Thread: TX - Activists: Hispanics must harness political power

By Daniel Borunda \ El Paso Times
Posted: 09/01/2012 12:00:00 AM MDT


Dallas-area lawyer Jose Angel Gutierrez speaks a panel discussing the future of Hispanic political empowerment during the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of La Raza Unida Party national convention in El Paso in 1972. He served as the party's first national chairman. (Ramon Renteria / El Paso Times)

Founders of La Raza Unida Party said the need for the Hispanic community to harness its political power is greater now than 40 years ago when the party had its first national convention in El Paso.

Former leaders of the party and a new generation of political activists are celebrating the 40th anniversary of an independent party that was a high point of the Chicano Movement.

Poverty, anti-immigration policies and the influence of big money in politics are among reasons there is still a need for an independent political party, said ex-party members during a panel discussion Friday evening at Mercado Mayapán.

Chicano activists said the question remains the same as in 1972: whether the two-party system can represent a growing Hispanic community that has yet to awaken to its power.

"Today, there is a big group (of people) who no longer believe the electoral process is the way to go because brown faces in high places have not dramatically changed conditions in our communities," said Maria Jimenez, a former La Raza Party organizer from the Houston area.

Jimenez, who was on the panel, said there is a need for new social movements because the influence of money in politics has made it more difficult for activists today than it was for activists who in the 1970s had faith in the U.S. political system.

In 1970, La Raza Unida Party was created by activists fighting discrimination in Crystal City, Texas. In 1972, more than 3,000 delegates attended the party's first national convention at the El Paso County Coliseum.

Chicano activist and a party founder José Angel Gutiérrez said during the panel discussion that Mexican-Americans were being taken for granted by the Democratic Party, although Mexican-American Democrats back then sought to destroy La Raza Unida Party.

There is a need to have a global view, communicate and organize, Gutiérrez said. "Let's work with what we've got," he said.

The panel discussion on Friday evening was attended by about 50 people. Organizers said about 300 people attended other events at the University of Texas at El Paso.

The anniversary commemoration continues with panels, poetry readings and other events today and Sunday at Mercado Mayapán, 2101 Myrtle.

The older, gray-haired Chicano activists said the biggest problems are a lack of political activism and organization and the need for more people to become involved. In recent years, some of the advances of the Chicano Movement, such as ethnic studies classes and bilingual education, have come under fire.

"We are on the one-yard line with 99 yards to go," said panelist Juan José Peña of New Mexico. He added that the opposition has almost made a safety.

"In 2012, we are confronted with the same historical question: Do we stay in the Democratic and Republican party plantation?" activist Hermán Baca said.

"We need to divorce ourselves from the two-party system," Baca said. "There is no other alternative. In order to do that, we need to understand. We need to educate. We need to politicize. And we need to organize our people. The biggest problem we have is la falta de conciencia politica y social para desarollar poder (the lack of political and social conscience to develop power)."

One Old Vet

Activists: Hispanics must harness political power - El Paso Times

Nation of Aztlan (which includes José Angel Gutiérrez)

