ANNOUNCER: From the Library of Congress and
the Smithsonian National Museum of African
American History and Culture.
David Cline: All right, today is June the
27th, 2016.
This is David Cline from the history department
at Virginia Tech, and working for the Civil
Rights History Project of the Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian International Museum of
African American History and Culture.
And behind the camera today, we have John
Bishop from Media Generation.
We’re also joined by Guha Shankar of the
Library of Congress.
And we have the great honor to be here in
Alhambra today, in California, with Carlos
Montes.
And if I could ask you, this is the only time
I’ll coach you at all, is to introduce yourself
with a full sentence.
"I am..," or "My name is..," and when you
were born, and where.
CM: Yeah.
And I prefer to say LA, Los Angeles, yeah.
Yeah, my name is Carlos Montes.
I was born in El Paso, Texas, December 28,
1947.
And I live in Los Angeles, California.
DC: Fantastic.
And can you--let’s just start with your
childhood.
Can you tell us a little bit about your people
and where they were from?
And then, and their journey, and then your
journey here?
CM: Sure.
No, absolutely.
My parents are from the northern part of Mexico,
Chihuahua, small little farming village.
It’s not even on the map, but it’s near
Parral, Chihuahua, a mining town.
They were from Las Cuevas.
Now, they moved up to the northern part of
the border to Juarez, where they worked and
lived.
Now I was born in El Paso, Texas, across the
border.
So my parents, they crossed over there at
the hospital, the Hotel Dieu.
So the first five years of my life, I was
raised in Juarez.
I spoke Spanish, I went to a public school,
my dad was a cab driver, my mother was a nursing
assistant and a housewife.
So it was a good life on the border--living
on the border.
It was good times in Juarez, Chihuahua, at
that time.
DC: And siblings?
Did you have siblings?
CM: Yes, yes, I have an older sister, Marilou
- Lulu, also born in El Paso, Texas.
And then my younger brother, Javier, also
born in El Paso, Texas.
DC: And you lived there as a young child?
CM: Yes, yes.
And then we moved briefly to El Paso, just
for a couple of weeks.
My parents--my mother already had resident
status in the United States, so we were waiting
for my dad to get his residency status, back
then they called it the green card.
And it was my mother’s idea to move to LA,
to Los Angeles.
And it was a major move.
I remember the day we were in the El Paso
train station, small little train station,
we were outside waiting for the train.
We got on the train, and it was a long ride,
but I remember the African American workers,
I think they called them the Pullman, or the
porters?
DC: That’s right, Pullman porters, yeah.
CM: Right, they came by at night and turned
off all the lights, where my mother was reading
a little Mexican novel.
But every so often I would tell, ask my mother
are we there yet, in Spanish, "Ya llegamos?
Ya llegamos?" she said no, no, no.
And finally, when we got to LA she woke us
up, "We’re here, we’re here!"
I was like, in semi, not shock, but I was
like "whoa, whoa, we’re here."
And I remember getting to the train station,
the Union Station in LA; it’s a big Art
Deco-Spanish combination design.
It was humongous compared to the El Paso one.
So, when I--when we got to the station, we
walked through it to the main lobby.
I knew we were in for a ride.
I said, "Oh my God, this is a big station,"
you know?
So, something told me that something in LA
was going to be a major, major experience.
DC: And where did you all settle?
CM: We settled in south LA.
My dad had come previously, got an apartment,
he got a job in a furniture assembly-line
factory.
And so, we moved into south LA, they call
it Florencia area, Florence area.
I went to school there--we went to school
there, elementary school, and started to learn
English, what they call survival English.
DC: And did your parents eventually learn
English as well, or did they mostly speak
Spanish?
CM: My dad was fluent in English and Spanish,
because he had come to the United States before
to work, when he was younger.
My mother, primarily Spanish.
So she became a full-time housewife, where
my dad worked at the factory.
It was--I think it was called Mission Furniture.
They produced coffee tables, and he was on
the assembly line, he was also in the carpenter’s
union, industrial section.
DC: Right.
So can you, and about what year was that,
that you arrived?
CM: You know what?
That was 1956, in the late ’50s.
DC: So what’s the racial map of Los Angeles
in the mid-’50s?
CM: Right.
Well, you know what, that area, south LA,
was older whites; there was a few white families
there, not very many.
Blacks were moving in from the south, from
Louisiana, Mississippi.
We were coming from Mexico, so it was interesting.
It was Chicano and black, and we got along
pretty well, even though my mother didn’t
speak English, there was something about coming--I
guess coming from another state and from a
rural background that we got along.
One of my neighbors, a young African American
teenager, raised pigeons.
Flying pigeons, or tumbling pigeons, and I
was fascinated by that.
And also, then my neighbors were one of the
first, when I met the first cholos, or pachucos,
or "gang members," if you want to stereotype
it, they were from Florencia.
They treated me really well, but I saw them--they
had their low riders, they had their look,
their--the beard, the hair dress, the tattoos.
And I played ball with them and they treated
me nice and they respected me, so I always
respected the so-called pachucos, or cholos.
And so, yeah, we went to school.
I remember the first days of school, it was
kind of interesting.
I didn’t know a word of English, so I had
to kind of learn my first day in the cafeteria.
I didn’t know where to go get your food,
and get your utensils.
But there was always a young--.
DC: You remember that?
CM: I remember that, no I remember that--I
remember those because -- there was a young
Chicano there, the teacher told him, help
him out, tell him where to go, what to do.
DC: How did you--.
Do you remember knowing how you thought about
yourself?
How you defined yourself then?
Because as you said, a young Chicano, were
you thinking in those terms yet?
CM: No, no, not yet, not yet.
No, I wasn’t thinking.
But the young guys, I saw them, that they
were obviously Mexican, or Mexican American.
I say Chicano because they looked like they
were fluent in English, and they knew some
Spanish.
So I identified with them because they acted--they
were visibly--they were brown, they had black
hair, and their names were Jose, or Martin.
So at least I felt comfortable in the school,
in the classroom.
The teacher was Anglo, white, blond, and trying
to get me to say the name of the ball, and
I just wanted to play with the ball, but they
were trying to learn--teach me English, you
know?
English, basic English.
But there weren’t any English classes, or
any English as a second language classes.
DC: Nothing at all.
CM: So I learned survival English.
DC: So as you went through school, how about
the--what you were learning?
Did you see yourself reflected in any of what
you were being taught?
How were they talking about, you know, Latinos,
in the school system at that time?
CM: Yes, yes.
No, I didn’t see any of our history there,
I didn’t see myself in the history.
You know?
And especially in middle school and high school,
I saw the US history, the Alamo version…
the basic--the Founding Father, George Washington,
etc. so there wasn’t anything that I could
identify with.
I do remember one time they showed the movie,
The Alamo, and the feeling among the crowd,
or the students, was kind of uneasy, you know?
We couldn’t really articulate what we were
going, but we knew that something was wrong,
[laughter] you know?
Because they were glorifying Jim Bowie and
Davy Crockett, and the Alamo, and "remember
the Alamo."
We were saying, "wait a minute, we were on
the other side here, really, why are you glorifying
the other side?"
But we were young, and we didn’t know what
was going on.
But, there were experiences like that, that
later on in high school, the racism was a
little bit more blatant.
I actually, before that--.
I’ll back up a little bit.
When we were still living in south LA, I went
to Miramonte Elementary School, and we used
to like to go to the show in an adjacent city
named Huntington Park.
Now that whole area, southeast LA, was still
primarily white, white working class, Huntington
Park, Bell because they had the auto industry,
the steel industry.
But I remember, we wanted to go to the show
in Huntington Park.
So, we walked over there, and we took the
residential route, because of the--we wanted
to walk on the lawn, because it was hot.
And we saw a sign in the department building,
said, "For rent, whites only."
Now you’re talking the late ’50s, ’56,
’57, it was my sister and myself, and we
looked at the sign, and they go, whites only.
We just said, we said to ourselves, they don’t
want any blacks.
And then we go what about us, we’re not
white, we’re not black, I wonder what they
think about us.
So we didn’t answer it, we just kept thinking
about it, you know?
And--.
DC: So that’s one of the first times that
that--.
CM: Yeah.
DC: --those kind of thoughts went through
your mind.
Yeah.
CM: Yes.
DC: Trying to make sense of something very
complicated.
CM: Right, that’s true.
That’s true.
And then being in Huntington Park, it was
mostly white, primarily white, you know?
Now today it’s 99.9 [percent] Mexican, Mexican
[inaudible].
DC: So, looking back, are there other particular
moments where you can start to see your sort
of consciousness forming?
CM: Mm-hmm.
In high school, I started to see the remarks
by teachers, condescending remarks, sometimes
racist remarks I would pick up on.
I remember one specific day was, I think it
was St. Patrick’s Day.
So we had a teacher talking about St. Patrick’s
Day, and wearing green, and then I was trying
to articulate something a little different
that we’re not Irish, Irish American, we’re
Mexican.
And I told them, but we’re--our descendants
are the Aztecs.
I didn’t know what I was talking about,
I just kind of threw it out there.
I had never studied history.
And he made a statement, he looked at everybody,
"Oh Carlos says you’re all a bunch of Asstecs."
He put am emphasis on the ass, that he’s
an Asstec.
And he--and then everybody looked at me, and
were all kind of embarrassed, and what are
you--are you going to say anything?
And I didn’t say anything, but I kind of
really got mad.
I never forgot that, that instance, that one
of the other teachers that was there, a younger
Anglo American teacher, was, he got visibly
embarrassed, I could tell, his face kind of
got a blush, blushing?
Yeah.
And then, the history that we were being taught,
it didn’t show anything about our experience.
DC: Were there places that you could go to
get--to start to get some more history about
yourself and your people?
CM: No, no.
Not that I recall in the--now I’m talking
high school.
In middle school, I was, it was black, Chicano
students in south LA.
But right before I completed middle school,
we moved to East LA, or Boyle Heights.
Which was primarily Mexican American, Japanese
American, and some black.
DC: For high school.
CM: Mm-hmm, right.
So my high school experience, I started experiencing
police abuse, police harassment.
Because what we would do in East LA, we would
go cruising, cruising Whittier Boulevard,
that was Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
I would see the sheriffs stop people.
And then later on, we got stopped.
My friend was driving, and I remember one
particular night they stopped us, and they
went through the whole car, the backseat,
the trunk of the car, and we kept telling
them, what are you looking for, you know?
He kept smirking at us, and I said, and we,
and my friend finally told him, why did you
stop us?
He said he stopped us because the little light
above the license plate was off.
I said, "Is that the only reason?"
And we ended up--no ticket, no arrest.
But it was just, we saw it as just harassment.
Later on, it happened again to me and my best
friend Richard.
And my best friend Richard told the police
officer, "Hey, you can’t do that."
[Laughter] I remember the--excuse me, the
police officer, and he happened to be a Chicano
guy, tell him, "See this billy club?
I could stick this billy club up your ass
and bring it out of your mouth."
I had told my friend, don’t say anything,
don’t--these guys are crazy, you know?
And he looked at them, and he looked at me,
and then later, I told him, I told you, that’s
how they are, you know?
Don’t say anything man, these guys are like,
are aggressive, and brutal.
And--.
DC: So you learned that early.
CM: Yes, yes.
Yes, cruising the boulevard, and watching
people getting harassed, and getting arrested,
and us being harassed and stopped.
DC: [Laughter] All right.
CM: So, keep on giving me questions, because
I kept talking, and I didn’t know what--.
DC: No, it’s good.
No we’re perfect, we’re going great.
CM: I’ve got to get the feeling of where
you wanted to go to, I don’t know.
DC: No, so I’m just walking you through
high school, and getting a sense of where
this, as you started to sort of form a consciousness,
a race consciousness.
So I’m curious about that, and if that happened
in high school, or after high school.
CM: Yeah, and OK, no, that was in high school
that we were cruising the boulevard, and looking
at, seeing the police harassment, the racist
comments by the teachers, the experience going
through high school, I felt like we’re just
going through the motions.
I could tell there was a group of students
that had books, that had glasses, always had
pens that were being taken care of.
But the rest of us were just kind of going
through the motions of high school.
I remember they put a big emphasis on ROTC,
of joining the military training.
They put a big emphasis on auto mechanics,
industrial arts, and not a lot of emphasis
on college preparation.
I remember in my senior year, I went to talk
to my counselor, and I told her I wanted to
go to college.
I was interested in going to college.
She just kind of smiled at me like, and didn’t
say yes, this is what you’ve got to do.
She said, "What, would you be interested in
a bookbinding course?"
Right, and I got--and I didn’t know what
she was talking about.
I told her, I just kind of went off, I said
I’d rather write the book than bind the
book, you know?
And she kind of like laughed at me and didn’t
do anything, and I ended up going to work
after high school in the same factory with
my dad.
And it was hot, and it was a lot of sawdust,
and it was for the summer, me and my best
friend Richard went to work there.
And then, we were saying you know what?
This is too hard.
Let’s go to college.
We ended up going to East LA Community College.
DC: OK.
Yeah.
So you enrolled there, and what were you studying?
CM: I wanted to study political science, and
I also got involved in student government.
I ran as student body parliamentarian, got
elected.
I was trying out--I was trying different things.
In high school, I tried cross country.
I tried different clubs.
