Southwest Brutality

King Fisher, the famous Texas gunman, was once asked how many notches he had on his gun. He replied, "Thirty-sevennot counting Mexicans." The flip remark was a serious indication of the low value that was, and still is, placed on Mexican American life in the Southwest. In the late 1800's, Senator Dwyer recounted a typical incident, "In passing through Bee County, we heard of a Mexican, a quiet citizen, who had been brutally murdered by several Americans because the Mexican would not go and play the fiddle for them."

Lynchings and murders of Chicanos

became so common in California and Texas that, in 1912, the Mexican Ambassador formally protested the mistreatment of Mexicans and cited a number of brutal incidents that had recently taken place. A series of brutal Texas assaults on Chicanos were listed in The Nation in 1922 and George Marvin in World's Work described the prevailing situation near the border, "the killing of Mexicans... in these last four years is almost incredible... Some Rangers have degenerated into common man-killers. There is no penalty for killing, for no jury along the border would ever convict a white man for shooting a Mexican." Abuse of Chicanos by Rangers and police continued through the 1930's. In 1943, according to the Los Angeles Herald Express, two hundred Navy men, angered by scuffles with barrio youth, commandeered a taskforce of taxicabs and began attacking zootsuited Chicanos in East Los Angeles. Time Magazine described the scene: "The LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) practice was to accompany the caravan in police cars, watch the beatings, and jail the victims. During the attacks, Mexican American boys were dragged from the theatres, stripped of their clothing, beaten, and left naked on the streets." Police did nothing to stop the attacking Navy men.

Southwest Justice

Courts of law have been a fruitless source of justice for Mexican American victims of such abuses. In 1947, for example, a 19-year-old Chicano boy was convicted of murder in Hudsbeth County, Texas, even though he was blind, mentally retarded, retaliating to an attack on his aging father, and was physically unable to have the legally necessary intent to justify a finding of first-degree murder.

Despite these circumstances, an all-white jury found the boy guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. On appeal, the boy's attorney charged that he had not been tried by a jury of his peers, pointing out that though Hudsbeth County was 50% Mexican American, no Chicano had ever served on a jury. He cited a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed exclusion of blacks from juries. The appeals court held that the 14th Amendment did not protect Mexican Americans in the same way and the boy was executed later that year.

When UFW farmworkers struck in South Texas in 1967, Texas Rangers led by Captain A. Y. Allee harrassed and brutalized the strikers. As news reached Allee that an injunction had been filed against him, he bragged that he had been sued many times but had never received an official reprimand.

A few years later, police went to the house of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez and picked him up for questioning about a service station robbery. As Rodriguez sat in the front seat of a Dallas squad car, police officer Darrel Cain placed a revolver to the boy's head and started shooting "Russian Roulette" style. The first shot was blank; the second bullet entered the boy's head and killed him. Cain received a five-year sentence for the murder from a jury in Texas, a deathpenalty state.

The Mexican American Workforce

By the late 19th and early 20t! Centuries, Mexican-origin natives and an increasing number of Mexican immigrants were becoming an important factor in the economic growth of the Southwest. Industrialism was growing and cheap labor was needed by farm, cattle, lumber, and other industries. The decline of ruralism in Mexico and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 brought Mexican immigrants to the States to look for work. In the early 1920's the Immigration Act of 1917 was temporarily suspended and Mexican immigrant workers were welcomed into the country to provide needed labor.

From 1900 to 1921, 40% of the nation's fruit and truck crops were produced by a labor force of 65%-85% Mexicans; 60% of mining labor was Mexican and between 60%-90% of section and extra gangs on 19 western railroads were Mexicans. These workers were excluded from unions while the best-paying jobs went to union members. Even with all children and adults working, Chicano families frequently made less than they needed to feed themselves.

With the Depression in the Thirties came resentment against Mexican workers who were accused of depriving Americans of needed jobs. Mass deportations began and over 400,000 persons were shipped back to Mexico, close to half of whom were citizens. When farmworkers were later needed to fill the labor shortage created by World War II, the Government's "Bracero" program was created and, again, large numbers of Mexican laborers were channeled into the United States.

Mexican-origin workers made a crucial contribution to the building of the Southwest, but they received very little in

return.

The vocal Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960's and 1970's is the fruit of a long legacy of Chicanos' efforts to fight their subjugation. Some of the first struggles for equal rights came in the form of riots against oppressive authorities and strikes by Mexican American laborers.

The first community welfare organizations or "mutualistas" sprang up as early as 1873 and spread throughout the Southwest. These were primarily social organizations, but they also served other functions. Members collected monies to provide decent burials for poorer Chicanos; meetings were held to discuss ways of dealing with abusive police or politicians; and the societies served as a training ground for future leaders.

The "mutualista" tradition found a more sophisticated expression in La Orden de Hijos de America, which was founded in San Antonio in 1921 to fight for the advancement of Mexican Americans. Their councils served as predecessors to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which was established in 1928. LULAC was founded in Texas, where racism against Chicanos has always been most blatant; but LULAC councils fought discrimination in other states as well. They established pre-schools to teach Chicanos English, gathered scholarship funds through community lotteries, and LULAC councils did what they could to protest killings, segregation, and other abuses.

In 1930, Anglo attorneys, along with Mexican American lawyers active in LULAC, attempted to test the civil rights of Chicanos in a court of law. They filed suit in Texas to protest school segrega tion. The case won at trial but lost on appeal. The court held that school boards could reasonably place Chicano and white elementary school children in totally separate schools.

World War II was a major turning point. Chicanos were drafted into the Armed Forces in large numbers. Mexican Americans, in fact, became the country's most decorated ethnic group during World War II.

