Testimonio by Rebecca Garcia at the 1999 Movimiento at UCLA Conference

(Starts with Chicano hand clap) That brings back a lot of memories. You don't hear it as often anymore. My name is Rebecca Garcia. I was Sandoval when I was here. I was born in raised in East Los Angles, went to Roosevelt High School. I was one of the first members of the Upward Bound program I understand. We started in the summer of 1967. I came here to campus lived at Hershey Hall along with Upward Bound students from Jordan High School. Don't ask me why they didn't try to involve Latinos with Whites. They thought we had to get acclimated with living with Blacks. In the barrios there were Blacks. I didn't understand the idea behind that but that's how it happened.

Then in October of that year I became a Freshman at UCLA and lived at Hedrick Hall. Now That was a very interesting experience coming down to Breakfast the first day I lived there and seeing no other Mexicans in the whole dining room. I put my tray down and left. It was a very strange experience. Needless to say after that because of my experience with High Potential I knew there were other Chicanos on campus. They had been some of the counselors in the Program during the summer. So that gave me strength and the confidence to go up to other Chicanos I had never seen and say hey are you a Chicano? do you want to come to this meeting? And that was the acclamation process basically. You go to class and you'd be the only Chicano Chicana on campus. You could walk across campus and never see another Chicano Chicana at all, all day. It was very interesting.

Now well, trying to come up with an idea for my presentation I went and looked through all my momentos and my photo albums and came up with a very interesting piece of paper. And I want to read some of it to you because that is what I am going to gauge my presentation around. It is a statement of purpose for UMAS at UCLA drawn up in 1967. And to get to the bottom of the purposes they were divided into four areas. And the first one was cultural. UMAS UCLA wanted to recognize and maintain the cultural aspects of the Mexican American people. Under education we wanted to inspire and induce Mexican Americans to pursue higher education UMAS will assist our brother and sisters by establishing tutorial programs, financial aid, and by visiting various schools to construct bridges of communication. Politically, UMAS will endeavor to promote unification among the Mexican American for the attainment of common goals by organizational cohesion we will be able to stimulate and make effective the lagging Mexican American vote. Socially we will endeavor to provide functions, which will increase our participation in and expand the community's awareness of our Mexican culture.

Now, with keeping this in mind there are somethings that first of all I want to point out. Another part of this presentation was a list of committees that were being formed, the Campus Relation Committee, as Ron said, we broke up into committees, and people had different ideas for what they wanted to do with their involvement. There was a Campus relations committee, the Community relations committee, and the Civics committee and the Chairman were listed for all of this. And they were all men. That is not good or bad but I just wanted to point that out. Of course, the faculty advisor, David Sanchez, who became integral in our involvement, in helping us here on campus by making endeavors easier for us.

Now, with respect to the cultural aspect, the one thing I was very involved in was the formation of the Chicano folklorico on campus. When we first came here there was a folklorico group and it was out of the Dance Department. We were very territorial we wanted to have folklorico. We wanted Chicanos to dance folklorico. And we did. We lobbied. We got money. We insisted, we demonstrated and the group was formed. Emilio Pulido became our director and we started practicing and putting on performances. We performed at everything from political rallies, conferences, fund-raisers, you name it. We were called and we went and danced. And as far as I know we were the first Chicano folklorico to be formed. The very first. And it was during the course of the development of that dance group that I became very good friends with one of my only openly gay friends on campus.

Also at that time was the Chicano Moratorium and we became very involved in the Chicano Moratorium waging a battle here at home against the war in Vietnam and the disparate number of Chicanos that were losing their lives during that war. And of course, the Farmworkers we did so much we couldn't do enough. We would collect food, picket, demonstrate, drive up to Delano which is were they were then, make food runs and deliver whatever we had collected. This was almost a weekly thing. We would go up there, give up our weekends, make a drive up there. But it was also a very interesting experience where I learned how to throw a grito with Luis Valdez and his brother. Things like that, small little things like that that occurred that will live in your memory forever, its totally amazing.

Now with respect to collaborative efforts because of the fact that the Upward Bound program were housed at Campbell hall for the Chicano high pot and the Black high pot there was a chance to exchange philosophies and exchange literature with the Black movement. It was my first experience in being so close to so many militant Blacks and have it not be so much head butting. We did try and form several collaborative efforts but anything long term never really happened. Interestingly enough one of the things that was mentioned in the purpose that I didn't read to you is the introduction that says, "To all Mexican American, Spanish Speaking and interested people". We were not at that point exclusionary we wanted anybody and everybody who was interested in why we wanted to make an organization happen welcome. And then like Ron said there was a question about where we were going, the direction of the organization and at some point in time there were certain events that made other people of color not unwelcome, uncomfortable I would say, because of the somewhat radical nature of our chapter.

And in closing the only thing I have to say is that were a lot of people that I made friends with here that are friends still and there are a lot of people here who are no longer here with us and I just want to tell all of the Chicanos here all of the friends that you make treasure because the vicissitudes of life and all of the things that happen you may not know how much longer you are going to have their friendship. Thank you.

1960s Panel Testimonios