LOS ANGELES TIMES WEST MAGAZINE January 26, 1969

The new Chicano is telling the Angle that things have changed. He's young, tough, smart and has a deep anger at injustice. He doesn't carry a gun. But he's not Tio Taco either.

By RALPH GUZMAN

THE GENTLE REVOLUTIONARIES

BROWN POWER

Last October a group of Mexican-Americans invaded and occupied the august chambers of the Los Angeles City Board of Education. Those six days and six nights of sit-in and sleep-in were a shock for the board, and even more shocking for citizens of the city of Los Angles. Something mysterious had bitten the complacent Mexicans of the city's East Side.

On the face of it, this invasion of the highest level of Los Angeles educational bureaucracy was an angry protest. The protesters hoped to force the board to hear substantive complaints about the quality of Mexican education. There was also the matter of the reinstatement of Teacher Sal Castro was prosecuted with 12 others for allegedly conspiring to lead student walkouts at four East Side high schools last March. He also was removed as a teacher at Lincoln High, then reinstated after the recent protests and demonstrations. Sal Castro, a Lincoln High School social science teacher accused of leading school walk-outs the previous spring. But the real event, the significance of which was not lost on the board, the city, or the Mexican-American community, was the first important public appearance of something called Brown Power.

Who were the protesters? What is Brown Power? What is the meaning of this sudden uproar among the presumably passive 650,000 Mexicans living in the Los Angeles County?

The protesters at the Board of Education were, to say the least, a very mixed company. There was least one Catholic Priest, one Epicopalian priest and several Protestant ministers. There were Mexican-American college students from UCLA and from California State College, Los Angeles. Most were indeed, Mexican-Americans and very few were more than 30 years of age. Some wore beards and brown berets; others, college clothing and neat business suits. There were some who looked like recent arrivals from the mountains of Guatemala. This guerrilla-like appearance had been cultivated carefully because these few were the Brown Berets, the official representatives of Brown Power.

The trouble at the moment-and the most important single fact about Brown Power-is that none of the October protestors can agree on exactly what Brown Power is, or on what it ought to be. Paradoxically, Brown Power is almost sure to become whatever the larger American community decides it ought to be.

For some of the young militants, Brown Power is a sort of life-condition shared by all Mexican-Americans. It is a feeling, a mystical sort of thing created by being Mexican in a sea of Anglos. It is being a member of la raza (meaning "our race" or "our people"). Young Mexicans (it isn't likely to happen to older Mexicans) receive Brown Power by the right of birth. Its primary sign is a brown skin. "Our skin is brown. Brown is a beautiful color." Brown Power militants generally share an intense attachment to "Mexican culture"-the whole complex of family feeling, food, music, and social mannerism that they accept as "Mexican." It is also the accumulated history of the Mexicans in the United States-of anger and clotted rage at poor education, poor jobs, and the grinding misery of thousands of Southwestern barrios (ghettos).

But the most important part of Brown Power is a kind of cocky aggressiveness-an angry mustache and an insolent guerrillero beard that carries a special message for the "racist" white Angle-Saxon Protestant. The Brown Power Mexican is telling the Anglo that things have changed. The Mexican rural laborer faded away a generation ago. His son moved to the city. He's young, tough, smart, and he's "watching you, white man." He's not patient, he's not submissive. He's not Tio Taco who wants to please his Angle patron.

There is idealism, of course, but all of it carries strong overtones of racism and extreme militancy. Members of the Brown Berets don't carry guns but some do talk about them. The racial ideal is a sense of onenesss and brotherhood with all people of Indian-Hispanic origin. Few of the young militants speak Spanish, however, it's the spirit and the color of the shkin that matters, not the language.

Most of the young militants, whatever the attractions of a brown beret, wear a somewhat modified version of mod styles, a manner of clothing quite common among the gilded middle-class young in East Los Angeles. Whatever the mysticism of the jungle trail, some drive sports cars when they or their parents can afford them. Many are based in Southern California colleges where they generally are active members in rapidly growing student organization such as UMAS (United Mexican-American Students) and MASA (Mexican-American Student Association). Still others have rejected formal schooling completely. A few are suspicious of college-trained Mexicans-whatever their age.

All of these young militants know very well what they're doing when they are compared to Black Power. They admire the aggressiveness and sophistication of the Black Power militants.

The Brown Power equivalent of a youthful Stokely Carmichael does not yet exist. Reies Tijerina, the fiery champion of land reform in Northern New Mexico, and Cesar Chavez, the Ghandian supporter of peaceful social change, are both well over 30. But there are many appeals to a spirit of brotherhood with the blacks. La Raza Unida, an informal organization of Brown Power militants in large southwestern cities, claims that it holds no important meetings without the presence of sympathetic Negroes. But Brown Power lacks the real toughness of the Black Power men. In part this is its newness, in part the fact that while Negroes are trapped inside their skin as firmly and irrevocably "black," the Mexican-American has many more options available to him in American society.

