José Angel
Hernández
HIST: 6393;
"Empire, War and Revolution"
April 26,
2000
Ernesto B.
Vigil. The Crusade for Justice:
Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent. (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), Pp. 487 + Notes & Index.
In this 20-year study of the Crusade for
Justice (CFJ), a Denver-based organization founded by Rodolfo "Corky"
González, Ernesto B. Vigil attempts to relay several themes and messages to his
readers. The monograph is
straightforward and narrative in nature.
This is to say that a historical analysis is absent from the text and
the author does not gently guide his readers to the main objective of his
study. As a member of the Crusade and
as an active participant in the struggles of this era, Vigil is able to amass
an impressive amount of documents and, simultaneously, request information from
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the Crusade via the Freedom of
Information Act (FOA), a process that Vigil admits was tedious.
On the one hand, the author provides a
historical interpretation to explain how the organization was initially
founded. A small biography of González,
the founder of the Crusade, is discussed in the first part of the study but it
does not dominate the entire work.
Also, the evolution of the group is discussed as well as its
relationship with several other civil rights organizations, namely the American
Indian Movement (AIM), the Black Panthers, the Socialist Workers Party, the
Denver Communist Party, the Brown Berets, La Raza Unida Party, the Puerto
Rican-based Fuerza Armada de Liberación Nacional (FALN), and especially the
Black Berets. Finally, the author
describes the covert activities of the "Iron Triangle": the Police
[local and federal], the FBI and the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO),
and Military Intelligence. The
infiltration of the CFJ is discussed at length as well as the identification of
several members of the Crusade who were eventually identified as
infiltrators.
In the larger context, this monograph
inadvertently "identifies" several themes that are absent from the
actual study. The residual policies of
McCarthyism are evident in the procedures and FBI memos pertaining to the
CFJ. Although the anti-Communist
rhetoric was alive and well during this period, the "red-scare"
re-invented itself into the "black" and "brown" scare
commensurate for the period of the 1960s and 1970s. The early purges of the United States House Committee on
Un-American Activities (1938-1975) turned its attention to the Civil Rights
Movements of this era and recreated a new domestic enemy in the form of radical
student movements and various social justice organizations.
The 1960s and early 1970s is often
described as an era where concepts of "free love" and drugs flowed
through college campuses and outdoor concerts.
Important events like the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement
are often overshadowed by the hippie culture and dismissed as an anomaly that
quickly came and left. Vigil's
monograph, however, serves as reminder of the covert operations taking place in
Mexican American communities throughout the southwest. According to the author, "the Crusade
would become a multifaceted, multi-issue organization with hundreds of members
before it fortunes wavered, then declined, in the mid 1970s. Its achievements have been poorly
chronicled, and the Crusade is often recalled for the controversies in which it
was embroiled, rather than for its accomplishments in the face of
adversity."[1] Their adversity during this tumultuous
period is evident in several incidents.
For instance, "on August 29, 1970, an
estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Chicano protesters marched East Los Angeles to
protest against the Vietnam War. The
march was the largest minority protest against the war, the largest protest
gathering of Chicanos until that time, and probably the largest antiwar protest
composed of working-class people."[2] The Denver-based CFJ supported the
moratorium with a busload of members from Colorado, most of which were later
arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
The events that evolved were the
culmination of various factors that went beyond the war in Vietnam. The Chicano Moratorium represented the
social, economic, and political disenfranchisement of one group of people and
the realization that Chicanos participating in the war returned primarily in
body bags. A statement issued a year
earlier by a University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) senior class
president embodies the sentiment of the period:
"I accuse the government of the United
States of America of genocide against the Mexican people. Specifically I accuse the draft, the entire
social, political and economic system of creating the funnel which shoots the
Mexican youth into Vietnam to be killed and [to] kill innocent men, women and
children. I accuse the United States
Congress and Selective Service System, which it has created of reinforcing
these weaknesses imposed upon the Chicano community and of drafting their laws
so that more Chicanos are sent to Vietnam in proportion to the total population
of White youth. I accuse the entire
American social and economic system of taking advantage of the machismo of the
Chicano male, widowing and orphaning the mothers, wives and children of the
Chicano community, by sending their men into the front lines where our machismo
has given us more Congressional Medals, Purple Hearts and deaths in proportion
to the population than any other race or ethnic group in the nation. This is genocide."[3]
Although the
sentiments of this one individual are not shared by all sectors of the
community, particularly the Mexican American middle-class, they do illustrate
the feelings that many protesters harbored.