One thing I really loved about high school,
that kept me in school, was I took beginning
band, and I was in the band, so I was in the
marching band.
So I will say that that’s one reason I graduated,
and completed high school.
But in college, I wanted to try some different
student government, and then I ran into this
group called MASA, Mexican American Student
Association, that was started by the older
Chicanos coming back from the military, and
the GI Bill.
I started going to the meetings, I go, "What’s
all this MASA about?"
The name MASA, obviously MASA used to make
tamales, and tortillas, so I’m like, why
are you using that name?
I kind of confronted them, what’s up, what’s
going on, what are you guys doing here?
I’m with student government; we’ve got
all these clubs, we’re doing car shows,
we’re doing concerts.
What’s MASA about, right?
And then they said, well we’re going to
be tutoring students, we’re going to do
scholarship fundraising.
But I confronted them as to why they were
using the name MASA.
And the name, it was just a white sheet of
paper I saw on a door, a Mexican--MASA, come
to a meeting.
So, I went to the meeting, but what happened
to me that during that confrontation with
them, it kind of like, it--I don’t know
what you call it, but it kind of like clicked,
I guess, or to use one of those old terms
I used to say, it didn’t blow my mind, but
it made me click--you know what?
They got something here, you’re right.
They’re trying to help Mexican Americans,
which is us, they’re doing this education
thing.
So I started going to the meetings, but since
I was younger, I was more--I started telling
them look, we’ve got to do what the blacks
are doing.
Because I grew up during the Watts Rebellion,
’65.
I was a janitor at an elementary school, so
I hung out and worked with the blacks.
And the blacks were arguing.
One guy was saying yeah, we’ve got to rebel,
we’ve got to burn.
And the other black was saying no, we can’t
do that.
I was listening to them, right?
And that was ’65.
So later on, during the black power movement,
and Malcolm X, and King, that influenced me
watching everything on TV and the news.
So I would tell the older Chicanos, we’ve
got to be like the blacks.
We can’t just be doing tutoring and raising
money to scholarships.
And then finally one time, I think they got
fed up with me, and they go, "Well why don’t
you do that?"
And they looked at me.
And then I go, "You know what?
OK, you’re right.
I will do it."
[Laughter] So I formed another organization,
called La Vida Nueva.
Ended up--I did stick it out in MASA for a
while.
I tried to make it more active.
Let’s take on the antiwar movement, let’s
talk about ethnic studies, and they didn’t
want to move, so I said OK, I’m going to
do my own thing.
So we formed another group called La Viva
Nueva, and we took on the issue of the war
in Vietnam, the struggle for Chicano studies,
and demanding more Chicanos go to East LA
College, because back then it was sixty, seventy
percent white.
And being there in East LA, you know.
So, that I think that was part of my beginning
of my involvement in the Chicano movement.
During the same time I got a job as a teen
post director in Lincoln Heights.
Lincoln Heights, you had Father John Luce,
who was the--at the Church of the Epiphany,
Episcopalian parish, who had brought in Eliezer
Risco to publish the newspaper La Raza.
I was working with the street kids, taking
them to the beach, the concerts, and working
with them, and they would always tell me oh,
we’re getting harassed by the police, the
schools are no good.
And I remember one time, Father Luce and Eliezer
Risco walked in with a stack of La Raza newspaper,
and told me here, pass them out, you know?
I said, "Well let me read it first."
I started reading it; I go whoa, what is this
stuff, you know?
It was La Raza newspaper, and criticizing
the government, the city, the war on poverty,
articles about the farm workers.
So I really got turned on, I go yeah, let’s
distribute it, you know?
DC: And had you read anything like that before?
CM: No.
No.
No.
I think the most I had done, I think, in [19]66,
or early [19]67.
I had gone to a meeting at the Casa del Mexicano
in Boyle Heights, where they had Dr. Julian
Nava speaking, who was running for the school
board, Sal Castro, a teacher, was speaking,
and also Patricio Sanchez.
So I was in the audience looking-- I said,
what are these guys talking about; this guy
wants to run?
It kind of made sense, OK, this guy wants
to run the school board, and he ended up winning,
because later on we had to work with him on
the walkouts.
I was getting, I guess, exposed to political
activism.
When I was in MASA, I invited Bert Corona,
who was with Mexican American Political Association,
to talk about the war in Vietnam, so I could
get MASA to take a position against the war.
And they still wouldn’t do it.
That’s why I ended up forming La Vida Nueva.
La Vida Nueva was more activist-oriented,
more direct action.
DC: So even in your first involvements, you
had a sense of a number of different issues,
it sounds like.
The war, other--and some other issues.
CM: Yes, yes.
In the beginning, it was going to school,
education, right?
But then in the issue with the war is that
we found out that a lot of the people I grew
up with in high school are getting drafted,
sent to Vietnam, and coming back dead.
Now I had a student deferment, because I was
at East LA College.
So they’re giving you [that], right?
But I saw what was going on, and then what
was going on in Vietnam, the killings and
the bombings.
DC: So, and then--.
So coming--so the next organizations that
you formed then, that then started to move
towards the Brown Berets.
CM: Right, right, OK.
I was talking about La Vida Nueva, and my
involvement at the teen post, where I got
exposed to Father John Luce’s Church of
the Epiphany.
I started going to meetings at the Church
of the Epiphany.
He had helped organize a group of young Chicanos
called Young Citizens for Community Action,
YCCA.
And they were more like a civic organization,
but they made the transition, or we made the
transition, to Young Chicanos for Community
Action, right?
And then the radical transition to starting
a coffeehouse called La Piranha Coffeehouse.
Have you heard about that before, La Piranha?
DC: Gloria {Arellanes] was telling us about--.
CM: OK, good.
DC: First, really being introduced--.
CM: To La Piranha Coffeehouse.
Which was in [19]67, right?
So then, yeah, the Young Chicanos for Community
Action got a small grant from, I think the
council of churches, National Council of Churches,
through the help of Father John Luce.
Now Father John Luce was very instrumental.
He wanted to lay the basis for some kind of
organizing among Chicanos in the East Side,
which included Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights,
East LA.
So, yeah, right, La Piranha Coffeehouse, we
opened it up in East LA at the corner of Olympic
and Goodrich.
There was a big sign outside, La Piranha.
And we started having meetings, concerts,
hanging out, young people hanging out, and
we started getting harassed by the sheriffs.
Raiding us, lining us up against the wall,
searching us, harassing us, no arrests yet.
Following us.
Giving us tickets for whatever reason.
And the first issue we took up--one of the
first issues we took up, was the harassment
of the cruising and the car clubs on Whittier
Boulevard.
Since I grew up doing that, I understood it.
We started passing out flyers on Whittier
Boulevard, know your rights.
They can’t stop you for any reason, they
can’t search you.
And we started--we held a rally in one of
the gas stations there, and the sheriffs came
and arrested David Sanchez.
And so we started doing that anti-police abuse
campaign, and then it escalated when there
was a young man found dead in the East LA
sheriff’s substation.
Now they alleged that he had hung himself.
But according to the news and the lawyer,
he had been beaten.
So we did a protest.
Our first open protest was to protest the
killing of a young Chicano.
We said it was a killing of a young Chicano
at the East LA sheriff’s substation.
So we had a picket line in front of the sheriff’s
station.
The sheriffs came out, started blocking us,
trying to provoke us.
We told everybody, just keep cool, they’re
trying to get you to get arrested.
But we made the news, the local news.
And we were accused of being outsiders, agitators,
communists, outside agitators, and we said,
we live here in East LA, you know?
We live here, we go to school here; Garfield
High School, I graduated from Garfield.
And, but we saw, and people back then denied,
there’s no such thing as police brutality.
It was a total denial of it.
So that was our first kind of coming out,
besides the Piranha Coffeehouse.
And then you’ll have different versions
of how the name came about, but--and who brought
a stack of brown berets to one of the meetings
one time, we passed them out, started wearing
the brown berets, and people started calling
us the Brown Berets.
And eventually we formalized it, and we said
we are the Brown Berets.
And then we started putting out a newspaper,
like that was the newspaper.
First we wrote for La Raza newspaper, we’d
write articles for it and distribute it.
Then we came out with our own newspaper, we
started--.
DC: May I ask in terms of strategy, as you’re
building this, and you’re looking, I assume,
at other organizations, and other struggles,
what strategies were you picking and choosing?
Because you talked about sort of the--.
I was interested when you were talking about
the first demonstration; were you adopting
nonviolence?
Were you also looking at black power and thinking
maybe there’s a different way of approaching
this?
CM: Yeah, we didn’t formally analyze and
sit down tactics.
We did the rally on Whittier Boulevard, we
did--we flyered on Whittier Boulevard to the
car club.
We met with the car clubs, actually.
And we made a presentation to them, to talk
about organizing, fighting back.
And we found out though that the sheriffs
had been there right before us, to tell them
that we were a bunch of communists and troublemakers.
So the only ones that took our side were the
more rowdy or militant car clubbers.
They met with us later on, he goes "hey, the
sheriffs were here before, that was a--and
we agree with you guys."
And so we were organizing in our community.
We didn’t sit down and get training on what
is organizing, we just started doing it out
of the--our own initiative.
And we would-- I did-- we did get influenced
by the black liberation movement, what we
read about and what we saw on TV and news.
But eventually, the Black Panthers did come
to East LA, to La Piranha Coffeehouse, to
meet with us.
Yeah, Bunchy Carter, and John Huggins came
to La Piranha Coffeehouse to talk about working
together, and invited us to go to their office.
And we would go over there, so we stressed
the black and brown unity.
And based on how they dressed, I think that
influenced us, they wore a black leather jacket,
the black beret, so we had the brown beret.
Now why did we pick the brown beret?
Because brown--we started, the other part
of this whole--the ideology behind it, we
started acknowledging that there was this
strong racism in the United States against
brown people, against black people, against
Chicanos, Mexican Americans, right?
So, we said be brown, be proud.
Brown pride.
So the brown beret is like, because the brown
pride, and then also to be a--to put out a
more militant approach, that we did not believe
in nonviolence.
We did not advocate violence.
But we believed in self-defense.
So the Brown Beret 13 point program, if you’ve
had a chance to look at it, talked about self-defense,
self-determination, education, freeing the
Chicano prisoners, no to the war, it’s a
pretty long list of demands.
But the main theme was self-determination
for Chicanos.
So we started taking on more of a--we went
from a civil rights organization, the transition
from the Young Chicanos for Community Action,
to La Piranha, the Brown Berets.
We became more of a, I think direct action,
more of a--the other big thing I can--that
we were different from the prior generation.
The GI Forum, the League of United Latin American
Citizens, the old CSO, they were talking about
assimilation and integration.
So we said no.
We made a break.
We said, "We don’t want to assimilate.
We want self-determination."
And they were caught up in saying that we
were white, and we should be white, and integrate.
And we were saying no, we’re not white,
we’re brown.
We’re indigenous, we don’t want to be
part--we want to be our own people, want our
self-determination.
So all of that was a political and cultural
renaissance, revolution, or revolt.
And tactics.
We believed that we needed to protest.
So, the, by learning our history, by looking
at the black liberation movements--.
So the first picket at the police station,
then we started taking on the issue of education.
Since we all grew up in the local high schools,
I was the only one of the Brown Berets who
had gone to college.
Who was in college.
If you look at David and Gloria, and Ralph,
and Cruz, Cruz had been in Vietnam, and had
come back.
But we were all poor working class Chicanos.
Our parents were working class and poor, and
I was one of the ones that--first generation
from Mexico, David and some of the others
had already been here for a while, their parents,
and they didn’t know Spanish as well as
I did.
I saw that difference, but what brought us
together was unity and pride in being brown.
And then we started using the word Chicano,
not Mexican hyphen American, or Latin American,
and so the tactics was that we needed to protest
like the blacks.
So we took on the issue of organizing massive
high school walkouts in East LA.
DC: So two things.
Did you use the term Chicano earlier in your
life?
Or was that--.
CM: I would hear my dad say it.
My dad would say" Chicanos," and he would
also say "La Raza."
I heard it from him.
So to us, we liked it, identified with it,
because we preferred it to the hyphenation,
or Latin American.
It was our term of self-identification, self-affirmation,
pride.
DC: It was there earlier, but you really started
to use it in this determined way--?
CM: Yes, we started popularizing the Chicano
power, Chicano movement.
Before it was there, you know, with our parents,
but it was popularized during the [19]60s,
the Chicano power movement.
DC: Yeah, yeah.
Do a save.
CM: How am I doing?
DC: Fantastic.
So--.
CM: We cannot get anywhere, we’ve got to
get it into it, yeah, yeah.
DC: We’re getting there, we’re getting
there.
CM: We’re getting there, good question though,
good question.
You’ve got those good questions.
DC: Well you are--you just set me up for the
next question, which was about the school
walkouts.
So, can you tell us about the —origins of
the Chicano Blowouts or walkouts?
CM: Yes.
OK, conditions in the East LA high schools
were really bad.
Overcrowded conditions, high dropout rate,
lack of ethnic studies, old facilities, antiquated
facilities, lack of--an emphasis on industrial
arts and the military.
Right?
I remember when I turned eighteen at Garfield
High School, they called me into the AP’s
office, and I go, "oh, what happened, what’s
going on?"
