding effects in Europe, tarnishing
the brtlliance of Napoleon Ill's prestige, enhancing the
honorable posture of the Spanish and British envoys,
destroying the slander spread there by the Conserva tives that the Juarez government had no backingl..
fur ther mor e, this Mexican victory admi rably prevented
an effective allia nce between Napoleon and the Confederate
states in the Civil war of the United States, which could
possibly have changed the ending of that struggle. A
historian says that on the Cinco de Mayo Zaragoza
defended at Puebla the integr ity ot the Mexican Fatherland and the North American Federation ." (C. Gonzalez
Blackaller and L. Guevara Ramirez, Sintesis de historla de Mexico, p. 366).
Mexican Americans, then, have a double incentive to
cry proudly, "Viva el Cinco de Mayo! " And other Americans, ragardless of national origins, have reason to
join them.
J. C. Canales
•
CHM Department of History
Fresno State College
La
r
r
le
st
iv
2
La Pluma Morena
Spiritual Plan of Aztlan
(The Brown Pen)
Excerpts ...
I am Joaquin
By Rodolfo Gonzalez
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, President of the Cru·
sade for Justice, a militant group based in Denver,
is currently in Albuquerque, M.N., at the request of
Reies Lopez Tijerina to assist the work of the Ali·
anza Federal de Mercedes. Gorky is also co-ordinator
for Vietnam Summer.
Gorky speaks freely about la raza, about "a national movement of Mexican and Spanish in the Southwest-a militant movement that is not afraid to be
linked with the spirit of Zapata, nor shy from the
need to change the system, to have a social revolution . . . "
A movement from Rio Grande City, Texas, to Den•
ver, from Delano to Tierra Amari lla.
I am Joaquin.
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of an
Anglo society,
Confused by the rules,
Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations,
And destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival.
And now!
I must choose
Between
the paradox of
Victory or the spirlt,
despite physlcal hunger
Or
to exist in the grasp
of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul
and a full stomach.
I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The vanquished
I have killed
and been killed.
I am despots Diaz
and Huerta
and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am
the black shawled
faithful women
who die with me
or live
I stand here looking hack,
and now I see
the present
and still
I am 'he campesino
r am the !at polit ical coyote
I'
of the same name,
Joaquin
In a country that has wiped out
all my history,
stifled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a
different weight of indignity upon
my
age
old
hurdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load ...
The Indian has endured and still
emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
and the Gauchupin will just ignore.
I look at myself
and see part of me
who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot
to disappear in shame.
I sometimes
sell my brother out
and reclaim him
for my own when society gives me
token leadership,
in society s own name.
I bleed in some smelly cell
from club.
or gun.
or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
cut my face and eyes,
as I right my way from stinking Barrios
to the glamour of the Ring
and lights of fame
or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles
on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea
and now
Viet Nam.
Here I stand
before the Court of Justice
Guilty
for all the glory of my Raza
to be sentenced to despalr.
Here I stand
Poor in money
Arrogant in pride
Bold with Machismo
Rich in courage
Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe.
I have made the Anglo rich
yet
Equality is but a word,
the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise.
My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped,
I lengthen
the line at the welfare door
and fill the jails with crime.
These then
are the rewards
this society has
For sons of Chiefs
and Kings
and bloody Revolutionists.
Who
gave a foreign people
all their skllls and ingenuity
to pave the way with Brains and Blood
for
those hordes of Gold starved
Strangers
Who
changed our language
and plagarized our deeds
as feats of valor
of their own,
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art
Our literature
Our music, they ignored
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their Greed and Avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
Which ts Joaquin.
I must fight
And win this struggle
for my sons. and they
must know from me
Who I am.
I have endured in the rugged mountains
of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery
of the fields.
I have existed
in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry,
in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection,
in the muck of exploitation
in the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
In the spirit of a people that has recognized not only
its proud historical heritage, but also the brutal grtngc
invasion of our lands, we the Chicano inhabitant and
civilizers of the North American land of Aztlan from
where our forefathers came, only to return to their
roots to conserve the determination of our people of the
sun, we give out a cry bringing forth the spirit of our
blood - the source of our power, our responsibility,
and our inevitable destiny, We are free and know that
those goals for which we justly fight; our home, our
lands, with the sweat of our brow and with our hearts.
A ztlan pertains to those who planteth the seed of life,
caretakers of the sources of life, reap the harvests; this
is not a foreign European.
The brotherhood unites us, our mutual love makes us
a rising power against the gringo oppressor that exploits our people and destroys our dignity and culture.
With heart in hand and with our hands in the soil, we
declare the spirit independent of our mestizo nation. we
are "La Raza" with the Mexican culture. Within the
whole world, before North America, amongst the continent of the bronze people, let us stand as one nation
as a union of tree people; we are the salvation of the
world.
Chicano editorial
This is the first issue of a Chicano-Black coalition
paper. Its content and posture will and should renect
our combined points of view, for it has been gained
through our efforts, yet we have also gained it for all
those students who have need of it. And those in our
community whom have been left out of the scheme of things
will be urged to contribute as well, for they have much
to say. In this respect our paper may be unique to
Fresno. However, space will be limited in each issue
and editions will be few at first. These circumstances
have been agreed upon for the remainder of this semester, but for next Fall a far better arrangement, which
has already passed one stage of approval, is hopefully
anticipated. This kind of paper could be one positive step
towards avoiding the possibility of a San Francisco
State debacle here, something I ·am sure none of us want
for many reasons. But it was a reality there and no matter where, an understandable, yet license, violently manifested, volcano of frustration can exist. This is no threat.
This paper would not have been created had the
Collegian shown more than just a mere token amount
of sensitivity, commitment. and fairness to all of its
captive readers. The Collegian is not alone at fault
though. The students have also shown their share of
complacency, apathy, and little sense of urgency and are
as blameworthy. Now change has been demanded and a
new paper, for better or worse, exists. Though many
have rightly considered themselves excluded, the initiative and obligation to act fell heaviest upon the Chicano
and Black students for clearly they have been the ones
most excluded,
When we individually or collectively speak in our paper
we will most likely speak as our Chicano and Black
cultures have taught us arid made us feel, but it is also
my belief that at the same time, but yet far more importantly, we should and must speak as members of a
far greater group --- the human race. This should be
a rule that stands for all,no matter what color or culture.
I believe it was with this thought in mind that Cesar
Chavez said that the purpose of our struggle is to prevent "the victim from being the victim, and the executioner from being the executioner."
As this paper rests in your hands right now, so do the
solutions to many of the problems that face your
fellowman, but before solutions can be round we must
be committed to try, with empathy and compassion, to
understand one another and not close our eyes to facts
though they be contrary to all we may have heard or learned. We must become committed to the point where we
will act when action is necessary, and we should always
promote that media which strives to make facts and true
feelings public This paper and this week of La Raza
are two of that media.
To sum up the intentions of this paper I believe that
the Chicano and Black students will faithfully strive
within good reason to use this paper to unite and not
incite, to seek cooperation and not revenge, and to end
racism and not enhance it, for together is the only real
way we can seek and build a newer world.
The Chicano students would like to than.le their Black
brothers and sisters for allowing them to have the first
issue of this paper because of the week of La Raza
Bronce. This shows respect for our people, history,
and traditions. and we are very grateful.
VIVA LA CAUSA!
Editor-John F. Ramirez ·
Did you know that there are more than two million
Chicanos in California, more than 12 percent of the total
population of the state; that of the 120 state legislators
in Sacramento, only one is Chicano; that there is one
Chicano county supervisor in California; that only one
school board member in the entire state is a Chicano;
and that city councils in the nine counties of the San
Joaquin Valley include only three Chicanos?
i Organizense, Raza!
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
3
Actividades de la semana
Monday, May 5
Excerpts .
..
The Tale of La Raza
By Luis Valdez
The revolt in Delano is more than a labor struggle.
Mexican grape pickers did not march 300 miles to
Sacramento, carrying the standard of La Virgen de
Guadalupe, merely to dramatize economic grievances.
Beyond unionization, beyond politics, there is the desire
of a New World race to reconcile the conflicts of its
500-year-old history. La Raza is trying to find its place
in the sun it once worshipped as aSupreme Being.
La Raza, the race, is the Mexican people. sentimental
and cynical, fierce and docile, faithful and treacherous,
individualistic and herd-following, in love with life and
obsessed with death, the personality of the raza encompasses all the complexity of our history. The conquest of Mexico was no conquest at all. It shattered our
ancient Indian universe, but more of it was left above
ground than beans and tortillas. Below the foundations
of our Spanish culture, we still sense the ruins of an
entirely different civilization.
The pilgrimage to Sacramento was no mere publicity
trick. The raza has a tradition of migrations, starting
from the legend of the founding of Mexico. Nezahualcoyotl, a great Indian leader, advised his primitive
Chichimecas, forerunners of the Aztecs, to begin a
march to the south. In that march, he prophesied, the
children would age and the old would die, but their grandchildren would come to a great lake. In that lake they
would find an eagle devouring a serpent, and on that spot,
they would begin to build a great nation. The nation was
Aztec Mexico, and the eagle and the serpent are the
symbols of the patria. They are emblazoned on the
Mexican flag, which the marchers took to Sacramento
with pride.
Then there is the other type of migration. When the
migrant farm laborer followed the crops, he was only
reacting to the way he saw the American raza: no unity,
no representation, no roots. The pilgrimage was a truly
religious act, a rejection of our past in this country and
a symbol of our unity and new direction. The unity of
thousands of raza on the Capitol steps was reason
enough for our march. Under the name of HUELGA we
have created a Mexican-American patria, and Cesar
Chavez is our first Presidente.
Most of us know we are not European simply by looking
in a mirror - the shape of the eyes, the curve of the
nose, the color of skin, the texture of hair; these things
belong to another time, another people. Together with a
million little stubborn mannerisms, beliefs, myths, superstitions, words, thoughts - things not so easily detected - they fill our Spanish life with Indian contradictions. It is not enough to say we suffer an identity
crisis, because that crisis has been our way of life !or
the last five centuries.
That we Mexicans speak of ourselves as a •race" is
the biggest contradiction of them all. The conquistadores
mated with their Indian women creating a nation of bewildered half-breeds in countless shapes, colors and
sizes. Unlike our fathers and mothers, unlike each other,
we mestizos solved the problem with poetic license and
called ourselves la raza. A Mexican's first loyalty when one of us is threatened by strangers from the outside - is to that race. Either we recognize our total
unity on the- basis of raza, or the ghosts of 100,000
feuding Indian · tribes, bloods and mores will come back
to haunt us.
Huelga means strike. With the poetic instinct of the
raza, the Delano grape strikers have made it mean a
dozen other things. It is a declaration, a challenge, a
greeting, a feeling, a movement. We cried Huelga! to
the scabs, Huelga! to the labor contractors, to the
growers. With the Schenley and DtGiorgio boycotts, it was
Huelga! to the whole country. It ls the most significant
word in our entire Mexican American history.If the raza
of Mexico believes in La Patria, we believe in La Huelga.
La Virgen de Guadalupe was the first hint to farmworkers that the pilgrimage implied social revolution.
During the Mexican Revolution, the peasant armies of
Emiliano zapata carried her standard, not only because
they sought her divine protection, but because she symbolized the Mexico of the poor and humble. Beautifully
dark and Indian in feature, she was the New World version of the Mother of Christ. Even though some of her
worshippers in Mexico still identify her with Tonatzin,
an Aztec goddess, she is a Catholic saint of Indian creation - a Mexican. The people's response was immediate
and reverent. The rallies were like religious revivals.
At each new town, they were waiting to greet us and of-
fer us their best - mariachis, embraces, words of encouragement for the strike, prayers, rosaries, sweet
cakes, fruit and iced tea. Hundreds walked, ran or drove
up to the march and donated what little money they could
afford. The countless gestures of sympathy and solidarity was like nothing the raza had ever seen. They joined
the march by the thousands, falling in line behind her
standard. To the Catholic hypocrites against the pilgrimage and strike the Virgen said Huelga!
Any Mexican deeply loves his mestizo patria, even
those who, like myself, were born in the United States.
At best, our cultural schizophrenia has led us to action
through the all-encompassing poetry of religion, which
is a fancy way of saying blind faith. La Virgen de Guadalupe, the supreme poetic expression of our Mexican desire to be one people, has inspired Mexicans more than
once to social revolution. At worst, our two-sidedness
has led us to inaction. The last divine Aztec emperor
Cuauhtemoc was murdered in the jungles of Guatemala,
and his descendants were put to work in the fields. We
are still there, in dry, plain American Delano.
It was the triple magnetism of raza, patria, and the
Virgen de Guadalupe which organized the MexicanAmerican farm worker in Delano - that and Cesar
Chavez.
Here was Cesar, burning with a patient fire, poor like
us, dark like us, talking quietly, moving people to talk
about their problems, attacking the little problems first,
and suggesting, always suggesting - never more than
that - solutions that seemed attainable.
Although he sometimes reminds one of Benito Juarez,
Cesar is our first real Mexican-American leader. Used
to hybrid forms, the raza includes all Mexicans, even
hyphenated Mexican-Americans; but divergent histories
are slowly making the raza in the United States different
from the raza in MeXico. We who were born here missed
out on the chief legacy of the Revolution: the chance to
forge a nation true to all the forces that have molded us,
to be one people. Now we must seek our own destiny,
and Delano is only the beginning of our active search.
For the last hundred years our revolutionary progress
has not only been frustrated, it has been totally suppressed. This is a society largely hostile to our cultural
values. There is no poetry about the United States. No
depth; no faith; no allowance for human contrariness
No soul, no mariachi, no chili sauce, no pulque, no
mysticism, no chingaderas.
The struggle for better wages and better working conditions in Delano is but the first realistic articulation of
our need for unity. To emerge from the mire of our past
in the United States, to leave behind the devoid, deadening influence of poverty, we must have bargalningpower.
We must have unions. To the farm workers who joined
the pilgrimage, this cultural pride is revolutionary.
There were old symbols - Zapata lapel buttons - and
new symbols standing for new social protest and revolt;
the red thunderbird flags of the NFWA, picket signs,
arm bands.
Every political rally included a reading of El Plan de
Delano, a "plan of liberation• tor all farmworkers in
the language of the picket line;• .•. This is the beginning
of a social movement in fact and not in pronouncements
••• We shall unite .•• We shall strike •.• Our PILGRIMAGE is the MATCH that will light our cause for
all farmworkers to see what is happening here, so that
they may do as we have done .•. VIVA LA CAUSA!
VIVA LA HUELGA!"
The NFW A IS A RADICAL union because it started, and
continues to grow, as a community organization. Arter
years of isolation in the barrios of Great Valley slum
towns like Delano, after years of living in labor camps
and ranches at the mercy and caprice of growers and
contractors, the Mexican-American farmworker is developing his own ideas about living in the United States.
He wants to be equal with all the working men of the
nation, and he does not mean by the standard middleclass route. We are repelled by the human disintegration of peoples and cultures as they fall apart in this
Great Gringo Melting Pot, and determined that this will
not happen to us. But there will always be raza in this
country. There are millions more where we came from,
across the thousand miles of common border between
Mexico and the United States. For millions of farmworkers, from the Mexicans and Phllippinos of the West
to the Afro-Americans of the South, the United States
has come to a social, political and cultural impasse.
Listen to these people, and you will hear the first
murmurings of revolution.
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Declaracion de La Semana de La Raza de Bronce
(Declaration and Dedication of La Raza Week)
oradores (Speakers)
1. Ellezer Lozada Risco - Director de Los Estudios
de la Raza en Fresno State College (La Raza
Chairman)
2. Bruce Bronzan - Presidente del Cuerpo Estudiantil
de Fresno State College. (Student Body President)
3. Chicano student from Fresno State
1:00 - 3:00 p.rn.
Amphitheatre
Reis Lopez Tijerina - Presidente y Fundador de la
Alianza de los Pueblos Libres. (Founder and President
of la Alianza de los Pueblos Libres).
8:00 - 2:00 a.m.
Baile en su lugar favorito (Dance with townspeople)
Tuesday1 May 6
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre FSC
Corky Gonzalez Fundador y Presidente de la Cruzada
por la Justtcia. (Founder and president of the C rusade for Justice)
2:00 - 4:00
Amphitheatre
Balle con una orchestra (Dance)
7:00 - 9:00 p.rn.
Teatro Azteca (Fresno)
Los Mixtlecos - grupo de jovenes interpetando bailes
majicanos.
