August 7th, 2005, Roosevelt High School: Today is one of last days of production on the film Walkout, a dramatization of the Latino Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s and early '70s (which is currently premiering on HBO). Among the final scenes being shot is a countdown to one of the walkouts.

David Sanchez, who founded the Brown Berets and is advising on the movie, is giving me a tour of the set. Many of the film's events happened on this campus. According to him, most of the police brutality occured at Roosevelt.

On several occasions, Sanchez displays nostalgia for his alma mater. "This is the same place," he exclaims, pointing to pipes in the ceiling of a hallway behind the auditorium. Adding to his nostalgia is the redressing of various areas to reflect 1968. Also, throughout the school are young adult extras dressed in '60s attire. Most of them are loitering as they wait for their next scenes. Sanchez, who himself has appeared as an extra in the film (i.e., an adult participating in a demonstration in front of Lincoln High. In the film, he is visible in the lower right-hand corner of the screen), fraternizes with many of them. "These clothes are kind of bigger than I normally wear and tighter in some areas," laughs Maple Navarro, a young Asian extra. (Sanchez will later tell me that Asians were involved in the walkouts, especially at Belmont.) "You feel like you're in a different era. It's fun."

We enter the school auditorium, where Sanchez graduated decades earlier ("I'm getting flashbacks," he laughs), and relax in the seating area among dozens of '60s-clad extras.

Q: What kind of input have you been providing on the project?

SANCHEZ: I'm advising the actor who's playing me [Douglas Spain]. I'm advising on the wardrobe: showing people how to wear brown berets, [and] I was able to get patches. . . . Also, on the script they asked me questions: "Is this right?" "Is that right?""Did this happen?" "What was going on in the coffee house?"

The coffee house was the Brown Beret headquarters. That's where the movement started.

The energy of the student movement was much higher in the 1960s and '70s [than today]. The energy of some of the actors was kind of low, so I tried to get them more energized about the movement energized about social change. In those times, people were energized, and they were more intellectual. People were processors of information, whereas today you don't see a lot of that.

. . . There were certain scenes where I would try to increase the intensity. For example, when the walkout was happening, the students were confronted by police, and the police arrested 15 of them and injured several. I increased some of the screaming.

Another time when the students were walking out of a school they didn't have any books in their hands. I said: "Wait a minute. When the students walked out, they had books in their hands. They weren't going back to school, they were going to go home!" The first time they shot it, their hands were empty when they walked out. [Then] they got some books and Pee Chees.

. . . Altogether, in 1968 there were 10,000 students that walked out of about five different high schools. It was shock to the school system. It will never be the same. The students walked out of the schools because they had demands. We organized the walkouts out of the Brown Beret coffee house, [a place] called La Piranya.

. . . The demands were: *more Latino teachers (there were hardly any Latino teachers), *better food (it's still pretty bad) and Mexican food, *Chicano history classes, *more counseling directed toward college as opposed to vocational education. Before we even made the demands, we made a survey and distributed it to the students. These were the kinds of questions we asked on the survey.

Because we made demands on the system, and they didn't want to listen to our demands, we walked out in March of 1968, and a few months later, there was a grand jury indictment to arrest 13 people. They were called the Los Angeles 13. There were nine Brown Berets and three others. We were arrested out of [our] houses, and some of us were arrested in the middle of the night. I was arrested at the Brown Beret office. I tried to get away: I jumped out the back window.

Q: Where was the Brown Beret office located?

SANCHEZ: Soto and Chavez Avenue. There's a Kentucky Fried Chicken there [now]. So we all went to jail. We were on a hunger strike for three days in the Parker Center. And the community came out: several thousand people demonstrated at the Parker Center.

. . . I think some of the things that the Brown Berets did were very creative because they did so many different kinds of events: walkouts, demonstrations, the Brown Berets started the Moratorium Committee, mass rallies, marches, caravans, occupations of parks, an occupation of Catalina Island, everything in the book in applying social change.

Q: Could you discuss the origin of the Brown Berets?

SANCHEZ: The original committee was called Young Citizens for Community Action, and then it became Young Chicanos for Community Action. I changed the name, and that's when a lot of people left the organization. I felt that we had to bring up the stakes. [The name] Young Citizens for Community Action wasn't good enough. We had to raise the stakes to become more firm and more militant in our beliefs in order to bring attention to the problems of the Chicano community. But then we wanted the stakes to be a little higher, so we changed the name again in 1967 from Young Chicanos for Community Action to the Brown Berets.

The way I became a Brown Beret was someone gave me a dark blue beret for a present, and I didn't feel comfortable wearing a blue beret. So I went downtown shopping for a brown beret, and I found [one]. I bought it, and I was wearing it, and everywhere I went people called "Hey, brown beret." I said, "That's a good name for the organization." That's how the Brown Berets got started.

