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The Brown Berets was a Chicano/Mexican-American community-based organization in Austin, Texas founded during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, modeled after the Brown Berets.
Founded in 1972, the Brown Berets Chapter of Austin focused on issues similar to the original chapter of Los Angeles that plagued the Chicano community. A quote from Gilberto Rivera, a prominent East Austin activist states, "the formation was due to a ‘call’ from the community & out of their own direct experiences of police violence which followed a persistent pattern in Austin & nearby communities". In addition, the Brown Berets "formulated the ‘Brown Beret Manifesto’ which sought short & long term goals on community matters like: police oppression, economics, immigration, education, housing, prison reform, medicine, communication (news/media channels)". [1]
The Austin Brown Beret chapter was considered a grassroots organization with the intentions of protecting youth and the rights of citizens. During its active years it worked closely with other grassroots organization and other local chapters when necessary. The chapter ultimately dissolved in 1983. Despite this, the legacy it left continued through the efforts of several other organizations such as PODER, CAMILA – Chicanos Against Military Intervention in Latin America, League of United Chicano Artists (LUChA), Youth Advocacy (formally known as CARNALES Inc.), and East Austin Economic Development Corporation.
On July 24, 1973, in Dallas, Texas, a 12-year old boy was killed while in the custody of a police officer who interrogated him over a soda machine burglary investigation. The news ensued violent protests in the city, drawing crowds of enraged citizens and Brown Berets from local Texas chapters. [2] The event sparked demands of civil rights and police reform, uniting the Mexican-American communities in Texas cities over such issues. [3] Furthermore, the Austin Brown Berets were noted in supporting the Dallas chapter during the protests. This incident is a reflection of the struggles that Chicanos faced within the American political system and when dealing with law enforcements .
Beginning in 1963, the Austin Aqua Festival began hosting boat drag racing on Lady Bird Lake (formerly Town Lake) with festival goers occupying Festival Beach. However, the trash and noise produced by the attendees upset the inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhoods, which were predominantly Mexican-American. With their complaints being ignored by the city, protests were led and organized by the Brown Berets and their leader and Chicano political activist, Paul Hernandez. Other groups participated, including El Centro Chicano and the East Town Lake Citizens. The 1978 April protest resulted in charges of police brutality, but it was the last year the boat races were held. [4]
An interview with East Austin resident, Pete Martinez, revealed that the boat races caused parking problems, issues with attendees stepping on residents' lawns, difficulty getting in and out of streets because of traffic, and noise pollution. Furthermore, Paul Hernandez explained that the underlying issues of the boat races were the degradation property value and forcing out of people. He goes on to assert that these activities block neighborhood efforts of revitalization, and instead help developers in deteriorating the residential area to redevelop it as a commercial area. In these comments, Hernandez touches on the concept of "land grabbing" or gentrification, which has been and still is an issue that East Austin faces. [5]
Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for Mexican Americans in the United States. The identity has also evolved into Xicano or Xicana and, more recently, Xicanx. Chicano/a is sometimes used interchangeably with Mexican American, although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican American identity emerged to encourage assimilation into white American society and separate the community from African American political struggle, Chicano/a identity emerged among anti-assimilationist youth, some of whom belonged to the Pachuco/a subculture, who reclaimed the term. Chicano/a was widely reclaimed in the 1960s and 1970s to express political empowerment, ethnic solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent, diverging from the more assimilationist Mexican American identity. Chicano Movement leaders were influenced by and collaborated with Black Power leaders and activists. Chicano/a youth in barrios rejected cultural assimilation into whiteness and embraced their identity and worldview as a form of empowerment and resistance.
M.E.Ch.A. is a US-based organization that seeks to promote Chicano unity and empowerment through political action. The acronym of the organization's name is the Chicano word mecha, which is the Chicano pronunciation of the English word match and therefore symbolic of a fire or spark; mecha in Spanish means fuse or wick. The motto of MEChA is 'La Union Hace La Fuerza'.
