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Show EM VECEREMOS - 3 FALL 1993 Seeds Of A New Movimiento 0 By the time they reached the UCLA campus, 1000 people were on hand Elizabeth Martinez Reprinted by permission from Z Magazine September 1993 pring 1993 swept across California, vibrant with stu- dent activism by La Raza from UC Davis in the north to Pomona College in the south. One day last April more than a thousand predominantly Latino students walked -out of junior high and high schools in Oakland complain- ing of discrimination and demanding a multicultural curriculum. In June a dramatic Chicano hunger strike supported by multinational mobilizations led to victory at: UC Los Angeles. For anyone who remembers the strength of Chicano student activism 25 years ago, including the big high school blow-outs of E : 1968, the question can arise: Is a new studies programs, joined the Latinos. So did some Palestinians and Native-Americans. “It was the first time the city has seen such a broad, multi-racial effort,” Professor Jorge Mancillas told me. : Young, after two decades of opposition to a Chicano Studies Department, met for the first time with all nine of them women, half men and sparked by Marcos Aguilar—decided to go on a hunger strike demanding a agreement with Young. The “Cesar Chavez Center for hunger strikers. On the following Monday the weakened strikers, some Several students of working-class Mexican origin—half... now in wheel-chairs after 14 days without food, signed an “¿Chicana and Chicano Studies Department.” The group eventually numbered nine, with six UCLA students, one high-school student, Mancillas from the UC Medical School, and a man who had participated in the 1968 _student uprising in Mexico City. Housed in tents on a prominent campus quad, they took water only. Support spread. It included several labor groups, among Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies” (Si! Si! Si! the acronym begins] would be estab- lished, with a department's attributes if not name. Seven full-time faculty would be hired over the next three years, there would be no cuts in ethnic and gender studies through 1995, and the charges against all but seven of the students arrested at the Faculty Center were dropped. Conflict began immediately about the Implementation them Justice for Janitors[affiliated with SEIU Local 600] - Committee that will hire the new faculty—that is, about governance. The hunger strikers had demanded student and community representation equal to that of faculty on demands for several this committee—one third for each sector. Young rejected this and the faculty was split on the extent of studentyears. 200 members movement being left their own strike community governance. Monday night meeting of stuborn and if so, how dents, faculty, and community to press their demands picket line and will it be differmarched over to the - continued through July, with up to 100 participants at ent—or the same? each. By late summer, academic careerism and old campus rally that If a new movegrudges seemed to render progress on the issue of goverfest day. ment is to emerge, nance impossible; some faculty have a lot at stake, perThroughout the it needs an agenda sonally. Division and lack of maturity have also plagued strike they provided that will be new in our side. “The administration will use all this to block bodies, material certain important resources such as the Center,” one sympathetic faculty member observed. Ways. Such añ. Avoiding the Devils of Division vans, and bargaining agenda must move TÍ. UCLA victory may be subverted, but it has much experience at negobeyond narrow culto show us. The hunger strike succeeded in large part tiations. Support tural nationalism because it won broad support. Also it did not let certain also came. from and see itself as devils of division prevail, including that most common community organiRaza or Latino, not divisive force: narrow nationalism. During the 1960s zations, merchants just Chicano. It like activist-restau-' some of us fought what we called narrow or reactionary - must also recogHunger strikers Ixtlapapayotl, Chitlichicoshayolt, y Chilixtlixatl. nationalism with revolutionary or progressive nationalrant owner Vivian nize the need to ism. The debate refuses to die, for it has roots in reality: Bronzo, and state legislators including Art Torres and Tom build serious, non-sectarian coalitions with other progres“the need of a colonized people to liberatc their minds and sive students of color and whites. It needs to be interna- Hayden. Chicano doctors monitored the fast on a volunbodies with a redefined, positive identity. teer basis. Even the Los Angeles Times editorialized that tionalist-which includes grappling with class contradicToday there is still a narrow nationalism that departmental status made sense in a city like LA. | “tions-while remembering the powerful need for a sense of negates any Latino except Chicanos. Stories abound of “They Really Were Willing to Die” positive group identity, especially among youth. Such an MECHA chapters on various campuses which reject till Chancellor Charles Young refused to budge. agenda needs to take on sexism and homophobia. It needs Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans as Meanwhile the commitment affirmed by the hunger to recognize the strengths as well as the possible probmembers. “For a while the power structure of strikers caught still more people's imaginations. they lems presented by indigenousness, an increasingly popuCalifornia MEChA was 100 percent reactionary lar spiritual expression among Chicanas and Chicanos. - really were willing to die,” said one student, a 23-year-old nationalist,” Sergio Romero noted. “At the National Sergio Romero, an activist, campus writer and strike supAbove all it must address the realities of poor and workStudent Conference in Albuquerque, April 1991, there porter from Cal State LA. This kind of idealism was one ing-class Latino lifestyle today, including the impact of was a California MEChA caucus mecting and everyof