And they had me sign for the selective service.
Yeah, I was saying, why would the school do
that, you know?
Well you’re eighteen, you’ve got to sign
up.
Oh man, you know?
I didn’t like that, but I didn’t start
rebelling until later on.
Later on, I would start objecting to everything,
when I was in the Brown Berets.
So what happened is that we started having
meetings at the, at the Church of the Epiphany,
with students and teachers.
Especially Sal Castro.
And they were starting a series of student
committees that were set up in Garfield, Roosevelt,
Lincoln, and Wilson, to start talking about
educational issues.
There were surveys done about the needs, and
these surveys were presented to the school
board, to Julian Nava, that I mentioned earlier.
I go "Oh OK, he won, right?"
And nothing was done, nothing was done.
So we started, what I use the word now, agitating,
but back then I would say leafletting, outreach,
doing outreach, going to schools, passing
out flyers.
Criticizing the conditions, and then just
popularizing the word walkout.
And then, it created a kind of tension and
controversy, what’s this, what’s all this
walkout?
This went on for months, like the dropout
rate, and we would show pictures, cartoons
of the schools as prisons.
Because they would literally lock the restrooms--lock
the gates to get in and out.
DC: Were the students immediately responsive?
Or were they kind of hesitant, this idea of
oh--.
CM: No, some were down; some were very open
to it.
So we would give them flyers, they would pass
them out.
Some were not, and we had parents that were
against us.
I remember going to a meeting at Garfield
High School where the principal had organized
a meeting to talk about these flyers and what’s
going on.
What’s this rumor about a walkout?
And conditions.
But what it was, really, the principal and
the VP, AP rather, talking about what they’re
doing, how great Garfield is, and I’m sitting
there, no, no, this is not true.
I went through Garfield, I barely graduated,
you know?
And so, we walked into that meeting, we took--I
told everybody, take off your brown berets,
we’re going to walk in there and then--and
I could see it was kind of like a public relations
meeting, that things are fine.
So I started asking questions, "what about
the dropout rate?
What about the library?
The library’s really old.
You know, and what about this?"
And this--and then the assistant principal
remembered me, so he called me out by name,
"Oh Carlos, I hear what you’re saying, but
we’re working on things, and things are
better."
And then some parents, they were raising their
hands and saying, we want to know what’s
going on, if somebody’s talking about doing
a walkout.
We just kept quiet though, we didn’t want
to say, yeah, we’re doing a walkout.
So this went on for months, with popularizing
the idea that the conditions of schools are
bad.
There were student strike committees set up
in all the major high schools in East LA.
[We] went to community meetings, we went to
board meetings, and the students presented
a set of demands to the school board, and
the school board said we’re going to study
them.
So as to who or what, who called the walkouts,
everybody takes claim for that, right?
But I remember going to the meeting on I think
it was February, or March the 5th, on a night,
nighttime, I went to the Church of the Epiphany,
in the basement.
I met with Eliezer Risco, me and a couple
other Brown Berets, and he goes look, tomorrow--he
goes, we want to do something.
You down?
I go, "Yeah, what are we going to do, what
are you going to do?"
He said, "Why don’t you guys go to Lincoln
High School, and run in there at ten o’clock
and start yelling walkout?"
And I go, "OK, sure."
You’re like twenty years old, you’re not
going to like--.
Nowadays somebody tells me that I go wait
a minute, what’s the plan?
You going to call the meeting?
You’re going to call parents, right?
So me and this other guy said OK, we’re
down for that.
I didn’t realize that the students had already
been meeting, and had talked about walking
out at ten o’clock March the 6th.
But remember it was--all this groundwork had
been laid before, right?
So, yeah.
The next day, March 6 at 10:00 a.m., I ran
into Lincoln High School, straight up the
front quad into the main admin building.
And me and this other guy named Richard B.
Hill started yelling "Walkout!"
I had my beret on, and I’m trying to remember
if we had our patch by then, I think we did.
No, maybe not.
But, we started yelling "Walkout," and then
teachers came out, students, what’s going
on?
This is the walkout?
Yeah, this is it, this is the walk--then,
an administrator came up and said what are
you doing, you’re trespassing, get out of
here.
I go "Look, this is serious, we’re doing
a walkout."
"No, you can’t."
"Yes, we can."
So then, before you know it, thousands of
students started to come out of all the different
buildings, marching out, it was beautiful.
Marching, coming out of Lincoln High School
on Broadway, North Broadway Street.
And there’s pictures of marching up and
down Broadway, and rallying in front of the
school, students getting on top of cars, and
posters with "Chicano Power," "Education,"
all the main demands.
We wanted equitable education, Chicano studies,
bilingual education, better facility, more
schools, and that went on for two weeks.
DC: So did you present the demands in a formal
way to--.
CM: Not that day.
Not that day.
It was, I don’t recall, we did it later
on at the school board.
But what happened, the school board started
having meetings, and discussions.
We marched to a local school board district
office.
But since our job was to get the other schools
out, right, after Lincoln started, then we
ran over to Roosevelt High School.
By the time we got to Roosevelt High School,
they had already chained up the gates, the
front gates, the side gates, so we couldn’t
get in.
So we were on the Mott Street side of Roosevelt,
where there was a driveway with a gate, and
students were trying to push out--come out.
They were like bunched up, pushing, pushing.
I told them, just push, push.
And one of them threw a rope out, and here,
put it on.
So we tied it to the gate, and we started
pulling on this side, and they kept pushing,
and eventually, the chain popped.
The chain popped open, and the gates flew
open and oh, the whole flood of students came
out.
And they go oh, my God!
I was like--and I turned around, kind of catching
my breath.
And there was guy across the street with a
white shirt and a tie, with a big camera taking
photographs.
We found out later on that was a police photographer.
So I have that photo, I have a photo of that.
So, there was two weeks, we went to Garfield,
we went to Belmont.
Wilson had already started walking out.
They--and they started on their own.
So for two weeks, students walked out and
marched to local district schools, we had--we
went down to the school board to present the
demands, and we wanted Julian Nava, who was
our Chicano, to fight for us.
And he did OK, but we--I thought he could
have done a lot more.
Sal Castro was suspended, because he was a
teacher at Lincoln High School, who was eventually
fired, but then the whole campaign to reinstate
him took--that took months to get him back.
And that was a victory.
There was a sit-in at the school board that
went on for days as part of the demands.
So eventually, we started getting more Chicano
teachers hired, more Chicano administrators.
They did have Mexican American studies, they
had a plan to open another high school in
1972, there was a brand new high school built
in East LA, called the New Wilson High School.
The old one became a middle school.
So, we made victories, we made gains.
And we started even having ethnic, Mexican
American studies.
Even Mexican food started being served.
And bilingual programs started being implemented,
and more of an emphasis on college preparation.
DC: So were you--and were you still in school
yourself at this point?
CM: OK, this is [19]69, I was part-time at
East LA College.
Yeah, yeah, because--.
DC: OK, I’m just wondering how you were
getting by.
How do young revolutionaries support themselves?
CM: Yeah, I don’t even remember how.
We didn’t eat.
We didn’t eat, we didn’t sleep.
We didn’t have any cell phones or car.
I had a job as a teen post director for a
while.
So I saved a little money on that.
And then, well, at that time I still lived
with my parents.
There it was right there.
I lived with my parents.
So--.
DC: And how were your parents reacting to
this?
CM: Well they were reacting pretty good.
But later on, when the police harassment started,
my mother started becoming preoccupied, or
concerned with my safety.
And she would tell me that.
Now the thing with my dad, he was a union
steward in the carpenter’s industrial section.
And when I was a young man in elementary school--I
forgot to mention that he took me to a union
meeting, a picket line during a strike, I
remember the union meeting was so exciting.
All the young--not these young, but all these
older men arguing and yelling..hey, this is
exciting, it’s a union meeting!.
DC: So you’d seen sort of a model for some
of this.
Yeah.
CM: What’s that?
DC: You’d seen sort of a model for some
of this organizing.
CM: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah the unions, absolutely, absolutely.
I remember to get in the union meeting, you
have to have a password.
So they gave me the password.
[Recording stops, then restarts.]
DC: OK, so you started to taste a little bit
of victory and some motion forward.
And then--.
CM: In the whole educational field, right.
We made some gains, made some victories, because
of the walkout, direct pressure, I will say
that everyone was shocked that young Mexican
American, Chicano kids would walk out.
It--they labeled us - the sleeping giant woke
up.
It made national news, that these massive
high school walkouts [happened], and it’s
part of our history.
They became popularized.
It’s a tactic now that’s used throughout
the United States, throughout the Southwest.
They started having walkouts in Arizona, New
Mexico, Colorado, that same year.
And then, a tactic is even used during the
immigrant rights struggle in 2006, where 40,000
students walked out on February the--excuse
me, March 27, in California.
So, we made gains, but one of the things that
did happen, there was a secret grand jury
convened by a DA, Evelle Younger.
And I say secret grand jury because they took
testimony.
We didn’t have the right to be there, or
have attorneys to hear the testimony, or cross
examine.
So they had police, they had alleged witnesses,
photographs, and they came out with an indictment,
grand jury indictment, to arrest thirteen
of us, we became known as the East LA 13.
The main charges were conspiracy to disrupt
the peace, conspiracy to disrupt the school
system; there was over a half a dozen charges.
They were all felonies.
When you disrupt the peace or disrupt a school,
it’s a misdemeanor, but when you conspire
to do that, it becomes a felony.
So these are all felonies.
There was, I said over six different felonies,
a variety, they threw the book at us.
[Laughter]
DC: And this was all the organizers of the
walkout?
CM: Yes, yes.
OK, the majority were the Brown Berets.
There was--.
But also Sal Castro, and an adult, Patricio
Sanchez, Mangas Coloradas.
No women were arrested, and no priests.
It was Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, David
Sanchez, Fred Gomez, Cruz Somera [?], Sal
Castro, Eliezer Risco, Pat Sanchez .. did
I say Sal Castro?
There were thirteen of us, and I forgot a
couple of names.
So they thought it was funny that it was thirteen
people, so we used to be the East LA 13.
The number thirteen is popular in East LA,
trece, thirteen; a lot of different gangs
or groups have used the number thirteen.
When I grew up in South LA, the gang there,
Florencia Trece, the Florence Thirteen gang,
you know?
So it was funny that they used thirteen, they
arrested thirteen.
Now the only thing is that we were already--I
was in Washington DC during the Poor People’s
Campaign.
So, we were super active in 1968, right?
The police brutality issue, the walkout issues.
We get an invitation.
Eliezer Risco from La Raza says, "Hey, come
here, I want to talk to you, there’s a poor
people’s campaign in DC.
There’s a bus leaving South LA tomorrow
morning, you want to go?"
Or I think, or that same day, I forget.
And we said, "Yeah, we want to go.
Or go, get down to that bus."
Just grabbed some clothes, took some newspapers.
We get down there; the bus was about to leave.
We made it a point--there was me, Ralph, David,
I don’t know if Gloria [Arellanes] was there.
A couple of us, I forget the exact delegation,
we made it a point when we walked on the bus,
we were in South Central, like we’re going
to go to the back of the bus.
So it was solidarity.
DC: Gloria was there, because she told us.
CM: She was there, she said that?
Did she say that story?
DC: She told about--yeah, yeah.
I won’t ruin the, what happened at the back
of the bus, yeah.
CM: You won’t ruin what?
DC: It’s not always so good to be in the
back of the bus sometimes.
CM: Right, right, right.
Oh, because of the restroom, or what?
[Laughter]
DC: That’s what she was talking about.
CM: Yeah no, but we were like, we wanted to
be in solidarity with black--you know?
And remember, I--when I was in South LA, I
grew up with blacks, I was in middle school,
Edison Middle School; it was fifty percent
black and Chicanos.
So to me, when I moved to Boyle Heights in
East LA, the Black Panthers started coming
over, I thought it was natural to have black
and brown unity, even though there were some
blacks in the Black Panthers, and some Chicanos
in the Berets, who didn’t want it, who had
prejudice, right?
That we had to fight.
So yeah, we got on the bus, and it was a couple
of weeks of--I think our first stop was Phoenix.
I think--was it Yuma or Phoenix Arizona?
And we had a stop, had dinner, held a rally
and a march, every city along the way, there
would be a rally or a march.
It was really awesome.
I would say it was an experience for me and
the rest of the Berets, because we had been
exposed to other races, other cities, other
conditions, to see that there was poor people
all over.
And there was Chicanos along the Southwest.
When we were in El Paso, Texas, my hometown,
I realized the more blatant racism of the
sheriffs, the police there.
Yelling at us, "You better stay in the Coliseum
and you guys can’t come out," being very
overly aggressive.
More so than the East LA sheriffs, they said,
"We’re angry," I told everybody "Man, we’re
in Texas, we better watch out."
But every city we had the solidarity of the
host committees; feeding us, housing us.
DC: How did that feel to sort of see so clearly
that this was bigger, that this was a bigger
movement?
CM: No, it started to show me that it was
a big movement, a big movement of poor people,
a multiracial movement, because I started
seeing Native Americans in Arizona join the
troupe.
And then, Chicanos from..campesinos, or farmers
from New Mexico joined us.
And I go "wow, this is the real thing, not
just farm workers who worked the field, but
people who actually had a small little ranch,
sheepherders and ranching, right?"