The Chicano Moratorium, formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the Vietnam War. Led by activists from local colleges and members of the Brown Berets, a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with a August 29, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew 30,000 demonstrators. The march was described by scholar Lorena Oropeza as "one of the largest assemblages of Mexican Americans ever." It was the largest anti-war action taken by any single ethnic group in the USA. It was second in size only to the massive U.S. immigration reform protests of 2006.
The Austin Aqua Festival was a ten-day festival held the first week of August on the shores of Town Lake in Austin, Texas from 1962 until 1998.
The Brown Berets are a pro-Chicano organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s founded by David Sanchez and remains active to the present day. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets' movements largely revolved around farm worker's struggles, educational reform, and anti-war activism; they have also organized against police brutality. Several groups have been quite active since the passage of California Proposition 187.
The Brown Berets are a Chicano/Mexican-American–based community organization in Watsonville, California, modeled after the Brown Berets of the Civil Rights Movement. An excerpt from their website states, "we serve as a community defense force acting for the liberation and amelioration of our barrios". Their beliefs are anti-military, anti-police, and anti-border patrol. Their members are encouraged to study the Black Panthers and American Militant Resistance. Brown Beret member and former Watsonville Mayor Oscar Rios was quoted in an interview as saying "It (California) belonged to us, Mexico, 1848. It was taken away okay, so it's no surprise we're taking it back slowly but surely."
The Chicano Movement, also referred to as El Movimiento, was a social and political movement inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent, especially of Pachucos in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Black Power movement, that worked to embrace a Chicano/a identity and worldview that combated structural racism, encouraged cultural revitalization, and achieved community empowerment by rejecting assimilation. Prior to the Movement, Chicano/a was a classist term of derision, reclaimed only by some Pachucos who adopted it as an expression of defiance to Anglo-American society. As a result of the Movement, Chicanismo arose and Chicano/a was widely reclaimed in the 1960s and 1970s to express political autonomy, ethnic and cultural solidarity, and pride in being of Indigenous descent, diverging from the assimilationist Mexican-American identity.
Chicana feminism, also called Xicanisma, is a sociopolitical movement in the United States that analyzes the historical, cultural, spiritual, educational, and economic intersections of Mexican-American women that identify as Chicana. Chicana feminism challenges the stereotypes that Chicanas face across lines of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and sexuality. Most importantly, Chicana feminism serves as a movement, theory and praxis that helps women reclaim their existence between and among the Chicano Movement and American feminist movements.
The East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts were a series of 1968 protests by Chicano students against unequal conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District high schools. The first walkout occurred on March 5, 1968. The students who organized and carried out the protests were primarily concerned with the quality of their education. This movement, which involved thousands of students in the Los Angeles area, was identified as "the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in the history of the United States."
Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida is a former Hispanic political party centered on Chicano (Mexican-American) nationalism. It was created in the early 1970s and became prominent throughout Texas and Southern California. It was started to combat growing inequality and dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party that was typically supported by Mexican-American voters. After its establishment in Texas, the party launched electoral campaigns in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, though it only secured official party status for statewide races in Texas. It did poorly in the 1978 Texas elections and leaders and members dropped away.
The American G.I. Forum (AGIF) is a Congressionally chartered Hispanic veterans and civil rights organization founded in 1948. Its motto is "Education is Our Freedom and Freedom should be Everybody's Business". AGIF operates chapters throughout the United States, with a focus on veterans' issues, education, and civil rights. Its two largest national programs are the San Antonio-based Veterans Outreach Program, and the Dallas-based Service, Employment, Redevelopment-Jobs for Progress, Inc. (SER). The current National Commander is Lawrence G. Romo.
Carlos Montes is a nationally respected leader in the Chicano, immigrant rights, and anti-war movements. He was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano working class youth organization in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Brown Berets were inspired by and often compared to the Black Panther Party. Montes was one of the leaders of the Chicano Blowouts, a series of walkouts of East Los Angeles high schools to protest against racism and inequality in Los Angeles-area high schools. He is portrayed by Fidel Gomez in the 2006 HBO movie Walkout.