But just enough of the racism and tough talk of Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver (to say nothing of Ché Guevara) echoes inside Brown Power to irritate the vast majority of the Mexican-American community in Los Angeles. The community has long had its "Establishment Mexicans" and they resent and fear the Brown Power militants for many reasons. Brown Power threatens their smooth relationship with Anglo Los Angeles. Brown Power drains off the thought and energy of the all-important younger generation, particularly the bright hard-working students who survive to go to college. Surviving the American secondary education system is a considerable accomplishment ; the drop-out rate in high school for Mexican boys and girls is extremely high. Brown Power may sooner or later force the Mexican Establishment either to repudiate their own young or take a hard line with Angle Los Angeles. Worse yet, the young militants are forcing Mexican-Americans to look squarely at themselves and to acknowledge their Indian ancestry. Most Mexicans don't want to.

The Mexican community has very little sympathy, by and large, for the violent aspects of the Negro protest. Two Mexican-Americans were killed in the Watts Riots of 1965. Never did the Mexican community entirely sympathize with the rioters. That some of the young people should do so is almost intolerable. In the words of one housewife, "These militant asquerosos (filthy ones) associate us with the colored people. We are white people. The United States government said so." And, indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Census recently identified the Mexican-American population as White Persons of Spanish Surname (WPSS). More recently the Inter-Agency Committee on Mexican American Affairs suggested that federal agencies use an even less racially slanted label: Spanish Surnamed Americans (SSA). The idea of Brown Power is dragging out those old racial bogeymen at the worst possible time.

What do the Brown Power militants want? They really don't know. Yet they do know, vaguely, that they want full equality everywhere and possibly some rectification of past wrongs. But Mexican-American wrongs and troubles are somewhat different in different parts of the Southwest. Young militants from different cities thus have different aims for Brown Power. Some are upset about the treaties that gave Mexican land to the United States. Others are preoccupied with Mexican economic troubles, particularly the almost endless farm labor warfare in Delano. Others see Brown Power as an instrument of politics. Some Mexican young people, born in the city and wise to its ways, are concerned with the half-hearted efforts of the educational Establishment in keeping Mexican boys and girls in high school. They deeply resent the "custodial" manner that emphasizes attendance and discipline at the expense of learning techniques of guerrilla warfare. Others, with no sense of incongruity, study ways of remedying troubles with policemen, antipoverty workers, school counselors and so on. This rather confusing mixture of goals merely reflects the rather confusing situation of the modern Mexican-American. Very few Mexicans dare to refuse the burdens of la raza. But the Brown Power techniques are still quite limited. Few people in the community are likely to join any Mexican protest.

All of this confusion shows up in the little committees and student groups that are trying to organize social protest in the name of Brown Power. The hard truth is that they have a hard time trying to keep track of almost anything-money, who is in jail, or just what they plan to do next Tuesday. Thus it is both comical and tragic that the legal Establishment-the mighty array of the sovereign state of California-should spend so much time and money establishing criminal conspiracy for 13 Mexican-Americans accused of fomenting school walkouts. In this respect the Brown Power advocates are completely different from the Old Left, the discredited fragments of workers' fronts and communist cells that once agitated American society. The Old Left may never have had enough bodies to carry pickets signs but they were organized within an inch of their lives. The Brown Power men lack both the experience and the sophistication.

The inexperience has been used against Mexican activists in the past. Anglos believed always that any Mexican civic leader, whatever his professed dedication, could be bough off. In the past, hundreds of indigenous leaders and potential revolutionaries accepted Establishment jobs and the social prestige that goes with the jobs. When militant students take administrative jobs with salaries and titles-well, to the Mexican community it sounds like another Mexican general accepting another ranch.

The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy caught this feeling very well. Early last year he took special pains to meet some of the Brown Power militants and to hear their views. His conclusion: "These fellows have a deep anger which they have trouble expressing. They are not sure of their goals. Compared to others that I have heard they are really gently revolutionaries."

In a very real sense much of Brown Power is an experiment. The movement is all very exiting and stimulating, but some of the more serious members complain about the frivolity. It is, after all, rather amazing that nice quiet Mexicans should become disorderly. When the Board of Education protesters solemnly established the "Chicano Board of Education" everyone was rather amazed and delighted that the joke could go so far. The trouble, of course, is that the Board was not amused. Nor was the Mexican community. A demand that Sal Castro be "returned to the community" assumes that the community and the protesters are one.

The goals of Brown Power may yet be confused but the Brown Power groups are not confused about their desire for action-direct action. They want confrontation and meaningful results. Nothing is more strongly rejected than the famed passivity of the Mexican-American. Nothing is more hated that the "quiet fighting" strategies of the past. Older leaders, older symbols and all the assimilationist yearnings of the past are scrapped ruthlessly. Jail is a mark of social acceptability. Brown Power will not wait for the compromises and the study committees of the past. Leaders of Brown Power are not elected. They demonstrate themselves by "performance in action." A temperate leader is almost by definition no longer fit to be a leader. The "battlefield commission" is won by direct courage against the Angle establighment.

