The Social Studies (2011) 102, 2532 Copyright C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0037-7996 print

/ 2152-405X online DOI: 10.1080/00377996.2011.533043

The Chicano Movement: Paths to Power

ANGEL JOSE GUTIERREZ
Political Science, University of Texas-Arlington, Arlington, Texas, USA

This article is a quick overview of the Chicano Movement (CM) with specic analyses of the ve major strategies employed by its adherents to effect social change. The CM was a social movement that occurred in the United States with increased activity in the southwest and midwest during a time frame: 1950s to 1980s. Persons of Mexican ancestry residing in the U.S. were its participants and self-identied as Chicanos. The term Chicano stems from the ancient Nahuatl language of the Meshica (Meh Shee Ka) peoples, also known as the Aztecs. Shicano is a shortened version of Meshicano; later pronunciation changed to Chicano and, for some in spelling, Xicano. As a social movement, the CM had as its ultimate goals the acquisition of political power with which to change the power relations between them and the Euro-Americans, also known as the Anglos. Keywords: alliances, coalitions, litigation, nonviolence, political power, power relations, protest and demonstrations, social movement

Brief History of Incorporation

On three occasions, two of which were violent encounters, the United States border moved toward Mexico and incorporated not only land mass but also Mexican people. The rst movement of the border occurred with the Texas revolt of 1836. The second movement occurred with the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846. The nal border movement came about through a real estate deal, the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. By the time of the U.S. Civil War, the continental map face of the country looked much like it does today, stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacic, Gulf Coast to Great Lakes, and with two national borders: Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. When borders move, the people incorporated become the powerless minorityforeigners in their own lands. Often, they lose title to their lands and ownership of businesses. They become the unwanted, subject to gross discrimination and harassment accompanied by violence at the hands of state actors. The victors become the authority guresthe powerful majority that creates a new political culture often imposing a new legal system, language policy, religion, education and economic systems, and a racial hierarchy. The victors place themselves at the top of the social pyramid as the dominant class. Those remaining as the border moved and who were incorporated are settled into varying layers of other classes. The bottom class is composed of the least desirable of people.1 Texas

Address correspondence to Jos e Angel Guti errez, Political Science, University of Texas-Arlington, 400 S. Zang Blvd., Ste. 144, Dallas, TX 75208, USA. E-mail: jgutierrez@uta.edu

after independence and a brief stint as a nation became a U.S. state by 1845. In ve years, the rst U.S. Census took place in Texas and reported that 28 percent of the inhabitants were African slaves. Across the southwest, the census gures counted the Euro-Americans (Anglos) with little concern for an accurate count of Native Americans, Mexicans, or freed slaves. Estimates by demographers and historians of the Mexican population remaining in the United States in 1850 range from 88,000 to 100,000. The others had repatriated to Mexico or were removed or killed during the battles for the land. Consequently, the remaining Mexicans, Native Americans, and Africans have since time immemorial sought to gain leverage at the expense of the other groups to obtain ascendency within the social pyramid and become the second group with power behind the Anglos. A power relation between all groups has been a key concern for these inhabitants to the present time. In 1910 revolution broke out in Mexico, and nearly a million people returned to their ancient homelands in the United States for safety. This Back-to-Mexico Manana generation believed the revolution would end shortly and they would return. It did not. The few Mexicans who realized the United States was their home country once again formed the rst civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1929. They began to charter an incorporation strategy leading to assimilation into Anglo culture. Normalcy in the Mexicos political culture, however, did not come about until the 1930s.2 During the Great Depression of the 1930s, millions of Mexicans were deported from the United States to Mexico. Within these two decades, however, another million-plus Mexican children were born