Las Adelitas de Aztlán was a short-lived Mexican American female civil rights organization that was created by Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes in 1970. Gloria Arellanes and Gracie and Hilda Reyes were all former members of the Brown Berets, another Mexican American Civil rights organization that had operated concurrently during the 1960s and 1970s in the California area. The founders left the Brown Berets due to enlarging gender discrepancies and disagreements that caused much alienation amongst their female members. The Las Adelitas De Aztlan advocated for Mexican-American Civil rights, better conditions for workers, protested police brutality and advocated for women's rights for the Latino community. The name of the organization was a tribute to Mexican female soldiers or soldaderas that fought during the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century.
Chicano literature, or Mexican-American literature, refers to literature written by Chicanos in the United States. Although its origins can be traced back to the sixteenth century, the bulk of Chicano literature dates from after the 1848 United States annexation of large parts of Mexico in the wake of the Mexican–American War. Today, this genre includes a vibrant and diverse set of narratives, prompting critics to describe it as providing "a new awareness of the historical and cultural independence of both northern and southern American hemispheres".
The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (JBAKC) was an anti-racist organization based in the United States. The group protested against the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacist organizations and published anti-racist literature. Members of the JBAKC were involved in a string of bombings of military, government, and corporate targets in the 1980s. The JBAKC viewed themselves as anti-imperialists and considered African Americans, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans to be oppressed colonial peoples.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) was a conference organized by the Black Panther Party (BPP) that was held in Philadelphia from September 4–7, 1970. The goal of the Convention was to draft a new version of the United States Constitution and to unify factions of the radical left in the United States. The RPCC represented one of the largest gatherings of radical activists across movements and issues in the United States. The Convention was attended by a variety of organizations from the Black Power Movement, Asian American Movement, Chicano Movement, American Indian Movement, Anti-war movement, Women's Liberation, and Gay Liberation movements. Estimates of attendance range from 6,000 to 15,000. Attendees convened in workshops to draft declarations of demands related to various issues, which were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a new constitution which would function as the final vision of those movements. The RPCC also signified a shift in BPP focus from black self-defense to a broader revolutionary agenda. While conflicts did arise during the Philadelphia Convention, the conference was ultimately deemed a success by the Panthers. After the Philadelphia conference, attempts were made to reconvene to finalize and ratify the new constitution in Washington, DC a few months later but ultimately failed due to police interference and Panther disorganization.
La Conferencia de Mujeres por la Raza was held in Houston, Texas between May 28 and May 30 in 1971. The conference marked the first time Mexican-American feminists came together within the state from around the country to discuss issues important to feminism and Chicana women. It was considered the first conference of its kind by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
On the morning of July 24, 1973, in Dallas, Texas, 30-year-old Dallas Police Officer Darrell L. Cain fatally shot Santos Rodriguez, a 12-year-old Mexican-American child. Officer Cain and Officer Roy R. Arnold were investigating reports of a burglary at a Fina gas station when they took Santos Rodriguez and his 13-year-old brother David Rodriguez from their home for an impromptu interrogation over the burglary. Cain shot Santos Rodriguez while conducting Russian roulette on the brothers in an attempt to force a confession from them.
Francisco F. Medrano was an American labor rights and civil rights activist. His work extended throughout the state of Texas and the country, and his family became prominent Dallas civic leaders. He is known for his motto: "In America, everything is politics, from the day you are born, until the day you die."
Paul Hernandez, was an influential East Austin Chicano activist, a major figure in Austin politics, and a founder of the local Brown Berets. He led the fight against the Aquafest boat races on Town Lake in East Austin which led to their relocation. He founded El Centro Chicano, which focused on housing, gentrification, drug abuse and police brutality. Hernandez was also a spokesman for El Concilio, a coalition of East Austin Mexican-American neighborhood associations. In the early 1990s a brain hemorrhage and protracted recovery sidelined Hernandez, but he remained committed to East Austin.