Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement.
Video. NLCC Educational Media, 1996.
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Chicano! gives one a sense of the unrest of the Mexican American population and the need for action. We witness, literally before our eyes, the growing awareness of collective history, of the power of mass action, and the evolution of the Chicano Movement. We learn that it begins in New Mexico with Reies López Tijerina and the land grant movement, is picked up by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales in Denver who defines the meaning of Chicano through his epic poem "I am Joaquin", embraces César Chávez and the farm workers, turns to the struggles of the urban youth, and culminates in growing political awareness and participation with La Raza Unida Party.
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Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales |
Part 2 "The Struggle in the Fields" examines the importance of César Chávez and his efforts to organize farm workers in the central valley of California. It delineates the various components of Chávez's strategy for farm worker self determination from strikes to boycotts to pilgrimages to fasts and emphasizes his commitment to nonviolence and the importance of faith and prayer in achieving his goal.
Part 3 "Taking
Back the Schools" is the best of the six parts. It covers
the Los Angeles high school blow outs of 1968 thoroughly and with
passion.
Part 3 is also likely to be the most interesting to
students because they can witness young people their own age
forcefully agitating for change.
Robert Kennedy with Harry Gamboa
It is also striking because the
catalysts for the walk outs--high drop out rate, crumbling
schools, lack of Mexican American teachers--still resonate today.
This segment is visually interesting as well because the film
makers made a conscious effort to interview actual participants
(which they do in all the segments), and in this one they
actually go back and forth between a photo or video of a
participant from the 1960s to that same person being interviewed
today, and it is fun to see how that individual changed in the
intervening thirty years. For example, at one point the video
discusses how the students were trying to garner outside support
for their cause in order to legitimate it in the eyes of the
school board.
Robert Kennedy agrees to meet with student leaders
and offer his support (he was running for president at the time
and was in California to meet with César Chávez), and we see a
picture of Kennedy surrounded by student leaders. The camera then
focuses on a young Harry Gamboa—one of the walk-out
leaders—standing next to Kennedy and the video then fades away
to an current day interview with him.
Part 4 "Fighting for Political Power" discusses the creation of La Raza Unida Party as a third party force for political power and the importance of political rights. It culminates in the 1972 election and the Raza Unida convention and the fragmentation of the party at the height of its membership and recognition.
Each of these
hour-long parts may be viewed individually. (It would, in fact,
be very rare for a teacher to be able to devote all six hours to
class time, even one specifically dealing with Chicano history.)
Reies López Tijerina
Nearly every segment, to its credit, treats the historical
background surrounding the events. For example, "Quest for a
Homeland" briefly discusses the Mexican American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and why Tijerina felt that he was
right to fight for the land. Similarly, in Part 4, the inequities
of voting rights in Texas are explained to us along with the
history of unequal distribution of political power in Crystal
City, Texas, the birth place of La Raza Unida Party. Despite the
fact that Mexican Americans made up the majority of the
population in the city, no one of Mexican decent held political
office. Chicano! is very good at
explaining the plight of Mexican Americans historically and at
the time of the Movement. The series provides a keen sense of
what it was like to have brown skin in the 1960s. One
interviewee, for example, remembers that farm workers were
thought of as ignorant, lazy, stupid, and dirty. While in another
segment, a different interviewee recalls that being Mexican was a
burden--that they had no respect and were treated as second class
citizens.
As with most documentaries, Chicano! makes excellent use of photo archives and film footage of the time period. It succeeds where many documentaries fail in that the film-makers were able to interview the actual participants of the events, as opposed to only scholars of the subject.
Furthermore, the documentary series is to be commended for attempting to provide a balanced portrait of events. In the segment on the farm workers and César Chávez, for example, we hear from farm owners whose produce was boycotted and land picketed at the height of the protests. Similarly, the film makers interviewed school board members and high school officials of the time for its segment on the Los Angeles high school walk outs of 1968.
Not only does each of the six segments illuminate a distinct aspect of the movement (land, farm workers, politics, urban issues, education), but it also attempts to delineate the diversity of the Chicano Movement not merely through causes, but also through geography and demographics. The viewer learns of rural issues in California which are in stark contrast to the rural issues of New Mexico. The documentary distinguishes between issues surrounding the high school walk outs in L.A., as opposed to those in the Crystal City, Texas walk outs. The former occurred over drop-out rates and lack of recognition of Chicano culture and history, the latter due to Chicanas being barred from cheerleading. The students from L.A. never really had their concerns met while the students in Crystal City won their cause which, in part, led to the galvanization of the Raza Unida Party. We learn of the differing political agendas of Chicano leaders across the Southwest from Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and California (Arizona is conspicuously left out of the equation).
While the discussion
of the broad spectrum of issues across the Southwest is a
strength of the series, it is also a weakness. For those whose
only exposure to Mexican American history is through this series,
the impression would be that Mexican Americans only live in the
Southwest and that these are the only states that had active
movements.
Alurista
This, of course, is not the case. Strong Chicano and
Mexican American communities exist throughout the country and
nearly all of them, particularly those in the Midwest, agitated
for change and had their own movements at the local level and
participated in happenings at the national level. This is, of
course, a function of the series' length, and the film makers do
make token references to other parts of the country. For example,
during a segment on the Crusade for Justice and the first Chicano
Youth Conference in Denver in 1967, the poet Alurista remarks how
he was amazed to see so many Chicanos from all over the country,
even Kansas. "I didn't know," he remarks incredulously,
"there were any Mexicans in Kansas!" Similarly, in the
series' discussion of the growth of La Raza Unida Party, the
narrator, Henry Cisneros, informs the viewer that chapters of the
party proliferated throughout the country, even in Nebraska.
What the individual videos do not do, however, is discuss the outcomes of the events in question or their significance. In part 1, for example, the film makers move from discussing Tijerina and the question of land grants to Corky Gonzales and the Crusade for Justice. The transition is fine, but we never find out what happened to Tijerina and his cause. The viewer is left hanging with no information. This also occurs in part 3 "Taking Back the Schools". The video follows the trend of events that occurred, culminating in the galvanization of the community to have Sal Castro, a teacher who supported the walk outs, reinstated after being fired by the school board. We are treated to video of the students' take over and sit in of the school board and their ultimate success in having Castro re-hired, but we are never told what happened with the students' original demands of the school board (bilingual education, Mexican American history courses, more Mexican American teachers). The film would have you believe that the walk outs were a success because the community came together in support of Castro. It never goes on to explain that the state of the schools remained virtually the same.
Also, Chicano! never explains until the end of the final video the continuing and overarching significance of the Chicano Movement and its legacy. It defines these as the new awareness of farm workers, increased labor activism, and growing visibility of educational and community needs. According to the documentary, the Chicano Movement galvanized and trained a new generation of activists and leaders and brought to a national stage a variety of issues important to the Mexican American community. However, the significance of each event needs to be further highlighted at the end of each segment for it to be truly effective.
For any one teaching the Civil Rights Movement; Mexican American, Chicano, or Latino history; activism; or political unrest, however, the series is a must see. Students will greatly benefit from such a remarkable series about an extraordinary time in history.
Valerie M.
Mendoza
University of Kansas