POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS 12.18.25 MY HEART SOARS LIKE A HAWK

My heart soars like a hawk…

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.  César Chávez, Chicano labor and civil rights leader

Those who would oppress us have grossly misjudged us. We are not afraid of them. Salomón R. Baldenegro, 1968

Recent events involving mostly young people confronting the ICE raids are inspiring. My heart soars like a hawk with pride to see young folks confront these racist thugs. Like their predecessors, they are not afraid to stand up to tyranny. They are the latest manifestation of a very rich history of activism.

These warriors will be revered along with their predecessors. Seeing history being made got me to stroll down memory lane.

They said we were our own worst enemy …

Social scientists in the1960s-1970s explained the Mexican American / Chicano community in blatantly racist and stereotypical terms – as a people driven by such things as superstition, fatalism, and envy. These alleged cultural attributes were supposedly the basis of whatever social, political, economic or educational problems confronting us. In short, we were depicted as being our own worst enemies.

Our history – reality – says otherwise … [The following are illustrative rather than exhaustive.]

1930s — Education…

Education generated much activism in the 1900s, focusing on issues such as the refusal of certain states to enforce mandatory attendance laws among Mexican American children (so they could go work the fields with their parents) … Segregation of Mexican American children in what were known as “Mexican” schools … “Americanization” efforts to “de-Mexicanize” the children …

Here are some of the actions taken to address these and similar issues:

* School boycotts in San Angelo (West Texas) (1910, 1928) … Three Texas Mexican communities formed their own schools and/or established their own after-school classes (1920-28) … Several Mexican communities in West Texas pressured school officials to improve educational conditions in the segregated “Mexican” schools (1920-28) … Journalistic exposé campaigns in newspapers detailing educational problems facing Mexican children (1900-1930s) …

* LULAC, the first Mexican American civil-rights organization, was founded in 1929 and was involved in or supported educational-reform efforts in the 1930s and 1940s, such as:

The first desegregation lawsuit in the Southwest on behalf of Mexican American children filed in Del Rio, Texas (1930) … In 1934, an outgrowth of a LULAC chapter, La Liga de Defensa Escolar (comprised of seventy-three Mexican American organizations), was founded. La Liga fought for equal facilities, equipment, etc., in Mexican American and Anglo schools … LULAC (with other groups) launched a massive letter-writing campaign in Texas, asking that the state withhold funds from school districts that did not provide quality education to Mexican Americans.

1940s-

* In the late 1930s, early 1940s, LULAC organized Mexican American PTAs to act as advocate groups in schools and organized mass attendance by Mexican Americans at school board meetings to raise issues of concern … Massive school boycotts and 8-month struggle by Mexican Americans against a Texas school district, re: segregation of Mexican American children (1945) …

[Although they are also found in other sources, the above examples are taken from “Let All of Them Take Heed,” Texas A&M University Press, 2000 (Pp. xvii; 64-90; 113-138), by Guadalupe San Martín.]

* In 1945, a history-making desegregation lawsuit (Méndez v. Westminster School District) was filed in Los Angeles, CA, in which the court ruled, for the first time in our country’s history, that segregation of children by race/ethnicity was unconstitutional. This was nine (9) years before the historic Brown v. Board of Education case! In fact, this case was cited in the Brown v. Board case.

* Also in 1948, the G.I. Forum, comprised of Mexican American WWII veterans –many of whom had earned medals for valor in combat – came back to the same discrimination that plagued them before the war, including being confronted with signs such as “No Mexicans Allowed” in restaurants, etc.

1930s-1950s — Labor …

* Young women union organizers have played a huge role in Mexican American / Chicano history. In the 1930s-1940s, while in her early 20s, Luisa Moreno unionized Mexican women cannery plant workers in California, fighting for maternity leave, equal pay for women, and racial equality.

* At age 18 Josefina Fierro de Bright organized boycotts of businesses in Mexican American barrios in Los Angeles that did not hire Mexican American workers. With Luisa Moreno, Fierro de Bright organized Spanish-speaking union workers in various industries in the 1930s.

* Eighteen-year-old Emma Tenayuca, of San Antonio, Texas, was arrested in 1933 when she led a strike of cigar workers. In 1938 Tenanyuca led a strike of twelve thousand workers—almost all Mexican American women—of the International Pecans Shellers Union, challenging pay violations, unfair production quotas, and unsanitary working conditions. Tenayuca and hundreds of strikers were arrested and beaten by police, but they eventually prevailed.

* Dr. Ernesto Galarza – who grew up working the fields with his parents – was a scholar / intellectual as well as a prolific union organizer. With respect to organizing farmworkers, Galarza was César Chávez’s predecessor.

In 1948, Galarza, associated with the National Farm Labor Union (NFLU), helped organize a farmworker strike against the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation in Arvin, California.

In 1950 he led the tomato strikers in Tracy and in 1951 the cantaloupe pickers in the Imperial Valley. In 1953-54 he assisted in organizing sugar cane workers and strawberry pickers in Louisiana. He fought “right to work” laws vigorously.

* The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW), whose membership was almost exclusively Mexican American / Chicano, was active in the late 1940s-1950s in Arizona’s “Copper Belt,” a string of small mining communities. The IUMMSW held barrio meetings, organizing families. This was a great source of its strength.

The IUMMSW organizers and members were “Red-baited” and blacklisted, and often they were attacked by management- hired goons and then arrested after being beaten up by the goons!

In 1946, the IUMMSW waged a 4-month-long strike against the Phelps Dodge mining corporation in Morenci-Clifton, Arizona. The union fought for traditional worker issues (wages, benefits) and against the “Mexican Rate,” whereby Mexican Americans were paid a lower wage than whites for the same job, and segregated bathrooms and eating areas in the workplace.

The union won the strike, which was the first strike won against Phelps Dodge.

There are many other examples of successful union activism in our history, such as the famous Bayard Strike in 1951-52 in Silver City, New Mexico (which is the basis of the “Salt of the Earth” movie).

* But the IUMMSW and other Chicano-dominant unions were more than “just” unions.  In the small mining towns of the Southwest, it was the unions that fought segregation in public facilities (swimming pools, theaters, etc.) and succeeded in desegregating these facilities.  And they were also involved in educational activism such as that described above.

In the1950s, the racist terror group Ku Klux Klan tried to get a foothold in Arizona mining towns populated predominantly by Mexican Americans. It held several cross-burning rallies with the intent of intimidating Mexican Americans so as to discourage them from registering to vote and from voting. Mexican American miners, under the leadership of the IUMMSW, drove out the KKK.

I’m proud to say that my father-in-law, Roberto Cruz, was a co-founder of the IUMMSW in Hayden-Winkelman, AZ, and was involved in the IUMMSW dynamics described above.

World War II Era …

No group in this country can “out patriot-ize” Mexican Americans when it comes to serving the country in times of war. Up to 750,000 Mexican Americans served in the military during World War II. Many of these soldiers didn’t wait to be drafted—they signed up on their own.

Mexican Americans/Latinos have earned more Congressional Medals of Honor (60) and other military wartime decorations in proportion to their numbers than any other ethnic group in the U.S. President Obama belatedly conferred the Medal of Honor to 24 WW II, Korea, and Viet Nam veterans. Of these, 17 are Mexican American / Latino (one, Staff Sgt. Manuel V. Mendoza, was from Miami, Arizona.)

Mexican American women also played a crucial role in winning WW II. In “Rosita the Riveter,” Ricardo Santillán describes how Mexican American women—along with women all over the country—took over the factories and manufactured ammunition and other war materiel during WW II.

Christine Marín describes how groups such as Tucson’s own Asociación de Madres y Esposas (Association of Mothers and Wives) went throughout the barrios, selling war bonds and building a network of “Victory Gardens” so people could grow their own vegetables and the country’s harvest could go to feed the troops. Asociación members also collected scrap metal to sell—and they picked cotton in the fields outside of Tucson—and donated the proceeds to the WW II war effort.

1960s-1970s…

I am of the Chicano Generation, who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. I wrote the opening quote in 1968, referencing the Chicano Movement, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. I quit college shortly thereafter to become a full-time organizer for the Centro Chicano, which we had established in Barrio Hollywood, in Tucson’s westside.

Although we were U.S.-born, American society viewed us as foreigners. We were beaten at school for speaking Spanish. Teachers arbitrarily changed our names. In high school, we were tracked into vocational and out of college-prep courses. Often, we were told that “Mexicans” weren’t smart enough to attend college. In essence, there was a concerted campaign by society, particularly the schools, to make us feel inferior and treat us as interlopers in our own land.

But we fought back. We used our Mexican names. We named our organizations in Spanish. We wrote and published bilingual poetry, plays, stories, and songs. We organized our barrios. We stood up for workers and organized unions.

We organized high-school walkouts. We pressured college / university presidents to establish Chicano Studies curricula. We pressured the Catholic Church to appoint Mexican American Bishops and assign Mexican American priests to Chicano-dominant parishes and to support Mexican American / Chicano social justice campaigns. We formed our own political party, Partido de La Raza Unida, which forced the Democratic Party to pay more attention to its Mexican American / Chicano constituents. We saved many lives by helping to stop the Vietnam War – while Mexican Americans / Chicanos comprised 11.8% of the five southwestern states, Mexican Americans / Chicanos accounted for over 19% of the Vietnam fatalities from those states. We pressured local officials to pave barrio streets and install street lighting, establish barrio community centers and parks, and much more.

We were blacklisted. We were labeled radicals, militants, Communists, etc. We were indicted and arrested. Most of us were in our 20s when we fought the above battles. Important as the above achievements are, the Chicano movement’s greatest achievement was that it instilled a deep sense of pride in our community, especially our youth.

I end as I started: My heart soars like a hawk with pride to see today’s young folks confront the ICE thugs who are attacking our community. Like their predecessors, they are not afraid to stand up to tyranny. c/s

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Copyright 2025 by Salomon Baldenegro. Images of ICE and Emma Tenayuca copyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions, Inc. Image of Sal Baldenegro on picket line and of LULAC Convention used under “fair Use” proviso of the copyright law. All other images are in the public domain. To Contact Sal write: salomonrb@msn.com