"¡Mi Raza Primero!" (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966-1978

Introduction: “Those Times of Revolution”

More than thirty years after it began, the phenomenon known as the Chicano Movement remains an enigma in U.S. history. Was it a “revolution ,” as Los Lobos tell us, or was it more in line with the reformist activism pursued by the so-called Mexican-American generation? When compared to the Cuban Revolution, the African liberation struggles, student uprisings in France, Mexico and Czechoslovakia, and the Black Power movement, the Chicano insurgency pales. Rather than simply probing its revolutionary or reformist attributes, this study is guided by Frederick Jameson’s suggestion to “situate the emergence of . . . new ‘collective identities’ or ‘subjects of history’ in the historical situation which made the emergence possible.”1 The roots of the Chicano movement, indeed of all Mexican-American political and social experience can be found in the nineteenth century. Mexican Americans are a product of the U.S.–Mexico War of 1846–48. One of the key outcomes of that conXict was the granting of American citizenship to the residents of the ceded Mexican lands. Yet, as David G. Gutiérrez has argued in Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity, this moment of inclusion created i n t r o d u c t i o n “Those Times of Revolution” Where did it go? Can we say we know? Those times of revolution. Our time of revolution. Los Lobos, “Revolution” 1 what can be called the Mexican-American dilemma. According to Gutiérrez, “In formally granting the ethnic Mexican population in the Southwest all the rights of American citizens in 1848, and yet denying them the possibility of exercising those rights, Americans planted the seeds of continuing ethnic discord in the region.”2 In addition, by granting them citizenship, the U.S. government, owing to the provisions of the 1790 naturalization act, made ethnic Mexicans legally white. However, socially, they were not given the privileges of whiteness and faced de facto segregation. Thus, Mexican Americans can be looked upon as “inbetween ” people.3 In addition to this in-between state, ethnic Mexicans’ conquest and the manifestation of that subjugation has varied from region to region, with the result being an uneven racialization.4 In some places, like present-day East and Central Texas, ethnic Mexicans, due to the large inXux of whites, faced overt and institutional racism.5 In other areas, New Mexico, for example, ethnic Mexicans remained the majority and therefore experienced a comparatively less-intense racism.6 As opposed to other racialized U.S. minorities (Native Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans), ethnic Mexicans have not encountered a unitary legal and social discrimination. These multiple occurrences of discrimination coupled with the “lure of whiteness” have ensured that Mexican Americans are (1) not a uniWed group, and, (2) have primarily waged battles for inclusion and parity.7 When viewed within this context, new light is shed upon MexicanAmerican reformist activism in the twentieth century. Perhaps the best example of this political mobilization is the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Founded in 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas, LULAC’s central concern was to empower Mexican Americans through assimilation. It stressed the notion that Mexican Americans were U.S. citizens and therefore should have all the rights of Americans. Thus, LULAC “pledged to promote and develop among [themselves] what they called the ‘best and purest’ form of Americanism.”8 Yet, in so doing, LULAC members limited who they sought to empower; they imagined a community composed of American citizens of Mexican descent. Of course, other groups of the Mexican-American generation sought to empower both Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, but they did not have LULAC’s longevity. Most prominent among these group were the Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples (El Congreso) and the Asociación Nacional Mexico-Americana (ANMA) of the 1930s and 1950s, respectively. Though leftist in orientation and advocating for the 2 INTRODUCTION rights of all ethnic Mexicans, these two organizations did not survive more than a few years. The Second World War brought on Congreso’s demise, whereas the Cold War ended ANMA. Thus, reform rather than radicalism has been long-lived in the Mexican-American community.9 This is most evident, given the fact that the other perennial MexicanAmerican organizations are the American G.I. Forum, founded in 1948 by Hector García to address the grievances of his fellow World War II veterans , and the Mexican American...