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in the United States: the rst Mexican Americans. These baby boomers became the World War II generation of returning veterans demanding civil rights.3 Returning Mexican American veterans formed the American GI Forum (AGIF) in 1948 to defend against discrimination and secure for themselves the rights of rst-class citizens. A year prior, in 1947, the United States and Mexico initiated an emergency war measure called the Bracero Program that ended in the early 1960s. Millions of Mexican men were contracted to work in U.S. enterprisesprimarily agriculture, railroads, sheries, and forestry. Ironically, during the rst Eisenhower administration, Operation Wetback (1954) was instituted that once again resulted in the massive deportation of Mexicans from U.S. soil. The U.S. addiction to ofcial cheap Mexican labor began and introduced a new labor arrangement between the countries: Mexico sends laborers, who in turn send money (remittances) home; the United States allows them in with the left hand and deports some of them with the right hand. Over the next two decades (19501970), the Mexican American baby-boom generation became parents themselves and gave birth to the Chicano generation.4 Ignacio M. Garcia (1997) in his book Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans, explains that this generation, unlike the prior two, rejected assimilation into Anglo culture and forged a new ethnic identity neither Mexican nor Mexican American but as Chicanos. They set out on a nationalist strategy to become a little nation within the larger nation. They engaged in nation-building. It was Chicanos who fully explored the use of various paths to power in pursuit of justice and equality for their group. The ve major paths they took to acquire power were revolt, litigation, protest, electoral work, and building coalitions/alliances. This is not to say that prior generations did not employ such paths, only that this Chicano generation used and institutionalized these paths to power to a greater extent even compared to this day.

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factories across the country: El Monte, California (berry pickers), San Joaquin Valley (cotton pickers), Fort Lupton, Greeley, and Fort Collins, Denver, Colorado (sugar beet laborers), San Antonio, Texas (Finck cigar makers and pecan shellers), Chicago, Illinois (steel workers), and the zoot suit battles (pachucos) with Los Angeles police units and U.S. Navy sailors and Marines. The movie Salt of the Earth (1954, Independent Productions Company) depicts the long ght between Mexican families and the Empire Zinc company in Silver City, New Mexico, from 1950 to 1952. The labor tradition of strikes and product boycotts were continued during the Chicano generation by the rst Chicano leader, Cesar E. Chavez. He self-identied as Chicano and led farm workers, primarily in California, to many victories that had eluded other labor groups previously and helped organize the United Farm Workers of America. Texas, Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and Wisconsin have also had local labor leaders engage in similar successful labor ghts with owners. Another Chicano leader of the era named Reies Lopez Tijerina led an armed band and occupied the court house in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. Tijerina and his followers continued to use the constitutional power of a citizens arrest to target enemies of the people such as the scientists at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and other ofcials. His group, La Alianza de Pueblos Libres, occupied several federal park lands and historic sites, reclaiming them as stolen land grants. Usually these activities resulted in armed confrontations and ultimately arrests and convictions for Tijerina and others.

Paths to Power: Protests and Demonstrations

Nonviolent protests and demonstrations do not mean nonaction. On the contrary, nonviolence is a philosophy while the practice of nonviolent protests is a powerful action tactic and strategy. The philosophy and the practice have been the foci of research and studies since the birth of Christianity by scholars and middle schoolers such as those at the Rio Gallinas Public Charter School in Las Vegas, New Mexico.6 Chicanos, mainly youth, in the 1960s and into the 1970s were the primary practitioners of this path to power. The main Chicano targets for reform in the 1960s were the public schools. The teachers, curriculum, cafeteria food, textbooks, testing, student culture and life, school administration, and governance structure were all Anglocentric. English was the only language allowed spoken in the classroom and schoolyard. Severe punishment awaited the bold who uttered their native Spanish language within earshot of school ofcials or Anglo students who also reported them. Despite their growing numbers, Chicano students, while physically present for purposes of enrollment counts and audits that led to more state funding, were ignored and bypassed in their academic needs. According to

Paths to Power: Revolt

Revolt, insurrection, and self-defense by Mexicans have been commonplace since the loss of land in Texas and the southwest. Any internet search engine will produce ample results for such violent events as the New Mexico activities of the Gorras Blancas and the Mano Negra, the Ludlow Massacre of 1913 in Colorado, the Plan de San Diego in 1915 (Texas), Pancho Villas raid of Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, and the labor wars in Arizona during 1914 1917, also known as the Clifton-Morenci strikes. Gregorio Cortez was resurrected as a Chicano hero in deance of Texas Rangers by Americo Paredes; his experiences were later made into a commercial movie, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (Moctezuma Esparza Productions and Corporation for Public Broad casting).5 During the 1930s and 1940s, Mexican laborers resorted to revolt in the elds and

