A movement made of "young Mexican Americans seeking change": Critical citizenship, migration, and the Chicano movement in Texas and Wisconsin, 1960-1975

Western Historical Quarterly

Volumn 34, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 275-299

  Rodriguez, Marc Simon ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 38949194964     PISSN: 00433810     EISSN: 19398603     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25047295     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. Journalist's description of Crystal City youth activism from "Gutiérrez Slate Wins in Crystal City," San Antonio Express, 5 April 1970.
2. Larry Goodwyn, "Los Cinco Candidatos," Austin Texas Observer, 18 April 1963;
3. John S. Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (Notre Dame, IN, 1974), 37;
4. José Angel Gutiérrez, The Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal (Madison, 1998), 51.
5. Goodwyn, "Los Cinco Candidatos."
6. Francisco Rodriguez, interview with author, 25 July 1998, Madison, WI, recording in author's possession. Francisco Rodriguez, a schoolmate who had attended elementary, middle, and high school with both José Angel Gutiérrez and Jesus Salas, two prominent future activists, was the emcee that night in charge of making sure the speakers were on the stage on schedule.
7. Goodwyn, "Los Cinco Candidatos." The cheers in response to Gutiérrez's speech, according to Goodwyn, were the "strongest of the night."
8. Crystal City-based migrant workers traveled to many states, yet the focus here is Wisconsin and Texas, because it was in Wisconsin alone that the activism of Crystal City's youth developed following the spark of local activism in 1963 and continued most forcefully into the 1980s.
9. Although Los Cinco won this election, they were voted out of office by 1965 due to the fact that they lacked the organization and discipline to overcome Anglo harassment and the difficulty of governing. For my purposes, it is the community mobilization on the part of Chicano youth that is central here, not the fact that those elected were soon out of office. On this and the related history of Crystal City, see Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town;
10. Ignacio M. Garciá, United We Win: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida Party (Tucson, 1989);
11. Armando Navarro, Mexican American Youth Organization: Avant-Garde of the Chicano Movement in Texas (Austin, 1995)
12. and Armando Navarro La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U. S. Two-Party Dictatorship (Philadelphia, 2000).
13. On the support provided by the Teamsters and PASO see, "Both Crystal City Slates Predict Election Victory," San Antonio Express, 27 March 1963;
14. William E. Brown, "Crystal City: Symbol of Hope," Labor Today 2 (December 1963-January 1964): 16-20
15. and "Crystal City: New City Council Names Teamster Mayor," The International Teamster (May 1963): 16-21. Although the focus here is on student activism, the protection provided by the outside support of the Teamsters and PASO cannot be understated. In March 1963, the federal government entered the voting rights fray to protect the rights of African American voters in Greenwood, MS, as it dispatched agents to Crystal City to investigate claims of discrimination and voter harassment.
16. José Angel Gutiérrez, interview with author, 19 April 1995, Arlington, TX, recording in author's possession (hereafter Gutiérrez interview);
17. Miguel A. Delgado, "The Fraternization of the Pachuco and the Chicano," 20 September 1972, TMs in author's possession;
18. Miguel A. Delgado, interview with author, 8 February 1997, Crystal City, TX, notes in author's possession;
19. Guadalupe Rodriguez, interview with author, 10 February 1998, Milwaukee, WI, notes in author's possession.
20. What David G. Gutiérrez refers to as the "significant shift" to ethnic block mobilization is cleatly demonstrated in the Crystal City case, and was part of a broader movement for ethnic mobilization among Mexican American citizens taking place across the Southwest, yet few of these efforts garnered the same amount of national attention. The evolution of this electoral policy is discussed in David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley, 1995), 181.
21. The specifics of the Crystal City case are detailed briefly in Juan Gomez Quinones, Chicano Politics: Reality & Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque, NM, 1990), 71-2.
22. Alberto Avila, interview with author, 18 August 2002, Milwaukee, WI, recording in author's possession;
23. Juanita Ortiz, interview with author, 29 August 2002, Crystal City, TX, recording in author's possession;
24. Seldon Menefee, Mexican Migratory Workers of South Texas (Washington, DC, 1941);
25. Dennis Nodín Valdés, Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917-1970, (Austin, 1991), 137-8;
26. Wisconsin Governor's Commission on Human Rights, Migratory Agricultural Workers in Wisconsin (Madison, 1950);
27. Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, A Study of Migratory Workers in Cucumber Harvesting, Waushara County, Wisconsin, 1964 (Madison, 1966).