(A dance group interpreting Mexican
dances)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
9:00 - 12:00
Teatro Azteca
Una pelicula de la Revolucion de l910(Movie - Mexican
Revolution)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
Wednesday, May 7
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Amphitheatre-speaker
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Manuel Gomez - Representante de la Confederacion
de Estudiantes Chicanos. (Representative of the Confederation of Chicano Students)
Todo sera al compas de la musica del Teatro Campesino. (Music by Teatro Campesino)
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Women's Gymnasium
Los Paisanos- - grupo de estudiantes de la secundaria de Selma
Baile al compas de mariachis.
(Dance and mariachi group from Selma High)
9:00 - 10:30 p.m.
Los Aficionados del arte - grupo teatral - presentaran una comedia.
Entrada gratis (Free admjssion)
Thursday, May 8
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
El Teatro Rebelde - grupo musical de Visalia (A
musical group from Visalia)
11:00-3:00 p.m. and 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Science 162
Armando Jimenes Farias - autor del libro Picardia
Mejicana. Theme •prehispanic games and sports•
Entrad gratis (Free admission)
Friday, May 9
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Cesar Chavez - Fundador de la Union de Trabajadores Campesinos. (Cesar Chavez)
2:00 - 3:00 p,m.
Teatro Urbano - un grupo de San Jose State College
(Musical group from San Jose State College)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 6:30
O'Neil Park
Dia de campo
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Little Theatre
Terna, "La Picardia Mejicana"
Theme, "The Mexican Picaresque•
7:30-8:30 p.m.
Los Desaraigados played by FSC students.
Traiga a su mamacita. Se les dara una nor en festejo
del dia de las mad res ( each mother will recel ve a
flower for Mother's Day).
9:00-10:30 p.m.
Cuadro Espanol
(
4
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
I
Why the Grape Boycott?
By Ron Ortega
For seven years now Cesar Chavez has been the leader
and guiding spirit of La Causa, a movement born out of
the realization that conditions must change - Ya Basta!
That the Mexican must be recognized as a man, and not
a humble, inferior servant, is its grito. Senor Chavez is
our man, and as Zapata before him, he leads an army of
the people. They wear no _bandoleers I or ride mustangs.
They are simply poor, non-violent farm-working people
who are struggling for self-determination. To them the
living death is no longer acceptable, and it is inexcusable.
Since La Huelga in Delano in 1965, they have marched
with justice as their banner against the injustices which
seem legion. Why do these injustices exist and what may
be their remedy? The 1959 U.S. Census of Agriculture
showed that 6 per cent of California's farms own 75 per
cent of the land and 7 per cent of California farms em ploy 75 per cent of the labor, who the worker is fighting
-the large corporate farmer. These powerful landowners
have always resisted worker unionization.
The question is often asked why is organizational
strength necessary? Are conditions really that bad?
Fewer than 20 per cent of the California families covered in the Governor's Advisory Committee Report on
Housing Problems lived in dwellings which could be
considered adequate by present standards of health,
safety, and comfort. Often toilet facilities were pit
privies. Twenty-five per cent of the homes lacked even
so basic a necessity as a kitchen sink with running water,
and 30 per cent had no bathing facilities. This report
offers little evidence of improvement in the effective
economic and social position of the agricultural worker
in California. He remains the most poorly paid, poorly
fed, and poorly housed of California's laborers. Those
who doubt that these poverty conditions exist in reality
need only to spend some time in the barrios to see what
worker's problem. They are almost completely powerless on the job and in the lifeof the community. Workers
in agriculture have been denied the improved wages and
working conditions that are commonplace in industry.
The vast majority of farmworkers in California do not
get any overtime pay; they often don't know their rate of
pay whlle they are working; they do not have any health
or pension plans; safety provisions are minimal. There
are no established channels for grievances. The many
who will dispute these realities can point to examples of
better wages and working conditions, but their examples
do not represent the experiences of the vast majority of
unorganized farm workers in California and the United
States. The farm worker rightly feels that he is only
fighting for what other working groups already have and
take for granted - the right to organize and bargain
collectively.
Tijerina lo Speak Today
the •actual• conditions are.
The charge is often leveled that the farm worker lives
in these poverty conditions because he is lazy or has no
motivation. This argument has no meaning or 1alidity to
anyone who knows anything about field work. To spend
long hot hours stooped over in the sun doesn't seem to
qualify one as lazy, also farm workers have the prime
motivation to feed their families. Not many farm workers
toil in the fields so they can •put in a swim ming pool
next summer." It follows that if the worker is dependent
on this work for his very survival that he is not trying to
destroy the farmer. As Cesar Chavez has said, "We do
not want to damage the grape industry by this boycott that would be taking jobs away from ourselves - but we
feel that we must tell the consumer that those who sell
scab grapes are supporting poverty, supporting injustice." Aunual income is only one aspect of the farm-
l
The workers cannot wait for their employers to make
the changes; they have been waiting for 100 years. Congress has also failed to pass the needed legislation to
protect the workers' right to bargain with their employers. The economic, consumer boycott seemed to be their
last non-violent recourse.
As a result of the Delano strike and the several boycotts that have accompanied the strike there have been
union representation, elections, bargaining and contracts with 10 wine grape growers. The aspirations and
organizational energies or the workers are now focused
on table grape growers.
The hard reality is that the workers need and want
organization and collective bargaining and their employers are resisting this change with all the considerable
power at their command. Concerning the charge leveled
by critics that the workers don't want Chavez and the
UFWOC: in all secret ballot elections to date, the
workers have in every case voted to be represented by
the UFWOC.
If we are to continue with the assumption that all men
are created equal and that all men should have equality
of opportunity, then the students of Fresno State College
have a moral responsibility to support the grape boycott.
So that through the boycott the farm worker can enhance
his opportunities and determine his own destiny.
A Ripple of Hope
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy
and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep
down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
•Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their
society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the
one essential vital quality for those who seek to change
a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to
enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner oft.he globe.
"For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation
to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before
those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is
not the road· history has marked out for us. Like it or
not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they
are also more open to the creative energy of men than
any other time in history .•.
"'The future does not belong to those who are content
with today, apathetic toward common problems and their
fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new
ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those
who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal
commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of
. American Society."
-Robert F. Kennedy, 1966
On June 5, 1967 an armed raid was made on the courthouse of a northern New Mexico town named Tierra
Amarilla. It was significant if only to demonstrate that
a people rebelled against the suppresive gringo system
which was imposed on them. Once before in 1846, the
people of the same region rebelled against the gringo
system as it was being implemented and succeeded in
kllling the fl rst gringo governor, Charles Brent, of that
area.
The leader of these June 5 rebeldes is Reies Lopez
Tijerina. He was born in Falls City, near San Antonio,
Texas, the son of a migrant laborer who took the family
throughout the Southwest picking cotton for $6-8 a day.
As a boy Reies came to know poverty well, living in
perpetual starvation, as he and his brother would trap
wood rats and eat them. He didn't wear shoes until he
was 13, and because of the need for all of the family to
work in the fields , was only able to get a minimal abount
of formal education.
With that type of background it was only natural that
Reies Lopez Tigerina emerge as leader of the militant
organization "La Alanzia Federal de Mercedes,• which
is striving to reclaim stolen land and eliminate suppressive economic practices aimed at "La Raza" in northern
ew Mexico.
He wlll be speaking today in the Amphitheatre from
1 to 3 p.m.
Chavez agrees with son's
military induction refusal
Statement of Cesar Chavez, April 23, 1969, concerning
his son Fernando's refusal of induction into the armed
forces.
I have asked Eloise, one of my girls, to read this
statement to you. I am sad that my health does not permit
me to be with my son today. The decision that Polly
(Fernando) has made and his reasons !or it, are his
own. But it is a decision that I very much agree with.
A year ago during my !ast for non-violence I said that
if to build our union would require the deliberate taking
of life, either the life of a grower or his child, or the
life of a farm worker or his child, then I would choose
not to see our union built.
Today Polly has chosen to respect life and not to kill
in war.
Such a decision is not easy to make and my heart
goes out to all parents and children who are faced with
a similar challenge o! non-violence.
Thank you !or being here with us today.
The young whites know that the colored people of the
world, Afro-Americans included, do not seek revenge for
their suffering. They seek the same things the white
rebel wants: an end to war and exploitation. Black and
white, the young rebels are free people, free in a way that
Americans have never been before in the historyof their
country. And they are outraged.
-~~------
There is in America today a generation of white
youth that is truly worthy of a black man's respect, and
this is a rare event in the foul annals of American his ..
tory. From the beginning of the contact between blacks
and whites there has been very little reason for a black
man to respect a white, with such exceptions as John
Brown and others lesser known. But respect commands
itself and it can neither be g·ven nor withheld when it is
due. If a man like Malcolm X could change an repudiate
racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change,
if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
It was certainly strange to find myself, while steeped
in the doctrine that all whites were devils by nature,
commanded by the heart to applaud and acknowledge respect for these young whites- -despite the fact that they
are descendants of the masters and I the descendant
of the slave. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the
heads of the children--but only if the children continue
in the evil deeds of the fathers.
-Excerpts from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice
MORENA
MONDAY, MAY 5, 1969
Chicano-Black Student Supplement
la Semana de la Raza Bronce y •••
El Cinco de Mayo
Every fifth of May Puebla, the original •city of the
Angels" in the Western Hemisphere awakens to a
glorious day, a day which has won her the proud name
of •Puebla la heroica." For this is the commemoration
of the Batalla del Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 1862, when
Puebla repulsed a French attack. Around eleven in the
morning the school children of Puebla, decked out in
their uniformes de gala (dress uniforms) decorated with
identifying ribbons, march for four hours in a five mile
long parade through the center of the city. When the
parade reaches the zocalo (central plaza), the units of
the various schools march past the state and municipal
officials and salute them. The rest of the day is spent
in a grand fiesta with many of the citizens gaily dressed
i n regional costumes, while bands play throughout the
city. There is dancing in the zocalo and other plazas.
At ten in the evening, the "combate de fiores• (the
fl ower battle, an ancient Aztec tradition) takes place.
People throng to the zocalo and adjoining streets throwing flowers at each other and presenting bouquets to
frien ds and strangers alike, Later, there are many
glitteri ng private parties to cap the festivities.
During the day, the Mexican Army stages a sham
battle on the Cerro de Guadalupe, atop which stands the
fort, now a historical museum, which was the core of
Puebla's defenses.
Throughout the Mexican Nation similar events take
place; and, in the ancient Aztec village of Penon (the
rock), in the suburbs of Mexico City, a classic play is
enacted with a cast of public officials, soldiers, and
musicians. Not only does the long drama follow closely
the hi stor ical events, but it contains long quotations from
the various diplomatic pronouncements and treaties which
preceeded and followed the battle.
One may well ask why all the festivities, and thereby
hangs a glorious and interesting tale of intrigue, adventure, derrtng-do, and heroic patriotism. From 1858
to 1861 , Mexico was wracked by a sanguinary and destructive civil war, the Guerra de la Reforma or Guerra
de Tres Anos. The conflict was a showdown between
the J acobin radicals who called tt1emselves puros and
the ultraconservative religious elements. They were all
catholics, but they disagreed violently on the relations
between Church and State, as well as on the nature of the
state itself. The Liberals (as the puros were officially
called), favored a federalized republic and rejected their
Indo-Spantsh-Catholic culture in favor of the Anglooriented-Protestant one of the United States. The Conservatives preferred a unitary republic on the French
model or a recreation of the Spanish monarchial state,
as well as the Europeonization of Mexican culture. To
bring about their ends, both sides courted foreign intervention: the Liberals that of the United States, the Conservatives that of France.
At the conclusion of the Guerra de la Reforma, which
the Liberals won with the aid of the United States, President Benito Juarez surveyed-the sorry state of his country, drained physically and emotionally and utterly
devastated by a fratricidal war. Small surprise, then,
that President Juarez declared a two-year moratorium
on the payment of Mexico's foreign debt. Although the
decis ion was dictated by absolute necessity, it was catastrophic , for it furnished a pretext for foreign intervention. The time was propitious, for the United States, itself embroiled in the bloody struggle between the Union
and Confederate forces, was in no position to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine which not only decried intervention
by non-American powers, but specifically banned the
further extension of the monarchical system inAmerica.
Napoleon III , Emperor of the French, had long dreamed
of a Catholic Latin American Empire which would counteract the Protestant Anglo-oriented United States. Also,
he was influenced by the dazzling vision of Mexican
riches dangled before his eyes by such Mexican exiles
as the ex- Liberal General Juan Almonte, the royalist
Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and the ambitious Jose
Manuel Hidalgo who had distinguished himself against
the Amer ican invaders at the Battle of Churubusco in
1847. He was also influenced by hisbastardhalf-brother,
the Duc de Morr.y, who was a partner of J.B. Jecker,
a Swiss banker who held Mexican government bonds
worth fifteen million pesos .
Napoleon II prevailed on Britain and Spain to agree on
forcibly pressing their respective claims against Mexico
by means of a joint diplomatic mission backed by a powerful punitive expedition • . • a form of international
intimidation of small powers by large ones commonly
referred to in diplomatic and military cfrcles as "showing the flag." When indulged in between major powers,
it is known less euphemistically as "rattling the sword."
His plan was ratified officially in the London Convention
on October 31, 1861. By this agreement the contracting
parties pledged themselves to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. There were no provisions for changing Mexico's form of government.
On January 9, 1862, the tripartite envoys , Count Dubois
de Saligny, General Juan Prim, and Sir Charles Wyke
met at Vera Cruz to discuss their claims. It soon became
clear that Spain and Britain's claims were just, whereas
France demanded the honoring of the Jecker bonds (the
Due de Morny was to get thirty per cent) and an additional twelve million pesos in cash. France wanted no questions asked. She was unwilling or unable to furnish
valid proof.
Nevertheless, President Juarez and his representatives treated the tripartite expedition with courtesy and
consideration. Not only did he allow them to occupy Vera
Cruz unopposed but, by the Treaty of La Doledad, allowed the foreign troops to move from the oppressive
heat of the disease- ridden " Hot Land" to the healthier
climate of the Mexican Plateau, near Puebla. The allies
agreed to retreat to Vera Cruz, should hostilities break
out.
France's exorbitant demands and the rudely inflexible
attitude of Dubois de Saligny, who was a stooge of the
Due de Morny, soon caused a personality clash between
the French envoy and General Prim. Sir Charles Wyke
sided with the Spanish general. Tempers reached the
breaking point, when the French landed General Almonte
and other Mexican imperial agents to engage in subversive activities under the protection of the flag of
France. At the urging of their representatives, Spain and
Britain recalled their expeditionary forces.
Napoleon III then ordered the Commander in Chief of
his invading army, General Charles F. Latrille, Count
of Laurencez, to take Mexico City and overthrow the
Government of Mexico. On this occasion, as in almost
every instance in the French Intervention in Mexico,
France forgot her vaunted devotion to honor. General
Laurencez violated the treaty of Soledad and marched
directly towards Puebla, where an army under General
Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the way to the capital.
Juarez's choice of General Zaragoza to repel the
French invasion was both surprising and intuitive. He
might have selected General Jose Lopez Uraga, tor example, a trained soldier of great technical knowledge
and proven skill since 1947. He knew European military
strategy and had distinguished himself in action during
the War of Reform. General Zaragoza, on th e other hand,
was a brilliant but untutored guerilla tactician from Coahuila. However, no one knew the militar y ability and
the limitations of the Mexican soldier better, or had
greater confidence in his her oic endurance and courage,
It 1s interesting that Za r agoza in addressing his unpaid,
underfed, poor ly clothed and armed troops never spoke
of winning or dying heroically, as Antoni o Lopez de
Santa Ana often had. Zaragoza spoke confidentl y only of
total triumph.
General Laurencez, on the contrary, had formed a poor
concept of the Mexican soldier. When the bedraggled men
of the Cons ervative guerilla leader, General Lorenzo
Mar quez, str aggled into his camp, the French general
noted they were barefooted, half-naked , and ill-armed.
Never having s een them in action, he concluded that
Mexico could easily be conquered With six thousand
Volume 1, Number 1
French regulars. so contemptuous was he of Mexican
mllltary ability, so sure that the Conservative and
deeply religious citizens of Puebla would betray the army
of the radical government of Juarez, that he decided on
a frontal attack of the two hills where General Zaragoza
had deployed his men, Cerro de Guadalupe and Cerro de
Loreto. Also, Lurencez could not know that the general
ln hls twenties who led the flanking attack for Zaragoza.
was the mllltary genius who would eventually destroy
the armies of Emperor Maximilian. His name was General Porfirio Diaz and this was his first major command. Before the battle, General Laurencez wrote his
government: "We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organt zation, discipline, morality, and
high ideals that even now, at the head of our valiant six
thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico.• Famous
last words!
