Sonny Montes and Mexican American Activism in Oregon

Conclusion

260 Conclusion In this book, I have tried to shed light on the early years of Mexican American community formation in Oregon’s Upper Willamette Valley and to explain and assess a social movement. My hope is that the stories told are suggestive of larger truths. But what larger truths do they suggest? One topic of interest that surfaced in the researching of this book was the impact of external (i.e., non-Mexican American) stimuli on the birth of a Mexican American community in the Upper Willamette Valley. For several decades preceding the creation of the VML, a combination of push and pull factors—the rise of corporate farming and the creation of a labor surplus in the Southwest, the need for migrant labor in the Northwest—had produced a pattern of seasonal migration of Mexican American farmworkers to Oregon and nearby states. Still, up to 1965 the seasonal population movement did not result in large-scale Mexican American settlement in Oregon. One reason for the marked increase in settlement that occurred after 1965 was the creation in that year of the VML, an agency funded with federal War on Poverty dollars that helped Oregon’s seasonal migrants to leave the migrant stream. But it wasn’t federal dollars alone that made the difference. While the VML provided assistance to migrants from its first weeks of doing business, it was not until the appointment of John Little as executive director in 1967 that the organization became fully committed to the notion of Mexican American community building. Little gave voice to the Mexican American migrants and seasonal farmworkers in the region, and thereafter they set institutional priorities in the communities served by the VML and held the key positions in the VML hierarchy. The VML thus functioned as a community-building agent in two ways: it provided incentives for migrants (Mexican American and non-Mexican American alike) to settle and served as a kind of leadership-training institute. The result was the nurturing of a group of leaders within Mexican American communities in the Upper Willamette Valley—a group that would play a major role in the nascent Chicano movement in the area. Conclusion 261 While the protagonist of the VML story told here is Sonny Montes, the role played by John Little is also significant. Over the course of the twentieth century, a number of Anglos have had a huge positive impact on the course of Mexican American history: Carey McWilliams, Fred Ross, and Jerry Cohen, among others. John Little’s name should appear on the list as well. A true believer in community development, he served as an advocate for, a mentor to, and a prodder and friend of the Mexican American people he worked with and for. He also helped to orchestrate the “revolution” of 1968 that put Mexican Americans firmly in control of the organization. But he did so not so much by leading in the conventional way but rather by empowering others—Sonny Montes, David Aguilar, Jimmy Amaya, Frank Martinez, Emilio Hernandez, even Lupe Bustos. One point worth noting about the history of the VML is that the key moments of Mexican American self-assertion in the organization (the study night of 1967, the revolution of 1968) came at a time when the VML’s Mexican American leaders knew relatively little about the course of Chicano protest in other regions. Although Sonny and his co-workers were well aware of Chavez’s struggle in the fields, until the Los Gatos conference of 1969, they knew little about Tijerina’s Alianza Federal de Mercedes, Gonzales’s Cruzada Para La Justicia, and the efforts of groups in East Los Angeles to improve the educational system. In fact, the ideology that informed the early manifestations of Chicanismo in the VML came not so much from the Chicano movement itself but rather from the dogma of mid-twentieth-century community development—essentially, the teachings and practices of Saul Alinsky and Catholic community organizers, as refracted through the lenses and experiences of John Little, a former Papal Volunteer. The underlying principle was a belief that any community had the capacity to make good decisions, and the basic approach was to catalyze the community, never to dictate to it. John Little conveyed the dogma, Sonny and others learned it, and they in turn have conveyed it to others ever since. The Colegio story is about a noble dream and the social movement that tried to keep the dream alive. This book...