Brown Berets

For the group founded in 1994, see Brown Berets (Watsonville).

The Brown Berets is a Chicano nationalist activist group of young Mexican Americans that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s to the present day. The group was modeled on the Black Panther Party and inspired by the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Young Lords, anti-war movement(s), Cesar Chavez, the Farm Workers movement, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, Reies Tijerina and revolutionary movements around the world. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets focuses on community organizing against police brutality and are in favor of educational equality. As a decentralized movement, several groups have been quite active since the passage of California Proposition 187, carrying on the militant stance and paramilitary garb of the original movement. Units exist in most sections of California and a few in other southwesten states. They primarily serve as a visible symbol of historical Raza resolve at demonstrations and political parades.

Predecessors

In 1966, as part of the Annual Chicano Student Conference in Los Angeles County, a team of high school students discussed different issues affecting Mexican Americans in their barrios and schools. Among the students at the conference were Vickie Castro, Jorge Licón, John Ortiz, David Sanchez, Rachel Ochoa, and Moctesuma Esparza. These high school students formed the Young Citizens for Community Action the same year, and worked together to support Dr. Julian Nava's campaign as a Los Angeles school board member candidate in 1967. Sanchez and Esparza had trained with Father John B. Luce's Social Action Training center at the Church of the Epiphany (Episcopal) in Lincoln Heights and with the Community Service Organization.

The organization's name was then changed to Young Chicanos For Community Action or "YCCA". In 1967, the YCCA founded the Piranya Coffee House. In September 1967, Sal Castro, a Korean War veteran and teacher at Lincoln High School, met with the YCCA at the Piranya Coffee House. The group decided to wear brown berets as a symbol of unity and resistance against discrimination. As a result, the organization gained the name "Brown Berets". Their agenda was to fight police harassment, inadequate public schools, inadequate health care, inadequate job opportunities, minority education issues, the lack of political representation, and the Vietnam War. It set up branches in Texas, New Mexico, New York, Florida, Chicago, St. Louis and other metropolitan areas with Chicano populations.

Actions

Yes

The Brown Berets also were involved in community issues such as unemployment and housing, which became important elements in their agenda. The publication of La Causa by Eleazar Risco and the Brown Berets helped bring awareness of the problems faced every day in the barrios of East Los Angeles.

In 1969, Brown Berets [Cristo Cebada]] produced and distributed a newspaper called "La Causa." They also participated in organizing the first free medical clinics and free breakfast programs. Women held an important role in the writing and distribution of "La Causa", but even though this was so, the Brown Berets, as the rest of the Chicano Movement, did not fully take women into strong leadership positions. The jobs assigned to women in the Brown Berets consisted of office type jobs and clerical/secretarial jobs. Sexism within the Brown Berets was evident. Brown Berets saw themselves as liberated men and ignored the women's struggle because they, male Brown Berets, believed that the feminist movement was a white women's movement and that above all, first came the liberation of the La Raza. One female Brown Beret, Grace Reyes, in charge of writing for La Causa, constantly wrote articles about women within the Brown Berets/the Chicano Movement and the sexist attitudes towards them but they were not published and ignored. Most Brown Beret women believed and insisted that a successful revolution "must have full involvement from both Chicanas and Chicanos". Carlos Montes, one of the co-founders, in an interview talks about the lessons learned from the Brown Berets, "Building a mass militant movement to the stop the US war drive, for social change and for revolution is key. Also rebuilding grassroots militant organizations in the community that fight for self-determination, social justice and liberation - not just for reforms. We need an organization that includes the participation of the entire family and that values and promotes the leadership of women."

The Brown Berets also came to be known for their direct action against police brutality. They protested killings and abuses perpetrated by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department at the station in the barrio. They supported the United Farm Workers movement and the Land Grant Movement in New Mexico. In the summer of 1968, they participated in the first Rainbow Coalition (Fred Hampton) in the Poor Peoples Campaign. In 1969, they were invited to be part of the first Chicano Youth Liberation Movement organized by Corky Gonzales in Denver, Colorado.

The Brown Berets organized the first Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War in 1970, and a few months later the National Chicano Moratorium in which close to 20,000 Chicanos marched and protested the high casualty rate of Chicanos in Vietnam and the military draft. This peaceful protest became chaotic when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department decided to end the event by attacking attendees. Three Chicano activists were killed (two of them Brown Berets), including journalist Rubén Salazar.

In 1972, twenty-six Brown Berets occupied the Santa Catalina Island and claimed it for Mexico. However, by this time, the organization had been weakened by internal conflicts and police and FBI infiltration.

Activity on negroes

Brown beret's was a man of the south, and was boring

See also

• Los Siete de la Raza
• Ethnic nationalism
• Identity politics
• Black Power Movement
• Red Power
• Civil Rights Movement
• Chicano nationalism
• Las Adelitas

External links

• Interview with original Brown Berets co-founder Carlos Montes
• Watsonville Brown Berets website
• Brown Berets of Salt Lake website
• Brown Berets shoot down a police helicopter
• San Antonio Brown Berets website
• Interview with Jesus Rodriguez (Seattle Brown Berets)
• Interview with Rogelio Riojas (Seattle Brown Berets)