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The Vietnam War had a profound eVect on Chicano youth of the 1960s and ’70s. The high proportion of Mexican Americans Wghting and dying in Southeast Asia, coupled with these young people’s heightened awareness of social issues, led to a vigorous protest against the war. In this maelstrom of discontent, Rosalio Muñoz, a former UCLA student-body president and in 1968 a minority recruiter for the Claremont Colleges, received his induction orders in December of that year for the following September. “I was concerned and wanted to do something,” he later recalled, “but when I was drafted, and it happened to be for September 16, it catalyzed for me as . . . an opportunity to strike a blow against the war and the draft.”1 Though Muñoz’s initial motives were inherently selWsh, he quickly became convinced that he had “to do something for all Chicanos.”2 There was, Wrst of all, the symbolic importance of the day on which he was to report for induction: September 16 was Mexican Independence day. He had also already become disenchanted with the draft because of his experiences at the Claremont Colleges. The Chicano students whom he visited told him how draft boards tried to discourage them from considering college by telling them that student deferments were not available. These incidents only served to crystallize Muñoz’s sense of the war as an act of discrimination against Mexican Americans. As he 3 “Chale No, We Won’t Go!” The Chicano Moratorium Committee 61 62 CHAPTER 3 saw it, “There were so few of us even qualiWed [to go to college] and those that were qualiWed they would try to discourage to get a deferment .” For him, “the horribleness of the war and discrimination against people and then the upsurge of peoples’ forces and of the Chicano Movement” created the climate necessary for a Chicano struggle against the conXict in Vietnam.3 Initially, Muñoz set out to organize protests against the draft, not the war. Shortly after receiving his induction orders, he discussed his plan with his friend and former fellow student Ramsés Noriega. Muñoz turned to him because of the latter’s experience as an organizer with the United Farm Workers and as the manager of Muñoz’s earlier campaign for student-body president. The two had also worked closely in founding the United Mexican American Students. Noriega warned Muñoz that what he proposed was dangerous. “Do you want to die?” he asked his friend. “Because what you’re asking is to take on the United States government on this. It’s a very large issue, very dangerous—many people will die.” “I’m ready to die,” replied Muñoz. “If you’re ready,” responded Noriega, “let me think about it and start putting [together] a program of a movement.” Several days later, the two embarked on a tour of the state to survey Mexican-American attitudes toward the war and the feasibility of their plan.4 In August 1969, following the tour, they created Chale con el Draft (To Hell with the Draft) to aid individual Chicanos in their deliberations about whether to seek a deferment or to resist being drafted.5 Muñoz’s own decision was to resist, and he chose September 16, 1969, the day that he had been ordered to report for induction, as the occasion for his announcement. His intention was to go through pre-induction processing and then to refuse induction.6 On September 16, he went with more than a hundred supporters to the Armed Forces Induction and Examination Center on Broadway Street in Los Angeles. In an apparent eVort to appease the crowd, oYcials postponed his induction until the October draft call.7 This news caused Muñoz to pull from his pocket a prepared statement that he read to the press: Today the sixteenth of September, the day of independence for all Mexican peoples , I declare my independence of the Selective Service System. I accuse the government of the United States of America of genocide against the Mexican people. SpeciWcally, I accuse the draft, the entire social, political, and economic system of the United States of America, of creating a funnel which shoots Mexican youth into Vietnam to be killed and to kill innocent men, women and children. I accuse the law enforcement agencies of the United States of instilling greater fear and insecurity in the Mexican youth than the Viet Cong ever could, which is...

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