Peasants, small farmers, small ranchers who
were fighting to recover the land, to take
back the land.
Now that’s another thing I want to point
out, that in June of [19]67, Reies Tijerina
and a group of members of the Alliance of
Free City States, Alianza Federal de Mercedes,
lead a raid in Tierra Amarilla where they
went to arrest a district attorney for violating
their rights, and they resisted, so there
was a shootout.
So there was a raid on Tierra Amarilla that
was a shot, heard worldwide, and in East LA,
it made a major impact on us.
Where I politically changed, made a political
transformation, I guess you could say, that
this is not just for education stuff, police
abuse.
This is for land, this is for our nation,
this is for self-determination.
So that was a major political revolution in
our minds, of the Brown Berets.
This was for Chicano power.
This was not just for civil rights.
This is for revolution, and we started studying
the revolutionary movements in Mexico, primarily
Zapata, —and Villa, and then we started
hearing about Cuban and the Vietnamese people
made a big impact on me.
That this poor peasant economy was fighting
the US Army, the US military, and eventually
defeated it.
Right?
And that they wanted self-determination, they
wanted socialism, so we started getting influenced
by the more leftist radical examples.
The other thing that I’ll point out is that
Black Panthers were the ones that first gave
me the Red Book, Mao Tse-Tung’s little red
book.
At first we thought it was kind of cute, but
we started reading it, it sounds pretty nice,
you know?
We made a joke about it, "Mousy," because
we had nicknames in East LA.
Chicanos have nicknames for everybody, Louie,
Little Louie, and Chewie, and Freddy, and
then we said Mousy, Mousy, oh, Mao Tse-Tung,
Mousy says this.
Yeah.
[Laughter] So, but the Chinese Revolution,
we didn’t study it in depth.
The major impact to me was the Vietnamese,
the black liberation movement.
And then, stories from my mom, that my grandfather
was in the Mexican Revolution, I met my grandfather.
We would go back to Mexico every year when
we were young.
I talked to my grandfather, he showed me his
gun, his sombrero.
He had a wooden leg that he had been shot,
and they had amputated his leg, so he had
a wooden, not a whole leg, just a, what do
you call it?
A wood--.
DC: Peg leg.
CM: Peg leg.
Peg leg, peg leg, there you go.
But I could tell he was a real strong man.
So, where was I at, the transformation part?
The--so we got arrested.
DC: And so, moving across the--.
CM: We’re moving across the Poor People’s
Campaign, we get to Albuquerque, and we meet
the farm workers, the people that took over
the land, or fought for the land.
Then we get to Denver, Colorado, and we see
all the families, where the Brown Berets was
young men and women.
We get to the Crusade as well as Alianza,
where the whole family were members.
The mom, the dad, the kids were like--we liked
that, that approach, that organizational approach.
We were mostly young Chicanas, Chicanos, but
we liked that.
And then, after we left the Southwest, we
started picking up poor working class whites
and blacks at--I’m trying to remember, Missouri,
I forget what comes after Colorado.
My memory’s starting to fade a little bit,
but I remember being in Louisville, Kentucky,
we’ve--all we could remember.
The Derby, we went down to the racetrack and
marched around the racetrack.
And afterwards I said, what the hell are we
doing at a racetrack?
There’s nobody here anyway.
We were just trying different stuff.
We were young and down for something, right?
And what else did I want to, so then--
DC: Well what about some of the other personalities
that people, the other leaders from the other
communities, like Corky Gonzalez?
CM: Right, right.
Well we got to meet them, right?
You know, we got to interact.
I mean, they were in different buses, right?
And then, but once we got to DC, we really
got to meet them closely, and watch them in
action, and learn from them, and get to know
them.
Corky Gonzalez, a very respected leader from
Denver, Colorado; we found out that he had
been a boxer, a businessman.
He had been in the Democratic party, had tried
that and he gave it up.
He said, we’ve got to build our own organizations.
And had hundreds of members, whole families
were there.
And then, of course, and then of course, Tijerina,
the Alianza Federal, the farm owners.
I don’t want to use farm workers, because
they were-- they owned their little farm,
and they worked it.
And the Native Americans that came with us,
the Navajos, so, it really opened my mind
up to see that this was the wider struggle,
and then in Virginia, and Appalachia, the
poor whites, they joined us, you know?
That they were really poor, you know?
In education and jobs and housing.
So I realized that this was a struggle not
against the white man, or the honky, it was
a struggle against the system, the corporate
system, the rich people against the poor people,
but that blacks and Chicanos had a particular
demand for self-determination.
DC: So in DC, what was the scene?
CM: Every day was a big protest.
Yeah, the ones I remember were marching on
the US Supreme Court, supporting the Native
American rights for land, water, fishing,
we were--every day we supported different
issues, different struggles.
And marching up the US Supreme Court, I remember
we were marching up there with the Native
Americans leading it, and with black, Chicanos,
and whites.
And as soon as we got up to the door, or up
the stairs, we saw that the police closed
these big giant doors."
Boom!".
It was so symbolic that as soon as we got
there, they closed the big doors to the Supreme
Court, and the Native Americans started banging
on the door.
And we decided to do a sit-in, and we did
a sit-in that whole day all around the US
Supreme Court.
I remember marching on the--they used to have
the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,
where Jesse Jackson lead that march.
We were going to raise the issue of food for
poor people, food and jobs.
And the tactic, I thought, was really great,
because we all marched into the building,
and we said we’re all going to go to the
cafeteria and we’re going to get our tray
of food, and go to the cashier, and Jesse
said, "Everybody just go through and don’t
pay.
I’ll be the last one."
So we said all right, let’s do it, let’s
go, we’re going to get some food.
And then what he did at the very end, he said
we’re not going to pay as a protest to poor
people, that we demand food for all poor people
in the United States.
So it was a protest.
Civil disobedience.
So I started learning all these tactics, and
I started--we started, you know, the Brown
Berets, "wow, there’s a lot of things we
could do".
We did another march where we got attacked
by the Washington DC Police.
I forget which one, where Ernesto Vigil I
think was arrested.
And we stayed at-- every day was a different
march, and what started happening is the--I
started to see that the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, the leaders were sometimes
apprehensive of what we wanted to do.
We wanted to be more militant..[take] more
direct action.
I remember that Martin Luther King had invited
the participation of the Chicano movement,
so he could--which was the original idea of
the Rainbow Coalition, the original Rainbow
Coalition, had Chicanos, have Native Americans,
whites, and blacks.
And then, that was in February and March..
and he was assassinated [on April 4, 1968].
So remember ..that crusade.. the Brown Berets,
and Alianza did not believe in peaceful nonviolence
tactics.
I know that some of the lieutenants, like
Reverend Abernathy, were concerned about that.
But we--but he couldn’t renege on the invitation
of King, so we were in the march.
And we pushed the envelope many times, the
young people, the young Chicanos and blacks,
we started getting a little, what should I
say.. uptight, with the older leadership.
And we said, we’re going to do our own march.
So, the young people..we’re going to do
our own march.
Because there were marches every day.
So we said, "We’re going to do our own march
for youth, for young people, for education,
for jobs, for young people."
So we recruited blacks, Native Americans,
Chicanos, and we’re going to march on the
White House.
Yeah, right!
And then Abernathy and them said "No, no,
you know, don’t--what are you guys doing?
You shouldn’t do.." so they sent some of
the Chicano elders to talk to us, and they
didn’t try to talk us out of it directly,
but I knew that’s what they wanted us to
do.. [that is] not to do it.
But we did--we respectfully said we’re going
to do it.
They said OK, go do it.
We got our ass kicked.
[Laughter] We got arrested.
So we marched on the White House, we marched
on the White House, we wanted to have a meeting
with LB, was it LBJ?
Was that LBJ back then?
I forget.
[Recording stops and restarts.]
DC: Yeah.
OK, marched on the White House.
CM: We marched on the White House.
And as we got there, we got attacked.
We got outmaneuvered.
We had the White House security in the front,
I don’t know if there was White House security,
they weren’t Secret Service, they didn’t
look like [them] because they were wearing
uniforms and hats.
And then, they confronted us, but then to
the back, it was the Washington, DC police,
so they got us.
They just pushed us down, beat us up, put
our hands way up to our neck, and pain, oh
man, picked us up, and literally picked us
up and threw us in the paddy wagon.
But one thing I will note is I got abused
and hit, but I didn’t bleed.
But the young black guy was bleeding on his
head, he [the policeman] popped him in the
head.
I always noticed the difference for blacks,
they always made it worse.
And then, we had already been there for a
month and a half, two months I think.
So went to court, got bailed out, so ask me
another question.
Just a whole lot of stuff happened over there.
DC: So where were you staying?
You were staying over at--.
CM: We were at the Hawthorne, was it the Hawthorne
School?
DC: Yeah, the school.
CM: Yeah, Hawthorne School.
We were staying at Hawthorne School, that’s
where all the Chicanos and Native Americans
were staying there.
DC: And did you go down to Resurrection City?
CM: We did.
We went down to Resurrection City, we would
go down there.
We would--we didn’t stay there, you know,
and later on, when it started raining and
flooding, and getting hot, we were saying
man, good thing we didn’t stay there, because
it got flooded.
DC: Right, right.
CM: And it was really crowded, but we would
go there.
You know, we would go down there and have
meetings with the blacks and the other groups.
So we met a whole lot of different organizations.
We met Puerto Ricans, met blacks from different
organizations, different cities, whites from
the South, and Appalachia, Native Americans.
It was a major learning experience.
DC: So what do you think, I mean this might
not be an easy one to answer, but what do
you think the effects were on the Brown Berets
of having participated?
CM: Well it definitely opened up our mind;
you see there was a wider struggle, wider
struggle in the US.
Before that, we used to blame white racism
and oppression on the white man.
The white man is the enemy.
The honky, the white man, the whitey, right?
And to me, the beginning of the Poor People’s
experience and all of that changed to say
"it’s not the white man, it’s the one
percent,"[the term] that’s used nowadays,
or the corporate structure, or the rich people.
And the rich corporations is the enemy [in]
that they monopolize and they discriminate.
So, it was a major…I started seeing, I guess
you could call it, class analysis, it was
the upper class and the working class, and
that it was a wider struggle.
It wasn’t just LA or the Southwest, it was
a national struggle.
And even so that it was a worldwide struggle,
the example of the Vietnamese, Africa, Latin
America, against the US domination of their
economies, politically, and militarily.
Like in Puerto Rico or Cuba, right?
And so, it was a political transformation
for me and many of the other Brown Berets.
But I think not all the Brown Berets made
that transformation.
DC: So, and just, I just want to get the chronology
right, in terms of the East LA 13, and then
the Poor People’s Campaign.
CM: Yeah, OK.
DC: So you were indicted, and--.
CM: Well we were indicted when we were in
the Poor People’s Campaign.
We were in Washington, DC.
DC: OK.
So you were there when the indictments came
in?
CM: Right, we had a meeting, Corky Gonzalez
called us, he goes "Hey, there’s warrants
out for your arrest."
I go, "What?
For what?"
We go, "You know, for something we did here?"
"No, no, you guys got indicted."
He got a call, telegram, that back in LA,
the grand jury had indicted us, and there
was warrants out for the arrest of myself
and Ralph Ramirez, who were in DC.
And that the other people who had stayed in
LA, David Sanchez went to Arizona, he went
back, he didn’t go all the way on the trip.
And Gloria Arellanes wasn’t indicted.
Now I don’t remember how far she went on
the trip.
DC: She was in DC for about three weeks, and
then she went home.
CM: Oh, OK.
OK.
So then, the other East LA 13, their homes
or businesses were raided, and arrested.
And they went on a hunger strike, and then
they got bailed out.
There was rallies.
We were in DC, so we decided to go underground,
semi-underground.
We started taking our brown berets off, I
think I may have shaved, you know?
[Laughter] And then we were fearful for being--getting
arrested.
We knew that the Poor People’s Campaign
was being spied on by the local police and
the FBI, and we suspect that there may have
been infiltrators within the Poor People’s
Campaign.
We never proved who it was.
And--.
DC: Did you ever have infiltrators within
the Brown Berets themselves?
CM: Yes.
Yes, we did.
We did, we did, we did, yeah, yeah.
OK, so you want me to talk about that a little
bit?
No, absolutely.
No, when we--OK, so then we stayed in DC for
a while.
I think we went to New York, came back, and
then we met with Puerto Rican youth activists,
and then the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference threw us back.
They wanted to get all the militants back,
so we came back to LA, we didn’t stay in
East LA.
We stayed in Echo Park, we rented a room,
we stayed underground; we were not going to
turn ourselves in.
And what happened is one time, David Sanchez
came to visit us, and his driver, Richard
Avila, was an undercover cop, LAPD.
Yeah.
So what he did, I don’t know how he did
it, he came to see us, and then evidently
they were being followed by another cop - Sergeant
Lee Ceballos ..they’re with the public disorder
intelligence division, PDID.
So what happened, when we got in the car to
give us a ride, they stopped the car.
The sergeant, the undercover sergeant called
the regular LAPD patrol car, stopped us, and
then they stopped us.
And we’re in the backseat and we just say
don’t say nothing, don’t say nothing.
They already knew who we were.
So they go, you’re under arrest, come on,
you guys are under arrest.