A popular American historian has briefly and fairly
acurately described the action that ensued:
"General Laurencez, commanding 6000 well-trained
and handsomely uniformed dragoons and foot soldiers,
was given orders to occupy Mexico City. On the path of
his march to the capital was Puebla, defended by 4000
Mexicans armed with l antiquated guns--many of which
had seen service at the battle of Waterloo fifty years
before, and had been bought at a bargain by Mexico's
ambassador to London back in 1825. Commander of
Puebla's forces was Ignacio Zaragoza, an amateur
in tactical warfare, as were most of his officers, but a
seasoned warrior in guerrilla fighting. Laurencez, to
show his contempt for that ragtag army, called for a
charge up the middle of the Mexican defenses at zaragoza 's most strongly fortified position. The charge
carried
his cavalry through soggy ditches, over a
crumbling adobe wall, and up the steep slopes of the
Cerro de Guadalupe. But their drive petered out before
reaching its objective, and over one thousand Frenchmen
were left sprawled on the field, dead or dying. Laurencez
paid for his contempt. The Mexican army held , and then
Zaragoza led a counter-attack that drove Laurencez
back to Orizaba and, after a short reprieve, attacked
him again and drove the remnants of his army to the
This was the first time French troops had
coast.
met defeat in nearly half a century, and it was handed
them not by a major power of Europe but by the penniless, war-torn republic of Mexico. This battle for
Puebla, fought on May 5, is yearly commemorated in
Mexico by a national holiday, and there is hardly a
Mexican village, town , or city that does not call its
main s treet Cinco de Mayo."
But the Cinco de Mayo did more than give Mexicans
their most glorious national holiday. A Mexican history text comments on its significance as follows:
"The victory of the Mexican Army in the Battle of
Cinco de Mayo had far-reaching consequences, national
as well as international.
With regard to the national consequences, the belief
that the French were invincible in war was destroyed,
a belief the, Conservative traitors themselves had used
to demoralize the defenders of the nation. Furthermore
the victory made the entire nation thrill with enthusiasm
and patriotism, thus encouraging the Mexican people to
continue their struggle against the invader without
flagging ••By this victory, the Mexican Army also gained
an additional year in which to reinforce and reorganize
itself, forming new mtlitary cadres, in which almost
all the political elements of the nation were represented.
As regards the international consequences, the defeat
of the French had r esounding effects in Europe, tarnishing
the brtlliance of Napoleon Ill's prestige, enhancing the
honorable posture of the Spanish and British envoys,
destroying the slander spread there by the Conserva tives that the Juarez government had no backingl..
fur ther mor e, this Mexican victory admi rably prevented
an effective allia nce between Napoleon and the Confederate
states in the Civil war of the United States, which could
possibly have changed the ending of that struggle. A
historian says that on the Cinco de Mayo Zaragoza
defended at Puebla the integr ity ot the Mexican Fatherland and the North American Federation ." (C. Gonzalez
Blackaller and L. Guevara Ramirez, Sintesis de historla de Mexico, p. 366).
Mexican Americans, then, have a double incentive to
cry proudly, "Viva el Cinco de Mayo! " And other Americans, ragardless of national origins, have reason to
join them.
J. C. Canales
•
CHM Department of History
Fresno State College
La
r
r
le
st
iv
2
La Pluma Morena
Spiritual Plan of Aztlan
(The Brown Pen)
Excerpts ...
I am Joaquin
By Rodolfo Gonzalez
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, President of the Cru·
sade for Justice, a militant group based in Denver,
is currently in Albuquerque, M.N., at the request of
Reies Lopez Tijerina to assist the work of the Ali·
anza Federal de Mercedes. Gorky is also co-ordinator
for Vietnam Summer.
Gorky speaks freely about la raza, about "a national movement of Mexican and Spanish in the Southwest-a militant movement that is not afraid to be
linked with the spirit of Zapata, nor shy from the
need to change the system, to have a social revolution . . . "
A movement from Rio Grande City, Texas, to Den•
ver, from Delano to Tierra Amari lla.
I am Joaquin.
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of an
Anglo society,
Confused by the rules,
Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations,
And destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival.
And now!
I must choose
Between
the paradox of
Victory or the spirlt,
despite physlcal hunger
Or
to exist in the grasp
of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul
and a full stomach.
I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The vanquished
I have killed
and been killed.
I am despots Diaz
and Huerta
and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am
the black shawled
faithful women
who die with me
or live
I stand here looking hack,
and now I see
the present
and still
I am 'he campesino
r am the !at polit ical coyote
I'
of the same name,
Joaquin
In a country that has wiped out
all my history,
stifled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a
different weight of indignity upon
my
age
old
hurdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load ...
The Indian has endured and still
emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
and the Gauchupin will just ignore.
I look at myself
and see part of me
who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot
to disappear in shame.
I sometimes
sell my brother out
and reclaim him
for my own when society gives me
token leadership,
in society s own name.
I bleed in some smelly cell
from club.
or gun.
or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
cut my face and eyes,
as I right my way from stinking Barrios
to the glamour of the Ring
and lights of fame
or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles
on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea
and now
Viet Nam.
Here I stand
before the Court of Justice
Guilty
for all the glory of my Raza
to be sentenced to despalr.
Here I stand
Poor in money
Arrogant in pride
Bold with Machismo
Rich in courage
Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe.
I have made the Anglo rich
yet
Equality is but a word,
the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise.
My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped,
I lengthen
the line at the welfare door
and fill the jails with crime.
These then
are the rewards
this society has
For sons of Chiefs
and Kings
and bloody Revolutionists.
Who
gave a foreign people
all their skllls and ingenuity
to pave the way with Brains and Blood
for
those hordes of Gold starved
Strangers
Who
changed our language
and plagarized our deeds
as feats of valor
of their own,
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art
Our literature
Our music, they ignored
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their Greed and Avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
Which ts Joaquin.
I must fight
And win this struggle
for my sons. and they
must know from me
Who I am.
I have endured in the rugged mountains
of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery
of the fields.
I have existed
in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry,
in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection,
in the muck of exploitation
in the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
In the spirit of a people that has recognized not only
its proud historical heritage, but also the brutal grtngc
invasion of our lands, we the Chicano inhabitant and
civilizers of the North American land of Aztlan from
where our forefathers came, only to return to their
roots to conserve the determination of our people of the
sun, we give out a cry bringing forth the spirit of our
blood - the source of our power, our responsibility,
and our inevitable destiny, We are free and know that
those goals for which we justly fight; our home, our
lands, with the sweat of our brow and with our hearts.
A ztlan pertains to those who planteth the seed of life,
caretakers of the sources of life, reap the harvests; this
is not a foreign European.
The brotherhood unites us, our mutual love makes us
a rising power against the gringo oppressor that exploits our people and destroys our dignity and culture.
With heart in hand and with our hands in the soil, we
declare the spirit independent of our mestizo nation. we
are "La Raza" with the Mexican culture. Within the
whole world, before North America, amongst the continent of the bronze people, let us stand as one nation
as a union of tree people; we are the salvation of the
world.
Chicano editorial
This is the first issue of a Chicano-Black coalition
paper. Its content and posture will and should renect
our combined points of view, for it has been gained
through our efforts, yet we have also gained it for all
those students who have need of it. And those in our
community whom have been left out of the scheme of things
will be urged to contribute as well, for they have much
to say. In this respect our paper may be unique to
Fresno. However, space will be limited in each issue
and editions will be few at first. These circumstances
have been agreed upon for the remainder of this semester, but for next Fall a far better arrangement, which
has already passed one stage of approval, is hopefully
anticipated. This kind of paper could be one positive step
towards avoiding the possibility of a San Francisco
State debacle here, something I ·am sure none of us want
for many reasons. But it was a reality there and no matter where, an understandable, yet license, violently manifested, volcano of frustration can exist. This is no threat.
This paper would not have been created had the
Collegian shown more than just a mere token amount
of sensitivity, commitment. and fairness to all of its
captive readers. The Collegian is not alone at fault
though. The students have also shown their share of
complacency, apathy, and little sense of urgency and are
as blameworthy. Now change has been demanded and a
new paper, for better or worse, exists. Though many
have rightly considered themselves excluded, the initiative and obligation to act fell heaviest upon the Chicano
and Black students for clearly they have been the ones
most excluded,
When we individually or collectively speak in our paper
we will most likely speak as our Chicano and Black
cultures have taught us arid made us feel, but it is also
my belief that at the same time, but yet far more importantly, we should and must speak as members of a
far greater group --- the human race. This should be
a rule that stands for all,no matter what color or culture.
I believe it was with this thought in mind that Cesar
Chavez said that the purpose of our struggle is to prevent "the victim from being the victim, and the executioner from being the executioner."
As this paper rests in your hands right now, so do the
solutions to many of the problems that face your
fellowman, but before solutions can be round we must
be committed to try, with empathy and compassion, to
understand one another and not close our eyes to facts
though they be contrary to all we may have heard or learned. We must become committed to the point where we
will act when action is necessary, and we should always
promote that media which strives to make facts and true
feelings public This paper and this week of La Raza
are two of that media.
To sum up the intentions of this paper I believe that
the Chicano and Black students will faithfully strive
within good reason to use this paper to unite and not
incite, to seek cooperation and not revenge, and to end
racism and not enhance it, for together is the only real
way we can seek and build a newer world.
The Chicano students would like to than.le their Black
brothers and sisters for allowing them to have the first
issue of this paper because of the week of La Raza
Bronce. This shows respect for our people, history,
and traditions. and we are very grateful.
VIVA LA CAUSA!
Editor-John F. Ramirez ·
Did you know that there are more than two million
Chicanos in California, more than 12 percent of the total
population of the state; that of the 120 state legislators
in Sacramento, only one is Chicano; that there is one
Chicano county supervisor in California; that only one
school board member in the entire state is a Chicano;
and that city councils in the nine counties of the San
Joaquin Valley include only three Chicanos?
i Organizense, Raza!
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
3
Actividades de la semana
Monday, May 5
Excerpts .
..
The Tale of La Raza
By Luis Valdez
The revolt in Delano is more than a labor struggle.
Mexican grape pickers did not march 300 miles to
Sacramento, carrying the standard of La Virgen de
Guadalupe, merely to dramatize economic grievances.
Beyond unionization, beyond politics, there is the desire
of a New World race to reconcile the conflicts of its
500-year-old history. La Raza is trying to find its place
in the sun it once worshipped as aSupreme Being.
La Raza, the race, is the Mexican people. sentimental
and cynical, fierce and docile, faithful and treacherous,
individualistic and herd-following, in love with life and
obsessed with death, the personality of the raza encompasses all the complexity of our history. The conquest of Mexico was no conquest at all. It shattered our
ancient Indian universe, but more of it was left above
ground than beans and tortillas. Below the foundations
of our Spanish culture, we still sense the ruins of an
entirely different civilization.
The pilgrimage to Sacramento was no mere publicity
trick. The raza has a tradition of migrations, starting
from the legend of the founding of Mexico. Nezahualcoyotl, a great Indian leader, advised his primitive
Chichimecas, forerunners of the Aztecs, to begin a
march to the south. In that march, he prophesied, the
children would age and the old would die, but their grandchildren would come to a great lake. In that lake they
would find an eagle devouring a serpent, and on that spot,
they would begin to build a great nation. The nation was
Aztec Mexico, and the eagle and the serpent are the
symbols of the patria. They are emblazoned on the
Mexican flag, which the marchers took to Sacramento
with pride.
Then there is the other type of migration. When the
migrant farm laborer followed the crops, he was only
reacting to the way he saw the American raza: no unity,
no representation, no roots. The pilgrimage was a truly
religious act, a rejection of our past in this country and
a symbol of our unity and new direction. The unity of
thousands of raza on the Capitol steps was reason
enough for our march. Under the name of HUELGA we
have created a Mexican-American patria, and Cesar
Chavez is our first Presidente.
Most of us know we are not European simply by looking
in a mirror - the shape of the eyes, the curve of the
nose, the color of skin, the texture of hair; these things
belong to another time, another people. Together with a
million little stubborn mannerisms, beliefs, myths, superstitions, words, thoughts - things not so easily detected - they fill our Spanish life with Indian contradictions. It is not enough to say we suffer an identity
crisis, because that crisis has been our way of life !or
the last five centuries.
That we Mexicans speak of ourselves as a •race" is
the biggest contradiction of them all. The conquistadores
mated with their Indian women creating a nation of bewildered half-breeds in countless shapes, colors and
sizes. Unlike our fathers and mothers, unlike each other,
we mestizos solved the problem with poetic license and
called ourselves la raza. A Mexican's first loyalty when one of us is threatened by strangers from the outside - is to that race. Either we recognize our total
unity on the- basis of raza, or the ghosts of 100,000
feuding Indian · tribes, bloods and mores will come back
to haunt us.
Huelga means strike. With the poetic instinct of the
raza, the Delano grape strikers have made it mean a
dozen other things. It is a declaration, a challenge, a
greeting, a feeling, a movement. We cried Huelga! to
the scabs, Huelga! to the labor contractors, to the
growers. With the Schenley and DtGiorgio boycotts, it was
Huelga! to the whole country. It ls the most significant
word in our entire Mexican American history.If the raza
of Mexico believes in La Patria, we believe in La Huelga.
La Virgen de Guadalupe was the first hint to farmworkers that the pilgrimage implied social revolution.
During the Mexican Revolution, the peasant armies of
Emiliano zapata carried her standard, not only because
they sought her divine protection, but because she symbolized the Mexico of the poor and humble. Beautifully
dark and Indian in feature, she was the New World version of the Mother of Christ. Even though some of her
worshippers in Mexico still identify her with Tonatzin,
an Aztec goddess, she is a Catholic saint of Indian creation - a Mexican. The people's response was immediate
and reverent. The rallies were like religious revivals.
At each new town, they were waiting to greet us and of-
fer us their best - mariachis, embraces, words of encouragement for the strike, prayers, rosaries, sweet
cakes, fruit and iced tea. Hundreds walked, ran or drove
up to the march and donated what little money they could
afford. The countless gestures of sympathy and solidarity was like nothing the raza had ever seen. They joined
the march by the thousands, falling in line behind her
standard. To the Catholic hypocrites against the pilgrimage and strike the Virgen said Huelga!
Any Mexican deeply loves his mestizo patria, even
those who, like myself, were born in the United States.
At best, our cultural schizophrenia has led us to action
through the all-encompassing poetry of religion, which
is a fancy way of saying blind faith. La Virgen de Guadalupe, the supreme poetic expression of our Mexican desire to be one people, has inspired Mexicans more than
once to social revolution. At worst, our two-sidedness
has led us to inaction. The last divine Aztec emperor
Cuauhtemoc was murdered in the jungles of Guatemala,
and his descendants were put to work in the fields. We
are still there, in dry, plain American Delano.
It was the triple magnetism of raza, patria, and the
Virgen de Guadalupe which organized the MexicanAmerican farm worker in Delano - that and Cesar
Chavez.
Here was Cesar, burning with a patient fire, poor like
us, dark like us, talking quietly, moving people to talk
about their problems, attacking the little problems first,
and suggesting, always suggesting - never more than
that - solutions that seemed attainable.
Although he sometimes reminds one of Benito Juarez,
Cesar is our first real Mexican-American leader. Used
to hybrid forms, the raza includes all Mexicans, even
hyphenated Mexican-Americans; but divergent histories
are slowly making the raza in the United States different
from the raza in MeXico. We who were born here missed
out on the chief legacy of the Revolution: the chance to
forge a nation true to all the forces that have molded us,
to be one people. Now we must seek our own destiny,
and Delano is only the beginning of our active search.
For the last hundred years our revolutionary progress
has not only been frustrated, it has been totally suppressed. This is a society largely hostile to our cultural
values. There is no poetry about the United States. No
depth; no faith; no allowance for human contrariness
No soul, no mariachi, no chili sauce, no pulque, no
mysticism, no chingaderas.
The struggle for better wages and better working conditions in Delano is but the first realistic articulation of
our need for unity. To emerge from the mire of our past
in the United States, to leave behind the devoid, deadening influence of poverty, we must have bargalningpower.
We must have unions. To the farm workers who joined
the pilgrimage, this cultural pride is revolutionary.
There were old symbols - Zapata lapel buttons - and
new symbols standing for new social protest and revolt;
the red thunderbird flags of the NFWA, picket signs,
arm bands.