28. These networks functioned in ways similar to those of Mexican workers in California as detailed in Devra Weber's, Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal (Berkeley, 1994), 63-5.
29. Although not linked directly to the movement in Crystal City, Texas, these events have been detailed in Valdés's Al Norte, 189-92;
30. Rene Rosenbaum, "Success in Organizing, Failure in Collective Bargaining: The Case of Pickle Workers in Wisconsin, 1967-68,"
31. Julian Samora Research Institute, Working Paper Series 11 (August 1991): 7-12.
32. Jack Orozco, interview with author, 7 August 1992, Milwaukee, WI, notes in author's possession.
33. The general pattern of Crystal City-midwestern migration is detailed in Don Olesen, "Jesus Salas - Voice of Wisconsin's Migrants," Milwaukee Journal, 7 September 1969, 4-8.
34. For information on the continued migration and settlement of Texas-based migrants to Wisconsin, see "Mote Migrant Families Calling Wisconsin Home," Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 3 September 2002.
35. Geraldo Lazcano, interview with author, 10 August 1992, Milwaukee, WI, notes in author's possession. Further evidence of this pattern of migration, settlement, and continued visitation and communication can be found in the "Here and There" section of the Zavala County Sentinel (published in Crystal City, TX). For examples
36. see the numerous listings in the "Here and There" and Obituaries" sections of the Zavala County Sentinel, 1965-1972, detailing the continued relationships of those Cristaleños living in Wisconsin and the various midwestern states.
37. Quoted in Olesen, "Jesus Salas," 8.
38. State of Texas, Assessment of Property in Zavala County Owned and Rendered for Taxation, 1960 (Austin, 1960), 118, Texas State Library, Genealogy Collection, Austin, TX; Telephone Directory, Crystal City, TX (July 1958), 20, Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin.
39. The Salas family owned a tavern and restaurant, as well as a taxi service, in Crystal City after World War II. On several occasions, Manuel Salas, Sr. settled his family temporarily in Wisconsin before finally settling permanently in the late 1950s. In many ways, he was the hub on which the wheel of migrant labor in Wisconsin turned, as he was the labor contractor for the Waushara County-based Libby's. Jesus Salas, interview with author, 27 July 1992, Milwaukee, WI, recording in author's possession (hereafter 1992 Salas interview).
40. 1992 Salas interview.
41. Jesus Salas, interview with author, 22 March 1995, Milwaukee, WI, recording in author's possession (hereafter 1995 Salas interview).
42. Quoted in Mark Erenburg, "Obreros Unidos in Wisconsin," Monthly Labor Review 91, no. 6, (1968): 20;
43. Valdés, Al Norte, 190;
44. "Migrant Workets to March on Madison," Appleton Post-Crescent, 12 August 1966;
45. Salvador Sanchez, "The Migrant Stteam," Newsletter of the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute 2 (1968): 9-10;
46. "Wautoma in Spotlight for Migrant March to Madison," La Voz Mexicana, 18 August 1966.
47. Bill Smith, interview with author, 23 April 2000, Madison, WI, recording in author's possession (hereafter Smith interview).
48. Kerry Napuk, "Report on Potato Shed Operations, Plainfield and Almond, Wisconsin (Portage County)," 30 September 1966, in William L. Kircher Papers, Box 23, Folder 9, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI (hereafter Kircher Papers).
49. Mark Erenburg, interview with author, 22 July 1999, Evanston, IL, recording in author's possession. Faculty members also helped the organizers with procedural issues before the Wisconsin Employment Relations Committee, the state equivalent of the National Labor Relations Board.