Like what the hell, how the hell--we didn’t
know that the driver, Richard Avila was an
undercover cop.
He had come and joined the Brown Berets, he
said I’m from Lincoln High School.
He looked like a high school student, had
a baby face.
I’m from Lincoln, I want to join.
OK great, come on in.
And he got really close to the prime minister,
David Sanchez, and became his driver, and
his, you know, little hanging out with him.
I had noticed that after he had joined, he
would always criticize or contradict some
of the things that I would say--we would say,
you know, little things like we would say,
yeah--.
We would criticize everything about the US,
America, apple pie, oh, apple pie is American.
He would say, "Oh I like apple pie," like
we should be eating Mexican food or other
pastries.
Or the American flag, "Oh nothing wrong with
the American flag, just thirteen colonies."
Oh man.
And later on, he was a cop; he was spying
on us.
He was sent in by the public disorder intelligence
division to gather intelligence.
And then, the sheriffs also sent in another
guy called Robert Acosta.
Now him, they didn’t change his name, Robert
Acosta, his real name, where Richard Avila,
his real name was Richard Avina.
Yeah, and then what the--I don’t remember
when we discovered him, that must have been
when we got out, we came back to LA, we got
bailed out, but one time we were at the Brown
Beret office, and Hilda and Gracie Reyes,
the Brown Beret women, I’m sure Gloria talked
about them, came running, screaming to the
office, hysterical.
And I go, "What happened?
What’s going on?"
"He’s a cop, he’s a cop, Richard’s a
cop."
I go, "What are you talking about?"
They’re saying--they’re just hysterical,
screaming "Richard’s a cop."
I go, "What are you talking about, he’s
over there."
At a local popular hamburger stand, which
we always ate, on Soto and Chavez.
We--I said, "What are you talking about?
Let’s go."
So we walked over there.
And let me go see what’s going on.
I walked over there, there was four patrol
cars with four cops, all in uniform, hanging
out, and then I looked, and one of the guys
was Richard, so called Richard Avila, Richard
was in full uniform.
Just looking at us, smirking.
So to me, they were trying to blow our mind,
doing what I call psychological warfare, just
to show.
But they did it, everybody was hysterical,
in shock that this guy’s a cop, man, all
this time he was a cop.
And here he is, in full uniform, with all
these other cops.
Because they figured we’d try to kick his
ass or something.
So, they were there to protect him, and they
stuck around for a while, then they left.
So we became a little bit more paranoid, we
started doing security checks on people.
They sent in another guy to join, another
guy, Fernando Sumaya.
They used his real name.
And because we said, they’ll give you a
fake name, they’ll give you a fake address,
or fake identity, and he said he went to Calexico
High School.
So, Ralph called the school, and they go,
"Yeah he graduated from here, yeah."
So we said OK, he’s a real guy.
But he didn’t--we should have asked him,
where did you send his transcripts?
Sent his transcripts to the LAPD.
[Laughter] Anyway, but this guy, he had tattoos,
long black hair, long mustache.
He wore kind of like the barrio getup, the
ghetto clothes, but he was a cop.
But OK, so he joined, so then there were two
at the same time.
So then the other guy, Richard, transitioned
out.
Now this guy, Fernando Sumaya, he always had
a gun, and he always advocated, let’s go
shoot up, let’s go do stuff.
So he was more of a provocateur.
He would say, let’s go shoot up the Safeway
store, because they’re selling grapes, they’re
not boycotting grapes, let’s go firebomb
them.
He always wanted to do more stuff.
If anybody disagreed with the Chicano movement,
or the black movement, he’d [say], "Let’s
go shoot them, let’s go beat them up."
At first I just thought he was a militant
young tough guy, you know?
I’d go, "No, you know, we’re not going
to do that kind of stuff," you know?
But eventually, he did get a couple of guys
who had been to Vietnam, two Chicanos, Al
and Billy, Al Osevas [?], Billy Rivas, had
been to Vietnam, they were actually 82nd Airborne.
So they were down; he got them to go with
him to go firebomb Safeway.
And they got caught, and they were waiting
for them, the police.
But before that, he started some fires at
the Biltmore Hotel during an educational conference
called The Nueva Vistas Conference on Education,
where Ronald Reagan, governor, was supposed
to speak.
And Max Rafferty, Secretary of Education.
So we had had protests there, we organized
protests.
And we found out about it, because we knew
that he was against bilingual education, he
was against social programs, the governor,
Reagan.
So we had a picket line outside protesting,
we had people inside during the speakers,
and started what we called the Chicano handclap.
We started clapping, and disrupting the speeches.
And we had meetings in the rooms to plan this
stuff.
Now, Sumaya was in those meetings.
We had a meeting at East LA College with the
Brown Berets and La Viva Nueva to plan the
protest.
Fernando Sumaya was there.
So when we got to the Biltmore Hotel, there
was police there, there was firemen there,
and there was also the state police.
Because of Reagan.
Right?
So we did our protest, Fernando Sumaya, there
were several fires set in the hotel.
We don’t know who set them.
We know for a fact that he started one fire,
a small fire in a restroom.
Right?
And nobody got arrested that day.
The only people that got arrested were the
people that disrupted the speeches by getting
up during the speaking event.
And these are misdemeanors, and then they
got bailed out, right?
But it was some time later that there was
a second grand jury indictment, for conspiracy
to commit arson.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And arrested ten people.
Several Brown Berets, several professors and
students.
And the only testimony or evidence they had
was Fernando Sumaya saying these people met,
they had all these protests.
DC: The guy that started the fires.
CM: Right, right, right.
And then the first day in court, four people
had the charges dropped, boom, no evidence,
they dropped everything.
So that left six people.
So that was the Biltmore Six.
That became the famous political case, the
East LA 13 and then the Biltmore Six.
And we had our famous attorney, Oscar Zeta
Acosta, known as the Brown Buffalo, who wrote
the book, Revolt of the Cockroach People,
was our attorney.
He challenged the constitutionality of the
grand jury being discriminatory, because there
were no Chicanos in it.
And it’s a long story, but we subpoenaed
the judges to come to testify.
We had judges, we had Superior Court judges,
he was asking them, you know, how do you select
who you nominate?
And it was hilarious, the only one that knew
anybody who was Chicano was one guy, "Oh,
I nominated one, yeah."
"Well how do you know him?"
"Well he’s in my tennis club."
"What’s his name?"
"Pancho Gonzalez, the tennis star."
You know, he had nominated him to the--that
was the only one, right?
But other than that.
So, the Biltmore Six case was another famous
case, everyone was found not guilty eventually
on that case.
It went to trial.
I was the last one, and, but before I get
into that part, give me another question,
because it’s going to transition into me
leaving the country.
Well, one of the other big issues we took
on was the war in Vietnam.
Because we found out that Dr. Ralph Guzman
did a study out of UCLA, and showed that Chicanos
had a higher casualty rate in Vietnam due
to the fact that we were put in the most dangerous
positions, but higher casualty rate, in relation
to our population from the Southwest, right?
And that again blew our minds.
We said wow, so not only are we being drafted
and not going to college, we’re getting
killed in higher numbers.
So, what was popular back then was these antiwar
moratoriums.
We decided let’s do a Chicano moratorium.
I remember going to a meeting at the Brown
Beret office, and David Sanchez brought up,
let’s do a Chicano moratorium.
Now I do know that, Rosalío Muñoz will also
say that he had meetings, said let’s do
a Chicano moratorium.
So there’s going to be a debate who started
the idea of, to have a Chicano moratorium,
right?
But the first one we organized was in December
1969, we marched from Evergreen Park in Boyle
Heights to Obregon Park in East LA.
And the issue was protesting the high casualty
rate of young Chicanos, and the war in Vietnam.
And I have a couple of photos, I think as
a matter of fact, I don’t know if we can
transition, there’s a couple of photos on
the wall there of that march.
In December of [19]69.
DC: We’ll take a look at those at the end,
I think.
CM: Yeah, OK.
And it was a couple thousand people, we had
a rally, and that was politically creating
a lot of awareness for us in the community.
Because prior to that, they were trying to
stereotype that Chicanos were all pro-war,
or Chicanos were pro-military.
And we had a long history of being in the
military, and there was a book called Among
the Valiant by a Marine about the Congressional
Medal of Honor that Chicanos had won.
So, we said some of that may be true, but
in this case, you know, we’re saying no.
You know, we’re saying, we’re challenging.
So we met a lot of resistance from groups.
Veterans groups, community groups.
But little by little, we were able to popularize
that we were being targeted by the draft,
and that we were being put in dangerous front
line positions in higher numbers.
DC: And did you get support from other antiwar
folks?
CM: Yes.
From the antiwar movement we did, and the
black movement, yes.
So we did the December protest, and then we
did a March one, March 1970.
And then the big one was August 29, 1970 where
people estimate at least 30,000 people marching
down Whittier Boulevard, saying "Raza si,
Guerra no."
In that big march, with the peaceful rally
at Laguna Park, now called Salazar Park, was
attacked by the LAPD and the sheriffs.
And now we know now that the La Opinion reporter,
Isaias Alvarado, three years ago, filed a
Freedom of Information on Sal Castro, and
he found out that the FBI was working with
local police, doing intelligence gathering,
even before the walkouts, and before the moratorium.
It showed that their concern was that the
Chicanos would get together with the blacks
and start challenging the movement, the war
in Vietnam.
So this was--now who was president at that
time?
OK, you’re talking [19]69 now.
OK, because Nixon--no, not Nixon.
Johnson decided not to run, right?
Sixty-eight.
DC: Nixon was elected in [19]68.
CM: So Nixon got elected.
So here we are in [19]69 and [19]70, it’s
already Nixon.
So yeah, so it was Nixon, Hoover, FBI.
There’s tons of files that this reporter
got, I don’t know if you’re interested
in that, that showed that the FBI was working
with local police, intelligence-gathering,
that they knew they were ready; they had full
force of LAPD and sheriffs on August 29th.
And they provoked an incident, and they attacked
a peaceful rally.
It was a peaceful rally, they had folklorico
dances, they attacked it brutally with tear
gas and batons.
It created a whole rebellion that day.
And that day, Ruben Salazar, who was the youth
director for the news station, KMS TV station,
was on the ground with a cameraman, covering
that whole event.
He had also written a series of articles for
LA Times, critical of police abuse, immigration
abuse, Chicano identity, he interviewed me
and David, and Ralph, and he wrote about us.
And I remember talking to him, and he would
say--he would listen to us, sympathetic, but
I remember one time he told me, but Carlos,
the system works.
The system works.
He kind of said the system works.
I said, no we want a revolution; we want a
new system.
By that time we were already saying forget
it, you know?
We needed a revolution, and we want Chicano
power.
But he was killed by the sheriffs that day,
as well as Lyn Ward and Angel Diaz.
But there was a whole rebellion.
So, back up.
We didn’t find out until La Opinion got
those files that the sheriff, LAPD, now this
is sheriff territory, but they had the LAPD
there in full force, in my view, ready to
disrupt and attack us, and destroy that antiwar
movement.
And they did, because they killed Ruben, they
disrupted the movement, so by--after that,
the movement became defensive.
They arrested Corky Gonzalez.
They tear gassed the whole neighborhood.
Have you ever seen some of those news clippings
on that?
Or, August 29, [inaudible] 29.
But by the end of 1969, I had already been
arrested almost a dozen times.
Not only the grand jury indictments, but just
arrests.
You know, harassment arrests for being a Brown
Beret, a Brown Beret leader.
I was the Minister of Information, I forgot
to mention that.
You know, for some reason, I was--when I was
at the Garfield High School walkouts, the
reporters were running around, trying to interview
people, and nobody would interview them.
Then they saw me with the beret, and, "We
want to interview you, are you one of the
leaders?"
I go, "No, I’m not a leader."
And they said, "Well we want to talk to a
leader."
I said, "Well I’ll talk to you, but you
know," so they interviewed me, right?
So when I got back to the Brown Beret office,
La Piranha Coffeehouse, David confronted me,
said, "Well what are you doing interviewing?"
"Yeah, well they wanted to do something.
We can’t just let them not do an interview."
Anyway, I was made the Minister of Information
after that.
I was just--so then I was supposed to speak
at the rallies, antiwar rallies, press conferences,
so I started being very visible, and getting
arrested and harassed.
Another major struggle in [19]68, [19]69 was
at East LA College, I was still in La Vida
Nueva.
I had one foot there and then the other foot
in the Brown Berets.
We lead a student strike for ethnic studies.
Black studies and Chicano studies.
And it was La Vida Nueva, Black Student Union.
It took days and weeks, but the final day,
when we shut down the college, the administration
called the sheriffs, and the sheriffs came
on campus with a whole line-up of police and
beat and arrested people.
And disrupted the strike.
And then, I went home, got in my car with
my family and friends, and they followed me
and arrested me.
And they accused me of assault and battery
on a cop.
I went to trial on that.
I was also at a rally at a college, I think
it was Mount San Antonio College, where I
got arrested there.
They said I had a gun.
I was found not guilty.
During the times that I was in jail, the--I
got beat up twice.
Well, actually, once in the jail and once
in the street.
LAPD stopped me one time, and provoked me.
They handcuffed me, started pushing me around,
and I made the mistake of saying hey, well,
take the cuffs off.
