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The Brown Berets: The Chicano Movement

447 Words2 Pages

Introduction/Beginning Quote: César Chávez once said “Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers”. As an civil rights activist who played a major role in the chicano movement. Chávez dedicated his life to improving the treatment, pay and overall conditions for workers (in particular agricultural and farm workers) as he was all too familiar with the hardships they faced. The Brown Berets.. It began back in 1846 with the mexican american war- this was the spark for a great revolution that would later be attributed to the birth of the entire Chicano Movement itself as well as the formation of the young pro-chicano, revolutionaries, known as The Brown Berets.. …show more content…

As an incredibly repressed group of people, they were serious about their making use of their voices dedicated themselves to speaking out about a cause that was apart of them and what they were. During the time that they were most prevalent in the late ‘60s and early 1970s, the Brown Berets proved themselves as one of the most powerful and militant organizations in the Chicano liberation movement. As a member during this time recalls, “We were a group of young Chicano revolutionaries from the barrios of the Southwest fighting for the self-determination of our people. We organized in our barrios, published the newspaper La Causa, ran a free clinic and fought against police brutality as well as against the U.S. war in Vietnam” Being that it was a cultural as well as a political movement, they helped to construct new, transnational cultural identities and fueled an important renaissance that would impact countless lives. In the past few years, as a new generation of Chicano activists, built on the legacy of their predecessors, they’ve mobilized around the issues of affirmative action, globalization, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, most recently, immigrant

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“Farm workers are not agricultural implements. They are not beasts of burden--to be used and discarded. ” (Cesar Chavez Foundation)Born into a Mexican-American family of migrant farm laborers and a life of grinding poverty, Chavez dedicated his life's work to improving conditions for the thousands of farmworkers who kept fresh food on the tables across America — while they often went hungry, living and laboring in hard conditions and being paid unlivable wages. Chavez modeled his methods on the nonviolent civil disobedience of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. — employing strikes, boycotts, marches and fasts — to draw attention to the cause. Cesar Chavez spent much of his time trying to help fellow Mexican Farmers live a better quality

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Chavez examines the assumptions made by the media and the public by drawing in sources like magazine articles and illustrations to provide the audience with exactly how these accusations are made and shared with the public. Chavez questions what it means and what it takes to be considered an American citizen and how Latinos, particularly Mexicans, have many things stacked up against. There are no doubts that the number of undocumented immigrants has steadily increased each year. Leo R. Chavez argues that because of the rise in the numbers, it makes it easier for the media to assume that undocumented immigrants, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to our nation through an invasion. Chavez’s idea of a Mexican reconquest is developed through something he calls the Quebec model.

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This can be proven through the words of Carlos Montes, one of the leaders of the Chicano revolutionary group Brown Berets; when questioned on the Brown Berets’ interactions with the black civil rights party Black Panthers, he replied, “We supported them when the police attacked them. We also set up similar programs like the East L.A. Free Clinic and free breakfast programs” (Fight Back News 2). Thanks to their alliance with the Black Panther Party, Chicano activists decided to support their alliance and set up similar events and programs to theirs’, thus revealing that Chicano activists were motivated to act due to black civil rights activists. Although some may argue that “Los Angeles’s blacks and Latinos had a history of disagreement and strife formed over competition for jobs” (Bauman 9), those conflicts were due to the competition over jobs at the time of segregation. Consequently, thanks to the rise in civil right awareness, both groups gained more donations and support from other parties, and realized that they should be working together.

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societies in the world. These sub-cultures include Whites, African Americans, Asians, Irish, Latino, and European among others. Chicano refers to the identity of Mexican-American descendant in the United State. The term is also used to refer to the Mexicans or Latinos in general. Chicanos are descendants of different races such as Central American Indians, Spanish, Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans.

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Chavez asserts repeatedly that nonviolence is the only way for change to happen. The repeated use of “we”, “us” and “our” conveys the message to the audience that he is one of them. Chavez can relate to the farm workers based on his credibility (ethos) because of his past. Chavez went to work on the farm fields at a young age and knew exactly how the frustrated workers felt.

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