The war gave many Chicanos their first exposure to life outside the barrio. The G.I. Bill of Rights also allowed some Chicano veterans to buy homes and gain access to education. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the war was the fact that Mexican Americans laid down their lives by the thousands for the preservation of the United States; yet the country that accepted that sacrifice still failed to acknowledge the equal standing of Chicano people.

Mexican Americans who were hailed as Yankee liberators in Paris returned home to find employment notices which read, "Held Wanted, Anglo. No Mex. icans." Separate bathrooms bore the label "Hombres Aqui." Restaurant signposts announced, "No Mexicans served." Public swimming pools were still closed to Chicanos. Mexican Americans were still being beaten to death by police.

Chicanos organized to fight discrimination surrounding them. The refusal of the Texas white establishment to bury Felix Longoria, a Chicano war hero, in a miltary cemetary at Three Rivers, Texas, served as a catalyst for Dr. Hector Garcia's formation of the American G.I. Forum in 1948. The organization began working for social reforms, LULAC also stepped up its activities, and other, more politically-oriented groups developed. These new efforts were countered by strong forces. In the early 50's, with returning Anglo veterans needing work, Chicanos were again seen as draining jobs, and "Operation Wetback" rounded up and deported 3.8 million Mexican. origin laborers, including many citizens and legal residents. Pressures of the McCarthy era caused Chicano civil rights efforts in general to be checked by the threat of a "communist" label.

Use of the Courts

The post-war period witnessed the first effective use of the courts as a means of gaining equality for Chicanos. In the late Forties, Carlos Cadena, a Mexican American attorney in San Antonio, Texas, won a lawsuit which stopped use of "restricted covenants" that had prevented lands in Anglo neighborhoods from being sold to Mexicans or blacks. Cadena and Gus Garcia, another Chicano attorney, also worked with Al Wirin, a Los Angeles lawyer, on a case protesting segregation in Texas schools. The suit did not actually gain integration, but it did at least cause state authorities to repudiate segregation on an official level. Wirin had sought integration a year earlier in California; Ralph Estrada would later attempt to integrate Arizona schools, and suits in Texas and California began attacking Chicano exclusion from public pools. The crucial case, however, was Hernandez v. Texas, a case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 by Cadena and Garcia. Pete Hernandez, the defendant, had been tried and convicted for murder in Jackson County, an area which was 14% Chicano. His jury panel had not included one Hispanic person, In fact, no Spanish-surnamed person had served on any jury of any sort in Jackson County during the past 25 years. Hernandez was the first MexicanAmerican discrimination case to reach the nation's high court, and it was the first U.S. Supreme Court suit to be argued by Mexican American attorneys. It was also a victory.

Chief Justice Warren held that "... the state court had erred in limiting the scope of the equal protection clause to the white and Negro classes;... (and) that persons of Mexican descent were a distinct class..." entitled to the protection of the 14th Amendment. The legal implications of the Hernandez decision were profound. The nation's highest court had finally acknowledged that Chicanos were not being treated as "whites" in the Southwest as many Anglos had claimed. Mexican Americans were recognized as a separate class of people who were suffering profound discrimination. The decision paved the way for class-action legal work that could broadly attack the ills of the Chicano community,

The Sixties

By the time the 1960's came along, 85% of the Mexican Americans in the nation were native born. They could no longer be legally deported, and they were tired of being ignored. The revolution in black consciousness and civil rights was teaching Mexican Americans some valuable lessons. They were ready to stage a major battle to gain the rights they were due as citizens:

1963: Cesar Chavez, an Arizona-born farmworker, started knocking on doors in Delano, California, to organize farm laborers. 1963: Reies Lopez Tijerina founded La Alianza Federal de Mercedes to demand that the lands of northern New Mexico be returned to the Mexican American people. 1966: An Equal Employment Oppor

tunity Commission meeting was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to investigate Mexican American problems. About 50 participants walked out to protest the fact that the EEOC did not have one Mexican American person on the staff. 1967: El Grito, a Journal of Contempor

ary Mexican American Thought began publication in Berkeley, California. Chicano poetry, creative writing, and scholarly essays on Mexican-American themes were published.

1967: Jose Angel Gutierrez founded the Mexican American Youth Organization in San Antonio, Texas. This union of Chicano students, through a series of transformations, became La Raza Unida Party, the first Chicano political

party.

1967: Articles of Incorporation were filed in San Antonio, Texas, for

the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the first national Chicano civil rights legal organization. 1968: At Wilson High School in East Los Angeles, the principal cancelled a production of "Barefoot in the Park" that Chicano students had worked on for months, declaring it unfit. The pupils at Wilson walked out. Within 72 hours, 5,000 students from Garfield, Roosevelt and Lincoln High Schools and a number of junior high schools also walked out. Wholesale arrests and beatings of students followed. 1969: Corky Gonzalez, a former boxer, poverty program director, and founder of the Crusade for Justice, worked to establish La Raza Unida Party in Colorado.

1969: The first Chicano anti-war rally in the United States was organized in Los Angeles. Two thousand marchers protested the fact that Mexican Americans were being killed at a 2-to-1 ratio to whites in Indochina.

1969: Catolicos Por La Raza staged a

rally before the new $4 million St.
Basil's Cathedral in L.A. demand.
ing that the church provide
programs for Chicanos. As they
found their way into the
Cathedral, they were attacked by
undercover deputies in the guise of
ushers, who brandished
nightsticks. The congregation
sang, "O, Come All Ye Faithful"
as demonstrators were kicked,
clubbed, and maced by police.

It was into this atmosphere of fierce
anger and equally fierce pride that the
Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund was born.