I was like, "All right, take them off, come
on."
And then they started hitting me, and I go,
"Oh shit, they’re going to kick the shit
out of me," right?
Well they did, you know?
But I didn’t fight back, because the other
guy was sitting there with a billy club, ready
like this, you know?
I had been arrested in the, I think it was,
I lost track of which arrest.
In the county jail, they took me into a day
room and started beating me up.
That time, I fought back.
I said well, I’m already getting beat up,
so I might as well fight back.
But inside the jail, they had gloves, and
they didn’t have the billy clubs, because
they didn’t have--yeah, so the other thing
I wanted to point out, so I’m getting all
these arrests, right?
The East LA 13, the assault and battery on
the cop, the Biltmore Six case, so I’m getting
bailed out, and going to court on all these
cases.
Right?
The first time we go to court it was the Biltmore
Six, well, actually for the arraignment, where
they’re going to give testimony to see if
there’s enough evidence to hold us for trial.
Not the first one, because the first one,
four people got cut loose.
They had Fernando Sumaya there as a witness,
the undercover cop.
OK?
So we’re in the hall of injustice, we call
it the old--the building where the Manson
trial took place, where the Sleepy Lagoon
case took place.
Historic place, right?
An old building.
So I go in there.
The--I think Gloria was there, I don’t know
if you talked about that.
Gloria was there, and the Brown Beret women
were there.
Lorraine Escalante was there, other Brown
Berets were there, Fernando Sumaya’s going
to testify.
"Damn, we’ve got to be there."
I had a little job and I had a briefcase,
because my students--.
So I walk in with my briefcase, and I sit
down.
Sergeant Abel Armas who was part of the intelligence
group, sits next to me and looks at me.
Then he opens up his coat, he had a big giant
revolver, and he puts his hand--and he looks
at me like that.
I go "Fuck," and I’m looking at him like
"oh shit."
And then Fernando Sumaya’s up there, and
I go, "What the hell is going on here?"
So I’m sitting there, and then I go, "Oh
shit, I’d better call my job," seeing as
how I’m not going to be there, right?
I had a little job.
So I go out to the lobby, to the phone booth,
and I dial and [was] talking, "Hey, you know
what, I’ve got to be in court.
I can’t go to work today, I’ll be late."
And you know, the old fashioned telephone
booths?
So all of the sudden I hear this noise, and
somebody pushing on the door.
And it’s Abel Armas, big tall Chicano, husky
guy, with a couple other suits and sheriffs
with him.
And they start pushing, and I’m caught,
and I go like this, and I try to like--what’s--and
then it’s like, anyway, they busted the
door.
And they pushed my legs open, they busted
the door open, they dragged me out.
And I’m here on the phone.
The guy had heard what happened, they go--because
later on I had him go to court to testify
that I had called him.
They dragged me out, and check this out.
They grab my briefcase, and one of the other
cops pulls a gun.
DC: Oh.
CM: And he’s going to--about to go like
this, but then the Brown Beret women, Andrea
and Lorraine, "He’s got a gun, he’s got
a gun!"
And he put it back.
DC: Wow.
CM: Yeah, so they arrested me anyway for resisting
arrest.
But they were trying to plant a gun on me,
so they arrested me.
And then they took me in the back of the lobby,
and oh, and Lorraine Escalante got arrested
too, for trying to protect me or help me out.
So we’re sitting there like this, and Armas
and Sumaya come out and started making jokes.
Oh you guys, making fun of us.
I said "Look, we’re arrested, here, just
take us wherever you’ve got to take us so
we can get bailed out," you know?
I don’t know whether they thought I was
going to try to do something to Sumaya, or
they were trying to entrap me, or provoke
me, because they had--that was their style,
entrapment.
Because I mentioned earlier that Sumaya had
gotten two of those Airborne guys arrested
at a firebombing of a Safeway station.
And he was always advocating let’s go shoot
up the windows.
Or people who were criticizing within the
Chicano movement, "Oh let’s go shoot them
up," right?
So anyway, I got arrested for resisting arrest,
right, and later on I had to go to court.
I had that, the guy that I called, "He called
me up and I heard all this loud noise," but
I still got convicted, resisting arrest.
So the--it was Sergeant Lee Ceballos that
told me, "Carlos, you’re going to be dead,
you’re going to be killed, or you’re going
to spend the rest of your life in jail."
So this is what I was going through in [19]69,
right?
Arrests, bailout, go in and getting beat up.
I couldn’t even organize anymore.
I talked to Oscar Acosta, I go look, they’re
after you.
I don’t know what’s going to happen.
So, to make a long story short, I said, "I’m
out of here, I’m leaving the country.
I’m going to go on the lam," as they say
in the movies.
Or go underground, go underground.
So I did.
I did.
In January 1970, I left the country with my
girlfriend.
wife, Olivia.
And we went to live in Mexico.
We were trying to get to Cuba, we never got
there; we got to Yucatan.
And [we] stayed there, working for a year,
ended up coming back to Juarez, and lived
in Juarez.
And I got a job in El Paso, working in a warehouse.
And then I got a job as a carpenter apprentice.
I was active in the carpenters’ union, and
then in [19]72, there was a major garment
strike; 5,000 Chicanos went out on strike
for union recognition at FADA manufacturing
plant.
It was a major strike.
And we got involved in there.
We set up worker centers.
We started doing labor organizing.
But undercover, and immigrant rights organizing,
solidarity with Mexico and El Paso.
And then also in [19]72, they had the convention
of--the El Partido de la Raza Unida party
had a big convention.
We were there, but we were way up in the bleachers
of the El Paso Coliseum.
Because we didn’t want to go down there,
all the folks we knew were there.
So we lived underground for seven years, you
know, we were involved in--.
DC: How many years?
CM: Pardon me?
DC: How many years?
CM: Seven years, from [19]70 to [19]77, we
lived in El Paso.
We got--we had a house, I had two children,
all under anonymous names, or assumed names.
Or what do you call it, anonymous names, or
fake names, right?
DC: Yeah.
CM: Yeah, and--.
DC: And when had you gotten married?
CM: Oh, we got married in January [19]70.
DC: OK.
CM: Because the way we did it, we wanted to
have like a party to say goodbye to everybody,
but we couldn’t do that, because then they’d
know we were going to jump bail.
So we had--let’s get married.
So we got married in the backyard--no, in
the living room with Father Luce, and then
we had a party in the back with my ex-wife’s
cousin had a band.
And we had a party, and everybody was there.
The Berets, different people, hi, how are
you doing.
A couple days later, bam, we left the country.
We left the country, left for seven years,
stayed active, we--during the FADA strike.
It was a national strike for--especially in
the right, so-called right to work states;
I’d rather call it anti-union state.
Yeah, what happened, the New Left sent people
to organize.
All the different left groups from the new
left sent organizers to help.
So I got exposed to all the different groups.
Are you familiar with the term the New Left?
DC: Yes, yeah.
CM: All right.
There’s a couple books written on it, I
think The Revolution in the Air, maybe.
Have you read that book?
DC: Yeah.
CM: OK.
CREW: Let me pause for a second.
[break in audio]
DC: OK, so underground through 1977.
So come back.
[Laughter]
CM: Right, so I lived underground in EL Paso,
Texas.
I eventually moved to El Paso, Texas.
I was a garment worker, a steel worker, a
carpenter, organizing.
My wife was organizing too, had a workers
center.
So.
DC: Were you able to keep in touch?
CM: No, no.
DC: Quietly?
Not at all?
CM: No, we couldn’t be in touch with anybody,
because we were paranoid of all the undercover
cops, of getting arrested.
DC: So did you have any idea what was happening
with the Brown Berets, or?
CM: We would see the news, and keep up with
the news.
Now Texas, El Paso, doesn’t get a lot of
good news, it’s kind of backwards, in terms
of media.
So we don’t--we wouldn’t get everything.
But we heard about Ruben Salazar getting killed,
and actually that one--when that happened,
we were in Mexico City--front page of all
the Mexico City newspapers.
Ruben had been a correspondent in Mexico City.
But anyway, I’m getting off--the major question
is that we stayed in El Paso, had a son and
daughter, all named--born under assumed names,
what’s the proper terminology?
DC: That’s it, that’s right, assumed names.
CM: Assumed.
And we were doing fine.
We had a good life.
I had my truck.
I’d go hunting coyotes on the weekends.
[Laughter] Had our activism, let’s see,
[19]77.
OK, so [19]77, it had been seven years.
We should be able to go back and visit, and
come back.
So, we came in May of [19]77, we visited my
sister and her husband in the ----------, everything
was OK a day or two.
Then we came to Monterey Park, visited my
wife’s cousin, it was like a family reunion.
And we were going to go out to dinner that
night.
But the sheriffs--no, excuse me, not the sheriffs,
the police raid the house.
It was the Monterey Park police, and they
had their whole outfits.
Bulletproof vests with their rifles, dogs,
and LAPD.
There was another sergeant, Lee Castroita
[?], who was part of the group.
And they raided the house, and there was no
way to get out, they come in there with guns,
put me up against the wall: "You’re under
arrest."
I go "Oh, shit."
Like shock, going back.
I felt like living in the womb in El Paso,
Texas.
We were back in my hometown, Juarez, El Paso.
So anyway, what started was a two-year battle,
justice for Carlos Montes, had a defense committee,
community activist group, we fought it for
two years, I was found not guilty of all charges.
DC: Now were you out on bail during that time,
or were you--.
CM: Yes.
No, well after a month I got out on bail.
But the cops, the DA and the cops said, "Don’t
let him out, he’s going to run again.
He ran once, he’s going to run again."
I said "No, I won’t run."
[I] put up my mother-in-law’s house as collateral.
So I got bailed out.
I had a committee, we went to trial in November
of [19]79, I was found not guilty, jury trial.
It was me and Fernando Sumaya.
I was the last one of the Biltmore cases.
DC: Oh, so that was still on the Biltmore
charges, that’s what that was.
CM: Yeah.
That was--yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah, yeah, OK, because all the other–yeah,
all the other charges were the East LA 13
walkout [which] was thrown out in court as
being unconstitutional.
that we had a right to protest the school
district.
The other charges, you know, I had beat the
gun charge, I had the one resisting arrest;
it was a small misdemeanor.
Oh, the only one they still had me on was
assault and battery on a cop at East LA College.
That one, they said I had gone to trial, I
had been convicted of a felony, and I said
"No, it was a misdemeanor."
It was--they accused me of throwing him a
can, yeah, and he wasn’t even hurt.
But on the Biltmore case, I was found not
guilty.
But then they wanted me to go back on the
East LA College case.
I went to that one, and they gave me like,
probation.
Gave me probation and a $1,000 fine.
I remember saying, "$1,000 fine?"
And they--the attorney said, "Be quiet, man,
you ought to be glad you’re not in jail."
So then, I went back to--so then it was, by
then I was living in LA, and being active
in community organizing in LA.
So in the [19]80s, I got a job with United
Way.
I was an organizer in the community.
I went back with CSO, Community Service Organization,
I got involved in the Jesse Jackson campaign
in [19]84.
We got involved in immigrant rights movement,
pushing for immigration reform.
So the ’80s was about rebuilding the family,
being back in LA, reestablishing my roots.
In the ’90s, we got into the antiwar movement,
the war in Iraq, we did the twenty-year anniversary
of the Chicano moratorium in 1990, we had
a big march, 5,000 people.
For 1990, that’s a big march.
And.. but ask me some questions.
DC: So you kept at it.
And you--how did you support yourself during
that?
CM: I got a job, I got a job.
I worked full-time.
I worked for United Way as an outreach worker.
I worked as a job developer for the Mexican
American Opportunity Foundation.
I tried to get a job with progressive nonprofits,
but I was still kind of too hot.
Here’s Carlos Montes, seven years later
coming back, you know?
Conspiracy to commit arson, the whole case.
And we put on a free political prisoner campaign,
you know?
We supported Leonard Peltier, Native Americans
who were political prisoners, so we raised
the whole issue of free political prisoners.
A lot of people wouldn’t hire me, because
I was still too hot, yeah, too radical.
Too militant.
And by seven years later, some folks had given
up on the movement.
What--oh, what I did forget--.
DC: What happened with the Brown Berets?
CM: Well, the repression, the counterintelligence
program, the FBI working with local police
to infiltrate and disrupt the Black Panthers,
the Brown Berets, militant organizations,
worked to a certain extent--that many organizations
were disrupted and destroyed.
People were sent to prison, killed, or jailed,
or went underground to Canada and Mexico,
like myself.
Other folks were coopted by jobs, the War
on Poverty program.
Other people got into electoral politics,
other people got into electoral, excuse me,
labor organizing.
There was a segment of the movement though
that got into the New Left.
And not only the white, the black, and Chicanos
got into the new left, and started looking
at socialism and organizing the working people
to continue the struggle.
But, the counterintelligence program, the
COINTELPRO, was a major disruptive force,
the Brown Berets were disrupted, and disbanded
in 1972.
I was in El Paso, Texas, the Black Panthers
were destroyed, as well as other movements.
And ask me a question.
DC: OK.
So back to, so your working life, and finding
it.
CM: Well right--.
DC: Difficult to find employment [inaudible].
CM: Difficult to find employment, even though
some of the unions were too afraid of me.