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Emeritus Professor Frank Talamantes of the University of California-Santa Cruz, Hispanic students represented 11 percent of all K-12 public school enrollees in 1988, and by 2008 they had increased to 21.7 percent. Chicano students, then, much like all Hispanic students today as a result of these practices, are the primary statistics of academic failure and school desertion. The nonviolent weapons used by Chicano students were school boycotts, strikes, walkouts, and demonstrations. In Texas alone more than forty such school boycotts were held in the late 1960s into the 1970s. In California during these same years, particularly in Los Angeles, school walkouts (blowouts, they called them) erupted as they did in Denver, Albuquerque, Lansing and East Kalamazoo, Chicago, and Glendale, Arizona, to name a few places. HBO has memorialized the Los Angeles blowouts in the movie Walkout (2006). The Texas school protests were the main agenda of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) (Navarro 1995a). While students boycotted classes and walked out of school building en mass, their parents engaged in similar protests. Farm workers in California, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida walked out of agricultural elds and marched on grocery stores, food-processing plants, and capital buildings. The Texas farm workers in the late 1970s walked from the Rio Grande Valley, across Texas and the south, then up to Washington, D.C., seeking redress to their grievances which included safety, wages, health coverage, and legal protection. Farm laborers are not covered by most labor laws, state or federal. In the southern states, the misnamed Right to Work Laws prohibit labor organizing by farm workers, among others, and more important, permit employers to re anyone at will without cause or reason. Cesar E. Chavez reversed that policy in California via boycotts of products, marches on Sacramento, strikes during harvest times, and electoral activity. During the Vietnam War years, Chicano youth joined white and black students and others in protesting the war on grounds that it cost too much in lives and money. Minority youth, then, because of compulsory military duty, were enlisted in disproportionate numbers than Anglo youth who were able to obtain deferments and avoid military service. As a consequence, the numbers of casualtiesdead, wounded, and maimed for life disproportionately were minorities. Protests against the war erupted nationwide and caused an incumbent president Lyndon Johnson to forgo reelection in 1968. The August 29th movement in Los Angeles was a Chicano nonviolent protest of the war that resulted in a police riot. Noted journalist Ruben Salazar was killed, among others, and many were hurt at the hands of police during that day. No police ofcer was convicted of any charge of police brutality. MAYO members in Texas passed out yers with information on the cost of war at churches and in front of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The cost of war is always a crushing

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problem for the politicians who vote for such expenditures and the public that pays taxes and needs government services. The National Priorities Projects Internet site www.costofwar.comhttp://www.costofwar.com/http://w ww.costofwar.com/ provides comparable dollar gures for the United States by state and city for the current conicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most dramatic and numerous public demonstrations in the United States did not occur during the black civil rights movement. There have been massive demonstrations at the nations capital typically named March on Washington by their various sponsors during the black civil rights era, Vietnam war, Farm Aid protests, womens suffrage movement, and the Nation of Islams Million Man March. The largest and most widespread public demonstrations in this nation of immigrants have been held by Chicano immigrants and those who supported them in 1976 and 1986. Again, in 2006 and 2010, millions took to the streets in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York while hundreds of thousands marched in Denver, Albuquerque, Seattle, Omaha, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, and other major cities during those years. They sought immigration reform leading to lawful permanent status, decriminalization of the immigration laws, unication of families, and access to work permits, driver licenses, health benets, and employer sanctions. Immigrant youth currently seek passage of the Dream, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2001 (DREAM) to make lawful their presence and validate their college and university degrees so they can work as dentists, nurses, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists on graduation. Two young Latino students and an Iranian walked for months during 2010 from Miami to the nations capital to dramatize their plight and push for passage of the DREAM act. Currently, immigrants are denied the range of licenses issued by states for all purposes, from driving to working to hunting and boating. Immigrants can only protest, march, boycott, picket, demonstrate, and rally; they are ineligible as noncitizens to vote. They cannot run for or hold public ofce, pass, or veto legislation in the United States, or vote in their country of origin since they are not physically present there. During the time for the draconian state law HB 1070 to be implemented in Arizona on July 27, 2010, prayer vigils and demonstrations were held in Arizona and major cities in the United States as well as Mexico City. Once the law was enjoined by a federal judge, more vigils and protest continued as the appeal process began.

