The Young Lords: A Reader

Introduction: Toward Understanding the Young Lords

1 Introduction Toward Understanding the Young Lords Darrel Enck-Wanzer In 1968, over half a century after U.S. citizenship was imposed on Puerto Ricans against the will of a democratically elected House of Delegates on the Island, Boricuas in the United States continued to face hard times. Economic conditions were lean: jobs were hard to come by (especially if you did not speak English), and those jobs you could find involved hard physical labor and little pay. More than one job was often needed to support a family. “Great Society” social programs should have helped boost economic conditions , but most of those benefits were lost in the messy bureaucratic web spun by the state in conjunction with local Puerto Rican–run professional organizations.1 Politically, Puerto Ricans were still characterized as “docile,” and the role of political activism in urban centers like New York had been monopolized by professionals, experts, and elites.2 Furthermore, Puerto Ricans faced extreme and complex forms of racism and xenophobia .3 By most accounts, life for the working-class Puerto Rican left much to be desired.4 The troubling situation was not unique to Puerto Ricans in urban centers. In fact, nationwide, deleterious social conditions sparked various political responses from a wide range of so-called marginalized groups. In the U.S. South, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) changed its strategy to one based on the principles of Black Power—a radical, sometimes militant Afrocentric response to racist classism and classist racism. Across the country, the Black Panther Party articulated a militant Black Nationalist political program designed to address anti-Black racism at its roots and resist white oppression “by any means necessary.” In the Southwest and elsewhere, Chicanos articulated a conception of Brown Pride that eventually included a separatist political strategy rejecting completely an Anglo-American conception of politics. It is within this period of political radicalism that the Young Lords street gang in Chicago became politicized and radicalized under the leadership of Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez, adopted the name “Young Lords Organization,” and spread first to New York. As with any of these (or other) social movements, the situation within which the Young Lords arose and operated was anything but simple. They were a group of twenty-year-olds and teenagers, second-generation Puerto Ricans living in impoverished communities. Some of the Lords were fortunate enough to attend college. Most of the Lords were motivated both by the virulently racist, classist, and sexist oppression they faced daily and by a sense of love of their homeland and people.5 All of the Lords, virtually on condition of membership, were committed to articulating a new radical Puerto Rican identity aimed at the betterment of the Puerto Rican people in social, economic, and political arenas. 2 Introduction If only the history of this heterogeneous organization had been written by now. Instead, there are only a handful of scholarly articles on the Young Lords. One memoir of activism written by a former Young Lord (Miguel “Mickey” Melendez) has been published to date. A few doctoral dissertations have been written in whole or substantial part on the Young Lords, but none of them has yet seen publication. Worse still, the primary documents produced by the Young Lords—speeches, articles, posters, photographs , illustrations, poetry, etc.—have literally been disintegrating in boxes, basements, and landfills. While the record of the Chicago Lords’ activities exists only in oral histories and archival news footage, many of the New York Young Lords’ materials have been preserved by private collectors (all former Young Lords) and archives. Sadly, however, only fragmented pieces of that material are easily available for the general public and those without immediate access to the archives and collectors. It is unjust that when the name “Young Lords” is uttered, most people have little or no understanding of what Marta Moreno calls “this group of young men and women of color who made significant impact on history.” This book represents an attempt to right that wrong and to set the historical record straight about the Young Lords in their own words. Rather than rely on oral histories taken years after the fact or news reports propagated by a biased media, this book brings together material written, spoken, and otherwise produced by the Young Lords in their era. Organized around issues rather than personalities, this book offers a comprehensive collection of primary texts so that the Young Lords’ memory can be preserved and that you, the reader, can decide for...