The meaning of Brown Power to the Mexican-American community can yet hardly be guessed. There is a new pride among many. The school walk-outs of last March merely dramatized a fact of life in East Los Angeles: the poor quality of these among those who teach and administer them. Thus the success of the protest pleased many people even if they will not say so publicly.

The second important consequence is almost unbearable pressure on the current generation of Mexican-American leaders. Consider, for example, the position of an administrator on a college campus who has been hired specifically to look after the special needs of Mexican-American students. As a member of the Establishment he is naturally an object of suspicion to the young militants. Yet he is supposed to represent both the militants and the larger community. These pressures and cross-pressures are killing. Only recently a group of Negro militants at San Fernando Valley State engaged in a little direct action. It is a very good guess that the unhappiest man of all was the administrator supposed to look after the interests of the black students. He loses face twice: once to the militants because he can't react against the Anglo community because he can't stop militant action. Between the apostles of Brown Power and an Angle community still deaf to protest and slow to change, there is hardly any place to hide. And yet an honest and responsible leader must remember that the demands and ultimatums of Brown Power (just like Black Power) may or may not interest the whole minority community.

Nowhere is this more true than in Los Angeles. The very accomplishments of Mexican-Americans in this city make it truer. Thousands of Mexicans have worked themselves into small homes and middle-class status. This was a stunning accomplishment for a groupof immigrants hardly a generation removed from the railroads and fields of the Southwest. Middle-class Mexicans in the modest homes of Montebello and Monterey Park have no intention whatever of proclaiming theselves beautiful Indian brown and persuading their sons and daughters to wlak out of school. There are surely no more than 75 active Brown Berets in all Los Angeles. Some Brown Berets in all Los Angeles. Some Brown Power advocates are not even Mexican, but Latin Americans with backgrounds quite different from Los Angeles. For the moment their youth, their idealism, and the ideals of la raza confer a confer a sort of immunity. This may end rather suddenly if Brown Power is ever successful in speaking for all Mexican-Americans to all Los Angeles.

Most of the future of the Brown Power militants depends, oddly, on just how the white community reacts to them. To date, in Los Angeles, the Board of Education, the law enforcement agencies, and particularly the District Attorney receive an "F." One suspect a condition of profound ignorance. A revolutionary experience isn't possible unless the Establishment agrees there is going to be one. Thus mass arrests, jury indictments and almost hysterical television coverage simply accommodate the militants. One is tempted to suggest that to refuse to arrest any member of a militant group might been destroy them In the case of the walk-outs, Los Angeles saw a revolution and, almost by magic, there was one.

By contrast, the Stockton Unified Schools in Northern California took a less panicky view. When a militant Negro schoolteacher led a walk-out, it seemed to Stockton school administrators that she had demonstrated rather remarkable qualities of leadership. She was promoted to an administrative position and the "revolution" ended. The demonstrating students returned to their classrooms, the school system gained a talented administrator, and Black Power turned to other goals. The technical word for dealing with racial militancy in this fashion is "co-option." Black militants have learned to watch for it and to guard against it. Co-option shoots revolutions right the heart. It also supplies valuable new leaders to the Establishment and demonstrates that American society is open to talent. So far Los Angeles has shown that only the California State Penal Institutions are open to talent.

The reaction in Los Angeles was very close to nuclear "overkill." The resulting complications will take years of expensive litigation at taxpayer expense, produce a fine new crop of martyrs to Brown Power and offer the militants a fertile field for almost any kind of direct action. It confirms the most paranoid view of American society as a creaky, one-hoss, mule-cart that ought to be demolished anyway. And it diminishes the chances that Brown Power might show its brightest possibilities. Brown Americans might some day develop into a truly important Third Race between white Americans and black Americans. Mexican intellectuals in the late 19^th century predicted that some day Mexicans might be una raza de bronce (a bronze race).

There are some traces of this already in Brown Power. It is clear to blacks that Mexican-Americans are not quite white. Brown Power militants understand black aspirations and share the black distrust of the good intentions of the Angle community. Young Mexican-American militants show real compassion of a kind lacking now even among most white liberals. Yet they are committed to American society in a way that Negroes have never been. Yet there are committed to American society in a way that Negroes have never been. If they are defined as "bad," as "dangerous," as a "revolution" they will probably oblige Los Angeles and do their best to live up to this rather pleasing image. Perhaps, to steal a line from the educators, the Los Angeles Establishment should take courses in remedial reading and make sure they discover again that America was created in a rage at injustice. Who can scold the young, whatever their color, for a rage at injustice?