Paths to Power: Electoral Activity

Voting and other electoral activities produce results, particularly at the local level, that can improve the quality of life. National elections are far removed, more complex, and difcult to determine who contributed to victory; there is more symbolic value in national elections than substance for the

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individual voter. What Chicanos, other Latinos often also called Hispanics, and recent immigrants have in common is their potential electoral power. Cubans started arriving in large numbers after 1960, and they are fast-tracked toward citizenship. Cuban refugees have help learning the language and culture and are validated in their educational attainments from Cuba (Masud-Piloto 1996). This is not the case with other Latino immigrants. Central Americans began arriving in the United States during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. They were extended temporary protected status (TPS), which is not citizenship but a form of limbo dening them as neither citizen nor unlawfully present but as just a temporary resident. The children and grandchildren of those with TPS born in the United States over the course of the last three decades, however, are citizens. Puerto Ricans have held U.S. citizenship since 1917. Putting it bluntly, as I see it, Cubans are paid to come; Puerto Ricans have no interest in the immigration ght; Central Americans seldom join the immigration debate except when their TPS deadline nears; and the United States hunts Mexicans who cross over in search of work. Latinos are numerous and growing rapidly, 45 to 55 million are projected for 2011 or upward of 60 million if Puerto Ricans on the island are added to the count. Latinos are the youngest of all ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Those Hispanics under age eighteen are approximately 48 percent of the total population. Those without citizenship represent about 26 percent of adults. The remaining Latinos, some 26 percent, are the few eligible to register and vote. The major determinants of civic engagement are lacking among Latinos. Research consistently has shown for decades that those with higher educational attainment, greater age, and larger incomes participate more often and in all elections, not just the presidential one. Conversely, those with less of these three determinants participate at much lower percentages and numbers. Latinos who are eligible do register to vote and vote, but they are not enough to prevail at the ballot box, except for certain historic geographic areas such as the borderlands with Mexico and large urban centers: Los Angeles, El Paso, San Antonio, Chicago, New York, and the like. The number of Latino elected ofcials as reported annually continues to increase but is not a reection of their percentages of the total population.7 Women generally are in the same predicament; their numbers in the population do not reect their numbers in elective ofce, but they are making gains over time. As early as 1948, the failed presidential campaign of Henry Wallace sought out Mexican American voters. Richard Nixon turned down an ethnic component targeting Mexican Americans in his 1960 presidential run, but John F. Kennedy, his Democratic Party rival, did not. Viva Kennedy clubs were organized across the country, mainly in the midwest and southwest, from the ranks of LULAC and American GI Forum members. These organizations were chartered as nonprot organizations and, as such,

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had to maintain themselves as nonpartisan and nonpolitical on legislative issues and candidates. After Kennedy won the presidency, members of the Viva Kennedy clubs were rewarded with a few federal appointments in the judiciary, state department, and other minor cabinet positions (Garcia 2000). More importantly, the Viva Kennedy clubs morphed into political organizations in Texas and California: the Political Association of Spanish Speaking Organizations (PASO) and the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), respectively. Only MAPA remains active in 2010. Mexican American voter inuence has grown in subsequent Democratic Party presidential campaigns as has the Cuban American inuence in the Republican Party. PEW Hispanic, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Ofcials (NALEO), and the Willie Velasquez Southwest Voter Institute, to a lesser degree, annually produce studies and reports on Hispanic voter turnout and polls of opinion. During the Chicano Movement, youth became disenchanted with Democratic Party politics. The Democrats took the Latino vote as well as that of other minorities for granted, and the Republican Party ignored minorities. Consequently, the youth formed their own political entity, La Raza Unida Party (RUP) in 1970. By decades end, the RUP had spread to seventeen states plus the District of Columbia. In Washington, DC, Frank Shafer Corona was elected to the Adams Morgan school district as an RUPafliated candidate even though local elections usually are nonpartisan. In the Winter Garden area of southwest Texas during April 1970, the RUP elded sixteen candidates and won fteen races; by the end of the decade, RUP candidates were also elected to county government. By 1980 the RUP had lost ballot status or never obtained it in many states. The Democrats targeted the RUP for destruction and, like most third political parties in the United States, it ended as quickly as it had begun. The important changes the RUP brought about, however, remain with us to this day, including the presence of Ciro Rodriguez from Texas and Raul Grijalva from Arizona, both former RUP militants in the 1970s, in the House of Representatives in Washington, DC.8 The current mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaragosa, was a member of MEChA, a California student organization like MAYO of Texas. The current mayor of San Antonio is Julian Castro. His mother Rosie Castro, a MAYO member and later an RUP ofcial, ran unsuccessfully for that city council in 1969. Julians twin brother Joaquin is a state representative. The Chicano generation was very engaged in civic affairs and deeply involved with electoral activity. What they could not win with protests in the streets or at the ballot box often were won at the court house.