Every political rally included a reading of El Plan de
Delano, a "plan of liberation• tor all farmworkers in
the language of the picket line;• .•. This is the beginning
of a social movement in fact and not in pronouncements
••• We shall unite .•• We shall strike •.• Our PILGRIMAGE is the MATCH that will light our cause for
all farmworkers to see what is happening here, so that
they may do as we have done .•. VIVA LA CAUSA!
VIVA LA HUELGA!"
The NFW A IS A RADICAL union because it started, and
continues to grow, as a community organization. Arter
years of isolation in the barrios of Great Valley slum
towns like Delano, after years of living in labor camps
and ranches at the mercy and caprice of growers and
contractors, the Mexican-American farmworker is developing his own ideas about living in the United States.
He wants to be equal with all the working men of the
nation, and he does not mean by the standard middleclass route. We are repelled by the human disintegration of peoples and cultures as they fall apart in this
Great Gringo Melting Pot, and determined that this will
not happen to us. But there will always be raza in this
country. There are millions more where we came from,
across the thousand miles of common border between
Mexico and the United States. For millions of farmworkers, from the Mexicans and Phllippinos of the West
to the Afro-Americans of the South, the United States
has come to a social, political and cultural impasse.
Listen to these people, and you will hear the first
murmurings of revolution.
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Declaracion de La Semana de La Raza de Bronce
(Declaration and Dedication of La Raza Week)
oradores (Speakers)
1. Ellezer Lozada Risco - Director de Los Estudios
de la Raza en Fresno State College (La Raza
Chairman)
2. Bruce Bronzan - Presidente del Cuerpo Estudiantil
de Fresno State College. (Student Body President)
3. Chicano student from Fresno State
1:00 - 3:00 p.rn.
Amphitheatre
Reis Lopez Tijerina - Presidente y Fundador de la
Alianza de los Pueblos Libres. (Founder and President
of la Alianza de los Pueblos Libres).
8:00 - 2:00 a.m.
Baile en su lugar favorito (Dance with townspeople)
Tuesday1 May 6
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre FSC
Corky Gonzalez Fundador y Presidente de la Cruzada
por la Justtcia. (Founder and president of the C rusade for Justice)
2:00 - 4:00
Amphitheatre
Balle con una orchestra (Dance)
7:00 - 9:00 p.rn.
Teatro Azteca (Fresno)
Los Mixtlecos - grupo de jovenes interpetando bailes
majicanos.
(A dance group interpreting Mexican
dances)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
9:00 - 12:00
Teatro Azteca
Una pelicula de la Revolucion de l910(Movie - Mexican
Revolution)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
Wednesday, May 7
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Amphitheatre-speaker
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Manuel Gomez - Representante de la Confederacion
de Estudiantes Chicanos. (Representative of the Confederation of Chicano Students)
Todo sera al compas de la musica del Teatro Campesino. (Music by Teatro Campesino)
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Women's Gymnasium
Los Paisanos- - grupo de estudiantes de la secundaria de Selma
Baile al compas de mariachis.
(Dance and mariachi group from Selma High)
9:00 - 10:30 p.m.
Los Aficionados del arte - grupo teatral - presentaran una comedia.
Entrada gratis (Free admjssion)
Thursday, May 8
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
El Teatro Rebelde - grupo musical de Visalia (A
musical group from Visalia)
11:00-3:00 p.m. and 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Science 162
Armando Jimenes Farias - autor del libro Picardia
Mejicana. Theme •prehispanic games and sports•
Entrad gratis (Free admission)
Friday, May 9
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Cesar Chavez - Fundador de la Union de Trabajadores Campesinos. (Cesar Chavez)
2:00 - 3:00 p,m.
Teatro Urbano - un grupo de San Jose State College
(Musical group from San Jose State College)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 6:30
O'Neil Park
Dia de campo
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Little Theatre
Terna, "La Picardia Mejicana"
Theme, "The Mexican Picaresque•
7:30-8:30 p.m.
Los Desaraigados played by FSC students.
Traiga a su mamacita. Se les dara una nor en festejo
del dia de las mad res ( each mother will recel ve a
flower for Mother's Day).
9:00-10:30 p.m.
Cuadro Espanol
(
4
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
I
Why the Grape Boycott?
By Ron Ortega
For seven years now Cesar Chavez has been the leader
and guiding spirit of La Causa, a movement born out of
the realization that conditions must change - Ya Basta!
That the Mexican must be recognized as a man, and not
a humble, inferior servant, is its grito. Senor Chavez is
our man, and as Zapata before him, he leads an army of
the people. They wear no _bandoleers I or ride mustangs.
They are simply poor, non-violent farm-working people
who are struggling for self-determination. To them the
living death is no longer acceptable, and it is inexcusable.
Since La Huelga in Delano in 1965, they have marched
with justice as their banner against the injustices which
seem legion. Why do these injustices exist and what may
be their remedy? The 1959 U.S. Census of Agriculture
showed that 6 per cent of California's farms own 75 per
cent of the land and 7 per cent of California farms em ploy 75 per cent of the labor, who the worker is fighting
-the large corporate farmer. These powerful landowners
have always resisted worker unionization.
The question is often asked why is organizational
strength necessary? Are conditions really that bad?
Fewer than 20 per cent of the California families covered in the Governor's Advisory Committee Report on
Housing Problems lived in dwellings which could be
considered adequate by present standards of health,
safety, and comfort. Often toilet facilities were pit
privies. Twenty-five per cent of the homes lacked even
so basic a necessity as a kitchen sink with running water,
and 30 per cent had no bathing facilities. This report
offers little evidence of improvement in the effective
economic and social position of the agricultural worker
in California. He remains the most poorly paid, poorly
fed, and poorly housed of California's laborers. Those
who doubt that these poverty conditions exist in reality
need only to spend some time in the barrios to see what
worker's problem. They are almost completely powerless on the job and in the lifeof the community. Workers
in agriculture have been denied the improved wages and
working conditions that are commonplace in industry.
The vast majority of farmworkers in California do not
get any overtime pay; they often don't know their rate of
pay whlle they are working; they do not have any health
or pension plans; safety provisions are minimal. There
are no established channels for grievances. The many
who will dispute these realities can point to examples of
better wages and working conditions, but their examples
do not represent the experiences of the vast majority of
unorganized farm workers in California and the United
States. The farm worker rightly feels that he is only
fighting for what other working groups already have and
take for granted - the right to organize and bargain
collectively.
Tijerina lo Speak Today
the •actual• conditions are.
The charge is often leveled that the farm worker lives
in these poverty conditions because he is lazy or has no
motivation. This argument has no meaning or 1alidity to
anyone who knows anything about field work. To spend
long hot hours stooped over in the sun doesn't seem to
qualify one as lazy, also farm workers have the prime
motivation to feed their families. Not many farm workers
toil in the fields so they can •put in a swim ming pool
next summer." It follows that if the worker is dependent
on this work for his very survival that he is not trying to
destroy the farmer. As Cesar Chavez has said, "We do
not want to damage the grape industry by this boycott that would be taking jobs away from ourselves - but we
feel that we must tell the consumer that those who sell
scab grapes are supporting poverty, supporting injustice." Aunual income is only one aspect of the farm-
l
The workers cannot wait for their employers to make
the changes; they have been waiting for 100 years. Congress has also failed to pass the needed legislation to
protect the workers' right to bargain with their employers. The economic, consumer boycott seemed to be their
last non-violent recourse.
As a result of the Delano strike and the several boycotts that have accompanied the strike there have been
union representation, elections, bargaining and contracts with 10 wine grape growers. The aspirations and
organizational energies or the workers are now focused
on table grape growers.
The hard reality is that the workers need and want
organization and collective bargaining and their employers are resisting this change with all the considerable
power at their command. Concerning the charge leveled
by critics that the workers don't want Chavez and the
UFWOC: in all secret ballot elections to date, the
workers have in every case voted to be represented by
the UFWOC.
If we are to continue with the assumption that all men
are created equal and that all men should have equality
of opportunity, then the students of Fresno State College
have a moral responsibility to support the grape boycott.
So that through the boycott the farm worker can enhance
his opportunities and determine his own destiny.
A Ripple of Hope
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy
and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep
down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
•Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their
society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the
one essential vital quality for those who seek to change
a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to
enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner oft.he globe.
"For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation
to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before
those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is
not the road· history has marked out for us. Like it or
not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they
are also more open to the creative energy of men than
any other time in history .•.
"'The future does not belong to those who are content
with today, apathetic toward common problems and their
fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new
ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those
who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal
commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of
. American Society."
-Robert F. Kennedy, 1966
On June 5, 1967 an armed raid was made on the courthouse of a northern New Mexico town named Tierra
Amarilla. It was significant if only to demonstrate that
a people rebelled against the suppresive gringo system
which was imposed on them. Once before in 1846, the
people of the same region rebelled against the gringo
system as it was being implemented and succeeded in
kllling the fl rst gringo governor, Charles Brent, of that
area.
The leader of these June 5 rebeldes is Reies Lopez
Tijerina. He was born in Falls City, near San Antonio,
Texas, the son of a migrant laborer who took the family
throughout the Southwest picking cotton for $6-8 a day.
As a boy Reies came to know poverty well, living in
perpetual starvation, as he and his brother would trap
wood rats and eat them. He didn't wear shoes until he
was 13, and because of the need for all of the family to
work in the fields , was only able to get a minimal abount
of formal education.
With that type of background it was only natural that
Reies Lopez Tigerina emerge as leader of the militant
organization "La Alanzia Federal de Mercedes,• which
is striving to reclaim stolen land and eliminate suppressive economic practices aimed at "La Raza" in northern
ew Mexico.
He wlll be speaking today in the Amphitheatre from
1 to 3 p.m.
Chavez agrees with son's
military induction refusal
Statement of Cesar Chavez, April 23, 1969, concerning
his son Fernando's refusal of induction into the armed
forces.
I have asked Eloise, one of my girls, to read this
statement to you. I am sad that my health does not permit
me to be with my son today. The decision that Polly
(Fernando) has made and his reasons !or it, are his
own. But it is a decision that I very much agree with.
A year ago during my !ast for non-violence I said that
if to build our union would require the deliberate taking
of life, either the life of a grower or his child, or the
life of a farm worker or his child, then I would choose
not to see our union built.
Today Polly has chosen to respect life and not to kill
in war.
Such a decision is not easy to make and my heart
goes out to all parents and children who are faced with
a similar challenge o! non-violence.
Thank you !or being here with us today.
The young whites know that the colored people of the
world, Afro-Americans included, do not seek revenge for
their suffering. They seek the same things the white
rebel wants: an end to war and exploitation. Black and
white, the young rebels are free people, free in a way that
Americans have never been before in the historyof their
country. And they are outraged.
-~~------
There is in America today a generation of white
youth that is truly worthy of a black man's respect, and
this is a rare event in the foul annals of American his ..
tory. From the beginning of the contact between blacks
and whites there has been very little reason for a black
man to respect a white, with such exceptions as John
Brown and others lesser known. But respect commands
itself and it can neither be g·ven nor withheld when it is
due. If a man like Malcolm X could change an repudiate
racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change,
if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
It was certainly strange to find myself, while steeped
in the doctrine that all whites were devils by nature,
commanded by the heart to applaud and acknowledge respect for these young whites- -despite the fact that they
are descendants of the masters and I the descendant
of the slave. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the
heads of the children--but only if the children continue
in the evil deeds of the fathers.
-Excerpts from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice
LA
MORENA
MONDAY, MAY 5, 1969
Chicano-Black Student Supplement
la Semana de la Raza Bronce y •••
El Cinco de Mayo
Every fifth of May Puebla, the original •city of the
Angels" in the Western Hemisphere awakens to a
glorious day, a day which has won her the proud name
of •Puebla la heroica." For this is the commemoration
of the Batalla del Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 1862, when
Puebla repulsed a French attack. Around eleven in the
morning the school children of Puebla, decked out in
their uniformes de gala (dress uniforms) decorated with
identifying ribbons, march for four hours in a five mile
long parade through the center of the city. When the
parade reaches the zocalo (central plaza), the units of
the various schools march past the state and municipal
officials and salute them. The rest of the day is spent
in a grand fiesta with many of the citizens gaily dressed
i n regional costumes, while bands play throughout the
city. There is dancing in the zocalo and other plazas.
At ten in the evening, the "combate de fiores• (the
fl ower battle, an ancient Aztec tradition) takes place.
People throng to the zocalo and adjoining streets throwing flowers at each other and presenting bouquets to
frien ds and strangers alike, Later, there are many
glitteri ng private parties to cap the festivities.
During the day, the Mexican Army stages a sham
battle on the Cerro de Guadalupe, atop which stands the
fort, now a historical museum, which was the core of
Puebla's defenses.
Throughout the Mexican Nation similar events take
place; and, in the ancient Aztec village of Penon (the
rock), in the suburbs of Mexico City, a classic play is
enacted with a cast of public officials, soldiers, and
musicians. Not only does the long drama follow closely
the hi stor ical events, but it contains long quotations from
the various diplomatic pronouncements and treaties which
preceeded and followed the battle.
One may well ask why all the festivities, and thereby
hangs a glorious and interesting tale of intrigue, adventure, derrtng-do, and heroic patriotism. From 1858
to 1861 , Mexico was wracked by a sanguinary and destructive civil war, the Guerra de la Reforma or Guerra
de Tres Anos. The conflict was a showdown between
the J acobin radicals who called tt1emselves puros and
the ultraconservative religious elements. They were all
catholics, but they disagreed violently on the relations
between Church and State, as well as on the nature of the
state itself. The Liberals (as the puros were officially
called), favored a federalized republic and rejected their
Indo-Spantsh-Catholic culture in favor of the Anglooriented-Protestant one of the United States. The Conservatives preferred a unitary republic on the French
model or a recreation of the Spanish monarchial state,
as well as the Europeonization of Mexican culture. To
bring about their ends, both sides courted foreign intervention: the Liberals that of the United States, the Conservatives that of France.
At the conclusion of the Guerra de la Reforma, which
the Liberals won with the aid of the United States, President Benito Juarez surveyed-the sorry state of his country, drained physically and emotionally and utterly
devastated by a fratricidal war. Small surprise, then,
that President Juarez declared a two-year moratorium
on the payment of Mexico's foreign debt. Although the
decis ion was dictated by absolute necessity, it was catastrophic , for it furnished a pretext for foreign intervention. The time was propitious, for the United States, itself embroiled in the bloody struggle between the Union
and Confederate forces, was in no position to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine which not only decried intervention
by non-American powers, but specifically banned the
further extension of the monarchical system inAmerica.
Napoleon III , Emperor of the French, had long dreamed
of a Catholic Latin American Empire which would counteract the Protestant Anglo-oriented United States. Also,
he was influenced by the dazzling vision of Mexican
riches dangled before his eyes by such Mexican exiles
as the ex- Liberal General Juan Almonte, the royalist
Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and the ambitious Jose
Manuel Hidalgo who had distinguished himself against
the Amer ican invaders at the Battle of Churubusco in
1847. He was also influenced by hisbastardhalf-brother,
the Duc de Morr.y, who was a partner of J.B. Jecker,
a Swiss banker who held Mexican government bonds
worth fifteen million pesos .
Napoleon II prevailed on Britain and Spain to agree on
forcibly pressing their respective claims against Mexico
by means of a joint diplomatic mission backed by a powerful punitive expedition • . • a form of international
intimidation of small powers by large ones commonly
referred to in diplomatic and military cfrcles as "showing the flag." When indulged in between major powers,
it is known less euphemistically as "rattling the sword."
His plan was ratified officially in the London Convention
on October 31, 1861. By this agreement the contracting
parties pledged themselves to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. There were no provisions for changing Mexico's form of government.
On January 9, 1862, the tripartite envoys , Count Dubois
de Saligny, General Juan Prim, and Sir Charles Wyke
met at Vera Cruz to discuss their claims. It soon became
clear that Spain and Britain's claims were just, whereas
France demanded the honoring of the Jecker bonds (the
Due de Morny was to get thirty per cent) and an additional twelve million pesos in cash. France wanted no questions asked. She was unwilling or unable to furnish
valid proof.
Nevertheless, President Juarez and his representatives treated the tripartite expedition with courtesy and
consideration. Not only did he allow them to occupy Vera
Cruz unopposed but, by the Treaty of La Doledad, allowed the foreign troops to move from the oppressive
heat of the disease- ridden " Hot Land" to the healthier
climate of the Mexican Plateau, near Puebla. The allies
agreed to retreat to Vera Cruz, should hostilities break
out.