Nation of Aztlan - YouTube

~~~~

JOSE ANGEL GUTIERREZ

June 7, 2004
by Allan Wall
discoverthenetworks.org

Political science professor and Director of the Mexican-American Studies Center at the University of Texas
Co-founder of the Mexican American Youth Organization
Founder of the militant Chicano activist group La Raza Unida
“We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”
“Our devil has pale skin and blue eyes.”



Born in 1944, attorney and longtime Chicano activist Jose Angel Gutierrez is a political science professor and Director of the Mexican-American Studies Center at the University of Texas’ Arlington campus. Gutierrez has also served as President of the School Board for the Crystal City Independent School District; as the Urban Renewal Commissioner for Crystal City, Texas; and as a county judge for Zavala County, Texas. He received a B.A. from Texas A&M University in 1966; a Master's Degree from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas; a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin; and a law degree from the University of Houston's Bates College of Law.

In the 1960s Gutierrez worked to revolutionize public education, demanding equal treatment for Chicano students in U.S. schools. By 1967, however, his call for equality had been transformed into a doctrine of Chicano supremacy which led him to help establish the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO). According to the April 3, 1969 Congressional Record, Texas Democratic Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez said the following about this organization and Gonzalez: “MAYO styles itself the embodiment of good and the Anglo-American as the incarnation of evil. That is ... drawing fire from the deepest wellsprings of hate. The San Antonio leader of MAYO, Jose Angel Gutierrez, may think himself something of a hero, but he is, in fact, only a benighted soul if he believes that in the espousal of hatred he will find love. He is simply deluded if he believes that the wearing of fatigues . . . makes his followers revolutionaries. . . . One cannot fan the flames of bigotry one moment and expect them to disappear the next.”

In a 1969 speech in San Antonio, Gutierrez said: “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.” On another occasion he said, “Our devil has pale skin and blue eyes.”

Animated by such worldviews and ideals, Gutierrez established the militant La Raza Unida (“the Unified Race”) in the late 1960s. Both Gutierrez and this organization view illegal aliens as "migrants on their own continent” and support an open-borders immigration policy. Moreover, they advocate amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights for those who have already entered the United States in violation of its immigration laws.

Despite a waning of interest in the Chicano activist movement through the 1980s, the 1990s saw Gutierrez once again advocating unfettered migration rights for Chicanos throughout North and Central America, and making radical predictions about the future of race relations and population demographics. Speaking in California in 1995, Gutierrez said:

"The border remains a military zone. We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we're a new Mestizo nation. And they want us to discuss civil rights. Civil rights ... law made by white men to oppress all of us of color, female and male. This is our homeland. We cannot -- we will not -- and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population."

In 1999 Gutierrez was the keynote speaker at a banquet for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). At this event, Gutierrez toned down his rhetoric but reiterated his call for Chicanos to seize the U.S by means of population growth. "We have this bright future because we have the critical mass," he said. "We have the means now to take government and to lead. We have to get busy to work on our skills, our abilities, our competency to build that social capital, so we can be excellent leaders . . ."

In April 2004 Gutierrez was invited by the Mexican government to attend the binational Reconquista jamboree. According to columnist Allan Wall, the theme of this event was “Los Mexicanos de Aquí y de Allá -- ¿Perspectivas Comunes?” (“The Mexicans Here [in Mexico] and There [in the United States] -- Common Perspectives?”). The featured speakers at the event stressed their belief that Mexican emigration to the United States should increase, and that Hispanic Americans ought to use their escalating numbers as a means of gaining political advantage.

The day after the Reconquista festivities, Gutierrez spoke at the “Latino Civil Rights Summit” in Kansas City, where he stated: “We are the future of America. Unlike any prior generation, we now have the critical mass. We’re going to Latinize this country.”

Gutierrez has penned a number of books about Chicano activism, including The Making of a Chicano Militant and Making of a Civil Rights Leader: Jose Angel Gutierrez. He is also the author of A Chicano Manual On How To Handle Gringos. According to the publisher, this book's objective is to help facilitate “the conversion of Latino demographic power into educational, economic and political power . . . especially . . . those who want to be activists for themselves and their communities.”

In 1994 Gutierrez received the “Chicano Hero Award” from the National Council of La Raza; in 1995 he received the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education; in 1996 he was named “Distinguished Texas Hispanic” by Texas Hispanic Magazine; and in 2000 he was named one of the “100 Outstanding Latino Texans of the 20th Century” by Latino Monthly.

Jose Angel Gutierrez - Discover the Networks

June 2, 2009
Josh Price
The Conservative Beacon

Chairman Obama’s SCOTUS nominee should immediately remove her name from the membership list of the so-called civil rights organization National Council of La Raza.

I have already established the organization’s title is itself inherently racist insofar as refers to the Hispanic race as the race. In other words, it’s implied that the Hispanic race is the only one that matters–that it’s superior to other races. That’s almost the exact definition of racism.

Well now a disturbing, racist, genocidal quote is emerging from the founder of La Raza. Jose Angel Gutierrez said the following:

"We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him."

Gutierrez later expounded upon that statement:

Reporter: What is your definition of a gringo?

Gutierrez: A person or an institution who has a certain policy or program or attitudes that reflect bigotry, racism, discord and prejudice and violence.

Reporter: Are the majority of Anglo-Americans gringos?

Gutierrez: According to the Kerner report, we could say yes to that answer. The majority of the ones here in this state are gringos.

Reporter: What was meant by the phrase eliminate the gringos in the MAYO statement?

Gutierrez: You can eliminate an individual in various ways. You can certainly kill him, but that is not our intent at the moment. You can remove the basis of support that he operates from, be it economic, political, or social. That is what we intend to do.

Reporter: If nothing else works you are going to kill all the gringos?

Gutierrez: We will have to find out if nothing else will work.

Reporter: And then you are going to kill us all?

Gutierrez: If it doesn’t work. I would like to add to you that if you label yourself a gringo then you are one of the enemy.

Those are the words of the founder of La Raza, an organization which Judge Sonia Sotomyaor is a member. At the very minimum Judge Sotomayor should immediately seek to remove her name from La Raza’s membership list; and honestly, she should ask Chairman Obama to rescind her nomination.

That, of course, will not happen.

Founder of La Raza: Kill the Gringo! - The Conservative Beacon

I wonder if it isn't thier Southern European roots that make them want to relive the conquistador days of their ancestors. Calling these people activists is ridiculous, they are, in my opinion, subversives.