Chicano Conferees Plan 5-State School Walkout
April 1, 1969
DENVER—About 1,500 youths attending the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference Monday committed themselves to work for a massive school walkout in the five southwestern states on Sept. 16, Mexican Independence Day.
Chicano nationalism was preached throughout the five-day conference which Monday projected the walkouts as a first step toward "liberating" Mexican-American youths from "Anglo concepts."
At the final session of the revolutionary-rhetoric-filled conference the plan of Aztlan was read to the cheering youths from California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.
Aztlan is the Indian word for northern Mexico. The plan says that Chicano youths do not recognize the "Anglo conquest of the Southwest" and that as indigenous people of that area they are loyal only to Chicanoism.
Victory for Leader
It was a victory for Rodolfo (Corky) Gonzales, leader of the Denver-based Crusade for Justice, a civil rights organization, who contends that ethnic nationalism must be the ideology of the Chicano movement.
The conference was in danger of breaking up at times over such issues as whether Chicano youths should form coalitions with the Negro youth groups and whether the movement should start "internationalizing" itself by making contacts with the rebel youths of other countries.
Gonzales was able to sell the conference the idea that such issues can wait until the Chicano youth movement is powerful enough to "deal from a strong base and not one which we have to ask for favors."
Though Gonzales did not say it, it was obvious to the observer of the
* The National Chicano Youth Conference is best known for its proclamation of the Plan de Aztlán, a Chicano "declaration of independence" that articulated the theme of ethnic and cultural nationalism as the guiding ideology of the Chicano movement.
present Mexican-American movement that when he talks of "liberation" he is in effect calling for independence from Mexican-American leaders who get their financial support from the government and who have ties with the "establishment."
Ex-Prize Fighter
Gonzales, 40, a former prize fighter, left the war-on-poverty program which he headed in the Denver Mexican-American community and resigned from the Democratic Party after running unsuccessfully for public office.
Since then he has been calling not only for nationalism but also selfreliance to the Mexican-American community.
"The Chicano must do his thing by himself and for himself," says Gonzales, who feuded with the black leadership during the Poor Peoples' March on Washington.
Rebel youths at conference workshops spoke glowingly of Ernesto (Che) Guevara, Fidel Castro, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. But when it came to identifying their leaders in the Southwest, only Corky Gonzales and Reies Lopez Tijerina, the New Mexican land-grants crusader, were mentioned.
Pomona Student
Says Jorge Licon, 19, a Pomona College student:
"The young people are turned on by 'Corky,' not only because he talks of revolution but because he is beholden to no one. We young people are sick of the old established so-called Mexican-American leaders who talk but don't act, Corky acts."
Licon was referring to Gonzales' leadership in a recent walkout by West High School, located in the Mexican-American community. According to Gonzales the Chicano students won most of the demands made by the walkout leaders, including the transferring of a teacher accused of racism, the serving of Mexican-American food in the school cafeteria and the expansion of a Mexican-American studies program.
Should Gonzales have some success in leading a Southwest school walkout on Sept. 16, he will become the most important leader among the Chicano youth movement.
So far, most of the Mexican-American civil rights activities have been funnelled through war-on-poverty programs and through such organizations as the Ford Foundation.
Many of the youths who returned home Monday will be preaching Chicano nationalism, liberation and "Corky" Gonzales to their fellow students.