France's exorbitant demands and the rudely inflexible
attitude of Dubois de Saligny, who was a stooge of the
Due de Morny, soon caused a personality clash between
the French envoy and General Prim. Sir Charles Wyke
sided with the Spanish general. Tempers reached the
breaking point, when the French landed General Almonte
and other Mexican imperial agents to engage in subversive activities under the protection of the flag of
France. At the urging of their representatives, Spain and
Britain recalled their expeditionary forces.
Napoleon III then ordered the Commander in Chief of
his invading army, General Charles F. Latrille, Count
of Laurencez, to take Mexico City and overthrow the
Government of Mexico. On this occasion, as in almost
every instance in the French Intervention in Mexico,
France forgot her vaunted devotion to honor. General
Laurencez violated the treaty of Soledad and marched
directly towards Puebla, where an army under General
Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the way to the capital.
Juarez's choice of General Zaragoza to repel the
French invasion was both surprising and intuitive. He
might have selected General Jose Lopez Uraga, tor example, a trained soldier of great technical knowledge
and proven skill since 1947. He knew European military
strategy and had distinguished himself in action during
the War of Reform. General Zaragoza, on th e other hand,
was a brilliant but untutored guerilla tactician from Coahuila. However, no one knew the militar y ability and
the limitations of the Mexican soldier better, or had
greater confidence in his her oic endurance and courage,
It 1s interesting that Za r agoza in addressing his unpaid,
underfed, poor ly clothed and armed troops never spoke
of winning or dying heroically, as Antoni o Lopez de
Santa Ana often had. Zaragoza spoke confidentl y only of
total triumph.
General Laurencez, on the contrary, had formed a poor
concept of the Mexican soldier. When the bedraggled men
of the Cons ervative guerilla leader, General Lorenzo
Mar quez, str aggled into his camp, the French general
noted they were barefooted, half-naked , and ill-armed.
Never having s een them in action, he concluded that
Mexico could easily be conquered With six thousand
Volume 1, Number 1
French regulars. so contemptuous was he of Mexican
mllltary ability, so sure that the Conservative and
deeply religious citizens of Puebla would betray the army
of the radical government of Juarez, that he decided on
a frontal attack of the two hills where General Zaragoza
had deployed his men, Cerro de Guadalupe and Cerro de
Loreto. Also, Lurencez could not know that the general
ln hls twenties who led the flanking attack for Zaragoza.
was the mllltary genius who would eventually destroy
the armies of Emperor Maximilian. His name was General Porfirio Diaz and this was his first major command. Before the battle, General Laurencez wrote his
government: "We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organt zation, discipline, morality, and
high ideals that even now, at the head of our valiant six
thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico.• Famous
last words!
A popular American historian has briefly and fairly
acurately described the action that ensued:
"General Laurencez, commanding 6000 well-trained
and handsomely uniformed dragoons and foot soldiers,
was given orders to occupy Mexico City. On the path of
his march to the capital was Puebla, defended by 4000
Mexicans armed with l antiquated guns--many of which
had seen service at the battle of Waterloo fifty years
before, and had been bought at a bargain by Mexico's
ambassador to London back in 1825. Commander of
Puebla's forces was Ignacio Zaragoza, an amateur
in tactical warfare, as were most of his officers, but a
seasoned warrior in guerrilla fighting. Laurencez, to
show his contempt for that ragtag army, called for a
charge up the middle of the Mexican defenses at zaragoza 's most strongly fortified position. The charge
carried
his cavalry through soggy ditches, over a
crumbling adobe wall, and up the steep slopes of the
Cerro de Guadalupe. But their drive petered out before
reaching its objective, and over one thousand Frenchmen
were left sprawled on the field, dead or dying. Laurencez
paid for his contempt. The Mexican army held , and then
Zaragoza led a counter-attack that drove Laurencez
back to Orizaba and, after a short reprieve, attacked
him again and drove the remnants of his army to the
This was the first time French troops had
coast.
met defeat in nearly half a century, and it was handed
them not by a major power of Europe but by the penniless, war-torn republic of Mexico. This battle for
Puebla, fought on May 5, is yearly commemorated in
Mexico by a national holiday, and there is hardly a
Mexican village, town , or city that does not call its
main s treet Cinco de Mayo."
But the Cinco de Mayo did more than give Mexicans
their most glorious national holiday. A Mexican history text comments on its significance as follows:
"The victory of the Mexican Army in the Battle of
Cinco de Mayo had far-reaching consequences, national
as well as international.
With regard to the national consequences, the belief
that the French were invincible in war was destroyed,
a belief the, Conservative traitors themselves had used
to demoralize the defenders of the nation. Furthermore
the victory made the entire nation thrill with enthusiasm
and patriotism, thus encouraging the Mexican people to
continue their struggle against the invader without
flagging ••By this victory, the Mexican Army also gained
an additional year in which to reinforce and reorganize
itself, forming new mtlitary cadres, in which almost
all the political elements of the nation were represented.
As regards the international consequences, the defeat
of the French had r esounding effects in Europe, tarnishing
the brtlliance of Napoleon Ill's prestige, enhancing the
honorable posture of the Spanish and British envoys,
destroying the slander spread there by the Conserva tives that the Juarez government had no backingl..
fur ther mor e, this Mexican victory admi rably prevented
an effective allia nce between Napoleon and the Confederate
states in the Civil war of the United States, which could
possibly have changed the ending of that struggle. A
historian says that on the Cinco de Mayo Zaragoza
defended at Puebla the integr ity ot the Mexican Fatherland and the North American Federation ." (C. Gonzalez
Blackaller and L. Guevara Ramirez, Sintesis de historla de Mexico, p. 366).
Mexican Americans, then, have a double incentive to
cry proudly, "Viva el Cinco de Mayo! " And other Americans, ragardless of national origins, have reason to
join them.
J. C. Canales
•
CHM Department of History
Fresno State College
La
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iv
2
La Pluma Morena
Spiritual Plan of Aztlan
(The Brown Pen)
Excerpts ...
I am Joaquin
By Rodolfo Gonzalez
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, President of the Cru·
sade for Justice, a militant group based in Denver,
is currently in Albuquerque, M.N., at the request of
Reies Lopez Tijerina to assist the work of the Ali·
anza Federal de Mercedes. Gorky is also co-ordinator
for Vietnam Summer.
Gorky speaks freely about la raza, about "a national movement of Mexican and Spanish in the Southwest-a militant movement that is not afraid to be
linked with the spirit of Zapata, nor shy from the
need to change the system, to have a social revolution . . . "
A movement from Rio Grande City, Texas, to Den•
ver, from Delano to Tierra Amari lla.
I am Joaquin.
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of an
Anglo society,
Confused by the rules,
Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations,
And destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival.
And now!
I must choose
Between
the paradox of
Victory or the spirlt,
despite physlcal hunger
Or
to exist in the grasp
of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul
and a full stomach.
I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The vanquished
I have killed
and been killed.
I am despots Diaz
and Huerta
and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am
the black shawled
faithful women
who die with me
or live
I stand here looking hack,
and now I see
the present
and still
I am 'he campesino
r am the !at polit ical coyote
I'
of the same name,
Joaquin
In a country that has wiped out
all my history,
stifled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a
different weight of indignity upon
my
age
old
hurdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load ...
The Indian has endured and still
emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
and the Gauchupin will just ignore.
I look at myself
and see part of me
who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot
to disappear in shame.
I sometimes
sell my brother out
and reclaim him
for my own when society gives me
token leadership,
in society s own name.
I bleed in some smelly cell
from club.
or gun.
or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
cut my face and eyes,
as I right my way from stinking Barrios
to the glamour of the Ring
and lights of fame
or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles
on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea
and now
Viet Nam.
Here I stand
before the Court of Justice
Guilty
for all the glory of my Raza
to be sentenced to despalr.
Here I stand
Poor in money
Arrogant in pride
Bold with Machismo
Rich in courage
Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe.
I have made the Anglo rich
yet
Equality is but a word,
the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise.
My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped,
I lengthen
the line at the welfare door
and fill the jails with crime.
These then
are the rewards
this society has
For sons of Chiefs
and Kings
and bloody Revolutionists.
Who
gave a foreign people
all their skllls and ingenuity
to pave the way with Brains and Blood
for
those hordes of Gold starved
Strangers
Who
changed our language
and plagarized our deeds
as feats of valor
of their own,
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art
Our literature
Our music, they ignored
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their Greed and Avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
Which ts Joaquin.
I must fight
And win this struggle
for my sons. and they
must know from me
Who I am.
I have endured in the rugged mountains
of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery
of the fields.
I have existed
in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry,
in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection,
in the muck of exploitation
in the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
In the spirit of a people that has recognized not only
its proud historical heritage, but also the brutal grtngc
invasion of our lands, we the Chicano inhabitant and
civilizers of the North American land of Aztlan from
where our forefathers came, only to return to their
roots to conserve the determination of our people of the
sun, we give out a cry bringing forth the spirit of our
blood - the source of our power, our responsibility,
and our inevitable destiny, We are free and know that
those goals for which we justly fight; our home, our
lands, with the sweat of our brow and with our hearts.
A ztlan pertains to those who planteth the seed of life,
caretakers of the sources of life, reap the harvests; this
is not a foreign European.
The brotherhood unites us, our mutual love makes us
a rising power against the gringo oppressor that exploits our people and destroys our dignity and culture.
With heart in hand and with our hands in the soil, we
declare the spirit independent of our mestizo nation. we
are "La Raza" with the Mexican culture. Within the
whole world, before North America, amongst the continent of the bronze people, let us stand as one nation
as a union of tree people; we are the salvation of the
world.
Chicano editorial
This is the first issue of a Chicano-Black coalition
paper. Its content and posture will and should renect
our combined points of view, for it has been gained
through our efforts, yet we have also gained it for all
those students who have need of it. And those in our
community whom have been left out of the scheme of things
will be urged to contribute as well, for they have much
to say. In this respect our paper may be unique to
Fresno. However, space will be limited in each issue
and editions will be few at first. These circumstances
have been agreed upon for the remainder of this semester, but for next Fall a far better arrangement, which
has already passed one stage of approval, is hopefully
anticipated. This kind of paper could be one positive step
towards avoiding the possibility of a San Francisco
State debacle here, something I ·am sure none of us want
for many reasons. But it was a reality there and no matter where, an understandable, yet license, violently manifested, volcano of frustration can exist. This is no threat.
This paper would not have been created had the
Collegian shown more than just a mere token amount
of sensitivity, commitment. and fairness to all of its
captive readers. The Collegian is not alone at fault
though. The students have also shown their share of
complacency, apathy, and little sense of urgency and are
as blameworthy. Now change has been demanded and a
new paper, for better or worse, exists. Though many
have rightly considered themselves excluded, the initiative and obligation to act fell heaviest upon the Chicano
and Black students for clearly they have been the ones
most excluded,
When we individually or collectively speak in our paper
we will most likely speak as our Chicano and Black
cultures have taught us arid made us feel, but it is also
my belief that at the same time, but yet far more importantly, we should and must speak as members of a
far greater group --- the human race. This should be
a rule that stands for all,no matter what color or culture.
I believe it was with this thought in mind that Cesar
Chavez said that the purpose of our struggle is to prevent "the victim from being the victim, and the executioner from being the executioner."
As this paper rests in your hands right now, so do the
solutions to many of the problems that face your
fellowman, but before solutions can be round we must
be committed to try, with empathy and compassion, to
understand one another and not close our eyes to facts
though they be contrary to all we may have heard or learned. We must become committed to the point where we
will act when action is necessary, and we should always
promote that media which strives to make facts and true
feelings public This paper and this week of La Raza
are two of that media.
To sum up the intentions of this paper I believe that
the Chicano and Black students will faithfully strive
within good reason to use this paper to unite and not
incite, to seek cooperation and not revenge, and to end
racism and not enhance it, for together is the only real
way we can seek and build a newer world.
The Chicano students would like to than.le their Black
brothers and sisters for allowing them to have the first
issue of this paper because of the week of La Raza
Bronce. This shows respect for our people, history,
and traditions. and we are very grateful.
VIVA LA CAUSA!
Editor-John F. Ramirez ·
Did you know that there are more than two million
Chicanos in California, more than 12 percent of the total
population of the state; that of the 120 state legislators
in Sacramento, only one is Chicano; that there is one
Chicano county supervisor in California; that only one
school board member in the entire state is a Chicano;
and that city councils in the nine counties of the San
Joaquin Valley include only three Chicanos?
i Organizense, Raza!
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
3
Actividades de la semana
Monday, May 5
Excerpts .
..
The Tale of La Raza
By Luis Valdez
The revolt in Delano is more than a labor struggle.
Mexican grape pickers did not march 300 miles to
Sacramento, carrying the standard of La Virgen de
Guadalupe, merely to dramatize economic grievances.
Beyond unionization, beyond politics, there is the desire
of a New World race to reconcile the conflicts of its
500-year-old history. La Raza is trying to find its place
in the sun it once worshipped as aSupreme Being.
La Raza, the race, is the Mexican people. sentimental
and cynical, fierce and docile, faithful and treacherous,
individualistic and herd-following, in love with life and
obsessed with death, the personality of the raza encompasses all the complexity of our history. The conquest of Mexico was no conquest at all. It shattered our
ancient Indian universe, but more of it was left above
ground than beans and tortillas. Below the foundations
of our Spanish culture, we still sense the ruins of an
entirely different civilization.
The pilgrimage to Sacramento was no mere publicity
trick. The raza has a tradition of migrations, starting
from the legend of the founding of Mexico. Nezahualcoyotl, a great Indian leader, advised his primitive
Chichimecas, forerunners of the Aztecs, to begin a
march to the south. In that march, he prophesied, the
children would age and the old would die, but their grandchildren would come to a great lake. In that lake they
would find an eagle devouring a serpent, and on that spot,
they would begin to build a great nation. The nation was
Aztec Mexico, and the eagle and the serpent are the
symbols of the patria. They are emblazoned on the
Mexican flag, which the marchers took to Sacramento
with pride.
Then there is the other type of migration. When the
migrant farm laborer followed the crops, he was only
reacting to the way he saw the American raza: no unity,
no representation, no roots. The pilgrimage was a truly
religious act, a rejection of our past in this country and
a symbol of our unity and new direction. The unity of
thousands of raza on the Capitol steps was reason
enough for our march. Under the name of HUELGA we
have created a Mexican-American patria, and Cesar
Chavez is our first Presidente.
Most of us know we are not European simply by looking
in a mirror - the shape of the eyes, the curve of the
nose, the color of skin, the texture of hair; these things
belong to another time, another people. Together with a
million little stubborn mannerisms, beliefs, myths, superstitions, words, thoughts - things not so easily detected - they fill our Spanish life with Indian contradictions. It is not enough to say we suffer an identity
crisis, because that crisis has been our way of life !or
the last five centuries.
That we Mexicans speak of ourselves as a •race" is
the biggest contradiction of them all. The conquistadores
mated with their Indian women creating a nation of bewildered half-breeds in countless shapes, colors and
sizes. Unlike our fathers and mothers, unlike each other,
we mestizos solved the problem with poetic license and
called ourselves la raza. A Mexican's first loyalty when one of us is threatened by strangers from the outside - is to that race. Either we recognize our total
unity on the- basis of raza, or the ghosts of 100,000
feuding Indian · tribes, bloods and mores will come back
to haunt us.
Huelga means strike. With the poetic instinct of the
raza, the Delano grape strikers have made it mean a
dozen other things. It is a declaration, a challenge, a
greeting, a feeling, a movement. We cried Huelga! to
the scabs, Huelga! to the labor contractors, to the
growers. With the Schenley and DtGiorgio boycotts, it was
Huelga! to the whole country. It ls the most significant
word in our entire Mexican American history.If the raza
of Mexico believes in La Patria, we believe in La Huelga.
La Virgen de Guadalupe was the first hint to farmworkers that the pilgrimage implied social revolution.
During the Mexican Revolution, the peasant armies of
Emiliano zapata carried her standard, not only because
they sought her divine protection, but because she symbolized the Mexico of the poor and humble. Beautifully
dark and Indian in feature, she was the New World version of the Mother of Christ. Even though some of her
worshippers in Mexico still identify her with Tonatzin,
an Aztec goddess, she is a Catholic saint of Indian creation - a Mexican. The people's response was immediate
and reverent. The rallies were like religious revivals.
At each new town, they were waiting to greet us and of-
fer us their best - mariachis, embraces, words of encouragement for the strike, prayers, rosaries, sweet
cakes, fruit and iced tea. Hundreds walked, ran or drove
up to the march and donated what little money they could
afford. The countless gestures of sympathy and solidarity was like nothing the raza had ever seen. They joined
the march by the thousands, falling in line behind her
standard. To the Catholic hypocrites against the pilgrimage and strike the Virgen said Huelga!