Adding a different perspective, González believed that not only were
Chicano lives at stake, but corporations benefited from the war while gambling
American lives. "The great and
powerful corporations who control our industries, who control the purse strings
of the nation, calmly play a chess game trading the lives of innocent American
boys, confused and bewildered Vietnamese men, women, and children for green
dollars that do not show the red stain of blood, the anguish and torment of
grieving parents, the guilt for rape of a weaker nation..."[4]
The number of Chicano casualties killed,
unfortunately, is not that well documented.
Although Chicanos were roughly 11.8% of the population, Chicano
casualties made up 19% of the total.
This estimate, more importantly, needs to be seen in a national
context. Put another way, Chicanos are
primarily concentrated in several states (southwest) of the nation and do not
reside in every locale, at least not in any significant numbers. Therefore, if we focus our attention at
those areas where the concentration of Chicanos is much higher, the numbers are
more accurate. Additionally, in a study
by Dr. Ralph Guzman, Chicanos "tended to serve in those branches of the
military that entailed high risk duty, the Army and US Marines...Mexican
Americans have been seen as a suspect, foreign minority. Like the Japanese Americans during World War
II they have been under great pressure to prove their loyalty to the United
States."[5]
Under closer examination, as I mentioned
earlier, Chicano casualties are appalling.
In Colorado, where Chicanos make-up a substantial portion of the
population, "the Chicano combat casualty rate was 25.9% of [the state's]
total casualties between January 1961 and February 1967."[6]
Yolanda Romero states that 1968 was the
bloodiest of all years for Tejanos in the Vietnam War. According to her estimates, Austin, Corpus
Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and San Antonio suffered deaths from 22% to
33%. As a matter of fact, in "1968
the State Veterans Commission reported that through February 13th, 1,178 Texas
had been killed in action with Mexican Americans still being a majority on the
casualty list."[7]
Vigil’s assessment of the events that
unfolded during his participation are telling of the period, particularly US
reaction to social justice organizations.
Police brutality, discrimination, poverty, and the war in Vietnam,
overwhelmed the Mexican American population, which in turn reacted by
organizing, striking, protesting, and dying for a cause that was ultimately
crushed by the US government. Although
the Chicano Moratorium has yet to be studied in an appropriate historical
context, Vigil does address the centrality of the march and the connection between
social justice and Chicano casualties.
"In the end," as Vigil points out, "this work is written
in the belief that no organization will rise to match the Crusade, much less
surpass it, until it first learns the lessons of the legacy of the Crusade's rich
and largely unrecognized history."[8]
[1] Ernesto B. Vigil. The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), pg. 18.
[2] Ibid., pg. 138.
[3] Rosalio Muñoz Refuses Induction," El Gallo, September-October 1969, pp. 4-5; quoted in Ibid., pg. 133.
[4] Vigil. Crusade for Justice. pp. 27-28.
[5] "The Veterans Administration reported that from Texas [alone],
between 1964 and 1975, 79,624 Mexican Americans were in military service with
75,887 in Vietnam. Yolanda Romero. "Tejanos in the Vietnam Conflict: A
Profile. Paper presented at the Vietnam
War Symposium at The University of Houston, November 12-13, 1999; see also
"Ralph Guzman. "Mexican American Casualties in Vietnam." La Raza 1, no. 1 (1971), pg. 12; 15; quoted in Ibid., pg. 115.
[6] Vigil. Crusade for Justice. pg. 115.
[7] Romero. "Tejanos." pg. 5.
[8] Vigil. Crusade for Justice. pg. 382.