The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control

2. The Second Electoral Revolt (1970)

2 The Second Electoral Revolt (1970) The five years that preceded Cristal's second revolt in 1970 were relatively quiet. The Chicano Movement had emerged as a political force by 1965, but its characteristic fervent protest and militant activism had not really reached Crista!. Although the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), one of the most militant Chicano organizations, had been in the forefront of the Chicano Movement in various parts of Texas, it had not done much organizing in the Winter Garden area, where Cristal is located. However, in 1969 it became the first Chicano organization in the nation to put into effect a political plan (known as the Winter Garden Project) oriented to community control, empowerment , and change, that targeted the Winter Garden area of Zavala, Dimmit, and La Salle counties. From 1970 to 1975 the change brought about by the second revolt was so extensive that I describe it as the Raza Unida Party's "peaceful revolution." MAYO: Catalyst of the Second Revolt MAYO was organized in 1967 by five Mexicano students, one of whom was Jose Angel Gutierrez. With a constituency of college students and barrio youth, MAYO's adherence to protest and militant politics made it the most controversial and radical Mexicano advocacy organization in Texas. It confronted and took on many issues, especially in educa55 Copyrighted Material 56 Part Two. The Politics of Community Control tion. During its brief history before the second revolt it initiated thirtynine school walkouts and dealt with numerous other social and political issues. MAYO's leaders became the architects and implementers of the Mexicano third party, La Raza Unida, the major player in Cristal's second revolt. In May 1969 MAYO held its statewide board meeting at Uvalde and after much deliberation approved the plan to use the Winter Garden Project to create a movement for the decolonization of the three counties and win control of the area's city councils, school boards, and county governments. MAYO also planned to launch La Raza Unida, which would be the main political mechanism for implementing the plan. Jose Angel Gutierrez-who had grown up in Cristal, was involved in the first revolt as an undergraduate, and now was pursuing graduate studies in political science-was chosen to organize the Winter Garden Project and get it started. With his return to Cristal, the political stage was set for the Cristal school walkouts. They became the spark that ignited the fires of electoral revolt among Cristal's restive Mexicanos. This time, however, the political results were so historically significant that Cristal became the political matrix of the increasingly political Chicano Movement. Gutierrez: The Organic Intellectual As with Juan Cornejo's first revolt, personality drove the second. The noticeable difference was that Gutierrez was by far the more educated, articulate, politically experienced, and Machiavellian of the two. Whereas Cornejo had an eighth-grade education, Gutierrez by 1970 was working on his doctoral degree in political science. Historian Tony Castro compares Gutierrez to the Chicano Movement 's three other main leaders, Cesar Chavez, Reies Lopez Tijerina, and Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales: Jose Angel Gutierrez is not like other leaders of the Chicano movement. A generation gap separates him and the older threesome, Chavez, Tijerina, and Gonzales. Young, college-educated, the son of a doctor, Gutierrez may have the most brilliant mind of any of the civil rights leaders of his lifetime. He represents the new breed of Chicano professionals produced by the colleges and universities, but he is still a Chicano with the old dream of revolution. Yet, even in revolt, there are contrasts between him and the older leadership: Chavez is cautious, Gutierrez self-confident; Tijerina is aggressive, Gutierrez cunning; Gonzales is uncompromising, Gutierrez fluid. Gutierrez is a Chicano prodigy, a well-read intellectual by Anglo standards who can just as comfortCopyrighted Material The Second Electoral Revolt (1970) 57 ably organize barrio youth to counter the very system that taught him. Gutierrez has two major enemies-the dreaded gringo, of course, but also himself. Sometimes Gutierrez is too sharp-tongued, too self-confident, and too daring, particularly when accusing the gringo of racism and cultural genocide against Mexican-Americans.' Castro's analysis of Gutierrez is important for understanding the political framework of Cristal's second revolt and peaceful revolution and how they were tied to the politics of Gutierrez. Political movements are generally transitory. Although some succeed, most fail. More important, great movements are...