UCLA DAILY BRUIN Friday, February 23, 1968

Mexican American voice cries out against deeds, of racist U.S. majority

By Irene Cardenas

DB Staff Writer

' 'We have been accused of being violent, of being racist, but words alone do not make up racism; it has to be deeds. This racist system uses the culture, language, and customs and then supresses and humiliates people!" Mexican American revolutionary leader Reies Tijerina declared.

Tijerina addressed an audience of more than 600 at the Mexican American in the Southwest Symposium" held in the Ackerman Union Grand Ballroom yesterday. The symposium was co-sponsored by United Mexican American Students( UNIAS) and AS UC LA.

"The Anglo says 'Tijerina is a graud,' " Tijerina told the crowd, "but to us the American way of life is the American way to hell!"

Tijerina is leader of the Alianza Federal de Merdedes (Federation of the Free-City States) in New Mexico. He was charged with "Contempt of court" in that state after he and other Alianza members allegedly took over the county court house in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico and held law officers as hostages for several hours. He is currently free on bond.

Guzman speaks

Featured speaker Ralph Guzman, director of the Mexican American Study Project, preceeded Tijerina. He prefaced his remarks by saying, "I am partisan. I speak to you as a Mexican."

Guzman aroused the crowd, the majority of which were Mexican Americans and black students, by verbally attacking the police.

"There is no human contact, no knowledge of minorities and there can be no justice. You can't tell a person in the ghetto that the policeman is his friend!" Guzman said.

"The poor are supposed to remain mute before the police. There is nothing more galling than to swallow your suffering in silence," he said to the applauding crowd.

Audience agrees

Guzman received strong vocal agreement from the audience when he yelled, "The government has not shown the agrarian politeness of the Mexican or the rural patience of the black man.

"The government does not inform its left hand of the violence, it exacts with its right," he added.

Mexicans must expend a great effort in "proving their citizenship," he said.

"For most Mexicans, the Immigration and Naturalization Dept. means a knock on the door in the middle of the night. For this the people are bitter."

He also accused the government of "divide and exploit" tactics. He called the Dept. of Labor an instigator of violence."

Of the Dept. of Justice, he said, *'There are federal agents at this meeting. Where were the federal agents when families (of the Alianza) were put-behind fences?

"There is no rage so deep or so profound as that of unfulfilled promises."

Prisons of poverty

He called the police in Texas "wardens of minorities in their prisons of poverty. There is daily psychic brutality before women and children. They (the police) destroy a person's manhood."

Guzman summed up his speech by stating, "The poor man will respond to his hungry neighbor with food, not with a questionnaire.

Tijerina spoke of the fight that the Mexican Americans must put up. "Mexican Americans have been passive only for the time when leaders would emerge," he said.

"We are going to work together, fight together, and if need be, die together to get our rights. The Mexican doesn't make idle threats."

He gave as his reason for joining the fight for equality a desire to have things better for Mexican Americans now and in the future than he had in his youth.

Land of the free

" I was born in a cotton field, " Tijerina began. "My mother was picking cotton the day I was born. I was 11 when I started school and 14 when I had my first pair. of shoes.

"I used to walk down back alleys to get what other people threw away so I could have something for lunch at school," he said. Mexican American leaders Rudolfo Gonzales and Bert Corona also spoke at yesterday's rally. Cesar Chavez was schedule to speak, but did not appear because of his work with the farmworkers' union.