Some Photos I Haven't Exhibited

Some recent scans ... feel free to comment. Some were shot at San Jose High when I was a student. That was way back in the late 60s. Others were captured in 1974 at San Jose's Centro Cultural de la Gente. The one seascape is from around 1982. Quite the mix. Click to enlarge.

Yes ...  that is me back in 1969.

Copyright 2014 Jesus Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved.

‘Crystal City 1969’ raises awareness about discrimination against Chicanos

Written by Vidwan Raghava The University of Texas at Arlington Shorthorn staff

In 1969, Chicano students in Crystal City, Texas broke out in protest over their school historically denying them an equal chance to participate in school activities.

Today marks the 41st anniversary of Chicano civil rights protests in Crystal City, which began when a Chicano student was barred from becoming the homecoming queen.

Playwright Raul Trevino and producer and director David Lozano co-wrote Crystal City 1969, to illustrate the events of the 1969 walkouts.

The importance of the play lies in addressing issues that have been have downplayed by society, Lozano said. He said many people that lived through this era were seeing it dramatized for the first time.

“You will never find anything about Crystal City in any history books,” Lozano said.

Lozano was pained to find out that Mexican American students weren’t allowed to be homecoming queen or participate fully in sports.

Amongst other things, the school had a policy whereby only one Chicano girl could be a cheerleader, said associate history professor Roberto Trevino.

“In 1969, one student protested this but she was denied permission to be a cheerleader and that triggered a student boycott,” Trevino said.

The student, who was denied, was expelled which led to students protesting the policy.

Twenty-three at the time, Political science professor Jose Gutierrez arranged for a lawyer and got the student reinstated, which raised other students hopes that their protest for equal rights would bear fruit.

Supporting the protest was the Mexican American Youth Organization headed by Gutierrez.

The organization consisted of young adults, who were mostly college graduates and working professionals.

“I graduated from Crystal City,” he said. “I have first-hand experience of the discrimination faced by Chicanos,” Gutierrez said.

On Dec. 9, 1969 the students began their walkouts, which was marked with hundreds of students walking out of class, eventually leading to a shut down of the school.

In January the school board members capitulated and agreed on a compromise, but with clauses allowing them to renege, Gutierrez said.

On Jan. 10, following the compromise, Gutierrez and members of his youth organization started the Raza Unida party.

Raza Unida party members were elected to the Crystal City school board and this ensured the loopholes in the compromise were never used, Gutierrez said.

“There are these wounds, these wounds from being slapped for speaking Spanish, being kicked for being Mexican, being put in shop class in a remedial school just for being Hispanic,” Lozano said

The story is about any person who has felt discriminated against and not solely Hispanics, said actor Priscilla Rice who plays the role of Severita Lara in the play.

“I do this out of a love and respect for the activists and the sacrifices they made,” Rice said.

Gutierrez says he went to see the play last year and felt it did justice to the movement.

“It is historically accurate, but dramatizes certain events, which is fine because its primary purpose is to entertain, “ Gutierrez said.

Irving Arts Center
Dupree Theater 3333 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving, TX 75062
8 p.m. Today all tickets are $25
8 p.m. Dec. 10 – 11 Students and seniors $10 and general admission $15

Latino Cultural Center, Dallas
2600 Live Oak St. Dallas, TX 75204
8 p.m. Dec. 16 General admission $10
8 p.m. Dec. 17 - 18 Students and Seniors $10 General admission $15

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40th anniversary of first Latino political party

[Click image to enlarge or header to see original article.]

By Carlos Munoz Jr.

Mexican Americans made political history 40 years ago when, on Jan. 17, 1970, they founded their own independent political party in Crystal City, Texas. They called it “La Raza Unida Party” — or, translated, “The United People’s Party.”

A look back at this party can give us clues about where we need to go today.

The call for an independent political party came out of a national 1969 Chicano youth conference held in Denver by the Crusade for Justice, the first Mexican American civil rights organization to emerge during the 1960s. The conference produced a plan for Chicano liberation called “El Plan de Aztlan.” The document called the two-party political system “the same animal with two heads that feed at the same trough” because they represented the nation’s political power structures that historically had oppressed and colonized Mexican Americans since the end of the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848.

As was the case for blacks in the South, Mexican Americans had been victimized in the Southwest — from lynchings to segregation.

The party’s strength was in Texas and California, the two states with the largest Mexican American populations. With the exception of Crystal City, where the party gained control of the city council and school board, and several other South Texas cities, there were few victories for the party, due to strong opposition from both conservative and liberal white and Mexican American sectors.

For example, Henry Gonzalez, a liberal Democratic congressman and the only Mexican American from Texas serving in the U.S. Congress at the time, publicly denounced Jose Angel Gutierrez, the leader of the party.

In California, the party was not able to get the required 66,000 voters registered to get on the state ballot. It was able to register only 22,000 people, mostly college students. It never came close to a single political victory.

The party’s last hurrah came in the 1972 Texas governor’s race when its candidate, Ramsey Muniz, received 6.43 percent of the votes.

Soon after, the party started to decline due to ideological divisions.

The party did not meet its goal of becoming an independent political institution, but it helped open doors for Mexican Americans into the two-party political system. After the party’s decline, many of the party’s activists went into the Democratic Party.

More significantly, the party contributed to the political awakening of the Mexican American people and other Latinos. It put the issue of political representation of Latinos on the agendas of local, state and national politics. Prior to the emergence of the party, there were only a relative handful of Latino elected officials. Now, though still underrepresented, there are hundreds of them throughout nation. For example, in 1970, there were five Latinos in the U.S. Congress. Now there are 25, including two U.S. senators.

The increase in elected officials, however, has not resulted in fundamental change, primarily because those officials, no matter how liberal they may be, are an integral part of the “animal with two heads.” Racial or ethnic identity does not guarantee the representation of communities of color — specifically, those who are poor and working class. The best example today is the president of the United States. The majority of black and Latinos voted for President Obama expecting he would act in the interest of their communities. He has not.

The story of the La Raza Unida Party teaches us that independent political parties based on racial or ethnic identity will not work. An independent mass political party that can represent the needs of our more complex diverse society must emerge to challenge the two-party duopoly. Such a party could lead to an authentic multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural democracy for the 21st century.

Carlos Munoz Jr. is professor emeritus of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was one of the founders of the La Raza Unida Party in California and is the award-winning author of “Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement.” He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org

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