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Overview
Based on in-depth interviews conducted with three key activists, this book illuminates the lives of Raul Ruiz, Gloria Arellanes, and Rosalio Muñoz—their family histories and widely divergent backgrounds; the events surrounding their growing consciousness as Chicanos; the sexism encountered by Arellanes; and the aftermath of their political histories.
In his substantial introduction, García situates the Chicano movement in Los Angeles and contextualizes activism within the largest civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in US history—a struggle that featured César Chávez and the farm workers, the student movement highlighted by the 1968 LA school blowouts, the Chicano antiwar movement, the organization of La Raza Unida Party, the Chicana feminist movement, the organizing of undocumented workers, and the Chicano Renaissance.
Weaving this revolution against a backdrop of historic Mexican American activism from the 1930s to the 1960s and the contemporary black power and black civil rights movements, García gives readers the best representations of the Chicano generation in Los Angeles.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520961364 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 04/30/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Chicano Generation
Testimonios of the Movement
By Mario T. García
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of CaliforniaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-96136-4
CHAPTER 1
Raul Ruiz
EL PASO
El Paso, to me, is where everything begins. I am from El Paso. It's in my blood, as it is for so many other mexicanos.
My family is not from El Paso. But like so many other Mexican immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, they came to this border city from Mexico. They came from Chihuahua—el norte. My grandfather on my mother's side, Miguel Bustillos, was a railroad man. He had little education and very early on worked on the railroads out of Chihuahua. It was the railroad that brought him to the border—la frontera—to El Paso. There he worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Starting as a laborer, he eventually worked his way up to the skilled position of a machinist. He was a union man. He became a leader in his union of machinists. He was not afraid or intimidated to go on strike.
Grandfather Bustillos was quite enterprising. He built his own home in El Segundo Barrio of south El Paso, the main Mexican settlement. Not only did he build his own house at Seventh and Florence right next to Armijo Park, but he kept adding apartments, where eventually his grown children and their families lived. For a while he owned some cantinas, or bars, in the barrio but lost them during Prohibition in the 1920s. Not to be outdone, however, he buried bottles of whiskey in the ground around his home. Later, as a kid, I would at times come across some of these bottles as I played in our yard.
Grandfather also learned English, and he could read it. His English was better than that of my own father. He was a proud and dignified man. I see pictures of him with a full head of hair; he was alto y guapo—tall and handsome. But my grandfather was also a tough guy. He would go to union meetings carrying a baseball bat because there was always a lot of turmoil. He even got into trouble with the law a couple of times.
Grandma Bustillos may also have been from Chihuahua. Her name was Angelita. She was already in El Paso when my grandfather met and married her.
I didn't get to know either my grandfather or grandmother too well since they both died when I was still young. I have fond memories of them, but I feel that I know them mostly through the stories my own mother passed on to me. My recalling them now is a way of keeping them alive.
On my father's side, the family also originated in Chihuahua. This was the Ruiz family. Grandpa Pablo married my grandma Margarita, and they had two sons—my father, Pablo, and my tío Andrés. Grandpa Pablo was an unskilled laborer and worked a bit on the railroads in northern Mexico.
Unlike my mother's family, my father's came to the border but lived in Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican border town across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Because this side of the family lived in Juárez, my siblings and I grew up closer to my mother's family since we lived on the U.S. side of the border.
My father was born around 1900 and grew up in Juárez. He had very little education, only three or four years. He worked in a foundry and then as a messenger for some business people. When he was about eighteen, he crossed the border and started railroad work at the Southern Pacific yard. I think the attraction was, why work in Juárez when you can make more money in El Paso?
My mother, who was born in 1901, was a beautiful and elegant woman, as were her three other sisters. She had a bit more education than my dad, but not much more, perhaps to fourth or fifth grade. My mother didn't attend the big "Mexican school" in the barrio, Aoy, which was the public school. She attended a small private one. My mother wanted more education, especially of a vocational type, but my grandfather didn't go for that.
My parents met at barrio social functions or at baseball games in the park. Actually, when they met they were about the same age, well into their twenties. My mother was thirty years old when she married my dad. She didn't work outside of the home but helped to take care of Grandpa Miguel's house.
My parents married around 1930. They then lived in one of my grandfather's apartments, next to what became their extended family. This is where my siblings and I were born. First came my two older brothers: Hector in 1934 and Fernando in 1937. I was born in 1940.
Although it was before my time, the Great Depression affected my parents as well as most other people. Of course, my parents and the extended family were accustomed to hard times. "Ay chavalo tonto," my mother would later say. "Dumb boy, we've always been poor."
As working people we were not strangers to poverty. The impact of the Depression was that it affected even poor people's ability to work. My father began to experience layoff periods—el layoff—at the railroad yard. He was a proud man, so he never accepted help from my grandpa Miguel, who didn't have that much more but did have a few more resources. These seasonal unemployed times would even continue after I was born and growing up. Because of this, I came to hate the railroad even as a chavalito, a little boy.