Path to Power: Litigation

The race question in the United States is of extreme importance. In 1790 the rst Congress passed the Naturalization

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Act in which it limited U.S. citizenship to free white males; all others classied as not white and not male have been ghting this gross chauvinist and racist exclusion ever since. Gunner Myrdal pointed out as early as 1944 in his study, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Bros.), that the presence of black people in the United States posed a national problem for whites. Hispanics are perplexed by the race question on government forms. Are Hispanics white? Are Hispanics an ethnic group? Are Hispanics mixed bloods of Spanish fathers and Native American and African mothers? In 1977 the Ofce of Management and Budget mandated that Hispanics be counted as an identiable ethnic group regardless of race on government forms.9 Since then, Hispanics must choose one of four races and check the Hispanic origin box, particularly on census forms. Then, if so inclined, a Hispanic person can enter a nationality, one of twenty-two possible identications, on the form. Attempting to indicate a person is of mixed race or national origin is not an option. The U.S. Census personnel will default that entry into one of the four racial categories. Before 1940, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and the few Cubans in Florida had to check Other Race. In 2010 and as long as OMB Directive 15 is in place, Hispanics will be the only approved and identiable ethnic minority in the country. More importantly, for group cohesion and solidarity, Hispanics are divided by race from without by the government and from within by the government and their national origin. The pan-ethnic umbrella of the Hispanic label has many leaks. By a large majority, Hispanics have chosen the racial category white over black in census forms. Hispanics understand the full impact of the racial hierarchy in the United States. In 1953 a major case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Hernandez v. Texas. PBS television has available a documentary on it, entitled A Class Apart (2010). The case was decided three weeks prior to the well-known Brown v. Board of Education case. A Chicano murdered another Chicano in a small Texas town in 1952; the jury convicted him of the crime. The jury, however, had no Chicanos on the panel. In the history of the county there had never been a Chicano called, much less chosen, to sit on a jury. Lawyers for Hernandez, the accused, argued discrimination and racial exclusion. The state countered that Hernandez and the jurors were white, so there was no discrimination: he was tried by a jury of his peers. On appeal to the highest court in the land, the justices noted that in the evidence submitted at the trial court and in argument by Chicano attorney Gus Garcia, discrimination was rampant against Mexican Americans in Texas. The sign indicating separate toilet facilities for Mexican Americans in the very courthouse where the case was tried in Edna, Texas, read: Colored Men y Hombres Aqui. The U.S. Supreme Court held that Mexican Americans may be racially classied as white but their treatment was not like that of other whites, hence they as a group needed the constitutional equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave Mexican