Any Mexican deeply loves his mestizo patria, even
those who, like myself, were born in the United States.
At best, our cultural schizophrenia has led us to action
through the all-encompassing poetry of religion, which
is a fancy way of saying blind faith. La Virgen de Guadalupe, the supreme poetic expression of our Mexican desire to be one people, has inspired Mexicans more than
once to social revolution. At worst, our two-sidedness
has led us to inaction. The last divine Aztec emperor
Cuauhtemoc was murdered in the jungles of Guatemala,
and his descendants were put to work in the fields. We
are still there, in dry, plain American Delano.
It was the triple magnetism of raza, patria, and the
Virgen de Guadalupe which organized the MexicanAmerican farm worker in Delano - that and Cesar
Chavez.
Here was Cesar, burning with a patient fire, poor like
us, dark like us, talking quietly, moving people to talk
about their problems, attacking the little problems first,
and suggesting, always suggesting - never more than
that - solutions that seemed attainable.
Although he sometimes reminds one of Benito Juarez,
Cesar is our first real Mexican-American leader. Used
to hybrid forms, the raza includes all Mexicans, even
hyphenated Mexican-Americans; but divergent histories
are slowly making the raza in the United States different
from the raza in MeXico. We who were born here missed
out on the chief legacy of the Revolution: the chance to
forge a nation true to all the forces that have molded us,
to be one people. Now we must seek our own destiny,
and Delano is only the beginning of our active search.
For the last hundred years our revolutionary progress
has not only been frustrated, it has been totally suppressed. This is a society largely hostile to our cultural
values. There is no poetry about the United States. No
depth; no faith; no allowance for human contrariness
No soul, no mariachi, no chili sauce, no pulque, no
mysticism, no chingaderas.
The struggle for better wages and better working conditions in Delano is but the first realistic articulation of
our need for unity. To emerge from the mire of our past
in the United States, to leave behind the devoid, deadening influence of poverty, we must have bargalningpower.
We must have unions. To the farm workers who joined
the pilgrimage, this cultural pride is revolutionary.
There were old symbols - Zapata lapel buttons - and
new symbols standing for new social protest and revolt;
the red thunderbird flags of the NFWA, picket signs,
arm bands.
Every political rally included a reading of El Plan de
Delano, a "plan of liberation• tor all farmworkers in
the language of the picket line;• .•. This is the beginning
of a social movement in fact and not in pronouncements
••• We shall unite .•• We shall strike •.• Our PILGRIMAGE is the MATCH that will light our cause for
all farmworkers to see what is happening here, so that
they may do as we have done .•. VIVA LA CAUSA!
VIVA LA HUELGA!"
The NFW A IS A RADICAL union because it started, and
continues to grow, as a community organization. Arter
years of isolation in the barrios of Great Valley slum
towns like Delano, after years of living in labor camps
and ranches at the mercy and caprice of growers and
contractors, the Mexican-American farmworker is developing his own ideas about living in the United States.
He wants to be equal with all the working men of the
nation, and he does not mean by the standard middleclass route. We are repelled by the human disintegration of peoples and cultures as they fall apart in this
Great Gringo Melting Pot, and determined that this will
not happen to us. But there will always be raza in this
country. There are millions more where we came from,
across the thousand miles of common border between
Mexico and the United States. For millions of farmworkers, from the Mexicans and Phllippinos of the West
to the Afro-Americans of the South, the United States
has come to a social, political and cultural impasse.
Listen to these people, and you will hear the first
murmurings of revolution.
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Declaracion de La Semana de La Raza de Bronce
(Declaration and Dedication of La Raza Week)
oradores (Speakers)
1. Ellezer Lozada Risco - Director de Los Estudios
de la Raza en Fresno State College (La Raza
Chairman)
2. Bruce Bronzan - Presidente del Cuerpo Estudiantil
de Fresno State College. (Student Body President)
3. Chicano student from Fresno State
1:00 - 3:00 p.rn.
Amphitheatre
Reis Lopez Tijerina - Presidente y Fundador de la
Alianza de los Pueblos Libres. (Founder and President
of la Alianza de los Pueblos Libres).
8:00 - 2:00 a.m.
Baile en su lugar favorito (Dance with townspeople)
Tuesday1 May 6
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre FSC
Corky Gonzalez Fundador y Presidente de la Cruzada
por la Justtcia. (Founder and president of the C rusade for Justice)
2:00 - 4:00
Amphitheatre
Balle con una orchestra (Dance)
7:00 - 9:00 p.rn.
Teatro Azteca (Fresno)
Los Mixtlecos - grupo de jovenes interpetando bailes
majicanos.
(A dance group interpreting Mexican
dances)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
9:00 - 12:00
Teatro Azteca
Una pelicula de la Revolucion de l910(Movie - Mexican
Revolution)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
Wednesday, May 7
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Amphitheatre-speaker
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Manuel Gomez - Representante de la Confederacion
de Estudiantes Chicanos. (Representative of the Confederation of Chicano Students)
Todo sera al compas de la musica del Teatro Campesino. (Music by Teatro Campesino)
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Women's Gymnasium
Los Paisanos- - grupo de estudiantes de la secundaria de Selma
Baile al compas de mariachis.
(Dance and mariachi group from Selma High)
9:00 - 10:30 p.m.
Los Aficionados del arte - grupo teatral - presentaran una comedia.
Entrada gratis (Free admjssion)
Thursday, May 8
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
El Teatro Rebelde - grupo musical de Visalia (A
musical group from Visalia)
11:00-3:00 p.m. and 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Science 162
Armando Jimenes Farias - autor del libro Picardia
Mejicana. Theme •prehispanic games and sports•
Entrad gratis (Free admission)
Friday, May 9
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Cesar Chavez - Fundador de la Union de Trabajadores Campesinos. (Cesar Chavez)
2:00 - 3:00 p,m.
Teatro Urbano - un grupo de San Jose State College
(Musical group from San Jose State College)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 6:30
O'Neil Park
Dia de campo
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Little Theatre
Terna, "La Picardia Mejicana"
Theme, "The Mexican Picaresque•
7:30-8:30 p.m.
Los Desaraigados played by FSC students.
Traiga a su mamacita. Se les dara una nor en festejo
del dia de las mad res ( each mother will recel ve a
flower for Mother's Day).
9:00-10:30 p.m.
Cuadro Espanol
(
4
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
I
Why the Grape Boycott?
By Ron Ortega
For seven years now Cesar Chavez has been the leader
and guiding spirit of La Causa, a movement born out of
the realization that conditions must change - Ya Basta!
That the Mexican must be recognized as a man, and not
a humble, inferior servant, is its grito. Senor Chavez is
our man, and as Zapata before him, he leads an army of
the people. They wear no _bandoleers I or ride mustangs.
They are simply poor, non-violent farm-working people
who are struggling for self-determination. To them the
living death is no longer acceptable, and it is inexcusable.
Since La Huelga in Delano in 1965, they have marched
with justice as their banner against the injustices which
seem legion. Why do these injustices exist and what may
be their remedy? The 1959 U.S. Census of Agriculture
showed that 6 per cent of California's farms own 75 per
cent of the land and 7 per cent of California farms em ploy 75 per cent of the labor, who the worker is fighting
-the large corporate farmer. These powerful landowners
have always resisted worker unionization.
The question is often asked why is organizational
strength necessary? Are conditions really that bad?
Fewer than 20 per cent of the California families covered in the Governor's Advisory Committee Report on
Housing Problems lived in dwellings which could be
considered adequate by present standards of health,
safety, and comfort. Often toilet facilities were pit
privies. Twenty-five per cent of the homes lacked even
so basic a necessity as a kitchen sink with running water,
and 30 per cent had no bathing facilities. This report
offers little evidence of improvement in the effective
economic and social position of the agricultural worker
in California. He remains the most poorly paid, poorly
fed, and poorly housed of California's laborers. Those
who doubt that these poverty conditions exist in reality
need only to spend some time in the barrios to see what
worker's problem. They are almost completely powerless on the job and in the lifeof the community. Workers
in agriculture have been denied the improved wages and
working conditions that are commonplace in industry.
The vast majority of farmworkers in California do not
get any overtime pay; they often don't know their rate of
pay whlle they are working; they do not have any health
or pension plans; safety provisions are minimal. There
are no established channels for grievances. The many
who will dispute these realities can point to examples of
better wages and working conditions, but their examples
do not represent the experiences of the vast majority of
unorganized farm workers in California and the United
States. The farm worker rightly feels that he is only
fighting for what other working groups already have and
take for granted - the right to organize and bargain
collectively.
Tijerina lo Speak Today
the •actual• conditions are.
The charge is often leveled that the farm worker lives
in these poverty conditions because he is lazy or has no
motivation. This argument has no meaning or 1alidity to
anyone who knows anything about field work. To spend
long hot hours stooped over in the sun doesn't seem to
qualify one as lazy, also farm workers have the prime
motivation to feed their families. Not many farm workers
toil in the fields so they can •put in a swim ming pool
next summer." It follows that if the worker is dependent
on this work for his very survival that he is not trying to
destroy the farmer. As Cesar Chavez has said, "We do
not want to damage the grape industry by this boycott that would be taking jobs away from ourselves - but we
feel that we must tell the consumer that those who sell
scab grapes are supporting poverty, supporting injustice." Aunual income is only one aspect of the farm-
l
The workers cannot wait for their employers to make
the changes; they have been waiting for 100 years. Congress has also failed to pass the needed legislation to
protect the workers' right to bargain with their employers. The economic, consumer boycott seemed to be their
last non-violent recourse.
As a result of the Delano strike and the several boycotts that have accompanied the strike there have been
union representation, elections, bargaining and contracts with 10 wine grape growers. The aspirations and
organizational energies or the workers are now focused
on table grape growers.
The hard reality is that the workers need and want
organization and collective bargaining and their employers are resisting this change with all the considerable
power at their command. Concerning the charge leveled
by critics that the workers don't want Chavez and the
UFWOC: in all secret ballot elections to date, the
workers have in every case voted to be represented by
the UFWOC.
If we are to continue with the assumption that all men
are created equal and that all men should have equality
of opportunity, then the students of Fresno State College
have a moral responsibility to support the grape boycott.
So that through the boycott the farm worker can enhance
his opportunities and determine his own destiny.
A Ripple of Hope
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy
and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep
down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
•Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their
society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the
one essential vital quality for those who seek to change
a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to
enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner oft.he globe.
"For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation
to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before
those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is
not the road· history has marked out for us. Like it or
not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they
are also more open to the creative energy of men than
any other time in history .•.
"'The future does not belong to those who are content
with today, apathetic toward common problems and their
fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new
ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those
who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal
commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of
. American Society."
-Robert F. Kennedy, 1966
On June 5, 1967 an armed raid was made on the courthouse of a northern New Mexico town named Tierra
Amarilla. It was significant if only to demonstrate that
a people rebelled against the suppresive gringo system
which was imposed on them. Once before in 1846, the
people of the same region rebelled against the gringo
system as it was being implemented and succeeded in
kllling the fl rst gringo governor, Charles Brent, of that
area.
The leader of these June 5 rebeldes is Reies Lopez
Tijerina. He was born in Falls City, near San Antonio,
Texas, the son of a migrant laborer who took the family
throughout the Southwest picking cotton for $6-8 a day.
As a boy Reies came to know poverty well, living in
perpetual starvation, as he and his brother would trap
wood rats and eat them. He didn't wear shoes until he
was 13, and because of the need for all of the family to
work in the fields , was only able to get a minimal abount
of formal education.
With that type of background it was only natural that
Reies Lopez Tigerina emerge as leader of the militant
organization "La Alanzia Federal de Mercedes,• which
is striving to reclaim stolen land and eliminate suppressive economic practices aimed at "La Raza" in northern
ew Mexico.
He wlll be speaking today in the Amphitheatre from
1 to 3 p.m.
Chavez agrees with son's
military induction refusal
Statement of Cesar Chavez, April 23, 1969, concerning
his son Fernando's refusal of induction into the armed
forces.
I have asked Eloise, one of my girls, to read this
statement to you. I am sad that my health does not permit
me to be with my son today. The decision that Polly
(Fernando) has made and his reasons !or it, are his
own. But it is a decision that I very much agree with.
A year ago during my !ast for non-violence I said that
if to build our union would require the deliberate taking
of life, either the life of a grower or his child, or the
life of a farm worker or his child, then I would choose
not to see our union built.
Today Polly has chosen to respect life and not to kill
in war.
Such a decision is not easy to make and my heart
goes out to all parents and children who are faced with
a similar challenge o! non-violence.
Thank you !or being here with us today.
The young whites know that the colored people of the
world, Afro-Americans included, do not seek revenge for
their suffering. They seek the same things the white
rebel wants: an end to war and exploitation. Black and
white, the young rebels are free people, free in a way that
Americans have never been before in the historyof their
country. And they are outraged.
-~~------
There is in America today a generation of white
youth that is truly worthy of a black man's respect, and
this is a rare event in the foul annals of American his ..
tory. From the beginning of the contact between blacks
and whites there has been very little reason for a black
man to respect a white, with such exceptions as John
Brown and others lesser known. But respect commands
itself and it can neither be g·ven nor withheld when it is
due. If a man like Malcolm X could change an repudiate
racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change,
if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
It was certainly strange to find myself, while steeped
in the doctrine that all whites were devils by nature,
commanded by the heart to applaud and acknowledge respect for these young whites- -despite the fact that they
are descendants of the masters and I the descendant
of the slave. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the
heads of the children--but only if the children continue
in the evil deeds of the fathers.
-Excerpts from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice
MORENA
MONDAY, MAY 5, 1969
Chicano-Black Student Supplement
la Semana de la Raza Bronce y •••
El Cinco de Mayo
Every fifth of May Puebla, the original •city of the
Angels" in the Western Hemisphere awakens to a
glorious day, a day which has won her the proud name
of •Puebla la heroica." For this is the commemoration
of the Batalla del Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 1862, when
Puebla repulsed a French attack. Around eleven in the
morning the school children of Puebla, decked out in
their uniformes de gala (dress uniforms) decorated with
identifying ribbons, march for four hours in a five mile
long parade through the center of the city. When the
parade reaches the zocalo (central plaza), the units of
the various schools march past the state and municipal
officials and salute them. The rest of the day is spent
in a grand fiesta with many of the citizens gaily dressed
i n regional costumes, while bands play throughout the
city. There is dancing in the zocalo and other plazas.
At ten in the evening, the "combate de fiores• (the
fl ower battle, an ancient Aztec tradition) takes place.
People throng to the zocalo and adjoining streets throwing flowers at each other and presenting bouquets to
frien ds and strangers alike, Later, there are many
glitteri ng private parties to cap the festivities.
During the day, the Mexican Army stages a sham
battle on the Cerro de Guadalupe, atop which stands the
fort, now a historical museum, which was the core of
Puebla's defenses.
Throughout the Mexican Nation similar events take
place; and, in the ancient Aztec village of Penon (the
rock), in the suburbs of Mexico City, a classic play is
enacted with a cast of public officials, soldiers, and
musicians. Not only does the long drama follow closely
the hi stor ical events, but it contains long quotations from
the various diplomatic pronouncements and treaties which
preceeded and followed the battle.
One may well ask why all the festivities, and thereby
hangs a glorious and interesting tale of intrigue, adventure, derrtng-do, and heroic patriotism. From 1858
to 1861 , Mexico was wracked by a sanguinary and destructive civil war, the Guerra de la Reforma or Guerra
de Tres Anos. The conflict was a showdown between
the J acobin radicals who called tt1emselves puros and
the ultraconservative religious elements. They were all
catholics, but they disagreed violently on the relations
between Church and State, as well as on the nature of the
state itself. The Liberals (as the puros were officially
called), favored a federalized republic and rejected their
Indo-Spantsh-Catholic culture in favor of the Anglooriented-Protestant one of the United States. The Conservatives preferred a unitary republic on the French
model or a recreation of the Spanish monarchial state,
as well as the Europeonization of Mexican culture. To
bring about their ends, both sides courted foreign intervention: the Liberals that of the United States, the Conservatives that of France.
At the conclusion of the Guerra de la Reforma, which
the Liberals won with the aid of the United States, President Benito Juarez surveyed-the sorry state of his country, drained physically and emotionally and utterly
devastated by a fratricidal war. Small surprise, then,
that President Juarez declared a two-year moratorium
on the payment of Mexico's foreign debt. Although the
decis ion was dictated by absolute necessity, it was catastrophic , for it furnished a pretext for foreign intervention. The time was propitious, for the United States, itself embroiled in the bloody struggle between the Union
and Confederate forces, was in no position to enforce
the Monroe Doctrine which not only decried intervention
by non-American powers, but specifically banned the
further extension of the monarchical system inAmerica.