FAMILY SOCIALIZATION
My brothers and I were raised in a strong family environment with strict discipline. In our family we did not misbehave. And if we did, we paid the consequences. We grew up with a sense of right and wrong. It wasn't something necessarily preached to us, but we got the point. It would never occur to me to steal or to vandalize someone else's property. It wasn't that we were cowards. We did all the barrio stuff. But we never got in trouble. As we grew up we never took drugs or even drank liquor. My father drank but only socially.
I grew up with a sense that my brothers and I were accountable to our parents. If we ever did get a bit out of line we were punished, including corporal punishment. This included escobazos, being hit with my mother's broom, or cintazos, being hit with my father's belt. This punishment didn't create psychological trauma or physical problems for us. But it did reinforce correct behavior.
Despite the stereotype of the father as the enforcer of discipline in the Chicano home, in fact it was mostly my mother who disciplined us. She was the chief disciplinarian and the primary policy maker in the house. My father was recognized as the ultimate authority figure—he had his lugar, his place—but in practice it was really my mom who made household decisions. She disciplined us by not permitting us to go out, by corporal punishment, or by denying us some material thing. This is not to say that my father wasn't involved. He was, but without giving up his titular role as head of the family, he allowed my mother to run the household as she saw fit.
While some people think that the woman in a Latino family is secondary in the decision-making process, I never saw that in my family. I never saw it in my cousins' families. Strong women such as my tías, my aunts, ran them all. I always saw my tías as extended moms, especially Tía Delia, who was even stronger than my mom.
There's no question but that my mother had the strongest influence on my early socialization. She was a very religious woman. There were santos in our home, but not excessively. My mother belonged to las guadalupanas, a devotional society to the Virgen de Guadalupe, at, I believe, both Sacred Heart and St. Ignatius Parishes. She made sure that within our home and at the barrio Catholic church we observed religious traditions and practices. During cuaresma—Lent—we fasted, especially on Good Friday. We never ate meat on Fridays, which was not then permitted by the Church. We ate fish instead. We also visited different churches on Good Friday. My mother, of course, made sure that we were baptized, went to catechism classes, made our First Communion, and went regularly to Sunday Mass.
My father was not as religious as my mother, but he supported Catholic training for us. Later in his life, he became as devoted as my mother and prayed with his rosary every day.
Religion was always a part of our family's culture. It defined who we were and what we did. It was not something apart. It was never something forced on us. It was a natural family thing.
OUT OF THE BARRIO
When I was around six, my parents decided to move. Although my dad was at best a semiskilled worker at the railroad yard and had experienced many layoffs during the Depression, he was helped by the outbreak of World War II and full employment again due to the war effort, which ended the economic crisis.
He was able to save some money and at the end of the war had enough to buy a house of his own. Around 1946 he did so in an area beyond the south El Paso barrio. I think my parents decided to move for a couple of reasons. One, my father probably no longer wanted to live with the extended family in the vecindades, or apartments, that Grandpa Miguel had built. Actually, I think the rest of us felt the same way. Extended families are great, but sometimes there can be too much extended family, especially if you have cousins who run around beating the hell out of you.
Second, I think that my parents saw moving out of the barrio as a status thing. Buying a house, especially a sturdy one built of ladrillos, or bricks, and having Anglo neighbors was not bad for a Chicano. They also saw it as a way of helping us, hoping to provide more opportunities for their kids. There was always this thing of mejorar, of improving yourself. I think that this move was precisely that.
My father bought the new house—which was new to us, but others had lived in it before—for something like $6,000. I don't think that he needed a big down payment. It was what at the time was considered to be northeast El Paso up from El Segundo Barrio and north of the tracks. It was close to Alta Vista School, which became my school.
This was not a Chicano area, at least not then. There was a mix of people. Next door to one side of us was an Anglo family who owned a market on Paisano Drive, one of the main thoroughfares in the city. On our other side was an Anglo lady who was a pianist. I always saw her as a high-class lady, very refined, who played beautiful music. We used to sit on our porch and listen to her.
Next to the pianist was another Chicano family, the Riveras. The husband was a teacher. He probably taught music since he also played the piano. He was the only Chicano father I ever met who always dressed in a suit. He had a son, Carlito, a fat little kid whom every other kid on the block hated. They always used to beat him up. For some reason, I befriended him and became his protector. Señora Rivera used to visit my mother and ask, "¿Por qué le pegan a Carlito?" (Why do they pick on Carlito?).
I used to tell Señora Rivera that it was because of the way she dressed her son.
"Señora Rivera, don't send your son out with that little cap on because the guys are gonna want to knock it off. And does he have to play the violin?"
This was a neighborhood in transition. There were still many Anglos living there, but each year more Chicanos moved in as those who could afford it spilled out of the barrio. Within ten years, it became heavily Chicano.
This became our new neighborhood. My best friend was not another Chicano but a Chinese American boy, Gilbert Poo. Actually, Gilbert was half-Chinese and half-Mexican on his mother's side. There had always been a Chinese community in El Paso and Juárez. His father owned a neighborhood corner grocery store.