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Americans their rst civil rights (see Olivas and Tushnet 2006; Garcia 2008). Many battles remained to be fought in that arena, and the Chicano generation rose to the occasion. They continued their struggles for civil rights in the streets, agricultural elds, schools, and at public buildings. They also engaged in building organizations that became institutions: Chicano nation-building. In so doing they also formed the civil rights triumvirate: the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (1968), the National Council of La Raza (1973), and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (1974). In 1965, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was passed guaranteeing not only the right to vote but also to be voted for in elections primarily for African Americans because the coverage of the VRA was limited to southern states but not Texas or the southwest. Finally, in 1975, the VRA was extended to cover language minorities such as Spanish speakers. The implementation of the VRA and its subsequent voluminous litigation archive has resulted in the election of thousands of black and brown public ofcials to local government and federal ofce. Literally hundreds of cases have been brought by Chicanos over the past three decades, and the litigation continues as in the cases over redistricting to create Hispanic majority school board and city council positions. Bilingual education and teaching English as a second language (ESL) have been legally mandated across the country since 1968. Texas allowed bilingual education to be offered by local school districts but maintained its English-only legislation on the books. The U.S. Supreme Court afrmed these educational rights under the Fourteenth Amendment in two major cases. The rst was US vs. Texas (1971) stemming from litigation in the San Felipe del Rio and Del Rio Independent School Districts, both in Del Rio, Texas, a border town. The second case took place in California, Lau v. Nichols (1974), which provided for ESL. This issue was fought by Chicanos in Texas in the late 1970s. The state legislated that school districts would be denied funding if they enrolled and educated undocumented students. MAYO activists and others marched on the state capital building and occupied it, forcing the governor and legislators to ee out the back door. Litigation ensued on behalf of students in Tyler, Texas, brought by Chicano lawyers from Houston. The case Plyler v. Doe (457 US 202) was decided in favor of the students in 1982 and became the law of the land. Regrettably, the gains in Del Rio, Texas, and the legal protections of Plyer v. Doe across the nation are being eroded and rolled back. School districts such as Del Rio once again are denying enrollment to children without documents in 2010. Litigation has secured for Latinos additional constitutional protections and rights and brought about reform in the school nance arena and curriculum. Chicano studies in the Tucson, unied school district (Arizona) was court ordered in 1998.10 With the passage of HB 2281, ethnic studies have been legislatively prohibited in 2010 by the

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state legislature. The classic text on the history of Chicanos, Occupied America (6th ed., New York: Pearson 2010), has been banned from use in the public schools under this law. HB 2281 will be difcult to be overturned by the courts for two legal reasons: there is no constitutional right to an education in the United States and there is no right to a specic curriculum. Both of these rights are to be determined by states and not the federal government. To be sure, the legal ghts at the courthouses, state and federal, will continue: another path to power.

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paign of poor people to march and encamp in the nations capital. He invited Native Americans, poor whites, and Chicanos to join his leadership circle. Reies Lopez Tijerina was the Chicano representative next to King in that effort. On two occasions, Jesse Jackson in pursuit of the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and again in 1988 had Chicanos at his elbow as advisors and national cochairs of his campaigns. There was a perception of a black-brown coalition, but it did not translate into Chicano votes across the primary states for Jackson. Answers to building a coalition, however, are more apt to be found locally. Moreover, researchers who want to nd support for a coalition can nd anecdotal evidence of success. Others who doom to failure any effort at coalitionbuilding can nd as many also. Local efforts have resulted in success and failure. For example, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley won his ofce for ve successive terms from 1973 to 1983 by building a coalition with whites, Jews, and some Chicanos. When he sought the governorship of California in 1982 and again in 1986 he lost to the Republican candidate despite leading in the polls. The term Bradley Effect was coined during these elections because voters in pollsbroken down by age, gender, race, and ethnicity reported favoring him, but the vote totals reected that they voted otherwise on election day. Latinos were among those who did not vote at all or who did not vote for him. In Chicago, Harold Washington in coalition with Latinos won the mayoralty. A gain for Latinos from this coalition was the creation of a congressional seat since held by Luis Gutierrez, a Puerto Rican. The Washington-Latino coalition disintegrated with Washingtons untimely death. In Houston, Mickey Leland, a former black activist turned elected ofcial, became a congressman with help from the Latino vote. His coalition partners were Lionel Castillo and Ben Reyes. Leland also died prematurely; Castillo moved up into President Jimmy Carters administration, and Ben Reyes was convicted in an FBI sting operation and left ofce. The coalition died. In Dallas, during the era of at-large elections prior to single-member districts, the Progressive Voter League (African Americans) and the Mexican American Democrats (former RUPers and other Chicano Democrats) were in a coalition particularly at the ballot box and in some educational issues. With the advent of single-member districts, more African Americans were elected to the city council and school board along with the rst Chicanos as state representative, constables, and justice of the peace. The coalition died; too many leaders and not enough voters. More importantly, local leaders in both communities see redistricting differently. Blacks believed that redistricting efforts by Hispanics will lead to loss of black political power. Latinos counter that redistricting ought to be at the expense of white political power and politicians, not blacks. Neither believes the other. To be sure, the 2011 Census gures will reveal increased Hispanic population across America. Texas is poised to gain four new congressional seats. Where will they be

