Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice by Enrique M. Buelna (review)

In Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice, Enrique M. Buelna examines Mexican American labor activism in Southern California between 1930 and 1970 through the life of Ralph Cuarón. Buelna's biographical subject was a member of the Communist Party USA, an activist in the Congress of Industrial Organizations and other groups, and later a supporter of the Chicano movement. Yet Buelna's work is more than biography. He utilizes Cuarón's life to dissect the complex and at times outsider position Mexican Americans held within the Communist Party (CP), the role the CP played in raising the political consciousness of Mexican Americans—at least in Southern California—and how radical, working-class activism among Mexican Americans pushed the nation's promise for social equity forward. Overall, the author asserts that "[t]he Mexican American Left played a critical role, not only in organizing and providing a voice" for working class, Mexican origin people, "but by forcing the larger public to recognize Mexicans as Americans, as equal participants in the national polity" (11).

Buelna opens the book by detailing the history of the Communist Party USA, the American labor movement from the 1920s to the 1940s, and how unions became the training ground for Mexican American labor leadership and avenues of protests against segregation, police abuse, and labor discrimination. One of those politicized by the activism Buelna describes is Ralph Cuarón, who joined the Communist Party in 1942 as a nineteen-year-old merchant marine who had previously joined the National Maritime Union. According to Buelna, the party's commitment to defending and organizing minority groups endeared it to many Mexican Americans. Thus, the author asserts that "the Mexican American Left represented an important element in" Southern California society following World War II (49). Amidst that history, Buelna introduces Cuarón's lifelong partner and political collaborator, Sylvia Lucas, and also details the red-baiting that Mexican American civil rights activists endured during the mid-twentieth century.

However, despite Cuarón's commitment to the Communist Party's goal to uplift the working-class, he did not always toe the party line. For example, in 1948, without CP approval, he threw his support behind the Independent Progressives. By the late 1950s, Cuarón grew increasingly dissatisfied with the Communist Party's work within the Mexican American community. While Cuarón saw Mexican Americans at the "apex of revolutionary struggle in the United States" (117), the leadership of the New York-based Communist Party did not. Thus, Ralph Cuarón and Sylvia Lucas turned their activism squarely toward their local community in East Los Angeles, and they "identified the home as a key site in a greater ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism" (155). The Cuaróns launched a small communal apartment complex. Young people, including high school students, joined the communal experiment. The Cuaróns saw an opportunity to politicize this new generation, which they did through reading circles—that eventually became obligatory—on socialist and communist texts. The politicized youth living in communal housing, including the Cuaróns' children, went on to become Chicanx activists during the 1960s, taking part in 1968 school walkouts in Los Angeles.

Aside from Chicanx scholars, Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice is of great value to those interested in labor, working-class, and California history. Yet, these same readers will likely conclude that the book—despite its alluring title and attractive jacket that seamlessly intermixes Chicanx nationalist and communist symbolism—is not actually about Chicanx communists. After all, Ralph Cuarón, though supportive of Chicanx student activism, was not a self-identified Chicano. Despite the title not matching the story told within the book's pages, Buelna takes the reader through the fascinating history of Mexican American social justice activism.