I learned English from Gilbert. In fact, I learned English not so much in school as on the streets with friends such as Gilbert. At home we spoke only Spanish, and like my two older brothers I began to pick up English playing with other kids.
EARLY SCHOOLING
I started first grade at Alta Vista School. That first year was traumatic for me. I didn't know English, and there were no bilingual teachers or aides. The teachers were all Anglos and knew little or no Spanish. But even if they did, it was prohibited to speak Spanish at school.
We were punished for speaking Spanish, including corporal punishment. We would receive a demerit for every word of Spanish spoken and be reported to the principal. A network of little snitches aided him. In some cases, the principal would administer corporal punishment, such as paddling us. Or he would send us to the coach who would spank us, swat us, or hit us on the head with the big ring that he wore. I didn't escape such punishments.
Because of the language gap, I and many other Chicanos in the first grade failed and had to repeat it.
But by the time I repeated the first grade and was advanced to the second grade, things were changing for the better. I was learning English if for no other reason than for survival. This transition was made easier because of my older brothers who had learned English before me as well as my English-speaking friends. My brothers and I began to speak English at home and to read comics in English.
By the second grade, I was no longer having a problem with English. In fact, I was becoming a good student. Still I had some rough edges and was still being disciplined in school. My mother became quite upset with me.
"Pórtate bien, Raul. Y si te portas bien te compro una bicicleta"
This was a bribe that if I behaved she would buy me a bicycle. It worked.
My parents were still facing difficult economic times, especially after the war as layoffs resumed at the railroad yard. After my dad paid the mortgage and bills and bought food, there wasn't much left. So the idea of getting a bicycle was fantastic. I shaped up.
"What did you do to this boy?" other parents would ask my mother.
I got the bike and was no longer punished in school.
Once I settled down and also became more at ease with English, I became an even better student. I liked my classes and did well. I wasn't a nerd, but I enjoyed learning.
My parents, primarily my mother, as well as my brother Fernando, who was also a good student, encouraged me in my learning. My mother wasn't always after me. I was becoming more self-motivated. I began to discover the library at Alta Vista and the public library. I particularly enjoyed reading biographies such as on Kit Carson and Davy Crockett and adventure stories. We didn't have any books at home except for an old encyclopedia, so reading involved taking out library books. I also read a lot of comic books.
Part of my becoming comfortable at school was the fact that I had good teachers. Some were quite tough and strict, such as Miss Brooker in the fifth grade, but I did very well with her, even though she was forever on my back. I didn't see these teachers as bad people or as racists. All of my teachers were Anglos. I didn't have a Mexican American teacher until I was in college.
As I look back on it now, especially on the language issue, I can understand that there was a certain insensitivity about this. There must have even been a certain institutional racism. But my memories overall are positive ones.
One of the noticeable things at school was how teachers transformed the Spanish names of the Chicano kids into English ones. José became Joe. Pedro became Pete. Rodolfo became Rudy. The names not only stuck but were accepted by la palomilla—the Chicano kids—because they didn't want to stand out. Not only were proper names changed but also the kids themselves invented English nicknames for one another, such as Shorty or Junior or Skinny.
But in these changes not all our Mexican culture was erased. For example, the teachers changed Maria's name to Mary, but among the Chicano kids she was "la Mary"—and there was "la Judy" and "el Frankie" too.
These name changes, to my disappointment, didn't affect me. You couldn't easily translate Raul or a name such as Mario. You could give it an Anglo intonation but not a literal translation.
Who knows? Maybe these name changes even made what we would later refer to as "ethnic relations" easier. Even though during my eight years at Alta Vista the school became more and more Mexican and less and less Anglo, it was still a mixed school. I don't recall any particular tensions between the Chicano kids and the Anglo ones. We were in classes together, and we played together. El Paso has always had, at least on the surface, good race relations.
I was always in love with one güerita—blond girl—after another. I remember especially one, Gale Kunz, in either fifth or sixth grade. I was in love with her but never talked to her. Whatever happened to Gale Kunz?
Although we were becoming more acculturated at school, we retained our Mexican ethnic identity through our parents and our extended family on both sides of the border. Of course, in a border city such as El Paso it's very difficult not to be aware of the strong Mexican presence.
Besides visits to my mother's family in El Segundo Barrio, we would also visit my dad's family in Juárez. Our weekend trips across the border became part of our salida, or Sunday visit. Visiting, shopping, going to the movies, and eating at a favorite restaurant in Juárez became a weekly Sunday ritual. All these things were very cheap in the Mexican border town, so it didn't particularly strain my dad's limited income.
Even though my brothers and I were becoming more English dominant, we were able to retain some of our Spanish due to my parents and these family visits. Actually, among my peers we were mixing English and Spanish words, especially slang ones, together, such as "el nickel" and "el dime."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Chicano Generation by Mario T. García. Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
1. Raul Ruiz
2. Gloria Arellanes
3. Rosalio Munoz
Epilogue
Notes
Index