San Jose's Proud Legacy of Struggle for Chicano Rights


San Jose's Proud Legacy of Struggle for Chicano Rights

By Gil Villagrán, MSW El Observador, San José, October 2, 2009

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Chicano Movement when Mexicans in the United States realized that individual pleas for justice from the nation's social institutions were for the most part disregarded, denied, or actually resulted in greater repression by blaming victims for the abuse they endured. Examples include: the response to parent complaints of dilapidated schools---"due to Mexican student vandalism, it would be a waste of tax dollars to fix school buildings (including leaky roofs)". Complaints of police brutality-"the hospitalized suspect got what he deserved for resisting arrest." Banks are justified to deny home loans to buyers who do not belong in white neighborhoods because "Mexicans like to crowd into their own community." Skilled workers have a constitutional right to organize a union, "except for farm workers who are not skilled, and besides, many are 'illegal aliens' without any rights at all (except the right to be exploited)."

Cesar Chavez, living in San José as a young man, began to organize farm workers after prior groundwork by Ernesto Galarza, also of San José. But with support from savvy advisors, a righteous California governor (not Reagan), college students, and most critically--dedicated farm workers themselves, the effort gained national momentum with a boycott of grapes with the slogan, "Si Se Puede." 


The success of the United Farm Workers, electrified other Mexicans in their own struggles, among them college students and other young adults, at risk of being drafted for the Vietnam War, organized to fight collectively. Thus the Chicano Movement was initiated with shouts of "BASTA! No mas, we've had enough injustice as nuestros hermanos are dying in an undeclared war!"

But injustice against Mexicans in the U.S. began immediately at the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, when treaty agreements to respect land ownership; the Spanish language and the Catholic religion were for the most part disregarded. Bureaucratic sleight-of-hand actions in English-speaking courts often denied the legality of Spanish written land grants to the very people whose ancestors settled the Southwest, building the pueblos and missions, naming the mountains and rivers 300 years earlier. Court decisions by corrupt judges were the preferred form of real estate acquisitions by slave owning immigrants to Texas. While theft and murder of Mexicanos became a blood sport of ruffians seeking easy riches-claiming to be ridding the newly acquired territory of "greaser vermin." These murderers were eventually deputized by Texas governors as Texas Rangers--grotesquely rewarding them for their brutality against Mexicans.

Americans of Mexican decent as well as recent immigrant Mexicans all had a historical memory of past injustices for which nothing could be done, however it was present daily injustices reaching levels that could no longer to be tolerated as an awareness of the potency of collective action evidenced by the Civil Rights Movement reached a critical mass among our gente. This awareness began with conversations between neighbors, in factories and fields, riding the bus to work, at church, and hearing from children about being hit and called derogatory names by teachers.

In San Jose, Mexican parents and teachers at Roosevelt Jr. High School, after surreptitiously collecting dozens of wooden paddles used to hit students, staged a walkout in protest of such physical and emotional abuse in 1967. It was the nation's first Mexican-American student walkout, leading to changes at that and other schools. 
Many victories for social justice were won by the collective actions of the Chicano Movement.

However, 40 years later, what is the situation? Poverty among our people is endemic, not because our people do not work, but rather, because we earn our poverty with low wages, and severe poverty breeds many social dysfunctions. Just one day (Sept. 29) of headlines in the SJ Mercury News displays our present plight: "Drop in Latino (test) scores, State's low-wage workers squeezed, California's healthcare failure, Stabbings leave 1 dead, 6 hurt."
It is critical that a renewed Chicano Movement be initiated by a new generation of youth along with the veteranos who never gave up the struggle for social justice--together shouting, "Si se Puede!"