Napoleon III , Emperor of the French, had long dreamed
of a Catholic Latin American Empire which would counteract the Protestant Anglo-oriented United States. Also,
he was influenced by the dazzling vision of Mexican
riches dangled before his eyes by such Mexican exiles
as the ex- Liberal General Juan Almonte, the royalist
Jose Maria Gutierrez Estrada, and the ambitious Jose
Manuel Hidalgo who had distinguished himself against
the Amer ican invaders at the Battle of Churubusco in
1847. He was also influenced by hisbastardhalf-brother,
the Duc de Morr.y, who was a partner of J.B. Jecker,
a Swiss banker who held Mexican government bonds
worth fifteen million pesos .
Napoleon II prevailed on Britain and Spain to agree on
forcibly pressing their respective claims against Mexico
by means of a joint diplomatic mission backed by a powerful punitive expedition • . • a form of international
intimidation of small powers by large ones commonly
referred to in diplomatic and military cfrcles as "showing the flag." When indulged in between major powers,
it is known less euphemistically as "rattling the sword."
His plan was ratified officially in the London Convention
on October 31, 1861. By this agreement the contracting
parties pledged themselves to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic of Mexico. There were no provisions for changing Mexico's form of government.
On January 9, 1862, the tripartite envoys , Count Dubois
de Saligny, General Juan Prim, and Sir Charles Wyke
met at Vera Cruz to discuss their claims. It soon became
clear that Spain and Britain's claims were just, whereas
France demanded the honoring of the Jecker bonds (the
Due de Morny was to get thirty per cent) and an additional twelve million pesos in cash. France wanted no questions asked. She was unwilling or unable to furnish
valid proof.
Nevertheless, President Juarez and his representatives treated the tripartite expedition with courtesy and
consideration. Not only did he allow them to occupy Vera
Cruz unopposed but, by the Treaty of La Doledad, allowed the foreign troops to move from the oppressive
heat of the disease- ridden " Hot Land" to the healthier
climate of the Mexican Plateau, near Puebla. The allies
agreed to retreat to Vera Cruz, should hostilities break
out.
France's exorbitant demands and the rudely inflexible
attitude of Dubois de Saligny, who was a stooge of the
Due de Morny, soon caused a personality clash between
the French envoy and General Prim. Sir Charles Wyke
sided with the Spanish general. Tempers reached the
breaking point, when the French landed General Almonte
and other Mexican imperial agents to engage in subversive activities under the protection of the flag of
France. At the urging of their representatives, Spain and
Britain recalled their expeditionary forces.
Napoleon III then ordered the Commander in Chief of
his invading army, General Charles F. Latrille, Count
of Laurencez, to take Mexico City and overthrow the
Government of Mexico. On this occasion, as in almost
every instance in the French Intervention in Mexico,
France forgot her vaunted devotion to honor. General
Laurencez violated the treaty of Soledad and marched
directly towards Puebla, where an army under General
Ignacio Zaragoza blocked the way to the capital.
Juarez's choice of General Zaragoza to repel the
French invasion was both surprising and intuitive. He
might have selected General Jose Lopez Uraga, tor example, a trained soldier of great technical knowledge
and proven skill since 1947. He knew European military
strategy and had distinguished himself in action during
the War of Reform. General Zaragoza, on th e other hand,
was a brilliant but untutored guerilla tactician from Coahuila. However, no one knew the militar y ability and
the limitations of the Mexican soldier better, or had
greater confidence in his her oic endurance and courage,
It 1s interesting that Za r agoza in addressing his unpaid,
underfed, poor ly clothed and armed troops never spoke
of winning or dying heroically, as Antoni o Lopez de
Santa Ana often had. Zaragoza spoke confidentl y only of
total triumph.
General Laurencez, on the contrary, had formed a poor
concept of the Mexican soldier. When the bedraggled men
of the Cons ervative guerilla leader, General Lorenzo
Mar quez, str aggled into his camp, the French general
noted they were barefooted, half-naked , and ill-armed.
Never having s een them in action, he concluded that
Mexico could easily be conquered With six thousand
Volume 1, Number 1
French regulars. so contemptuous was he of Mexican
mllltary ability, so sure that the Conservative and
deeply religious citizens of Puebla would betray the army
of the radical government of Juarez, that he decided on
a frontal attack of the two hills where General Zaragoza
had deployed his men, Cerro de Guadalupe and Cerro de
Loreto. Also, Lurencez could not know that the general
ln hls twenties who led the flanking attack for Zaragoza.
was the mllltary genius who would eventually destroy
the armies of Emperor Maximilian. His name was General Porfirio Diaz and this was his first major command. Before the battle, General Laurencez wrote his
government: "We have over the Mexicans such a superiority of race, organt zation, discipline, morality, and
high ideals that even now, at the head of our valiant six
thousand soldiers, I am the master of Mexico.• Famous
last words!
A popular American historian has briefly and fairly
acurately described the action that ensued:
"General Laurencez, commanding 6000 well-trained
and handsomely uniformed dragoons and foot soldiers,
was given orders to occupy Mexico City. On the path of
his march to the capital was Puebla, defended by 4000
Mexicans armed with l antiquated guns--many of which
had seen service at the battle of Waterloo fifty years
before, and had been bought at a bargain by Mexico's
ambassador to London back in 1825. Commander of
Puebla's forces was Ignacio Zaragoza, an amateur
in tactical warfare, as were most of his officers, but a
seasoned warrior in guerrilla fighting. Laurencez, to
show his contempt for that ragtag army, called for a
charge up the middle of the Mexican defenses at zaragoza 's most strongly fortified position. The charge
carried
his cavalry through soggy ditches, over a
crumbling adobe wall, and up the steep slopes of the
Cerro de Guadalupe. But their drive petered out before
reaching its objective, and over one thousand Frenchmen
were left sprawled on the field, dead or dying. Laurencez
paid for his contempt. The Mexican army held , and then
Zaragoza led a counter-attack that drove Laurencez
back to Orizaba and, after a short reprieve, attacked
him again and drove the remnants of his army to the
This was the first time French troops had
coast.
met defeat in nearly half a century, and it was handed
them not by a major power of Europe but by the penniless, war-torn republic of Mexico. This battle for
Puebla, fought on May 5, is yearly commemorated in
Mexico by a national holiday, and there is hardly a
Mexican village, town , or city that does not call its
main s treet Cinco de Mayo."
But the Cinco de Mayo did more than give Mexicans
their most glorious national holiday. A Mexican history text comments on its significance as follows:
"The victory of the Mexican Army in the Battle of
Cinco de Mayo had far-reaching consequences, national
as well as international.
With regard to the national consequences, the belief
that the French were invincible in war was destroyed,
a belief the, Conservative traitors themselves had used
to demoralize the defenders of the nation. Furthermore
the victory made the entire nation thrill with enthusiasm
and patriotism, thus encouraging the Mexican people to
continue their struggle against the invader without
flagging ••By this victory, the Mexican Army also gained
an additional year in which to reinforce and reorganize
itself, forming new mtlitary cadres, in which almost
all the political elements of the nation were represented.
As regards the international consequences, the defeat
of the French had r esounding effects in Europe, tarnishing
the brtlliance of Napoleon Ill's prestige, enhancing the
honorable posture of the Spanish and British envoys,
destroying the slander spread there by the Conserva tives that the Juarez government had no backingl..
fur ther mor e, this Mexican victory admi rably prevented
an effective allia nce between Napoleon and the Confederate
states in the Civil war of the United States, which could
possibly have changed the ending of that struggle. A
historian says that on the Cinco de Mayo Zaragoza
defended at Puebla the integr ity ot the Mexican Fatherland and the North American Federation ." (C. Gonzalez
Blackaller and L. Guevara Ramirez, Sintesis de historla de Mexico, p. 366).
Mexican Americans, then, have a double incentive to
cry proudly, "Viva el Cinco de Mayo! " And other Americans, ragardless of national origins, have reason to
join them.
J. C. Canales
•
CHM Department of History
Fresno State College
La
r
r
le
st
iv
2
La Pluma Morena
Spiritual Plan of Aztlan
(The Brown Pen)
Excerpts ...
I am Joaquin
By Rodolfo Gonzalez
Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, President of the Cru·
sade for Justice, a militant group based in Denver,
is currently in Albuquerque, M.N., at the request of
Reies Lopez Tijerina to assist the work of the Ali·
anza Federal de Mercedes. Gorky is also co-ordinator
for Vietnam Summer.
Gorky speaks freely about la raza, about "a national movement of Mexican and Spanish in the Southwest-a militant movement that is not afraid to be
linked with the spirit of Zapata, nor shy from the
need to change the system, to have a social revolution . . . "
A movement from Rio Grande City, Texas, to Den•
ver, from Delano to Tierra Amari lla.
I am Joaquin.
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of an
Anglo society,
Confused by the rules,
Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations,
And destroyed by modern society.
My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival.
And now!
I must choose
Between
the paradox of
Victory or the spirlt,
despite physlcal hunger
Or
to exist in the grasp
of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul
and a full stomach.
I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The vanquished
I have killed
and been killed.
I am despots Diaz
and Huerta
and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am
the black shawled
faithful women
who die with me
or live
I stand here looking hack,
and now I see
the present
and still
I am 'he campesino
r am the !at polit ical coyote
I'
of the same name,
Joaquin
In a country that has wiped out
all my history,
stifled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a
different weight of indignity upon
my
age
old
hurdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load ...
The Indian has endured and still
emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
and the Gauchupin will just ignore.
I look at myself
and see part of me
who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot
to disappear in shame.
I sometimes
sell my brother out
and reclaim him
for my own when society gives me
token leadership,
in society s own name.
I bleed in some smelly cell
from club.
or gun.
or tyranny.
I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger
cut my face and eyes,
as I right my way from stinking Barrios
to the glamour of the Ring
and lights of fame
or mutilated sorrow.
My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles
on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea
and now
Viet Nam.
Here I stand
before the Court of Justice
Guilty
for all the glory of my Raza
to be sentenced to despalr.
Here I stand
Poor in money
Arrogant in pride
Bold with Machismo
Rich in courage
Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud.
My hands calloused from the hoe.
I have made the Anglo rich
yet
Equality is but a word,
the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise.
My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped,
I lengthen
the line at the welfare door
and fill the jails with crime.
These then
are the rewards
this society has
For sons of Chiefs
and Kings
and bloody Revolutionists.
Who
gave a foreign people
all their skllls and ingenuity
to pave the way with Brains and Blood
for
those hordes of Gold starved
Strangers
Who
changed our language
and plagarized our deeds
as feats of valor
of their own,
They frowned upon our way of life
and took what they could use.
Our art
Our literature
Our music, they ignored
so they left the real things of value
and grabbed at their own destruction
by their Greed and Avarice.
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of
nature and brotherhood
Which ts Joaquin.
I must fight
And win this struggle
for my sons. and they
must know from me
Who I am.
I have endured in the rugged mountains
of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery
of the fields.
I have existed
in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry,
in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection,
in the muck of exploitation
in the fierce heat of racial hatred.
And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution.
In the spirit of a people that has recognized not only
its proud historical heritage, but also the brutal grtngc
invasion of our lands, we the Chicano inhabitant and
civilizers of the North American land of Aztlan from
where our forefathers came, only to return to their
roots to conserve the determination of our people of the
sun, we give out a cry bringing forth the spirit of our
blood - the source of our power, our responsibility,
and our inevitable destiny, We are free and know that
those goals for which we justly fight; our home, our
lands, with the sweat of our brow and with our hearts.
A ztlan pertains to those who planteth the seed of life,
caretakers of the sources of life, reap the harvests; this
is not a foreign European.
The brotherhood unites us, our mutual love makes us
a rising power against the gringo oppressor that exploits our people and destroys our dignity and culture.
With heart in hand and with our hands in the soil, we
declare the spirit independent of our mestizo nation. we
are "La Raza" with the Mexican culture. Within the
whole world, before North America, amongst the continent of the bronze people, let us stand as one nation
as a union of tree people; we are the salvation of the
world.
Chicano editorial
This is the first issue of a Chicano-Black coalition
paper. Its content and posture will and should renect
our combined points of view, for it has been gained
through our efforts, yet we have also gained it for all
those students who have need of it. And those in our
community whom have been left out of the scheme of things
will be urged to contribute as well, for they have much
to say. In this respect our paper may be unique to
Fresno. However, space will be limited in each issue
and editions will be few at first. These circumstances
have been agreed upon for the remainder of this semester, but for next Fall a far better arrangement, which
has already passed one stage of approval, is hopefully
anticipated. This kind of paper could be one positive step
towards avoiding the possibility of a San Francisco
State debacle here, something I ·am sure none of us want
for many reasons. But it was a reality there and no matter where, an understandable, yet license, violently manifested, volcano of frustration can exist. This is no threat.
This paper would not have been created had the
Collegian shown more than just a mere token amount
of sensitivity, commitment. and fairness to all of its
captive readers. The Collegian is not alone at fault
though. The students have also shown their share of
complacency, apathy, and little sense of urgency and are
as blameworthy. Now change has been demanded and a
new paper, for better or worse, exists. Though many
have rightly considered themselves excluded, the initiative and obligation to act fell heaviest upon the Chicano
and Black students for clearly they have been the ones
most excluded,
When we individually or collectively speak in our paper
we will most likely speak as our Chicano and Black
cultures have taught us arid made us feel, but it is also
my belief that at the same time, but yet far more importantly, we should and must speak as members of a
far greater group --- the human race. This should be
a rule that stands for all,no matter what color or culture.
I believe it was with this thought in mind that Cesar
Chavez said that the purpose of our struggle is to prevent "the victim from being the victim, and the executioner from being the executioner."
As this paper rests in your hands right now, so do the
solutions to many of the problems that face your
fellowman, but before solutions can be round we must
be committed to try, with empathy and compassion, to
understand one another and not close our eyes to facts
though they be contrary to all we may have heard or learned. We must become committed to the point where we
will act when action is necessary, and we should always
promote that media which strives to make facts and true
feelings public This paper and this week of La Raza
are two of that media.
To sum up the intentions of this paper I believe that
the Chicano and Black students will faithfully strive
within good reason to use this paper to unite and not
incite, to seek cooperation and not revenge, and to end
racism and not enhance it, for together is the only real
way we can seek and build a newer world.
The Chicano students would like to than.le their Black
brothers and sisters for allowing them to have the first
issue of this paper because of the week of La Raza
Bronce. This shows respect for our people, history,
and traditions. and we are very grateful.
VIVA LA CAUSA!
Editor-John F. Ramirez ·
Did you know that there are more than two million
Chicanos in California, more than 12 percent of the total
population of the state; that of the 120 state legislators
in Sacramento, only one is Chicano; that there is one
Chicano county supervisor in California; that only one
school board member in the entire state is a Chicano;
and that city councils in the nine counties of the San
Joaquin Valley include only three Chicanos?
i Organizense, Raza!
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
3
Actividades de la semana
Monday, May 5
Excerpts .
..
The Tale of La Raza
By Luis Valdez
The revolt in Delano is more than a labor struggle.
Mexican grape pickers did not march 300 miles to
Sacramento, carrying the standard of La Virgen de
Guadalupe, merely to dramatize economic grievances.
Beyond unionization, beyond politics, there is the desire
of a New World race to reconcile the conflicts of its
500-year-old history. La Raza is trying to find its place
in the sun it once worshipped as aSupreme Being.
La Raza, the race, is the Mexican people. sentimental
and cynical, fierce and docile, faithful and treacherous,
individualistic and herd-following, in love with life and
obsessed with death, the personality of the raza encompasses all the complexity of our history. The conquest of Mexico was no conquest at all. It shattered our
ancient Indian universe, but more of it was left above
ground than beans and tortillas. Below the foundations
of our Spanish culture, we still sense the ruins of an
entirely different civilization.
The pilgrimage to Sacramento was no mere publicity
trick. The raza has a tradition of migrations, starting
from the legend of the founding of Mexico. Nezahualcoyotl, a great Indian leader, advised his primitive
Chichimecas, forerunners of the Aztecs, to begin a
march to the south. In that march, he prophesied, the
children would age and the old would die, but their grandchildren would come to a great lake. In that lake they
would find an eagle devouring a serpent, and on that spot,
they would begin to build a great nation. The nation was
Aztec Mexico, and the eagle and the serpent are the
symbols of the patria. They are emblazoned on the
Mexican flag, which the marchers took to Sacramento
with pride.