Path to Power: Coalition and Alliances

The key to forming a long-term relationship based on mutual interests among groups, a coalition, is the leadership of the groups. Those willing will; those not willing never come together and often oppose the others initiatives. An alliance is simply a shorter-term relationship, usually with a single focus or item of mutual interest. Booker T. Washington in his famous Atlanta Address (1907), entitled Cast down Your Buckets, implored white Americans to not forsake the Negro in favor of immigrants coming from Europe. In this context he positioned himself and followers to oppose immigration policy favoring non-Negroes. Washingtons plea was neither unfounded nor myopic. Immigrants from the colonial era to the present time have continuously leap-frogged the African ancestry population in the United States in all socioeconomic indicators. Shortly after the 2000 Census gures were released, Artellia Burch (2000) writing for the Charlotte Post, an African Americanowned newspaper, reported severely negative stereotypes held by African Americans of Latinos. A new phenomenon revealed by the census gures was the spread of Latino immigration to the southeastern United States, the Deep South. Nicolas C. Vaca, a Chicano activist scholar and lawyer during the 1970s in California was prompted to write a book, The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conict Between Latinos and Blacks and What it Means for America about it. Both Burch and Vacas publications created a furor among those who agreed and disagreed with their ndings and opinions. Both authors were the talk of the nation as they made the lecture and media circuits. Burch revealed black racism toward Latinos. Vaca questioned if blacks and Latinos ought to be in an alliance, much less a coalition. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt crafted the grand coalition of minorities, labor, and liberal whites into the foundation of the Democratic Party in the 1940s had anyone questioned the legitimacy of a blackbrown coalition. Which groups have common interests? Is it race or ethnicity that binds the coalition, or is it economic class interests? Which ought it to be? Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres (2002) in their book, The Miners Canary, posit it is both. Just before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated he began articulating and emphasizing class issues over black civil rights issues. He crafted a national cam-

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created, and who will benet? Both Dallas and Houston have African American members of Congress, one and two, respectively; Hispanics have none. Hispanic congressional representation begins in San Antonio, then south and west along the borderlands. Redistricting will have to address the growing Hispanic population. Someone has to lose power and someone will have to gain it. In the major cities of the country, the population of the core city is approximately one-third each: black, white, brown. Voting age population is not so evenly divided but favors the Hispanic population over time. Meanwhile, from 2000 to 2040, coalition-building is necessary to gain political power. Some twenty years ago, the white population did not need partners at the ballot box; a white voted for whites and that was all needed for victory. Minority voters need not vote. In the early part of this century, whites need partners to win elections, as do blacks and browns. No one group is enough to win elections held citywide, countywide, or statewide outright. Whites must join with blacks; blacks must join with browns; or browns must join with whites in coalition to win or face losing elections to the others in the triangular population pie. So which groups will coalesce? Once elected to governing bodies with other ofcials sitting at the same table, which leaders will join in coalition to govern? In Houston and Dallas in the past few years the nine member school boards have had three seats each: black, white, and brown. With ve votes needed to pass any policy, recommendation, hiring, or budget, who among the three-seat group will join the other? Talk of let us all work together; I have never discriminated or I do not see color; and why cant we just get along as people? now has to be the actual walk. Talking and walking in the shoes of others is the new political stage. How Hispanics are treated between now and 2040 when they will not need partners at the ballot box is the major determinant to how the nuevos Americans will reciprocate. Meanwhile, the Asian American population continues to grow at a rapid rate similar to the Hispanics. By midcentury, they could outnumber blacks in the country who continue to decline in numbers of the total population. Whites have had and will continue to have the greatest decline in population numbers; there are fewer white babies compared to babies of color. According to the Texas State Data Center, Asians in Texas are growing rapidly, and the U.S. Census projections for post-2010 numbers of Asians indicate that this is true across the nation, particularly on the east and west coasts.11 It could be that the ideal coalition partner for Hispanics is Asian Americans. Time will tell.