the major forces at work, in the opinion of leading immigration. : These issues-and more-were raised by the UCLA strug- Chicano historian Rudy Acuna, who spent 12-16 hours body who walked in that room got questioned—no, | interrogated, practically strip-scarched. I call it the gle that began last May. Its actual origins date back to daily at the hunger strikers' encampment. paper-bag test—you know, the browner, the better. But “How much were you inspired by Cesar Chavez's 1969, when ethnic studies were born in the tear gas of you have to stay in the organization to fight it. My methods?” I asked two of the hunger strikers, Maria student strikes and protests across the state. A Chicano Studies Program was established at UCLA 20 years ago Lara and Cindy Montanez. “I was aware of Cesar but particular chapter is more Third World-minded.” Bitter division but has been repeatedly denied support or almost abol- not as much as along with wild other people,” ished. In 1990 the Chicano student organization MEChA confusion also Cindy said: “Then demanded that this program be upgraded to a department, exists about termihis death brought that is, given its own faculty and autonomy. A proposal nology. Some of it more awareness. 1 was drafted. : : ' .emanates from do feel his sprit Despite support from many professors, Chancellor that curocentric Charles Young repeatedly failed to announce his decision was there. 1 think ad ect va e he has sparked on that proposal as promised. When he finally did so, he “Hispanic,” popuchose the eve of Cesar Chavez's funeral this year-and his something in all larized im the of us... The comdecision was no. Young/'s announcement came at in the 19808. :as the munity was very wake of another: to cut resources at the Chicana/o Chicano middleexcited about our Studies Library. Those two straws broke our burro's back. class grew. Some doing this hunger They epitomized the elitism of UCLA, located as it is on comes from the strike in honor of the primarily middle-class west side, far from East LA and massive immigraCesar Chavez. other Latino neighborhoods, with Latinos numbering tion of. Central High school stu-. only 1.4 percent of UCLA's full professors and only 17 Americans which dents talked about percent of its undergraduates. All this in a city where has given Los having their own Latinos form 65 percent of the public school students and photo courtesy La Gente de A which had stood by Chicano student D E 40 percent of the total population. A new off-campus group called Conscious Students of Color (ESC) organized a rally for May 11 to protest these actions. CSC included African-Americans who are Muslims (but not with the (Nation of Islam), Filipinos, Koreans, and other Asian/Pacific Island Americans; a Chilean whose father had served .under Allende, a Guatemalan and other Latin Americans familiar with struggles in their own countries. Together they formed a very open and politically diverse group. At the rally called by CSC, a window of the Faculty Center was broken; students entered and held a sit-in. UCLA officials called 200 police in full riot gear. They arrested 99 students, grabbing their heads, necks, and ears, dragging them, and in some cases using pepper gas or tazzers, according to La Gente, the UCLA student newspaper. “We stayed in handcuffs for over six hours,” Maria Lara told me, before being jailed at 3:00 AM as dozens of supporters watched. Charged with a felony (vandalism), not just the usual trespassing, 83 went to jail. The next day 1,000 people attended a MECHA protest against the arrests and more rallies followed with even larger numbers. African Americans and Asian/Pacific Island Americans, who also seek to upscale their own hunger strikes and Angeles —already Marcos Aguilar is one of the seven people who have vowed to fast until a “the second largest small children Mexican city on Department is created. The strikers are approaching Day 10 of the fast. offered to give up a the continent— chewing gum in half a million Salvadorans as well. Then there are those solidarity. “We're doing it for the kids,” said a 16who dislike the term “Chicano” because they think it year-old. Even younger children would say “we're means Mexican-Americans who have assimilated into the doing it for. the kids.” : gringo value system or, at the opposite end, gangbangers. The hunger strike made Chicano Studies a matter of Some Chicanos consider themselves Latin-os: others public interest—as it should be. In that spirit the UCLA speak of “Chicanos and Latinos” as separate entities; struggle went far beyond a campus issue. It became a some hate “Latino” as much as Hispanic. And so it goes. struggle to win respect for the Latino origins and identity Such hassles swirled around the UCLA hunger strike of El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles but they failed to cripple it. Though its goal was defined de Porciuncula—in other words, LA. Even more, as Cindy as a “Chicana and Chicano Studies Department,” strikers said, “it was a movement for everybody. The students and Maria and Cindy assured me this effectively meant Latino faculty and community were fighting not just for something that would benefit Chicanos, but something that Studies. They saw linkage based on the belief that the term Chicano comes from the pre-Columbian tribal name would affect the entire community. Students realized Mechica for a people who existed in Mesoamerica-Mexico,that, and so they were cautious about what they were and Central America. We might question this theory; but doing”—which led to a policy on Chancellor Young in what matters is that the hunger strikers did not sharply public statements. divide on nationalist issues or terminology. Instead “they At 7:00 AM on Saturday, June 5, with rain pouring remained committed to recognizing differences among down on them, 200 strike-supporters began to march 17 Raza without dwelling on the differences,” in the words miles across Los Angeles. By the time they reached the see “UCLA” on page four UCLA campus, 1,000 people were on hand. Chancellor |