50. Smith interview.
51. 1992 Salas interview; Valdés, Al Norte, 190;
52. Obreros Unidos, "The Migrant Workers Strike in Almond, Wisconsin," Kircher Papers, Box 23, Folder 10. Under Wisconsin Employment Relations Board (WERB) guidelines, Obreros Unidos formally requested that Burns enter into labor negotiations. Burns and Sons reacted with an attempt to break the union by raising wages by $.25 and dismissing twenty-seven union supporters. OU led a walkout, and suffered a defeat. OU later took Burns to court, and won a WERB case, but the decision came too late to benefit work-ers.
53. Mark Erenburg to Marc Rodriguez, 30 August 1999, letter in author's possession. In spite of their different activities, there seems to have been little friction between Salas and his father over the issue of organizing at Libby.
54. Even the supportive unions in Wisconsin were skeptical about the potential of organizing a sustained union among migrants. See various letters in Kircher Papers, Box 23, Folder 10.
55. Erenburg to Rodriguez, 30 August 1999.
56. For more on these dynamics see, Rosenbaum, "Success in Organizing, Failure in Collective Bargaining"; Wisconsin Employment Commission, Memorandum Accompanying Direction of Election (Obreros Unidos-United Workers Complaint v. Libby McNeill & Libby) Decision No. 8163, 29 August 1967;
57. Libby, McNeill & Libby v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, 48 Wis. 2d 272.
58. Valdés, Al Norte, 191. The AFL-CIO provided a slim outlay of funds to support OU efforts in comparison to similar urban drives, even complaining about the 1967 OU budget of $11,000.
59. Doris P. Slesinger and Eileen Muirragui, Migrant Agricultural Labor in Wisconsin: A Short History (Madison, 1979).
60. The issue of maintaining Obreros Unidos as a viable union was a point of contention between UFW-UFWOC, the AFL-CIO, and Salas. It appears from UFW correspondence that the AFL-CIO and the UFW sought to undermine the Wisconsin union, while hoping to use its best organizers for UFW-UFWOC supported activities outside of Wisconsin. Salas's correspondence with Chavez and the UFW main office is contained in United Farm Workers Collection, Box 68, Folders 16-17, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, Detroit, M1.
61. For the administration's policy, see James Gaither (?) "Report of the Task Force on Problems of Spanish Surname Americans," Gaither Papers, Box 327, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, TX.
62. Genevieve Medina, interview with author, 17 June 1992, Milwaukee, WI, notes in author's possession.
63. United Migrant Opportunity Services, Inc. (UMOS), Helping People Help Themselves: Celebrating Twenty Years of Service (Milwaukee, 1985).
64. "UMOS in Real Dialogue," El Cosechador, 26 November 1968.
65. (This newsletter was published by UMOS in Milwaukee and is readily available using OCLC). These organizations not only provided opportunities for male leaders but also in some circumstances became centers of female power. See Alfredo H. Benavides, "Homogenous Mexican American Leadership and Heterogeneous Problems in a Midwestern Community," in The Chicano Experience, ed. Stanley A. West and June Macklin (Boulder, 1979), 275;
66. See Navarro, Mexican American Youth Organization and The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community (Madison, 1998);
67. Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America: The Chicano's Struggle toward Liberation (San Francisco, 1972);
68. and, to a lesser degree, Valdés, Al Norte.
69. UMOS, Helping People Help Themselves, 1-9;
70. Arturo Gonzalez, interview with author, 22 February 1997, Crystal City, TX, recording in author's possession (hereafter Gonzalez interview).
71. See The Javelin: Crystal City High School Yearbook for 1962, 1963, and 1970. In the yearbooks for 1962 and 1963, Anglos represented the socially dominant group, despite the fact that Mexican Americans accounted for the largest group of enrolled students. Pompom squad and other student groups were Anglo dominanted with only token Mexican American representation. José Angel Gutiérrez and Francisco Rodriguez were two of the Mexican American students whose families seem to have been better off than other Mexican American families, as they both participated in various high status Anglo-dominated student activities.
72. Severita Lara De La Fuente, interview with author, 15 February 1997, Crystal City, TX, recording in author's possession (hereafter De La Fuente interview).
73. "Students Air Grievances," Zavala County Sentinel, 1 May 1969; Diana Palacios, after the boycott, went on to become high school senior class president, and the captain of the cheer squad. She later would work as a legal secretary for a Crystal City law firm.