Then there is the other type of migration. When the
migrant farm laborer followed the crops, he was only
reacting to the way he saw the American raza: no unity,
no representation, no roots. The pilgrimage was a truly
religious act, a rejection of our past in this country and
a symbol of our unity and new direction. The unity of
thousands of raza on the Capitol steps was reason
enough for our march. Under the name of HUELGA we
have created a Mexican-American patria, and Cesar
Chavez is our first Presidente.
Most of us know we are not European simply by looking
in a mirror - the shape of the eyes, the curve of the
nose, the color of skin, the texture of hair; these things
belong to another time, another people. Together with a
million little stubborn mannerisms, beliefs, myths, superstitions, words, thoughts - things not so easily detected - they fill our Spanish life with Indian contradictions. It is not enough to say we suffer an identity
crisis, because that crisis has been our way of life !or
the last five centuries.
That we Mexicans speak of ourselves as a •race" is
the biggest contradiction of them all. The conquistadores
mated with their Indian women creating a nation of bewildered half-breeds in countless shapes, colors and
sizes. Unlike our fathers and mothers, unlike each other,
we mestizos solved the problem with poetic license and
called ourselves la raza. A Mexican's first loyalty when one of us is threatened by strangers from the outside - is to that race. Either we recognize our total
unity on the- basis of raza, or the ghosts of 100,000
feuding Indian · tribes, bloods and mores will come back
to haunt us.
Huelga means strike. With the poetic instinct of the
raza, the Delano grape strikers have made it mean a
dozen other things. It is a declaration, a challenge, a
greeting, a feeling, a movement. We cried Huelga! to
the scabs, Huelga! to the labor contractors, to the
growers. With the Schenley and DtGiorgio boycotts, it was
Huelga! to the whole country. It ls the most significant
word in our entire Mexican American history.If the raza
of Mexico believes in La Patria, we believe in La Huelga.
La Virgen de Guadalupe was the first hint to farmworkers that the pilgrimage implied social revolution.
During the Mexican Revolution, the peasant armies of
Emiliano zapata carried her standard, not only because
they sought her divine protection, but because she symbolized the Mexico of the poor and humble. Beautifully
dark and Indian in feature, she was the New World version of the Mother of Christ. Even though some of her
worshippers in Mexico still identify her with Tonatzin,
an Aztec goddess, she is a Catholic saint of Indian creation - a Mexican. The people's response was immediate
and reverent. The rallies were like religious revivals.
At each new town, they were waiting to greet us and of-
fer us their best - mariachis, embraces, words of encouragement for the strike, prayers, rosaries, sweet
cakes, fruit and iced tea. Hundreds walked, ran or drove
up to the march and donated what little money they could
afford. The countless gestures of sympathy and solidarity was like nothing the raza had ever seen. They joined
the march by the thousands, falling in line behind her
standard. To the Catholic hypocrites against the pilgrimage and strike the Virgen said Huelga!
Any Mexican deeply loves his mestizo patria, even
those who, like myself, were born in the United States.
At best, our cultural schizophrenia has led us to action
through the all-encompassing poetry of religion, which
is a fancy way of saying blind faith. La Virgen de Guadalupe, the supreme poetic expression of our Mexican desire to be one people, has inspired Mexicans more than
once to social revolution. At worst, our two-sidedness
has led us to inaction. The last divine Aztec emperor
Cuauhtemoc was murdered in the jungles of Guatemala,
and his descendants were put to work in the fields. We
are still there, in dry, plain American Delano.
It was the triple magnetism of raza, patria, and the
Virgen de Guadalupe which organized the MexicanAmerican farm worker in Delano - that and Cesar
Chavez.
Here was Cesar, burning with a patient fire, poor like
us, dark like us, talking quietly, moving people to talk
about their problems, attacking the little problems first,
and suggesting, always suggesting - never more than
that - solutions that seemed attainable.
Although he sometimes reminds one of Benito Juarez,
Cesar is our first real Mexican-American leader. Used
to hybrid forms, the raza includes all Mexicans, even
hyphenated Mexican-Americans; but divergent histories
are slowly making the raza in the United States different
from the raza in MeXico. We who were born here missed
out on the chief legacy of the Revolution: the chance to
forge a nation true to all the forces that have molded us,
to be one people. Now we must seek our own destiny,
and Delano is only the beginning of our active search.
For the last hundred years our revolutionary progress
has not only been frustrated, it has been totally suppressed. This is a society largely hostile to our cultural
values. There is no poetry about the United States. No
depth; no faith; no allowance for human contrariness
No soul, no mariachi, no chili sauce, no pulque, no
mysticism, no chingaderas.
The struggle for better wages and better working conditions in Delano is but the first realistic articulation of
our need for unity. To emerge from the mire of our past
in the United States, to leave behind the devoid, deadening influence of poverty, we must have bargalningpower.
We must have unions. To the farm workers who joined
the pilgrimage, this cultural pride is revolutionary.
There were old symbols - Zapata lapel buttons - and
new symbols standing for new social protest and revolt;
the red thunderbird flags of the NFWA, picket signs,
arm bands.
Every political rally included a reading of El Plan de
Delano, a "plan of liberation• tor all farmworkers in
the language of the picket line;• .•. This is the beginning
of a social movement in fact and not in pronouncements
••• We shall unite .•• We shall strike •.• Our PILGRIMAGE is the MATCH that will light our cause for
all farmworkers to see what is happening here, so that
they may do as we have done .•. VIVA LA CAUSA!
VIVA LA HUELGA!"
The NFW A IS A RADICAL union because it started, and
continues to grow, as a community organization. Arter
years of isolation in the barrios of Great Valley slum
towns like Delano, after years of living in labor camps
and ranches at the mercy and caprice of growers and
contractors, the Mexican-American farmworker is developing his own ideas about living in the United States.
He wants to be equal with all the working men of the
nation, and he does not mean by the standard middleclass route. We are repelled by the human disintegration of peoples and cultures as they fall apart in this
Great Gringo Melting Pot, and determined that this will
not happen to us. But there will always be raza in this
country. There are millions more where we came from,
across the thousand miles of common border between
Mexico and the United States. For millions of farmworkers, from the Mexicans and Phllippinos of the West
to the Afro-Americans of the South, the United States
has come to a social, political and cultural impasse.
Listen to these people, and you will hear the first
murmurings of revolution.
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Declaracion de La Semana de La Raza de Bronce
(Declaration and Dedication of La Raza Week)
oradores (Speakers)
1. Ellezer Lozada Risco - Director de Los Estudios
de la Raza en Fresno State College (La Raza
Chairman)
2. Bruce Bronzan - Presidente del Cuerpo Estudiantil
de Fresno State College. (Student Body President)
3. Chicano student from Fresno State
1:00 - 3:00 p.rn.
Amphitheatre
Reis Lopez Tijerina - Presidente y Fundador de la
Alianza de los Pueblos Libres. (Founder and President
of la Alianza de los Pueblos Libres).
8:00 - 2:00 a.m.
Baile en su lugar favorito (Dance with townspeople)
Tuesday1 May 6
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre FSC
Corky Gonzalez Fundador y Presidente de la Cruzada
por la Justtcia. (Founder and president of the C rusade for Justice)
2:00 - 4:00
Amphitheatre
Balle con una orchestra (Dance)
7:00 - 9:00 p.rn.
Teatro Azteca (Fresno)
Los Mixtlecos - grupo de jovenes interpetando bailes
majicanos.
(A dance group interpreting Mexican
dances)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
9:00 - 12:00
Teatro Azteca
Una pelicula de la Revolucion de l910(Movie - Mexican
Revolution)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
Wednesday, May 7
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Amphitheatre-speaker
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Manuel Gomez - Representante de la Confederacion
de Estudiantes Chicanos. (Representative of the Confederation of Chicano Students)
Todo sera al compas de la musica del Teatro Campesino. (Music by Teatro Campesino)
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Women's Gymnasium
Los Paisanos- - grupo de estudiantes de la secundaria de Selma
Baile al compas de mariachis.
(Dance and mariachi group from Selma High)
9:00 - 10:30 p.m.
Los Aficionados del arte - grupo teatral - presentaran una comedia.
Entrada gratis (Free admjssion)
Thursday, May 8
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
El Teatro Rebelde - grupo musical de Visalia (A
musical group from Visalia)
11:00-3:00 p.m. and 3:00-5:00 p.m.
Science 162
Armando Jimenes Farias - autor del libro Picardia
Mejicana. Theme •prehispanic games and sports•
Entrad gratis (Free admission)
Friday, May 9
12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Amphitheatre
Cesar Chavez - Fundador de la Union de Trabajadores Campesinos. (Cesar Chavez)
2:00 - 3:00 p,m.
Teatro Urbano - un grupo de San Jose State College
(Musical group from San Jose State College)
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 6:30
O'Neil Park
Dia de campo
Entrada gratis (Free admission)
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Little Theatre
Terna, "La Picardia Mejicana"
Theme, "The Mexican Picaresque•
7:30-8:30 p.m.
Los Desaraigados played by FSC students.
Traiga a su mamacita. Se les dara una nor en festejo
del dia de las mad res ( each mother will recel ve a
flower for Mother's Day).
9:00-10:30 p.m.
Cuadro Espanol
(
4
La Pluma Morena (The Brown Pen)
I
Why the Grape Boycott?
By Ron Ortega
For seven years now Cesar Chavez has been the leader
and guiding spirit of La Causa, a movement born out of
the realization that conditions must change - Ya Basta!
That the Mexican must be recognized as a man, and not
a humble, inferior servant, is its grito. Senor Chavez is
our man, and as Zapata before him, he leads an army of
the people. They wear no _bandoleers I or ride mustangs.
They are simply poor, non-violent farm-working people
who are struggling for self-determination. To them the
living death is no longer acceptable, and it is inexcusable.
Since La Huelga in Delano in 1965, they have marched
with justice as their banner against the injustices which
seem legion. Why do these injustices exist and what may
be their remedy? The 1959 U.S. Census of Agriculture
showed that 6 per cent of California's farms own 75 per
cent of the land and 7 per cent of California farms em ploy 75 per cent of the labor, who the worker is fighting
-the large corporate farmer. These powerful landowners
have always resisted worker unionization.
The question is often asked why is organizational
strength necessary? Are conditions really that bad?
Fewer than 20 per cent of the California families covered in the Governor's Advisory Committee Report on
Housing Problems lived in dwellings which could be
considered adequate by present standards of health,
safety, and comfort. Often toilet facilities were pit
privies. Twenty-five per cent of the homes lacked even
so basic a necessity as a kitchen sink with running water,
and 30 per cent had no bathing facilities. This report
offers little evidence of improvement in the effective
economic and social position of the agricultural worker
in California. He remains the most poorly paid, poorly
fed, and poorly housed of California's laborers. Those
who doubt that these poverty conditions exist in reality
need only to spend some time in the barrios to see what
worker's problem. They are almost completely powerless on the job and in the lifeof the community. Workers
in agriculture have been denied the improved wages and
working conditions that are commonplace in industry.
The vast majority of farmworkers in California do not
get any overtime pay; they often don't know their rate of
pay whlle they are working; they do not have any health
or pension plans; safety provisions are minimal. There
are no established channels for grievances. The many
who will dispute these realities can point to examples of
better wages and working conditions, but their examples
do not represent the experiences of the vast majority of
unorganized farm workers in California and the United
States. The farm worker rightly feels that he is only
fighting for what other working groups already have and
take for granted - the right to organize and bargain
collectively.
Tijerina lo Speak Today
the •actual• conditions are.
The charge is often leveled that the farm worker lives
in these poverty conditions because he is lazy or has no
motivation. This argument has no meaning or 1alidity to
anyone who knows anything about field work. To spend
long hot hours stooped over in the sun doesn't seem to
qualify one as lazy, also farm workers have the prime
motivation to feed their families. Not many farm workers
toil in the fields so they can •put in a swim ming pool
next summer." It follows that if the worker is dependent
on this work for his very survival that he is not trying to
destroy the farmer. As Cesar Chavez has said, "We do
not want to damage the grape industry by this boycott that would be taking jobs away from ourselves - but we
feel that we must tell the consumer that those who sell
scab grapes are supporting poverty, supporting injustice." Aunual income is only one aspect of the farm-
l
The workers cannot wait for their employers to make
the changes; they have been waiting for 100 years. Congress has also failed to pass the needed legislation to
protect the workers' right to bargain with their employers. The economic, consumer boycott seemed to be their
last non-violent recourse.
As a result of the Delano strike and the several boycotts that have accompanied the strike there have been
union representation, elections, bargaining and contracts with 10 wine grape growers. The aspirations and
organizational energies or the workers are now focused
on table grape growers.
The hard reality is that the workers need and want
organization and collective bargaining and their employers are resisting this change with all the considerable
power at their command. Concerning the charge leveled
by critics that the workers don't want Chavez and the
UFWOC: in all secret ballot elections to date, the
workers have in every case voted to be represented by
the UFWOC.
If we are to continue with the assumption that all men
are created equal and that all men should have equality
of opportunity, then the students of Fresno State College
have a moral responsibility to support the grape boycott.
So that through the boycott the farm worker can enhance
his opportunities and determine his own destiny.
A Ripple of Hope
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to
improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy
and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep
down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
•Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their
society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than
bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the
one essential vital quality for those who seek to change
a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to
enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner oft.he globe.
"For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation
to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before
those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is
not the road· history has marked out for us. Like it or
not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they
are also more open to the creative energy of men than
any other time in history .•.
"'The future does not belong to those who are content
with today, apathetic toward common problems and their
fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new
ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those
who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal
commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of
. American Society."
-Robert F. Kennedy, 1966
On June 5, 1967 an armed raid was made on the courthouse of a northern New Mexico town named Tierra
Amarilla. It was significant if only to demonstrate that
a people rebelled against the suppresive gringo system
which was imposed on them. Once before in 1846, the
people of the same region rebelled against the gringo
system as it was being implemented and succeeded in
kllling the fl rst gringo governor, Charles Brent, of that
area.
The leader of these June 5 rebeldes is Reies Lopez
Tijerina. He was born in Falls City, near San Antonio,
Texas, the son of a migrant laborer who took the family
throughout the Southwest picking cotton for $6-8 a day.
As a boy Reies came to know poverty well, living in
perpetual starvation, as he and his brother would trap
wood rats and eat them. He didn't wear shoes until he
was 13, and because of the need for all of the family to
work in the fields , was only able to get a minimal abount
of formal education.
With that type of background it was only natural that
Reies Lopez Tigerina emerge as leader of the militant
organization "La Alanzia Federal de Mercedes,• which
is striving to reclaim stolen land and eliminate suppressive economic practices aimed at "La Raza" in northern
ew Mexico.
He wlll be speaking today in the Amphitheatre from
1 to 3 p.m.
Chavez agrees with son's
military induction refusal
Statement of Cesar Chavez, April 23, 1969, concerning
his son Fernando's refusal of induction into the armed
forces.
I have asked Eloise, one of my girls, to read this
statement to you. I am sad that my health does not permit
me to be with my son today. The decision that Polly
(Fernando) has made and his reasons !or it, are his
own. But it is a decision that I very much agree with.
A year ago during my !ast for non-violence I said that
if to build our union would require the deliberate taking
of life, either the life of a grower or his child, or the
life of a farm worker or his child, then I would choose
not to see our union built.
Today Polly has chosen to respect life and not to kill
in war.
Such a decision is not easy to make and my heart
goes out to all parents and children who are faced with
a similar challenge o! non-violence.
Thank you !or being here with us today.
The young whites know that the colored people of the
world, Afro-Americans included, do not seek revenge for
their suffering. They seek the same things the white
rebel wants: an end to war and exploitation. Black and
white, the young rebels are free people, free in a way that
Americans have never been before in the historyof their
country. And they are outraged.
-~~------
There is in America today a generation of white
youth that is truly worthy of a black man's respect, and
this is a rare event in the foul annals of American his ..
tory. From the beginning of the contact between blacks
and whites there has been very little reason for a black
man to respect a white, with such exceptions as John
Brown and others lesser known. But respect commands
itself and it can neither be g·ven nor withheld when it is
due. If a man like Malcolm X could change an repudiate
racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change,
if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.
It was certainly strange to find myself, while steeped
in the doctrine that all whites were devils by nature,
commanded by the heart to applaud and acknowledge respect for these young whites- -despite the fact that they
are descendants of the masters and I the descendant
of the slave. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the
heads of the children--but only if the children continue
in the evil deeds of the fathers.
-Excerpts from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice