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Resolution adopted at the Twenty-fourth National Convention of the SWP in August 1971, printed in SWP Internal Discussion Bulletin
Transcribed & marked up by Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
For many years the Chicano people were considered the silent or forgotten minority, or referred to anonymously as one of the other oppressed nationalities. The plight of Chicanos as an oppressed people was not in the: public spotlight.
This situation was to change dramatically in the mid- and late-1960s as an independent movement developed in response to the specific oppression of the Chicano people, which had a dynamic and revolutionary logic of its own. The Afro-American and student movements were joined by a movement of those who had called themselves Mexican-Americans, Hispanos, Latin Americans, Spanish-speaking. Part of the nationalist dynamic of this development was a new self-image. Terms of self-description like La Raza and Chicano gained greater acceptance, reflecting a new pride and dignity, a new determination to struggle for equal rights, for a better life, for liberation.
This resolution describes the roots of this nationalist awakening and traces the developments which led to the new rise of Chicano militancy and combativity in the 1960s. It outlines the current stage of the struggle, the prospects for independent political action, some initial components of a transitional program for Chicano liberation, and the tasks of the Socialist Workers Party in this important movement.
The conquest by the United States of the northern half of Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century resulted not only in the incorporation of a huge land mass into the territory of the United States but the incorporation of the Mexican population as well. These people and their descendants, set apart by race, language, and culture, were not assimilated as full and equal citizens, whatever formal guarantees were made to the contrary. Instead, they were systematically discriminated against as a people, and forged by expanding American capitalism into a distinct oppressed nationality. Subsequent immigration from Mexico swelled the ranks of this oppressed people.
Except for Native Americans, Chicanos suffer the highest unemployment, the lowest per capita income, the worst education, the highest functional illiteracy rate, the highest death rate, occupy the most dilapidated and overcrowded housing, and have less political representation in local, state, or national government than any other nationality in the population of the Southwest and perhaps in the nation.
The 1970 census put the “Spanish-surnamed” population at approximately 9 million, about 5 million of whom are Chicanos. The real figures are assumed to be much higher, with estimates by scholars of 10 million Chicanos at a minimum. More than 80 percent of Chicanos live in the five southwestern states of California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. The rest are spread out over the entire country from Florida to Alaska, from New Jersey to Illinois.
By 1960 La Raza was as urbanized as the Anglo population. Eighty percent of Chicanos in the Southwest live in cities. Most of them are workers. For example, over 30,000 of the 90,000 members of the United Steelworkers of America in the western states are Chicanos. Sixteen percent of the Chicano labor force are farm workers, many of whom live in urban areas.
Of the total elementary and secondary student population in the Southwest, 17 percent are Chicanos and 10 percent are Blacks, yet only 4 percent of the teachers and only 3 percent of the principals are Chicanos. There are approximately twenty Anglo students for every Anglo teacher in the Southwest, thirty-nine Black students for every Black teacher, and one hundred and twenty Chicano students for every Chicano teacher.
The only school jobs in which Chicanos are proportionately represented, in school districts with 10 percent Chicanos or more, are custodians (28 percent) and teacher’s aides (34 percent). While the median educational grades attended for whites is twelve years it is only eight years for Chicanos.
It is clear that language plays a critical role in maintaining the oppression of the Chicano people. According to the 1970 census, 50 percent of Spanish-surnamed people stated that Spanish is their primary language. The overwhelming majority of Chicano youth enter the schools speaking Spanish. By the time they drop out or graduate they have been partly or completely stripped of their first language without attaining a proficiency in English equal to that of Anglos. Thus they leave school with a linguistic handicap.
The suppression of the Spanish language in the schools is one of the most insidious forms of the oppression of the Chicano people. The use of Spanish by Chicano children in the schools has been restricted or banned even in states where prohibitive legislation has been repealed. Through attempting to obliterate the Spanish language, the capitalist ruling class hoped to strip Chicanos of their cultural identity and history in the same manner that the slave masters stripped the African slaves of their languages and identities. While this objective was never fully achieved, the damage done to Chicano students and their ability to learn has been dramatic. Racist textbooks and teachers and irrelevant materials have created a 50 percent “push out” (so-called drop out) rate from the predominantly Chicano high schools of East Los Angeles. In Texas the figure for Chicano push outs is 47 percent. Functional illiteracy among Chicanos is seven times that for Anglos and twice that for Afro-Americans. In Texas 50 percent of the Chicano heads of households are functionally illiterate. The use of linguistically and culturally biased intelligence tests has led to placing Chicano students in California in classes for the mentally retarded at a rate 250 percent out of proportion to their numbers in the population.
Inferior education, a linguistic handicap, and racist hiring practices force Chicanos into the worst low-paying jobs. The per capita income for Chicano workers in 1959 was 58 percent of that of white workers. Since then, the income gap between whites and Chicanos has widened. In Texas 34 percent of the Chicano families live in poverty, in New Mexico it is 30 percent, 22 percent in Colorado, 21 percent in Arizona, 15 percent in California.
While, in 1960, 14 percent of the Anglo work force were classified as professionals, only 4 percent of the Chicanos were in the same category, and 6 percent of the Blacks. Chicanos suffer four times the rate of crowding in housing compared to whites.
It is the combination of all these factors which gives Chicanos a higher incidence of tuberculosis, infant mortality, and chronic diseases and illnesses associated with malnutrition, poverty, and lack of medical care. For example, the life expectancy of Chicano farm workers is forty-eight years.
