5 UCLA DAILY BRUIN Thursday, February 22, 1968

Plight of Mexican American

By Irene Cardenas

(Ed. Note Miss Cardenas is a staff writer on the Daily Bruin.)

Mexican American revolutionary Reies Tijerina is an angry man.

Tijerina will be the featured speaker at the Mexican American in the Southwest symposium sponsored by United Mexican American Students.

To borrow a phrase, Tijerina is here "to tell it like it is." He waves his arms, his face get read and his words are quick and to the point.

For poor people "facts" aren't numbers and dates. Facts are feelings stuck in their guts, things they know and want to tell White America about if only White America would give a damn.

The poor people in this country don't need studies to tell them so. They know it. They are the ones who are hungry, not White America.

Facts for bulging billfolds

Of course some people insist on "figures." So here are a few of the "facts" for White America to put in its bulging billfold.

The UCLA Mexican American Study Project headed by Ralph Guzman noted that :the incidence of poverty in the Southwest among Mexican American

This means that if you are white, live in the Southwest and you're poor, you hurt, and if you are Mexican you are really hurtin'.

Thirty-five per cent of all Mexican American families in the Southwestern United States "live in poverty."

This means these people lack essential like food, clothing and blankets. It means a lot of kids get shoes twice a year. It means that a phone is a luxury. It means that the gas may get turned off because there is simply no money to pay for it.

Poverty means frustration

Poverty means a lot of things but most of all it means frustration. A Mexican teenager who drops out (or is forced out) of high school doesn't have the same type of problems that the middle class "hippie" has as he sits Indian style passing the joint. The Mexican American gets shipped to Vietnam.

Mexican Americans as well as Blacks are getting killed in Vietnam out of all proportion. The manpower in these groups is being killing to preserve "status" and to maintain a high economy.

Status? Minorities know who has the status; the money is not in their pockets. A high economic level? Be serious. We

know who is getting the cake.

'High-risk' duty

"War deaths by branch of service suggest that relatively large numbers of Mexican Americans are involved in high-risk duty," according to the Mexican American Study Project here. Telling it like it is, Mexicans en masse are given that "high-risk" duty, which means their chances of getting their heads shot off are greater.

I received a letter from a friend in Vietnam who said: "I am dirty, hungry, thirsty, but I'm OK. Guess what? Today is my birthday. I am twenty-one. Now I can vote."

That soldier is a Mexican whose family lives in poverty. He has a lot to fight for-to survive so he can make it home.

Tell me America will welcome him with more than a military funeral should his head be blown off.

Poverty produces riots

Last Sunday in a Los Angeles Sports Arena rally Black leader Stokely Carmichael told his people to get their shotguns in preparations for riots this summer. In Tuesday's Daily Bruin, Ralph Guzman was quoted as saying that "all the necessary ingredients" for riots are present in New Mexico. Poverty is poverty. Those ingredients are here, too.

Middle class American, listen to Reies Tijerina. He is angry and his anger is carried in the hearts of a lot of young Mexicans.