THIS IS A LOCAL HISTORY with national pretensions. The geographical scope of the narrative is largely limited to San Antonio, Texas, and to nearby areas. Change the names of people and neighborhoods, however, and we see a similar storyline of social and political change playing out in the late sixties and early seventies in Albuquerque, Denver, Los Angeles, and other southwestern cities. A reference to the South is not unseemly: in the sixties, San Antonio was considered a “moderate” city, similar in race relations and segregationist practices to Little Rock, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and other urban areas of the...

IN EARLY 1966, the San Antonio newspapers were filled with front-page items that highlighted the protests and troubles taking place across the country. In mid-March (March 16–18), a flare-up involving “600 Negroes” had taken place in Watts, California. The disturbances, which had spread to Pacoima and involved Black and Mexican youths, were considered “minor” compared to the riot of the previous August, when thirty-four people had been killed and $30 million of damage infl icted. The following week, on March 27, thousands marched in anti–Vietnam War protests throughout the country. On April 11, striking grape pickers, led by...

IN THE MID-SIXTIES, San Antonio was, in the words of one insightful observer, “a city of deference and racial differences; it was still a southern center.” San Antonio was “southern” in its segregation, even though the main racial divide was between Anglo and Mexican. The city’s population (587,718 in 1960) was 51 percent Anglo, 41 percent Mexican American, and 7 percent African American. By 1965, due in part to Anglo migration to outlying suburbs, San Antonio was well on its way to becoming a Mexican American majority city.¹

The city’s racial neighborhood zones were plainly evident. The East Side was...

ALTHOUGH THE GREAT majority of barrio youths were not in “conflict gangs,” the notoriety of the latter dominated the image of young Mexican Americans. From the mid-fifties through the mid-sixties, gang warfare had broken out on the Mexican side of town every few years. “Outbreaks” of gang violence occurred in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1966—nearly every two years over an eleven-year period.¹ “The main battles were territorial,” as one investigative reporter put it:

The Dot and Circle gangs fought over Concepción Swimming Pool near the missions; second-generation Alto and Ghost Town gang members fought for control of...

FROM THE MID-FIFTIES through the mid-sixties, gang warfare had broken out in San Antonio every two years. Then, in 1969, such incidents ceased for nearly a decade. The common causes of troubles (pedos) were still around, and gang activity was still taking place, as group worker Jesse Sauceda noted, but it was “not as explosive as before, porque [because] it doesn’t involve ten to fifteen guys on each side but maybe just one or two guys.” The gang identity was still there, but it had been “weakened as far as numbers are concerned.” There were more things for young people...

Speaking before congress, Henry B. Gonzalez described, with a tone of bewilderment, the panorama that he saw unfolding in his district:

We see a strange thing in San Antonio today; we have those who play at revolution and those who imitate the militance of others. . . . We have those who cry “brown power” only because they have heard “black power” and we have those who yell “oink” or “pig” at police, only because they have heard others use the term. We have those who wear beards and berets, not because they attach any meaning to it, but because...

EMBOLDENED BY their performances in the Del Rio protest and the San Antonio city election, the MAYO leadership decided to respond to Congressman Gonzalez’s charges by turning up the rhetorical heat. The strategy seemed to follow Alinksy’s ninth rule for radicals: pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. This, in any case, was what MAYO leaders successfully pulled off through a press conference in which they called for the elimination of the “gringo” and questioned the manliness of a certain congressman. Of the two charges, the second was arguably the more consequential.

Held on April 10, 1969,...

IN THE FRENZIED TIMES of the late sixties and early seventies, even an apparent failure could generate more social movement activity. Put another way, there were no failures, only experiments. So long as a core group remained committed and energized, the formal closure of one project or the disbanding of an organization ironically forced its activists to contemplate the next step, the next reincarnation, of their activism. The Chicano movement seemed to be like a resilient snake, growing bigger while shedding surface skins.

MAYO was a prime example of such growth. Even as it was losing its foundation and government...

IN SEPTEMBER of 1971, an extraordinary but little noticed political event took place in San Antonio. A few key Chicano businesses and organizations representing a broad political spectrum—Mario’s Restaurant, LULAC, the GI Forum, MAYO, and Mungia’s Printers—organized La Semana de la Raza, a week-long celebration of movement politics and culture. Two aspects made this celebration important. It broke the monopoly of the Mexican Consulate and the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce on the celebrations of Mexican Independence Day (September 16), thus underscoring the emergence of a distinct Chicano voice. In addition, by cutting across the ideological spectrum of...

THE PATRIARCHAL aspects of Mexican culture have been much examined and need not be detailed here. Open to question is the variability of gender relations behind closed doors—that is, in the private world of the family.¹ Publicly, women were expected to act in subordinate backstage support roles, and this was generally true in the early years of the Chicano movement. This expectation, however, was repeatedly exposed by women as a contradiction in a political movement dedicated to equality and social change. Moreover, a growing “women’s liberation” movement kept raising the question of male dominance, or machismo. Awareness of the...

MAYO WAS THE BASE for the formation of two very different organizations, each reflecting a distinct social class base. There was some overlap, but generally the militant college students went into the Raza Unida Party, and the batos locos into the Brown Berets. Many batos distrusted the college students. A typical sentiment was that of Lalo Martínez, a former gang member who described himself as “the first pachuco at the Lake [a local college].” Martínez described the middle-class Chicanos he ran into as aloof or in self-denial about their identity:

That’s a problem with many Chicanos; no se quieren dejar...

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, I have described the class and gender tensions that underlay much of the organizational structuring within the Chicano movement. Specifically, as MAYO evolved from a community organization to a political party, it gave rise to gendered and class-based organizations. Both the women and the batos locos involved with MAYO–Barrios Unidos used the language and symbolism of the movement to craft groupspecific agendas and efforts. A lingering question—a residue, perhaps, of the days when Chicana feminists were accused of dividing the movement—is whether this kind of specialization, the result of what is often called...

BY THE MID-SEVENTIES, the Chicano movement in Texas and the Southwest was largely exhausted. The reasons were many. Internal friction about leadership and tactics, and external pressure applied by police authorities, as discussed previously, were critical debilitating factors. On the other hand, some movement aims had become institutionalized and its activist elements accommodated. Some victories had been won. The “opening up” of universities to Chicano students and the creation of Chicano studies programs were important achievements. In the political arena, Mexican Americans had secured the kind of direct access and representation in decision making that movement activists had been pressing...

THUS FAR, MY narrative explanation has largely described the movement and the lives of those involved from an organizational perspective. Here I wish to shift focus and let the lives of a few key individuals—individuals who dominated the public arena in the mid-seventies—inform us about the pitfalls facing potential leaders. I am talking about a few charismatic individuals who, despite their obvious abilities, dissipated or undermined the political energy of the Mexican American working and lower classes. Although this chapter may read like a romantic tragedy, it is important to examine why such potential leadership went awry.

My...

LOS ANGELES TIMEScolumnist Frank del Olmo, reminiscing in 1997 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Raza Unida Party’s national convention, commented that two events during the month of September 1972 marked both the zenith and nadir of the Chicano movement. He had traveled to El Paso to report on the convention, one of the few occasions that “Chicano icons” Raza Unida founder José Ángel Gutiérrez, Colorado activist Rodolfo “Corky” González, and New Mexican land grant leader Reies López Tijerina would gather to discuss a national strategy. The sense that this might be a “historic” moment had drawn the attention...