The expansion and consolidation of American capitalism was carried out through the subjugation of various peoples, including the Chicanos, and their incorporation into its structure as oppressed nationalities. This national oppression within the borders of the United States has benefited and continues to benefit the ruling class in many ways and is essential to its continued rule. It has divided the working class and increased its stratification, created pools of cheap labor and detachments of the industrial reserve army, and provided workers for the most difficult, dangerous, or seasonal and low-paying jobs. White racism, the ideological justification for such national oppression, is used demagogically by the rulers to divert white workers away from struggling against their capitalist class enemy and toward supporting the oppression of Chicanos and other oppressed nationalities both within the borders of the United States and beyond.
The ruling class will never grant freedom to oppressed nationalities, including La Raza. The national liberation of the Chicano people can be won only in the process of the socialist revolution, which will have a combined character: a social revolution by the working class to establish its own state power, combined with a revolution by the oppressed nationalities for their self-determination. The predominantly proletarian composition of the Chicano people indicates that they will be in the forefront of the revolutionary struggle of the working class as a whole, as well as fighting alongside other oppressed nationalities for their national self-determination.
Many of the developments which led to the worldwide youth radicalization of the 1960s also affected the Chicano people and helped facilitate the emergence of a new generation of militant young Chicanos.
The colonial revolution showed that peoples long oppressed could rise up and win their freedom. The Cuban revolution especially had an impact in the Chicano community.
The first mass reflection of the colonial revolution in the United States was the movement of the Afro-American people. The struggles of this oppressed nationality shook up the political equilibrium, helped to inspire the youth radicalization, and served as a model for subsequent insurgent movements it helped set into motion. The student movement, the antiwar movement, the Chicano movement, and more recently the women’s liberation movement, owe much to the initiating role of the Black movement, the lessons of its successful and unsuccessful strategies and tactics, and the experiences of Black organizations and leaderships.
The Chicano movement has benefited from the experiences of these movements, and, in turn, it has taught lessons in its own right, surged ahead in some aspects, and now provides examples especially for the Black movement.
Two efforts were begun in 1962 that were to influence the initial stages of the new Chicano movement and inspire subsequent developments. These were the farm workers’ movement and the land-grant organizing efforts led respectively by César Chávez and Reies López Tijerina.
César Chávez resigned from his position of leadership in the Community Service Organization in 1961 when conservative elements blocked his efforts to use the CSO to support the struggles of Chicano farm workers. The following year he formed the Farm Workers Association, which was to become a social movement, a union of farm workers that could fight for collective bargaining with the rich growers, but would also deal with medical, language, and other problems faced by farm workers.
In 1965 the association joined forces with a Filipino farm workers’ group to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, based in California. The expiration of the Bracero Program at the end of 1964 (although it partially continued under the Green Card program) had created a new opportunity to organize farm workers with less likelihood that strikes could be broken by the massive importation of Mexican labor. A strike of grape workers began in the fall of 1965 and, though it won some initial concessions, it was necessary to carry out a protracted grape boycott campaign before substantial victories were won and consolidated.
The organizing efforts and achievements in California had a major impact upon the barrios and farm-labor camps around the country and led to similar developments in Arizona, Texas, Washington, Colorado, and other states.
It was La Huelga (the strike), together with the land-grant movement in New Mexico, that first forced this forgotten minority into the public eye and proclaimed the emergence of a new civil and human rights movement. The migrant laborers, who were said by racists to be naturally endowed for such stoop labor because they were “built low to the ground,” were challenging racist stereotypes and asserting their humanity. Chicanos shouting “Huelga!” and “Viva La Causa!” and demanding “Justicia y Libertad!” added another powerful element to the struggles of the oppressed and exploited.
The farm workers’ movement has been led for the most part by pacifist reformists like Chavez, who supports liberal Democrats. Nevertheless this movement has had an independent, nationalist dynamic which has helped set other sectors of La Raza into motion. This independent dynamic has been incomplete and blunted by the refusal of the Chávez leadership to break politically with the Democratic Party and initiate an independent Chicano party. Such a development is a necessary step for the success of the farm workers’ struggle. It could result in rapid electoral victories in the cities and towns of the rich farm country in the valleys of California, and in other states, where Chicanos are a majority. These victories in turn would give fresh impetus to unionization efforts, the fight for higher wages, better conditions, health and child care, and other struggles.
The growth of La Raza Unida Party in 1970 and 1971 has exerted considerable pressure on the farm workers’ movement to embark on the road of independent Chicano political action. This may be seen in Chávez’s recent statement in favor of La Raza Unida candidates. If the farm workers’ union should begin to stray from the Meany-approved subordination of the labor movement to the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy can be expected to exert considerable pressure on the farm workers by withdrawing financial and other support.
In violation of the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S. war with Mexico in 1848, the property of the Mexican inhabitants of what is now the Southwest U.S. was not respected.
Reies López Tijerina investigated the original land-grant titles and exposed the processes by which they were stolen. The Alianza Federal de Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants) was formed in 1962 in New Mexico to publicize the claims of the “Indo-Hispanos” to the land now occupied by Anglos and by the National Forest Service.
A series of events beginning in 1966 brought the Alianza to public attention nationally. A march from Albuquerque to Santa Fe with petitions to the governor of New Mexico and the president of the United States was followed by attempts to occupy parts of National Forest lands in the fall of 1966 and the summer of 1967. This was answered by military force and frame-up charges against Alianza leaders.
Included in the program of the Alianza was the idea of internationalizing their struggle by appealing to the United Nations and Cuba to recognize their claims to the land and their right to establish an independent republic based on the land grants.
The Alianza participated in a New Politics formation, the People’s Constitutional Party of New Mexico, during the 1968 elections, running Tijerina for governor. They, along with the Crusade for Justice of Denver and the farm workers’ union, joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. Tijerina and other Alianza militants, after frame-up trials, were imprisoned and the Alianza has declined.
With Chicanos constituting more than one-third of New Mexico’s population, and a majority in some areas, considerable potential exists for building an independent Chicano party there, although no such efforts have been undertaken thus far.
An urban civil rights and cultural movement called the Crusade for Justice was formed in Denver, Colorado, in the mid-1960s. While located solely in Denver, the Crusade’s influence was to be more widely felt as its principal spokesman, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez, a former official of the Democratic Party, emerged as one of the central leaders in the Chicano movement.
The Crusade for Justice organized and supported high school strikes, demonstrations against police brutality, and legal cases in behalf of Chicanos framed up by the police. It also supported mass actions against the Vietnam War.
One of the most important roles played by the Crusade has been organizing the Chicano Youth liberation conferences. The 1969 and 1970 conferences brought together large numbers of Chicano youth from the Southwest, the Northwest, and the Midwest, as well as some Puerto Rican youth from the Midwest and East Coast. Out of the first conference came El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (The Spiritual Plan of Aztlán), a program for the mass mobilization, of Chicanos for community control. The Plan of Aztlán raised the concept that the liberation of the “Mestizo Nation” would ultimately require “a nation autonomously free, culturally, socially, economically, and politically.” The formation of an independent Chicano party was projected “since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feeds from the same trough.”
The second Chicano youth conference (1970) represented a further step forward for those forces who supported a mass-action perspective and the formation of an independent Chicano political party. Following the conference, the Crusade for Justice and other Chicanos launched the Colorado Raza Unida Party.
The schools have been a place where Chicano youth have been politicized by many of the factors that fueled the international youth radicalization, as well as by many specific grievances. By the 1960s the number of Chicano youth in the high schools had dramatically increased. There are approximately two million Spanish-surnamed elementary and secondary school students in the United States, 70 percent of them in the Southwest. More Chicano students than before are now going on to college, but not in the same proportion as the rest of the population.
The Chicano student movement developed to combat oppressive school conditions. High school and elementary students were prohibited from using Spanish in the classroom or on the school grounds; the true history of the Chicano people was not taught; Anglo principals and teachers directly and indirectly expressed their racist concepts and attitudes; and Chicano students not pushed out of the schools were tracked into vocational rather than academic courses, often into the army rather than college. Students were not allowed to freely organize political or cultural groups in the schools. Corporal punishment was meted out to those who objected to these repressive conditions. Disciplinary suspensions and expulsions were common.
To change these conditions a wave of Chicano high school blow outs (strikes) occurred all over the Southwest and in other places, like Chicago. The largest and most effective took place in 1968 in Los Angeles, where 15,000 Chicano students walked out of the barrio schools and triggered similar actions among students in some predominantly Black and several mostly white schools. A Chicano sit-in at the board of education brought to public attention the demands of Raza students for “Education, Not Contempt,” “Education, Not Eradication,” and posed the need for Chicano control of schools in the Chicano community. The actions of the high school students engendered support from college student groups as well as parent and community organizations.
Concessions have been granted as a result of these high school struggles, one of the most important being the repeal or easing of the prohibition against the teaching of regular classes in Spanish in the schools. But the Chicano people still face the problem of how to take control of the schools in the Chicano communities. Elements of control have been won in some school districts in South Texas, where student strikes have been combined with the formation of independent Chicano parties which have elected candidates to office.
Chicano college students also began to organize on the campuses for Chicano studies programs, open admissions, and community control of higher education—the Brown university. Chicano students played a leading role in the Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State College, the University of California at Berkeley, and elsewhere in 1968 and 1969. A Latin and Mexican-American studies department was won at Merritt College in Oakland and some form of Chicano studies was won at many other colleges.
A conference of Chicano students and educators in 1969 at Santa Bárbara, California, issued El Plan de Santa Bárbara which “set out to formulate a Chicano plan for higher education.”
Some elements of the concept of the Brown University are present in this document as summed up in the statement: “We do not come to work for the university, but to demand that the university work for our people.”
No single Chicano student organization exists as a national or Southwest-wide group. UMAS (United Mexican-American Students) is strong in Colorado, MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán—Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán) in California, MAYO (Mexican-American Youth Organization) in Texas. In the Midwest, Chicano students have in some cases united with Puerto Rican students in Latino groups such as the Latin American Student Organization in Chicago.
In many urban areas Chicano youth formed groups like the Brown Berets. These groups have played a role as organizers and monitors in high school strikes and in actions against police brutality. The Brown Berets vary from place to place, from being nonpolitical or antipolitical, to revolutionary nationalist, to ultraleft sectarian.
In those areas where independent Chicano political parties have been formed, student groups have often provided activists and leaders. This has been especially important in Texas, where MAYO-led student strikes helped lay the basis for the formation of La Raza Unida parties in South Texas.
The Vietnam War was escalated at a time of heightened nationalist consciousness among La Raza. Some Chicano leaders and organizations were among the most consistent and outspoken opponents of the war. As the antiwar movement grew, many activists became aware that masses of Chicanos could be mobilized in militant opposition to a war that was not in their interest. For one thing, Chicanos were being used as cannon fodder totally out of proportion to their numbers. For another, the Defense Department was giving a helping hand to the rich growers facing strikes by the farm workers by buying huge quantities of scab grapes and lettuce to feed to the U.S. troops in Vietnam. Increasing numbers of Chicanos asked the obvious question: “How can they tell us we are fighting for freedom and democracy 8,000 miles away, when we don’t have freedom and democracy here at home?”
Chicano contingents in antiwar marches were organized in the late 1960s in places like Los Angeles, Denver, and San Francisco, and helped lay the basis for the unprecedented outpouring of La Raza for the National Chicano Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam on August 29, 1970, in East Los Angeles. Thirty thousand marched while additional tens of thousands lined the streets to cheer on the demonstrators.
The brutal police assault on the Chicano Moratorium rally and the East Los Angeles barrio resulted in the deaths of three Chicanos. This attack showed that the ruling class feared the prospect of mass mobilizations of Chicanos in the streets, especially when the idea of forming La Raza Unida parties was being popularized far and wide, including in Los Angeles. The greater Los Angeles area contains hundreds of thousands of Chicanos. Many live in unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County, the rest in an area gerrymandered to thwart the potential independent strength of the Chicano population as a single voting bloc.
The police attack brought about a sharp confrontation between an enraged community and the Los Angeles ruling class. First, the barrio erupted as many Chicanos gave vent to long pent-up rage at the conditions of life, the day-to-day police brutality, the profit-hungry merchants. Second, a sharp political struggle was waged to organize a mass street action to reassert the right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances. Such an action was held on Mexican Independence Day. Ten thousand militant Chicanos marched despite the red-baiting campaign by city officials which was echoed by the reformists in the movement.
Further Chicano antiwar actions have since been held in widely scattered places, and sizable Chicano contingents have been organized for the subsequent coalition-called antiwar actions, most notably the huge April 24 march in San Francisco, where some 4,000 Chicanos and Latinos marched—the largest contingent of an oppressed nationality in that action.
Raza women have begun to discuss and act against their triple oppression as members of an oppressed nationality, as workers, and as females in a patriarchal bourgeois society. Most Chicanas are brought up in Catholic families, and thus have to cope with an especially reactionary morality which rationalizes the subordination of women in the family and in society, including strictures against the right of women to control their own bodies, the right to abortion and contraception.
The reactionary concepts about the role and rights of women perpetrated by capitalist society and religion are also promoted by some Chicano leaders in the name of “La Familia de La Raza” and machismo. The result is a denial of full opportunities for participation and leadership by Chicanas in the Chicano movement.
The May 1971 Mujeres Por La Raza (Women for La Raza) conference in Houston, attended by some 600 women, was an historic gathering. It showed the potential for mobilizing this half of La Raza as nationalist fighters and as feminists and points the way for women of other oppressed nationalities.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service continues the policy of harassing and illegally deporting Chicanos and resident Mexicans to Mexico. This decades-old injustice has given rise to actions and organizations to expose these practices.
Although more than half of the Catholics in the Southwest are Chicanos, the Catholic Church hierarchy has continuously insulted its Chicano membership by its racist practices and refusal to use its immense resources to support the Chicano movement. Groups have formed such as Católicos Por La Raza in Los Angeles, which has demonstrated at churches against the current state of affairs in Los Angeles County where, they say, property owned by the Catholic Church is valued in excess of $1 billion yet Chicano children “are praying to La Virgen de Guadalupe as they go to bed hungry.”
The recent development of independent Chicano political parties that have contested in city, county, and state elections in several states in the Southwest grows out of the struggles outlined in the previous section and has profound implications for the Chicano people and for other oppressed nationalities, especially Afro-Americans.
For years Chicanos have voted in their majority, and in many cases overwhelmingly, for candidates of the Democratic Party. More than 95 percent of Chicanos voted for Democrats in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1964. One of the most successful vote-hustling tools for John F. Kennedy in 1960 was the Viva Kennedy committees. Around the same time the Mexican-American Political Association (MAPA) and the Political Association of Spanish-speaking Organizations (PASO) were formed, which for the most part have faithfully delivered the Chicano vote to the Democrats.
One exception to this trend was the “third force” maneuver in 1966 in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to throw the Chicano vote to one major Republican candidate with the hope that this would make the Democrats more responsive to the aspirations of Chicanos. In Texas this maneuver resulted in the election of the Republican candidate, John Tower, to the U.S. Senate. A half-million Chicanos voted for Tower, and at the same time voted for the Democratic candidate for governor, John Connally, who also won. This resulted in the Johnson administration calling various moderate Chicano politicians to the White House to discuss holding a White House Conference on Mexican Americans. An earlier White House meeting with Black leaders had turned into an attack on the president so Johnson decided to hold the conference far away from Washington with militant Chicanos excluded. This caused such a furor among Chicano leaders that the conference was indefinitely postponed and never took place. But demands for action by the federal government continued to be pressed and the White House set up Cabinet hearings in El Paso in October of 1967. Invited were the more moderate leaders such as Chavez; excluded were Tijerina and others considered too militant.
Those excluded set up their own La Raza Unida conference attended by some 700 activists, including many who had been invited to the White House hearings. They held their own hearings and issued the Plan de La Raza Unida. This proclamation insisted that “the time of subjugation, exploitation, and abuse of human rights of La Raza in the United States is hereby ended forever.” They drew up a list of demands directed at all levels of government, demands which were ignored by the Johnson administration and the Democratic and Republican parties.
Subsequently, at the Democratic Party convention in 1968, Chicano Democrats complained that they were being ignored and considered walking out. Following the convention, California MAPA, which had always endorsed the Democratic Party nominees, voted not to endorse anyone for president. This was a factor in preventing a victory for Hubert Humphrey in California.
Though political associations like MAPA and PASO continue to endorse and get Raza votes for capitalist party candidates, they are pressured toward a more independent posture by the paucity of concessions emanating from these parties and by the insurgent Chicano movements, including the independent Chicano parties.
The formation of La Raza Unida parties signifies the beginnings of a break with this subordination to capitalist politics. These parties point the way toward registering in the electoral arena the strength, combativity, and independence of the mass struggles against the oppressive conditions of life forced on the Chicano people. They point to the need to generalize the various struggles of La Raza around education, the war, discrimination, and all the other issues into a unified, independent mass political struggle of Chicano people to take control of their own destiny. They show that meaningful victories can be achieved by combining electoral action with mass actions in the streets.
If these Raza Unida parties remain independent of the capitalist parties, including the national Democratic and Republican parties, and if they develop mass struggles centered on the needs of the Chicano people, they could be the first steps towards a mass independent Chicano political party.
Within the context of the deepening radicalization in the U.S. today, the development of a mass independent Chicano political party would shake up American politics. The strength of the Democratic Party comes from the support it receives from a combination of sizable oppressed groups—the trade unions, and the great majority of the Black and Chicano people. The coalition of these forces with the capitalist politicians of the Democratic Party is held together by the belief that this coalition can win elections and deliver reforms. The massive defection of Chicano voters would create an immediate crisis for all the elements in this coalition, not only in the Southwest, but nationally. Without the Chicano vote, the Democrats would be unable to carry whole sections of the Southwest and would be weakened in a number of midwestern states. The Democratic Party’s growing incapacity to win nationally would break up this coalition, encouraging Black people and the labor movement to organize their own parties.
Old alignments would disintegrate and new ones form. A mass independent Chicano political party would therefore not only be the best way to promote and protect the welfare of the Chicano people, but would also create the possibility of forging alliances with other oppressed groups.
Meaningful improvements in the quality of life of the Chicano people under capitalism and ultimate liberation require a strategy of mass independent political action in all forms, and a militant leadership that can inspire and win the confidence of the masses. The forms this political action can take are many and varied. Thus far, the different components of the movement, such as student, labor, and antiwar struggles, have developed independently, each adopting organizational forms thought to be most suited to the demands being fought for, the milieu in which the struggle takes place, and the adversary being combatted. All these developed separately in the absence of an independent Chicano party enjoying the active support and adherence of the great mass of the Chicano people. If such a mass party had existed, the form and tempo of these struggles would undoubtedly have been different.
There are three interrelated aspects to building an independent Chicano party of mass action.
1. First is the organizing and carrying out of united-front mass actions. That is, actions around specific, well-defined issues organized in such a way that they are capable of drawing into motion the masses of La Raza. This requires an issue that is of immediate importance, formulated in a demand or demands easily understood, fought for by a leadership that wants to mobilize La Raza and is capable of forging the organizational means to that end, that is, a nonexclusive, democratic decision-making structure.
The building of such mass actions will help lay the basis for the development of an independent Chicano party. Where the nucleus of such a party exists, the building of united-front actions by that nucleus and other Raza forces will help it reach out to broader masses and at the same time project the independent Chicano party as a party capable of organizing the Chicano struggle on all fronts.
Aspects of the united-front approach existed in the organization for the National Chicano Moratorium Against the War, August 29, 1970. The issue was one of burning importance and immediacy. The central demand raised was basic, clear, and aimed squarely at the federal government: “Bring Our Carnales Home Now.” The popular slogan “Raza Si, Guerra No” captured the nationalist spirit and dynamic of the Chicano Moratorium. The leadership of the Moratorium wanted a massive action and sought and welcomed the support of all, irrespective of their ideas on other issues. Many different groups and individuals were actively drawn into organizing the action.
Many local struggles in the high schools and colleges have likewise resulted in groups working together for mass actions which in some cases have involved considerable support and won their demands.
The mobilization of thousands of people in militant mass political action in the streets paves the way for independent political action in the electoral arena. This in turn can further spur on the independent mass street mobilizations. These two forms of political action should be seen as complementary and reinforcing, not as mutually exclusive or contradictory. In this way it will be made clear that an independent Chicano party must be a party of a new type, that is, a party of mass action.
2. The formulation of a mass action program of democratic and transitional demands will be fundamental to the development of a mass Chicano party.
3. Another important element in the construction of a mass Chicano party will be a nonexclusive, democratic structure open to all of La Raza who want to participate in the struggle. Internal democracy is important because it facilitates the fullest involvement of the masses of people, increases the likelihood that the party will faithfully reflect the aspirations of the most oppressed and exploited, and helps to ensure the selection and replenishment of leadership.
In the last two years a considerable number of leading Chicano activists have come to see the need to break with the capitalist parties and extend the independent thrust of the Chicano movement to the electoral arena through the formation of La Raza Unida parties and similar formations in Texas, Colorado, California, and Arizona. So far these attempts have resulted in a widespread popularization of the concept of independent electoral politics and have put on the defensive both the ultraleft abstentionists who reject any electoral activity on principle, and the opportunist Chicano Democratic and Republican politicians and those who support them.
The most outstanding results of these efforts have been the electoral victories in various city elections in South Texas where Chicanos constitute an overwhelming majority of the population. In other areas, such as Colorado and California, good showings have been made by initiating nuclei of La Raza Unida parties. Though modest vote totals were achieved in the first attempts, the results were promising given the difficulties in launching any new political formation. Rather than causing a lapse into demoralization and inactivity, these modest successes have encouraged continued efforts. This is in sharp contrast to the earlier experience of the Black movement. Leaders of the Michigan Freedom Now Party in 1964 and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama in 1966 and 1968 made promising first showings in electoral efforts, but became discouraged because they did not more quickly achieve a mass following, in the case of the FNP, or win an election victory, in the case of the LCFO. Both later returned to capitalist politics. The advocates of independent Chicano parties have also avoided the error of merely proclaiming the formation of a nationwide or Southwest-wide political party, which would at this time be an artificial shell. While stating the need for a party based on all the Chicano people and making that their goal, these leaders have chosen to begin on a more realistic basis, on the state, county, and municipal level.
The Crystal City, Texas, Raza Unida Party grew out of militant student struggles in 1969. After the students and community came into conflict with the local government and won certain concessions, they saw the need to replace the racists and vendidos (Chicano sellouts) on the city council and school board with militant representatives of the Chicano community who had been tested in struggle. This led to the formation of La Raza Unida Party, which ran and won in the city elections and made changes beneficial to the Chicano community. At the same time RUP supporters have continued to encourage further independent struggles such as participation in antiwar actions and the workers’ fight for a democratic union in the main industrial plant in the area.
The meaningful changes made possible by combining mass action in the streets with independent electoral action included the firing of racist teachers, protecting high school student rights, outlawing corporal punishment by teachers, launching Chicano studies programs and bilingual education, and taking advantage of federal government monies they were entitled to but which were not utilized by the previous city government. Police policies were altered to the benefit of the Chicano community. La Raza Unida Party leaders also took immediate steps to substantially raise the wages of school and city workers and to encourage their unionization.
Steps were taken or projected to cope with the problem of involving the Chicano community in more direct, ongoing, and meaningful ways in policy decisions and implementation. One was the functioning of the Ciudadanos Unidos (United Citizens), originally set up as a parent support group during the school strikes in 1969, which later became a general adult leadership body. Another step was raising the idea of advisory councils, to be composed of democratically elected representatives from various constituencies—students, parents, teachers, and other school workers—to discuss and make decisions on key educational policy questions with the understanding that their decisions would be implemented by the city and school board officials elected on La Raza Unida Party’s slate.
One of the principal achievements of the election victories in Crystal City is the psychological impact they have had, the inspiration and symbolic value of oppressed people wresting from their rulers some influence in public policy-making, some element of control over their lives and destiny.
While it is important to evaluate and publicize the Crystal City achievements, it is likewise essential to be aware of the limitations of this development. Crystal City is an isolated town of 10,000 people in a county of fewer than 15,000 in South Texas, 100 miles from San Antonio, the nearest large city. The economic mainstay of the county is agriculture and the small processing industries that exist are related to agriculture. Virtually all the land and agriculture-related industries in the county are owned by Anglos. Most of the commercial enterprises are Anglo-owned.
Moreover, many Crystal City Chicanos spend at least half of each year away from their homes as they fan out across the country in the spring to work in the fields, returning in late fall. Though this mobility helps spread the ideas and example of La Raza Unida Party to other areas it creates certain difficulties for local organizing.
Controlling the city hall and the school board in a town like Crystal City has strict limitations. There is only so much that can be changed through control of a city government, especially one which lacks financial resources. Beyond reach at the present time are the Anglo-owned businesses and the all-Anglo county government which wields considerably more power than the city because of its ability to tax the landowners in the county.
There are also leadership limitations. The central, militant leadership radicalized in the Chicano student movement is a small layer spread out in different cities in South Texas. Often the candidates chosen to run under the Raza Unida Party banner or other independent slates are less political, less radical than the former student leaders. Even among the most politically developed, there are different levels of understanding on key questions involving the capitalist parties, especially whether or not to support liberal Democrats like McGovern for president in 1972 on the national level or whether or not to have supported Yarborough for U.S. senator in Texas in 1970.
Programmatically these independent Texas formations aspire to Chicano control of South Texas, a majority-Chicano area of more than twenty-five counties. While they see the need to fight for attainable reforms that would improve their conditions, they don’t necessarily pose the question of the need for more fundamental changes, in society. The logic of fighting consistently for Chicano control of South Texas through all forms of independent mass political action points toward anticapitalist conclusions, but this is not widely understood among the activists and leaders of these independent developments.
Although La Raza Unida Party in Crystal City has mass support among Chicanos, the party itself is not yet a mass organization but rather more of an electoral instrument, set up to comply with Texas election laws. Those who register to vote RUP don’t join a party with an organizational structure which can democratically involve the masses of La Raza. Instead, the decision-making groups that the political-minded activists belong to are Ciudadanos Unidos and MAYO.
The question of remaining independent of the capitalist parties and politicians is a decisive test facing the Raza Unida parties in Texas and elsewhere in the next period, especially as the 1972 presidential campaign approaches. We must expect that Democratic Party politicians, assisted by the labor bureaucracy, reformists in the Chicano movement, and the Communist Party, will be putting increasing pressure on the Raza Unida parties to support liberal Democrats and the national Democratic ticket, or perhaps some form of New Politics. Resisting this pressure will be essential to the continued development of the Raza Unida parties independent of the capitalist parties and based upon the Chicano people. The fact that some leaders of these parties have not unequivocally repudiated any support to the Democrats nationally, and have been attracted to Democratic presidential hopeful McGovern, highlights this danger. We will be participating in the political debates on this question, emphasizing the need for an independent mass Chicano political party.