I was too radical.
So, an old Brown Beret friend of mine, Richard
Diaz, who was my buddy, my homeboy, my best
buddy, I went to high school with him, we
cruised, he’s the one that the police said
I could take the billy club.
He said hey, come to work for Xerox.
He was a sales rep, and I go no, no, I’m
not going to work for a corporation.
I worked for MAOF, Mexican American Op, as
a job developer, finding jobs for ex-offenders.
And he kept at it, it took him a year, he
finally convinced me, "Look, you can make
good money.
You’re always out in the field, outside,
you don’t like to be locked up in an office,
and you’re talking to people.
I can get you in" --because he became a manager.
So he got me in.
I was still finishing probation from the old
case, right?
So he got me in.
It was kind of funny.
I was kind of the oddball, because all these
young business [school] people from USC, UCLA,
and I was this old Chicano guy coming in here.
I had a beard, I didn’t know how to dress
in a suit.
One time I walked in wearing a short sleeve
shirt, they made fun of me: "You don’t wear
a short sleeve shirt, you’ve got to wear
a long sleeve shirt."
No polyester suits, of course.
I had to learn that right away.
So I became--I learned that it was a lot of
fun, because you’re out there talking to
people--we’re selling copiers.
So, yeah, I learned how to do it, I started
making a little money, had my kids in school,
bought a house, so I built my family.
My wife got a job.
DC: Meanwhile you had plenty of issues to
keep working on.
CM: Yeah, yeah.
We started, continued the issues.
We tried electoral politics with the Jackson
campaign, [19]84, [19]88.
We did the community service organization,
and the [19]80s was immigration reform.
During the Reagan era [when] he became president,
the immigration reform, Naturalization Act,
and then the solidarity movement, Central
America, we did a little bit of that with
the committee in solidarity with El Salvador.
Not heavily involved in it, but supportive
of it.
And then, there was another thing I mentioned,
we did the twenty year anniversary of the
Chicano moratorium.
It was a way to rejuvenate the Chicano movement.
We had 5,000 people marching.
We brought up similar issues: the war in Iraq,
the first invasion of Iraq was coming up.
We opposed that.
And the ’90s, I forget what happened in
the ’90s.
Remind me of some, or ask me a question.
Let’s see.
Raising our children, going to high school.
Yeah I was active in CSO, Community Service
Organization.
So we did, we took, oh yeah, the Nineties,
[19]93, [19]94, we formed the Rainbow Coalition
for Justice.
There was several young Chicanos killed by
the sheriff.
One was shot in the back, young teenager.
They shot him through the back and the bullets
came through his mouth; they busted out his
teeth, and there was also some blacks killed.
So we had the Rainbow Coalition for Justice
on the issue of police brutality, [19]93,
[19]94.
There was a scandal with the LA County sheriffs;
they had the Vikings gang within the sheriffs
that were doing hits on people.
So the big scandal on it--there was a big
investigation.
So we’re part of the issue of police brutality,
trying to get reform through the system, and
Sacramento.
DC: This is an issue that had been in existence
forever.
CM: It’s in existence in the ’60s; it’s
in existence today.
Today we’re still fighting--Edwin Rodrigo
was killed by the sheriffs, shot seventeen
times on February the 14th.
We’re fighting with that case today.
So in the ’90s we took up the issue of police
brutality.
Oh yeah, Angel--no, excuse me, not, it was
Angel Ortiz here, and then Smokey Jimenez,
killed by the LAPD in Ramona Gardens by the
sheriff that came out of the jurisdiction
East LA, came into city territory.
So there was a rebellion there, so we combined
those two cases and did the Rainbow Coalition
for Justice in the ’90s, yeah.
DC: And in the ’90s too, there was sort
of a youth movement, right?
I mean there was--I guess you’ve probably
seen waves of younger people join at certain
times.
CM: That’s true, that was true.
There was young Latino, Chicano youth movements
that came through.
Identifying more with indigenous culture,
and then graduating from college, and raising
the issue of affirmative action was always
there, college admission, ethnic studies,
that was always an ongoing struggle.
DC: Great.
So ’90s into the 2000s, and we can even
jump to where we are right now.
CM: Yeah, the 2000s was a major upsurge in
the immigrant rights movement.
Due to the effect of NAFTA in [19]94, and
of course, the other part was, how can I forget
the solidarity with the movement in Mexico,
the Zapatista movement, all in the late [19]90s.
We went to Mexico--my daughter went to the
Zapatista territory, by then my daughter and
my son are in their twenties, they’re activists
on their own.
That whole-- the demographics in LA and the
Southwest changed dramatically.
We have millions of newer immigrants that
are displaced from the poverty and violence
in Mexico and Central America coming to live
in the United States.
That creates a whole wave of organizing for
immigrant rights.
They suffer the issues of police brutality,
immigration abuse.
So then in the 2000s, we get into the mega
marches.
Of--we organized those.
I was proud to say I was part of organizing
the mega marches in 2006.
We were on the ground at 8:00 a.m. with--by
that time, I was working with a union, SCIU,
I transitioned out of the corporation and
I got into--did a career change.
By that time I said OK, I’ll work for a
union, a progressive union, SCIU, the county
workers union, I was an organizer.
And we were part of a coalition to--for immigration
reform.
We went to a convention in February at the
Riverside Convention Center, where united
immigrant rights activists from throughout
the United States, primarily Chicano.
And we said we’re going to have big marches
in March, against the Sensenbrenner Bill,
which was a bill that would criminalize being
undocumented in the United States.
It had passed in December of 2005.
So then we call for massive marches in March
of 2006.
Chicago has almost half a million people marching
on March the 10th.
So when we hear about that, we go wow, we--that
means Chicago can do 400, half a million people,
we’re going to have to up it.
So we did it in March 25th though, we needed
a little bit more time, right?
March 25th, the 25th, that was the 25th, 26th,
27th, that was a Saturday, yeah.
Downtown, Olympic and Broadway, we got there
at eight o’clock in the morning with a delegation
of members from SEIU [Service Employees International
Union], healthcare workers, and it was already
packed.
Olympic and Broadway was bodies, bumper to
bumper bodies.
We wiggled our way down to Broadway, and looked
up Broadway, Broadway was already full..a
sea of people from Broadway all the way down
to City Hall.
We had to take Spring Street to the east of
it to be able to walk up.
So then, and what we had noticed is hundreds
and hundreds, if not thousands of people,
had been using the train, the bus, walking,
when we were driving to the beginning side
-- families, you could see the whole family,
the grandparents, the parents, the kids marching,
getting to the starting side.
Now that was on March 25th, 2006, the big
mega marches, and then on the march--.
DC: Take me into your emotional reaction,
having worked in all of these causes for so
long, and to see something like that.
CM: Yeah, yeah, it was exhilarating.
I mean it takes--always exhilarating, exciting
to be in a march.
But to see a sea of people and you see the
whole LA Civic Center was inundated with Chicano,
newer Mexican immigrants, Central Americans,
the whole city was inundated.
The freeways were full, the metros were full,
the buses were at a standstill.
It was like it was a major takeover downtown
civic center, that the police weren’t even
ready for.
If we had taken on a rebellion, it would have
been a rebellion, but it was a march.
And the demand was stop the criminalization
of immigrants, which we won.
The bill was withdrawn, or--and the, on Monday,
March the 27th, the students walked out.
Forty thousand students, according to the
media, walked out all over the state of California.
And marched on city halls.
So, Monday morning, we were at the union office.
We got the call, let’s go down and help
the students, right?
I was able to get on the radio station with
that number one Spanish language station,
Piolin [broadcaster Eddie Sotelo’s broadcast,
El Show de Piolin] by, because what happened,
how did it happen?
They were talking about it, and then oh yeah,
in early March, the movie, the HBO movie had
come out on the walkouts.
There you go, that’s why I’m bringing
this all up.
The original walkouts, it took them years
to come up with a movie.
HBO movie finally produced them; it came out
in early March.
So it became very popular, even though it
was on HBO, it was, within the Chicano community,
everybody’s watching the movie.
"Walkout, walkout, walkout."
So I have a strong position that that helped
the walkouts of the students in 2006.
DC: You’re portrayed in the movie, right?
CM: And I’m portrayed in the movie, that’s
true.
And so, what happened [was] I called the radio
station, I said, "Look, the students are walking
out, you know, the movie," and then, "Who
are you?"
"Well, I’m Carlos Montes, I’m in the Walkout,
you know?"
"Oh, you’re that guy?
Yeah, yeah."
And he goes, "Can you put us in touch with
El Pachuco, or James Edward Olmos?"
I go, "Yeah, well I’ll call the producer
of the movie, Moctesuma Esparza, and he can
get a hold of him."
He wanted to put us on the air live.
I said, "OK, so I’m going to call Moctesuma,"
he called James Edward Olmos, and then we
called in the station, they interviewed us.
Monday morning, the 27th, during the student
walkouts of--throughout the whole state.
I call for continued walkouts.
They asked us, they asked each one of us,
what do you think?
Edward Olmos goes, "Oh, they made their point,
they should go back to school."
I said, "Come on, man."
And then Moctesuma was a little bit like,
"Well, you know, it’s a good history, you
know," and I was saying, "Walkout!
Walkout!"
. I kept ... since I was on the radio, I kept
telling everybody in Spanish, huelga, huelga,
salgan a las huelgas [Go on strike].
And then--so that was great.
Now to us, it was exhilarating having the
students use that tactic that we used back
in [19]68.
But Saturday, on the 25th, to see that massive
rally, the whole city hall was surrounded.
Have you seen some of those pictures?
You see the whole sea of people up and down
Broadway, First Street, and even Spring.
We barely were able to walk up Spring.
And then--.
DC: [Inaudible.]
CM: Yeah, yeah, that was--and then there was
marches all up and down, all over the country
that started.
And then we did a Mayday.
Mayday we took two mega marches..one downtown
and one down on Wilshire.
Massive.
Massive.
So to us, it’s saying the movement is back,
and the newer immigrants that have come to
the community are building the movement.
They’re--the newer immigrants, the adults
that are coming, they have the identity culture
as being Mexican, Central American, but their
children are being part of the Chicano experience,
being bilingual, seeing the racism, the crowded
schools, the police brutality, what I went
through.
DC: Sure.
CM: And that helped create a whole student
movement, La Vida Nueva, United Mexican American
Students, because MEChA, Movimiento Estudiantil
Chicanx de Aztlán, MEChA’s all over the
colleges.
All over the US.
Immigrant rights organizations all over the
US, that still exist today, that are still
fighting for immigration reform.
DC: Do you have--I’m sorry.
CM: No, I was going to say, and every May
Day we go out and march.
We did a Mayday march and rally in Boyle Heights,
the Community Service Organization, which
I organize with, with the Boyle Heights Neighborhood
Council.
We did a May Day march in Boyle Heights.
From 2006 to, let’s see, [20]14, we kept
doing the big mega marches downtown.
Of course they got smaller and smaller, we
weren’t able to keep up, you know, the mega
marches, right?
DC: Right.
CM: So now we do them in Boyle Heights.
And what--the other thing is that the 2000
period, there was a second invasion of Iraq,
right?
So, we continued that--we formed a group called
Latinos Contra la Guerra where we got families
and students involved in opposition to the
war in Iraq.
We marched down Whittier Boulevard in 2003.
I think it’s important to point that out,
we took the same route from Belvedere Park
to Salazar Park, and held a march and rally.
DC: The same route as the moratorium?
CM: Yes.
DC: Yeah.
CM: Yes, but on the issue of the second invasion
of Iraq, in Latinos Contra la Guerra and then,
what we did though, we integrated the local
issues, we want schools, not a war.
We want education, not war.
So that was the other part of the 2000s, besides
immigration.
The war issues and taking on international
issues, solidarity with Mexico, solidarity
with struggles in Colombia, the Plan Colombia.
We tried to fight the whole epidemic of the
crack and cocaine invasion.
But we saw the link of Plan Colombia, that
the Clinton administration was pumping a billion
dollars into the Colombian government military,
against really its own people.
But I’m kind of going off a little bit.
Ask me a question, so I can bring it back.
DC: No, I was going to ask you, you’re--obviously
I mean your activism, you continued your activism,
but I was going to ask you if the harassment
against you also continued.
CM: Right.
Well, you know what?
Due to my solidarity, I’m glad you asked
that question.
[Laughter] Because due to my--I’ve been
to Colombia twice, right?
I have friends that are active in the antiwar
movement, through an organization called the
Antiwar Committee, Fight Back News, Colombia
Action Network, Palestine Solidarity Organization.
And what we do, we do trips to Palestine,
Colombia, and Mexico, and we come back and
we educate people what we’ve seen.
We denounce what I consider human rights violations
that are perpetrated or supported by funding
from Plan Colombia, especially in Colombia.
I met with the Coca-Cola workers in Colombia
who were trying to organize a union and they’re
being kidnapped and assassinated - Afro-colombianos
who are being displaced from their land, human
rights activists that are being killed in
Colombia.
So, when I came back to the US, I did a speaking
tour to denounce Plan Colombia, the US government
role in supporting the Uribe..repressive government
of Alvaro Uribe, and the military apparatus
of spying on its own people, using the money
to give rewards to the military for what they
called, I forget the Spanish word, but false
killings.