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racism toward persons of Mexican ancestry in Texas. The information in these books could easily be replicated in any other southwestern state during the early period of conquest toward statehood to the present time. A historical account of power relations between Anglos and Mexicans in Texas is presented in Montejano 1987. The history of Chicanos in the United States is 2007. documented by Acuna Griswold del Castillo 2008 is a revisionist history of that era building on the previous work of others. For a local history of the Chicano Movement in Texas, see Montejano 2010 and an earlier work by Munoz 1989. For information specically on the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), see Navarro 1995b. Paredes, Americo. With His Pistol in His Hand, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958. The lm produced by Moctesuma Esparaza and Michael Hausman in 1983 is titled The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez See Schock n.d. and http://nonviolentweapons.com/? page id=140, which lists 198 methods of nonviolent action compiled by 7th and 8th grade students (downloaded 27 July 2010). See, also, Sharp 1973. Go to www.naleo.org for statistical data on the number by state and ofce category. The report is called the Directory of Latino Elected Ofcials (by year) See Garcia 1989 for an early study of the RUP and Navarro 2000. Federal Register 43, no. 87 (May 4, 1978): 19269-70 for what is now commonly referred to as OMB Directive 15, and for a history of this mandate, see Federal Register 59, no. 110 (June 9, 1994): 29831-35. I was the lead attorney in the case that brought about the settlement and program. Rosalie Lopez was the lead plaintiff of parents and students. She was later elected to the TUSB board of trustees with oversight of the program and overall school district. Good sources of statistical demographic data are http://txsdc.utsa.edu and www.factnder.gov for national population gures. See, also, Murdock et al. 2003 for population projections to 2040.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

References
R. 2007. Occupied America. 6th ed. New York: Pearson Longman. Acuna, Burch, A. 2000. When worlds collide: Blacks have reservations about inux of Hispanic immigrants. Charlotte Post. De Leon, A. 1983. They called them greasers: Anglo attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 18211900. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Garcia, I. M. 1989. United we win: The rise and fall of the Raza Unida Party. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. . 1997. Chicanismo: The forging of a militant ethos among Mexican Americans. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Notes
1. De Leon 1983 and Montejano 1986 provide a comprehensive overview from a historical perspective of power relations, race relations, violence, and Anglo

32
. 2000. Viva Kennedy: Mexican Americans in search of Camelot. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. . 2008. White but not equal. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Griswold del Castillo, R., ed. 2008. World War II and Mexican American civil rights. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Guinier, L., and G. Torres. 2002. The miners canary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Masud-Piloto, F. 1996. From welcomed exiles to illegal immigrants: Cuban migration to the U.S., 19591995. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld. Montejano, D. 1987. Anglos and Mexicans in the making of Texas, 1836 1986, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. . 2010. Quixotes soldiers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Munoz, C. 1989. Youth, identity, power: The Chicano movement. New York: Verso Press. Murdock, S. H., N. Hogue, M. Micheal, S. White, and B. Pecolte. 2003. The new Texas challenge: Population change and the future of Texas. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press.

Guti errez
Myrdal, G. 1944. An American dilemma: The negro problem and modern democracy. New York: Harper and Bros. Navarro, A. 1995a. Mexican American youth organization: Avant-garde of the Chicano movement in Texas. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. . 1995b. Youth, identity, power: The Chicano Movement. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. . 2000. La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano challenge to the U.S. two-party dictatorship. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Olivas, M. A., and M. Tushnet. 2006. Colored men y hombres aqui. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press. Schock, K. n.d. Nonviolent action and its misconceptions: Insights for social scientists. PSOnline. www.apsanet.org (accessed November 18, 2010). Sharp, G. 1973. The politics of non-violent action, volume 2: The methods of nonviolent action. Boston: Porter Sargent. Vaca, N. C. 2004. The presumed alliance: The unspoken conict between Latinos and Blacks and what it means for America. New York: Rayo/Harper Collins. Washington, B. T. 1907. Up from slavery: An autobiography. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.

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