One necessary step in the construction of a mass independent Chicano party is the elaboration of a program of democratic and transitional demands capable of mobilizing the masses of La Raza in struggle.
Attempts have been made to formulate such a program for Chicano liberation that would speak to the immediate day-to-day needs of the masses of La Raza—needs that American capitalism shows itself less and less able to meet in full—and at the same time point to the ultimate goal of Chicano liberation and self-determination.
Chicano control of the Chicano community is a central component of such a program. The demand that the Chicano community control through democratic means all institutions in the community arises from the experience of the Chicano people, who are exploited by Anglo business, brutalized by Anglo-controlled police forces, imprisoned unjustly by Anglo judges, drafted to fight by Anglo draft boards in a war that is not in their interest, miseducated and stripped of their language, history, and culture by the schools, excluded from or discriminated against in the trade unions, restricted from exercising constitutionally guaranteed rights of free speech, assembly, and redress of grievances.
Many demands have been put forward in the course of struggles in the last few years which constitute a starting point for developing a transitional program for Chicano liberation. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán drawn up in 1969 at the Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver was one contribution to the development of such, a program. The 1970 platform of the Colorado Raza Unida Party and the initial programmatic documents of the Oakland-Berkeley Raza Unida Party were steps in the same direction.
The Delano Proclamation presented in 1966 by UFWOC, El Plan de La Raza Unida, El Plan de Santa Bárbara, El Plan del Barrio (issued during the Poor People’s March on Washington) were additional programmatic manifestos and documents.
The goals of the high school student struggles must form part of such a program along with the goals of the farm workers’ movement, Chicano workers in general, the college student organizations, the Bring Our Carnales Home movement, the prisoners, the women.
No full program for Chicano liberation has been developed, but some of the most important demands are clear. Some derive from the Transitional Program (“The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”) and can be directly applied to the Chicano struggle. Others were outlined in the transitional program, for youth (“The Worldwide Youth Radicalization and the Tasks of the Fourth International”). Still others will be similar to demands in “A Transitional Program for Black Liberation.” Some demands were raised in the programmatic section of “Toward a Mass Feminist Movement,” which apply to Raza women.
Such demands as well as demands raised first in the Chicano movement will constitute the beginnings of a transitional program that can provide a guide for the organization and mobilization of the masses of La Raza. Such a program can point in the direction of mass anticapitalist mobilization, and lead toward the goal of Chicano liberation, and at the same time maximize the gains that can be won short of that goal. It will form a part of the general transitional program of the American socialist revolution. The following is a contribution to the formulation of a transitional program for Chicano liberation.
1. The Right of Self-Determination
Since the Chicano people are oppressed as a nationality, they have the right to fully and unconditionally determine their own destiny, including the right to establish a separate state if they so decide collectively.
The most immediate and compelling struggles to determine the destiny of the Chicano people are those aiming at Chicano control of the Chicano community (or, as in a number of larger geographical areas where La Raza is a majority of the population, Chicano control of these regions, such as South Texas).
It is a democratic right of Chicanos to control all institutions in the Chicano community. These should be administered by democratically elected councils representing the masses of La Raza. These local councils should join with others on the state and national level on the basis of elected delegates subject to immediate recall.
2. Justice
Replace police occupation of the Chicano community with a police force composed of residents of the Chicano community and controlled by the Chicano community. Organize the community to defend itself.
La Raza has the right under the Constitution to trial by peers, and such trials should take place in Spanish if desired by the defendant. Release all Chicano prisoners who have not been tried by their peers.
Prisoners and ex-prisoners should retain citizenship rights of free speech, association, assembly, the right to hold and discuss ideas, the right to read and write what they choose with no censorship, and the right to vote. Regular conjugal visits should be provided for.
3. Education
The Chicano community shall have control of the education of La Raza through democratically elected councils. All of La Raza is entitled to free education through the university level with subsidies by the government to cover living expenses and books for those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go to school. From the earliest grades there should be instruction in the Spanish language as well as English. The true history and culture of the Chicano people must be taught to all.
In all educational institutions Chicano students must be allowed to exercise their constitutional rights without fear of disciplinary suspensions, expulsions, or corporal punishment. These include the right to hold and freely express ideas; the right to propagate these ideas through organizations, newspapers, leaflets, buttons; the right to use facilities of these public institutions to serve the needs of the Chicano people. End the tracking system.
All ties between the schools and the war machine must be severed. Student records must not be turned over to Selective Service. No military recruiters in the schools, no ROTC, no research for military purposes.
At both the high school and university level the student health services should include: contraception and abortion facilities. Married or not, students with children shall not be expelled or suspended and shall be provided with free twenty-four-hour-a-day child care controlled by the students.
No cops on campus.
Teachers must abide by the will of the Chicano community. Racist teachers must be fired. Preferential training and hiring of Raza teachers. Teachers have the right to form unions, to bargain collectively, and to strike.
4. Chicano Workers
All Chicano workers, including farm workers, shall have the right to organize unions and to strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Farm workers shall be covered by minimum wage and workmen’s compensation legislation. End all residency requirements so that migrant laborers qualify for all national, state, and local welfare and other benefits.
Growers and other bosses shall be prevented from strikebreaking practices by the establishment of union-controlled hiring halls. For full union democracy, including the right to organize Chicano caucuses to fight against racist union officials and practices.
