The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control

Preface

Preface This book is a case study of two electoral revolts that occurred in 1963 and 1970 in the small, dusty, and rural community of Crystal City, Texas, or Cristal, as it is known in Spanish by Mexicanos.1 These political takeovers were experiments in what I call the politics of community control, meaning control over the local government structures and public policy process. Both are of historical significance to the study of Chicano and local politics for different reasons, which this book will examine. At the core, however, is that in both revolts Mexicanos wrested political control from the local gringo power holders.2 The revolts occurred during the tumultuous "epoch of protest" 0955-1974). They were products of exogenous and endogenous antagonisms , which by 1965 gave rise to the Chicano Movement. The pervasiveness of political activism, conventional and unconventional, and the concomitant calls for change, impelled all the movements-civil rights, New Left, antiwar, Black Power-of the 1960s.3 This was a time of protest, militancy, and social unrest. For Mexicanos the Chicano Movement was a repudiation of accommodation- and assimilationoriented politics. It fostered a political and cultural renaissance that was predicated on Chicanismo.4 To some Mexicano activists references to El Movimiento and La Causa were calls for self-determination, for a Chicano nation, Aztldn, whereas others regarded such language as a call for reformation of the existing social order.s At the heart of the Cristal experiment was self-determination, Mexicanos ' having control over their political destiny. After decades of political subordination and powerlessness, Mexicanos in Cristal shook up the gringo power holders of Texas in 1963 by winning control of the town's city council and holding it for two years. But it was not until the second revolt, in 1970, that the subordination and powerlessness of the Mexicano community really began to change. The differences between the two experiments were partly a reflection of a changing political climate. Whereas the 1963 revolt occurred at the height of the civil rights movement, the 1970 revolt coincided with the apex of social xi Copyrighted Material xii Piedras. Negras • Uvalde * Austin • San Antonio Map of South Texas Preface protest and radicalism. The two political takeovers differed in leadership , ideology, organization, and strategy and tactics. Specifically, the first revolt was much more spontaneous, ephemeral, and accommodationist in its struggle for change, whereas the second revolt lasted longer and was the product of a the Mexican American Youth Organization 's Winter Garden Project, a well-calculated plan of action oriented toward decolonization of Mexicanos in south Texas. This book comes at a propitious time. Latinos, especially Mexicanos, are fast becoming the majority population in numerous local communities throughout Aztlan and the nation. Latinos have reached a level of political sophistication that makes the existence of a plethora of Copyrighted Material Preface xiii Cristals inevitable. This demographic "browning of America" is engendering the "re-Mexicanization" of Aztlan. Hence, this book is partly inspired by this new historical reality, that Latinos in the twenty-first century will be able to multiply the Cristals many hundredfold. I believe this book provides the most comprehensive analysis of community control and the Cristal experiment to date. It goes beyond John Shockley's Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (1974), which provides a well-written account of Cristal's politics from 1963 to 1973. This book is an expansion of my dissertation, a bifurcated in-depth case study of the Mexican American Youth Organization (1967-1972), the Raza Unida Party's second revolt, and its peaceful revolution (1970-1973). In 1973 my family and I spent four months in Cristal while I conducted my research. It was exciting and satisfying to witness and examine what I believe was one of the most important political struggles produced by the Chicano Movement. I was able to observe and interview the Raza Unida Party's leadership, supporters, and adversaries and participate in its activities. In short, I experienced the dynamism of a community control experiment that sought to empower people and bring about massive change. While at the University of Utah I conducted additional research trips to Cristal in 1974 and I was there again in 1975, at the apogee of the political fractiousness. I had planned to produce a case study of the Raza Unida Party's peaceful revolution. However, because of the growing schisms that led to its political breakdown in 1975, I...