They would kidnap people, peasants, and then
dress them in guerilla outfits, and they would
kill them to bring up their numbers, and get
rewards.
That was all documented.
But some of my activist friends had been to
Palestine, so this network of activists, through
Fight Back News, Palestine Solidarity Group,
Colombia Action Network, and the Antiwar Committee,
and also the Freedom Road Socialist Organization,
we were raided.
Now let me make sure I get the year right,
2010; twenty-three people, twenty-two people
were raided, 2010, from Chicago, to Minneapolis,
to one guy in San Jose, by the FBI.
They were raided, but they weren’t arrested.
It was called the--they were raided by the
FBI, and what they did is that they had warrants
to search their phones or computers, and all
their files.
Right?
And the issue, the warrant, was looking for--it’s
a long warrant, but the main part was investigation
for providing material support to the PFLP,
and the FARC – PFLP [is] the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine], the Palestinian
group.
And then the FARC is Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
de Colombia right?
Nobody was arrested, but they took all their
files.
In one case, Joe and Stephanie Iosbaker, they
[the FBI] were there like, all day long taking
out boxes, boxes.
Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American activist
in Chicago, [they] raided his house.
Mick Kelly, Jess Sundin [Colombia Action Network].
So, what we did, we started the Stop the FBI
Committee [Committee to Stop FBI Represssion],
and we fought back, right?.. that was .. and
say, this is harassment.
Our theme or slogan was "Solidarity is not
a crime."
We’re antiwar activists, we’re in solidarity
with Palestine and Colombia, but there’s
no proof -- and you would have arrested us
if there was any proof – [of us] providing
material support.
And what does material support mean to them,
you know?
So no one was arrested, just investigation.
Ongoing investigation, ongoing investigation.
We go to marches, demos, we formed the--now
in my case, 2011, in May, my house was raided
by the sheriff’s SWAT team and the FBI,
on similar allegations of providing material
support to the FARC and the PFLP.
Now the excuse they used to raid my house
and arrest me is that I had a felony conviction
from 1969, from the student strike for Chicano
studies at East LA College, right?
So that was part of the probable cause.
Because I had purchased guns legally through
the--at the local hardware, not hardware store,
sporting goods store.
So I did have guns, but they were registered
guns.
But they used that as an excuse, saying you’re
a felon from [19]69, you can’t have these
guns.
So they arrested me, and I had to go to trial,
but what they did actually, they broke down
the house at five o’clock in the morning.
There was literally the sheriff’s SWAT team.
I was in bed asleep, in the back bedroom.
All I heard was a loud crash.
I jumped out of bed, yelling, "Who is it,
who is it?"
All I see [are] these lights with these little
rifles, not little rifles, rifles with the
little lights on top.
And the helmets, and the bulletproof vests.
Then, I jumped out of bed, I was like, "Who
is it?"
"Police, police, Carlos Montes," like "Oh
shit, what the hell’s going on," I said.
It was shocking.
They arrested me.
I was in jail for a few days.
My family bailed me out.
We formed a committee, Free Carlos Montes
Committee, part of the Fight Back News, part
of the Stop FBI Coalition.
And after a year, I was found not guilty.
I--well, hang on.
Back that, back that.
The--when I went to court, the charges started
getting dropped.
I had six felonies against me.
I forget what they all were.
Felon with a gun, or buying guns, so they
started dropping some of the charges, I had
three left.
So, we went to court, and we did a full campaign,
call the DA’s office, petitions, every time
we would go to court.
We would pack the courtroom, drop the charges,
we did petitions to Obama, take to Eric Holder,
because we know it was linked to the investigation
into our antiwar activities.
What we finally did is did a campaign of the
local DA by calling--.
DC: They had taken your files too, right?
CM: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they took my files,
photographs, computers, cell phones, all the
memory cards and everything.
And we had a defense committee--offense committee.
So, we packed the courtroom, we jammed the
district attorney’s office by calling his
phone, [saying] "drop the charges, drop the
charges."
Finally, they said OK; they got tired of it.
They go, "What do you want, what do you want?"
"Well, drop the charges."
"Oh no, we’re not going to drop the charges."
They wanted me to do time in jail.
Like plead guilty to something and we’ll
drop the charges, do a year or two, I said
no, I’m not going to do no jail.
So we went back and forth, went back and forth.
Finally they said, "Look, we’ll drop everything,
plead to something."
And they still wanted me to do jail, and I
said, "No, no, I’m not."
I told my attorney, "Let’s go to trial.
Let’s go to trial."
But they said, "Look, you go to trial, you
could win, you could lose, you never know.
No guarantees."
So in the end they said, "OK, look, plead
to something, we’ll give you probation."
They wanted five years’ probation.
I’m like no, that’s too long.
Something’s going to happen.
They said OK, three years probation.
So, I pleaded guilty to one count, I forget
what the heck it was.
We kept debating whether it was a felony or
a misdemeanor, you know, they had evidence
that it was a felony; we had evidence that
it was a misdemeanor.
I pleaded guilty to buying a gun, I think,
as a--that I should have told, that I should
have said I had been a felon in 1969, knowing--.
So I went to court, and then they gave me
three years probation, they dropped all the
charges, and I was able to go back to organizing.
About a year and a half, two years later,
I went back to court and filed a motion to
have that dropped.
The DA objected to it, jumped all over, "No,
no, *-*you said three years."
I said, "No, I never said, that’s what you
said ..three years."
So the judge agreed [saying], "In the interest
of justice, I don’t think why this should
go forward."
He dropped the probation, and expunged the
record for that charge.
Yeah.
I continue organizing today with Community
Service Organization, we primarily work on
immigrant rights.
Our last campaign was to fight for deferred
action for DAPA, Deferred Action for Parents
of Americans and DACA, Deferred Action for
Children Arrivals.
We had a campaign to write and call the Supreme
Court, but unfortunately we lost.
Just a temporary setback.
The Supreme Court was deadlocked four to four.
They couldn’t rule on whether Obama had
the authority to do an executive order on
deferred action.
So, we continue organizing the community.
What we did over the years is we fought against
the car impounds for folks that are--don’t
have a driver’s license, we fought for the
driver’s license.
We were able to get a California driver’s
license bill for undocumented--that passed.
We were also able to stop the car checkpoints,
or checkpoints where they stop people to see
if they have a license and they impound their
car.
So we worked on bread and butter issues that
affect the community.
But on the ongoing struggle to fight for legalization
for all.
That’s part of our struggle in the Chicano
movement for self-determination and for equality.
It’s not just an immigrant rights struggle.
I see it as part of our ongoing struggle for
equality, and part of our ongoing struggle
against repression that we lived through all
these years.
Our history of the Chicano power movement,
of today, we have many examples of fighting
against repression, whether it’s political
repression or police repression against our
community.
We’re also working with Edwin Rodriguez’s
family this year, who was killed by the sheriffs,
he was shot seventeen times on February the
14th.
Ten [bullets] through the back, under the
false pretense that it was a stolen car; it
was not a stolen car, then they said we stopped
him because his lights on his license plate
wasn’t on, just a pretext to harass him.
And then also, we’re waiting for, excuse
me, working with the family of Jose Mendez,
a sixteen year old that was killed by the
LAPD on February the 6th.
Which was a week right before Edwin Rodriguez.
So, these are immigrant families that have
come to live in the United States, and then
their children grow up in East LA, and they’re
young men, face the same police harassment
that I faced growing up, except they’re
getting killed and harassed.
So, we fight for the issue of police--to stop
the police killings, as part of the struggle
for equality and immigrant rights.
DC: So the struggle continues.
CM: The struggle continues, it’s a long,
hard struggle, we have a lot of examples of
resistance in our--if you look at the history
of Chicanos from sort of 1848, the Mexican
American War, to today, every decade there’s
examples of resistance.
And I’m glad that I’m part of the, not
only the ’60s, but even today fighting for
justice and equality for Chicanos and Chicanas.
DC: So when you hear about, when people use
the, and this is going to be my last question,
but-.
CM: Sure.
DC: --when people use the phrase Civil Rights
Movement, where do you fit in, in that?
What do you think, how do you think about
it?
CM: Well we’re part of that movement, but
as I said earlier, we’re part of the whole
Civil Rights Movement, but I think it’s
just a notch higher, or a step forward that
it’s part of the struggle for equality,
to be free.
We want to be free, you know?
The blacks in the civil rights movement, they
wanted their civil rights, be able to vote,
get a job, housing, education.
But, really the struggle is to be free.
Free as a people.
And we’re not free.
You know?
We’re not free as a people.
We’re not free as working people.
So the struggle continues.
DC: Well said.
CM: Is that enough?
Is that enough?
Or do you have another question?
Crew: So next week, or two weeks from now,
somebody comes--this is a hypothetical.
Somebody says, "Carlos, 1968, fifty years
later, 2018’s the fiftieth anniversary of
the Poor People’s Campaign.
We want you to organize here, and try and
recreate those circumstances."
Could you do it, or is there a strategy that
you would employ to do that?
And are the issues the same now as they were
then?
CM: The issues are similar.
You know, but conditions have changed, you
know?
But you know, working people are still suffering
a recession.
There’s high unemployment, or underemployment,
low wages.
Especially among young people.
You know, many people that have jobs, or that
are retired, or that have stable jobs, don’t
see it.
But you know, homelessness, you know, in major
cities, and unemployment, underemployment,
even students that have gone to college have
a high student debt, right?
So the conditions are, you know, different
demographics, we have a higher population
of newer immigrants that have come in the
last twenty years, especially from Mexico
and Central America, from all over the world,
actually.
So, if somebody were to ask me to organize
a Poor People’s Campaign I’d say, you
know, we’ve had newer examples, we had the
Occupy movement, we had the immigrant rights
mega movements, we had the Bernie Sanders
movement, you know, there’s different tactics
and different strategies that can be used.
In the poor people’s movement, right here
in LA, we have a vibrant, strong homeless
movement, advocates, that different organizations,
and we also have the Black Lives Matter movement.
You know, so where back in the [19]90s, we
had the Rainbow Coalition for Justice of blacks
and Chicanos uniting together.
So, I would say that there’s organizations
doing that work now.
And we would do a fifty year anniversary of
the walkouts, or the Brown Berets is coming
next year, right?
So [19]68, you’re right, 20__, it’s coming
around, all these fifty year anniversaries,
you know.
But what I ask people, don’t just commemorate
the anniversary, link it to the struggles
of today.
Make sure that they’re commemorating the
struggle of fifty years ago, and the struggle
that’s going on today.
And that we’ve got to be involved in that
struggle, and work with the young people,
the new young generation, train them and support
them as leaders, as organizers.
GS: That’s nice.
CM: Was that good enough, or what?
DC: That was great.
JB: No, it was really sweet.
Can I ask just one little technical question?
Did you ever get your files back?
CM: Yes.
Yes, eventually, once I beat the case, and
everything was done, I got my files back.
We know they copied everything, of course.
I got my archives back.
Because yeah,, they went through the whole--this
whole place was thrown—you know, photo albums,
this whole closet over here, the back, the
bed was thrown over, yeah, yeah, I got my
files back, and the, yeah, I got them.
[Laughter] I donated some of them to the Cal
State LA library archives.
And.. one big thing I forgot to mention.
Damn, how can I forget that?
Well, so part of the FBI harassment, as I
mentioned, because of our solidarity work.
But the other big part is that we really got
on their radar when we organized the march
on the Republican National Convention, 2008,
in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Where we have a strong base of activists,
the Antiwar Committee, the Fight Back News.
We marched on the RNC, and I was there, and
we were there for several days, marching,
protesting, sitting down in the street, and
we did it again, so that’s when we got on
their radar.
And they sent an FBI infiltrator to the Antiwar
Committee by the name of Karen Sullivan, who
works for the FBI.
I don’t know where she’s at now, but she
infiltrated the Antiwar Committee, infiltrated
Fight Back News, infiltrated Freedom Row Socialist
Organization.
And then during the raids, when we were trying
to find out where everybody was, we kept calling
her, and they called back, saying, "Don’t
bother calling her, she’s one of us" ..meaning
one of the FBI.
And then again in 2012, we marched at Tampa
Florida, at the RNC against Romney, and our
slogan was, "Money for human needs, not for
war."
Stop the warmongers - McCain in 2008, and
then Romney in 2012.
I’m not going to be there, but we’re doing
another march in Cincinnati in July.
July 18th, 19th, we’re calling it March
on the RNC.
The same slogan.
"Money for human needs, not for war."
This time we’re adding, "Dump Trump."
At the CSO locally, we had a lot of protests
against Trump.
We went to the Simi Valley Reagan Presidential
Library, when they had the candidates’ debate,
we were outside protesting.
"Dump Trump, Stop the Racist Republican Agenda."
That’s a good way to end it.
[Laughter] All right, all right, all right.
Oh, there’s so much to go on, right.
So much to go on.
DC: Let’s stop there, let me just say thank
you.
CM: Yeah, yeah.
No, thank you.
DC: This was wonderful, and we really appreciate
all the work that you’ve done, and your
time.
CM: Thank you.
No, absolutely, you know, I’m glad that
you’re doing this project to document the
movement, and to carry on the struggle, so
that other generations can learn from it,
and continue the struggle.
Yeah.
All right, all right.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a presentation of
the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History
and Culture.
