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Brown Berets Get Ready
Sep 15, 2005, 02:28 PM
Reported by Romeo Cantu

A once powerful militant group, known as the Brown Berets, told Action 4 News that they are ready to stand up against the Minutemen when they come to the Valley to patrol the border.

"We're here to stay and no one is going to come over and tell us what to do.

Those times are over. Minutemen stay away," said Pablo Delgado, a spokesman for the Brown Berets, a group similar to the Black Panthers.

Delgado said that he’s heading up the group here in Texas, just like he helped to do back in the mid-1960s when the once powerful militant group was first formed in East Los Angeles during the Chicano Liberation movement.

"At the time, we had racism and discrimination against the Mexican-American people, like the Ku Klux Klan. Now, (it’s) the Minutemen.

Meeting with some of his supporters in the Valley, Delgado said that 16,000 Brown Berets around the state are ready to meet the Minutemen.

And that encounter could come soon, because the Minutemen are expected to have about 500 members in the Valley by Friday.

"We do not promote violence," Delgado said. "We're here to monitor to defend the people. But if push comes to shove, we're ready."

Action 4 News contacted the president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. of Texas, Al Garza, via telephone.

"We are not out there provoking anyone especially the Hispanic community.

We are there to focus on the pipelines," Garza said. "If they have a problem with that to me that means that simply they are advocating illegal immigrants. I can only say that we are not going to confront anybody. We are working within the law and we are going to stick to it."

"And a message to Al Garza or Ed Garza, I don't know his name. I think that he does not know where he comes from," Delgado said. "We the Brown Beret organization do not recognize him as a Hispanic or as a Mexicano. To us, he is nothing."

Delgado said that he's calling for a national conference of the Brown Berets to be held in McAllen in the next couple of months.