74. Quoted in Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town, 273, n. 33.
75. The community level mobilization is covered in Armando Navarro, "El Partido de La Raza Unida in Crystal City: A Peaceful Revolution," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Riverside, 1974), 187-304
76. and Michael Miller, "Conflict and Change in a Bifurcated Community: Anglo-Mexican-American Political Relations in a South Texas Town," (master's thesis, Texas A&M University, 1971), which presents a discussion of these events in "Farmington," a pseudonym for Crystal City, Texas.
77. De La Fuente interview; Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town, 120.
78. See Zavala County Sentinel, 1 May 1969;
79. Navarro, "El Partido de La Raza Unida in Crystal City," 134;
80. José Angel Gutiérrez, "Toward a Theory of Community Organization in a Mexican American Community in South Texas," (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1977).
81. De La Fuente interview.
82. The mention of "violence" may have been a result of local reading of supposed statements made by Gutiérrez on 10 April 1969, in San Antonio, Texas, where he was quoted as saying that he would "kill" gringos, and also perhaps to a specific editorial published in the San Antonio Express on 12 April 1969, which characterized the Mexican American Youth Organization, then active in San Antonio, as a "handful of apparently frustrated young men," and Gutiérrez as a "violent young man."
83. For nearly a month after his remarks in San Antonio, Gutiérrez would be attacked for his actions, words, and youthfulness in letters to the paper, by U.S. representative Henry B. Gonzalez, editorials, and articles written for the Express. In these letters, editorials, and commentary pieces, Gutiérrez was labeled a "boy," "baby face," and "a young juvenile with a tamale on his shoulder." See Dallas Morning News, 12 April 1969
84. and San Antonio Express 12, 16, 20 April 1969.
85. De La Fuente interview. In an anonymous letter to the Zavala County Sentinel published on 20 November 1969, the writer calculated that over 26 percent of Crystal City high school graduates old enough to have a daughter try out for the court were Mexican American, yet did not provide information on how many actually had a daughter in the high school. It seems as if the single-student figure is accurate.
86. Benny L. Parker, "Power-in-Conflict: A Chicano Political Party's Definition of So4 cial Disequalibrium and Anglo-Chicano Power Relationships Expressed through a Situational Analysis of Public Address in Crystal City, Texas, in 1972," (Ph.D. diss., Southern Illinois University, 1975), 31;
87. Gutiérrez interview. See also José Angel Gutiérrez "Mexicanos Need to Control Their Own Destinies," in La Causa Política: A Chicano Politics Reader, ed. F. Chris Garcia (Notre Dame, IN, 1974), 226-33.
88. On the collapse of Los Cinco between 1963-1965, see Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town, 42-79.
89. De La Fuente interview; Navarro, "El Partido de La Raza Unida in Crystal City," 141.
90. Gutiérrez interview.
91. Navarro, "El Partido de La Raza Unida in Crystal City," 143.
92. UMOS, Helping People Help Themselves, 9. Gutiérrez visited friends in Milwaukee, primarily Francisco Rodriguez, in the taverns lobbied for support back in Crystal City, and provided assistance in mobilization in Milwaukee.
93. Gutiérrez, Making of a Chicano Militant, 212;
94. Navarro, The Cristal Experiment, 129.
95. 1995 Salas interview; Gutiérrez, Making of a Chicano Militant, 253-6.
96. Gutiérrez interview; Tony Castro, Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America (New York, 1974), 169. Castro argued that RUP pursued the "old politics of ward campaigning disguised as new Chicano politics" and that these efforts "whetted the appetites of other Chicano activists."
97. Juan Gomez Quinones, Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise, 1940-1990 (Albuquerque, NM, 1990).
98. See also José Angel Gutiérrez Papers, 1954-1990, Raza Unida Party, Box 24, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.
99. José Angel Gutiérrez Papers, 1954-1990, Box 24, "Salazar" File, 1972, 2, Benson Latin American Collection, General Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.
100. The division between the Midwestern-Texas-California RUP and the Colorado arm headed by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales is still a point of controversy. According to the Gonzales branch, the midwestern chapters were seen as "bogus state chapters," a view contradicted by the history of activist involvement revealed in this article and other work. See Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent (Madison, 1999), 187.