For a sliding scale of wages and hours so that all who want to work can do so and so that inflation doesn’t wipe out wage gains. An escalator clause in all union contracts so that wages automatically rise with the cost of living. A shorter workweek with no loss in pay to spread the available work so that there will be jobs for all.
Preferential hiring; and training of Chicanos to make up for past and present discriminatory hiring practices. No federal government money to construction projects where Chicanos are not hired at least in proportion to the population.
5. Raza Women
Chicanas have the right as women to control their lives and destinies. End all discrimination against Chicanas. Equal pay for equal work, equal job and educational opportunities; free twenty-four-hour child care controlled by the parents and community; repeal all laws restricting the right to abortion; free abortion on demand; no forced sterilization; the right to contraceptive devices and information.
6. Election Laws
Repeal all state election laws that restrict the participation of independent Chicano candidates and parties in local, state, and federal elections, including prohibitive registration or signature requirements, distribution requirements, loyalty oaths, filing fees, and gerrymandering of election districts to the detriment of La Raza.
For the full franchise at eighteen years old: the right to vote in all elections and the right of any qualified voter to run for and hold any public office. Print official election material, including ballots, in English and Spanish.
7. Against Mass-Media Stereotypes
The FCC shall revoke the licenses of radio and television stations that use racist stereotypes to portray Chicanos in advertising and programming. No racist stereotypes in newspapers, textbooks, and other forms of mass communication.
8. Foreign Policy
End the drafting of Chicano youth to fight in imperialist wars. End the war in Southeast Asia and bring the carnales home now. Bring all U.S. troops home from Southeast Asia now. Support the constitutional rights of Chicanos in the armed forces to organize and to express political views and cultural pride.
Support the national liberation struggles of oppressed peoples. End U.S. government intervention in Latin America.
9. Land
Land to those who work it. Nationalize the “factory farms” under farm workers’ control.
10. Formation of a Chicano Political Party
The indispensable instrument for organizing and carrying on effective struggle for such demands, achieving Chicano control of the Chicano community, and moving forward to Chicano liberation is a mass independent Chicano political party.
In aiding the development of an independent mass Chicano movement, the Socialist Workers Party must help popularize the ideas of and help in other ways to build the Chicano parties, the Chicano antiwar movement, the high school and college struggles, and other important actions, including the farm workers’ and boycott movements, the struggles of Raza women, the developing movement of Chicano prisoners, and the defense of victims of political frame-ups. In this work we advance our program and perspective for Chicano liberation.
In the coming debates on the 1972 elections, we can play an important role in fighting for the maintenance of an independent perspective, arguing against any support to the capitalist parties, either direct support to the Democrats or Republicans, or through New Politics tickets or parties.
Such tasks are the responsibility of the entire party and must not fall solely to Chicano and Latino members. Due to our limited forces a premium is placed on extensive use of the socialist press for getting out our ideas—the Militant, the International Socialist Review, and Pathfinder Press literature—as well as SWP election campaigns and our weekly forums.
The Militant above all enables us to regularly speak to thousands of people, Including many activists in the Chicano movement, and to extend our political influence beyond our numbers. Sales of individual copies and subscriptions to the Militant to Chicano activists must be seen as part of our regular sales efforts.
These vehicles enable us to present news and analysis of the Chicano movement and other initiatives of the oppressed and exploited and counterpose our full program for social change in polemics against the reformists and ultralefts.
Chicano and Latino members should help build Chicano student, antiwar, and feminist groups, and La Raza Unida Party formations. Where it is not possible to participate actively in the Chicano movement our strength in the student, antiwar, and women’s liberation movements can be utilized to make contact with and help the independent development of La Raza, and at the same time encourage the Chicano movement to unite in broadly based mass-action coalitions. We should be alert to opportunities to support struggles of Chicano workers.
Unfortunately, red-baiting has marred certain Chicano struggles. We should expose red-baiting for what it is—an attempt to divide the Chicano movement and to weaken its more militant wing. When directed specifically against us, it is in reality aimed at all those, including ourselves, who are consistent fighters for the political independence of the Chicano movement.
In addition to supporting Chicano antiwar actions we must help build Raza antiwar contingents such as were organized for the April 24 antiwar marches. Chicana contingents in mass women’s demonstrations, such as the abortion law repeal actions, should also be built.
Part of the preparation for meaningful participation in the Chicano movement is learning from that movement. In this connection it is important to read Chicano newspapers and magazines and hold educationals on the history and current stage of the struggle of the Chicano people. To equip our members to understand and help provide leadership for the Chicano movement they must study the Marxist analysis of the national question, the theory of the permanent revolution, the history of struggles of other oppressed nationalities in this country, and the history of the working class movement.
One of the tasks of the coming American revolution will be carrying through to completion the struggle of the Chicano people for self-determination, which cannot be won under capitalism; the full liberation of Chicanos, both as part of the working class and ass a nationality, can be achieved only through a victorious socialist revolution.
An absolutely essential prerequisite for the success of the coming American revolution is the construction of a mass revolutionary socialist party on the Leninist model. The construction of such a party is the central objective of the SWP.
The mass revolutionary socialist party we seek to build must be multinational as well as proletarian in composition, uniting revolutionary Marxists from the different nationalities in this country into a single centralized combat party. At the present stage of building such a party, the recruitment and training of cadres is our foremost task. More and more Chicano activists will join the SWP as they come to see the need for a socialist revolution and for a Leninist party to lead that revolution to victory, a party with a correct program on all aspects of the anticapitalist struggle, that unconditionally supports the fight of the Chicano people for self-determination, fights alongside them for their full liberation, and fights for the full liberation of all humanity.
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