I bought 12 brown berets for the people in the coffee house. At the coffee house, we asked our customers to come protest police harassment at the sheriff's station, and they were given brown berets.

Q: What were the police harassing people about?

SANCHEZ: The police were harassing the Brown Beret coffee house. They didn't like activism, so they were harassing the customers. When people would leave, the police would give them tickets, or they would come in at 10 o'clock and arrest people because of the curfew.

So we started protesting against the police. Over time, people from different schools started meeting at the Brown Beret coffee house. The building is still there on the corner of Olympic and Goodrich. It's now called Tomayo's Restaurant. We had this huge Aztec mural on the wall, and they took it out. They should have left it up. It was beautiful.

Q: Did they re-create that for the movie?

SANCHEZ: No, they didn't ask me about that. They went ahead and did some artwork, and I didn't agree with it.

Q: Do you feel that a lot of what you were trying to do in the '60s and '70s has been realized, or has not all of it been accomplished?

SANCHEZ: No, what happened was lousy. A lot of the rewards and opportunities that we gained from the movement, especially the walkouts, were lost. For example, back then there was a 50% dropout rate, and we were able to reduce that to about 15%. But today, the Latino dropout rate is as high as 63%.

A lot of the gains have been lost because of government rules: they're testing students too much now, [and] there's an algebra requirement. Students who can barely pass high school math, let alone take algebra, are dropping out like flies.

There are some [Chicano Studies] classes; that's one of the only gains that we have left. Only a very few classes are in the high schools, but there are some. The problem is that a lot the classes are not taught to promote leadership. Instead, they only teach history. You have to connect these students with what actually happened, and you have to connect them with leadership, but it's not being done.

Q: Another lasting achievement has been the hiring of Latinos in schools.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, it opened up the doors to universities for Chicano students, and many of them have returned to the classroom as teachers. There were a number of good things that happened. The movement also opened the doors for hiring Latinos to some degree.

Nonetheless, even today the City of Los Angeles only hires like 15% Latinos, Los Angeles County only hires 17% Latinos, the state of California only hires seven percent Latinos. So a lot of the things that we fought for are being taken away by the conservative system.

There's a lot of discrimination, and we don't have any leaders. This is one reason why I'm running for City Council: to fight for jobs in the community, to change the political direction of our community, to put more of their energy into social action and social change to increase the employment of our people from this community.

Q: Going back to the subject of Chicano history classes, in what ways could they impart leadership?

SANCHEZ: I taught Chicano studies for 11 years. They don't want you to teach relevant politics, they don't want you to teach Chicano politics, they don't want you to teach the real action that took place then [during the Brown Beret movement] and should take place now, they don't teach people to get involved with the community, they don't teach people the need for civic duty and civic participation. Instead, most students only go into the Chicano Studies classes because they want credit or because they want to graduate from the school or university. There's no social change consciousness that comes along with that, and that's the problem.

Q: Did you teach in college or in high school?

SANCHEZ: I taught seven years at East LA College and four years at LA Trade Tech. In those colleges I always had difficulty with the conservative elements in the administrations and also conservative teachers and also conservative Chicano teachers who professed to be Chicano Studies professors but in actuality never really had their heart in the right place. Some people say, "Oh, a lot of people have forgotten where they came from." No, they didn't forget where they came from; they were never for the people in the first place. They were just out there for the opportunities.

[Sanchez strikes up a conversation with an extra seated in front of us, a Caucasian female named Kelsey Morrissey. She appears to be in her early twenties.]

SANCHEZ: Kelsey was playing one of the students who walked out at Roosevelt High School. One of the things the director asked me was "Were there Anglos going to Roosevelt at the time who walked out also?" I said, "Yes, there were Anglos who walked out." That's an important factor.

[He then resumes talking about the Latino civil rights movement.]

Why there was such a large social cultural revolution in America is because many of the people were forced to think because of the Vietnam War, [where] people were being drafted and returned in aluminum coffins; leaders were being assassinated [including] Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Ruben Salazar here in East L.A., and a number of other people.

So The entire country wanted change, and the young people were really tired of the all-white, all-American educational system, which excluded other cultures. It was a time when Latinos got tired of trying to be Anglos. Trying to be all-American wasn't working for a lot of us. [Also] many of us were witnesses and victims of poverty and victims of the selective prison system, victims of joblessness, victims of violence, victims of the chaos that was being exploited by society and which is still being exploited by society today. This kind of motivated all of us to take political action.

Today it's a little different: you have a large part of society that is just living on the comforts of society and don't know what's going on with the left-out sector. They're self-absorbed by luxury; they have received the spoils of poverty: nice houses, good-paying jobs [while] stealing everything they can from the poor and middle class. . . . We're talking about one-third of the people in America, and that one-third is the dominant society. They refuse to share the national wealth; they have controlled and conquered the national wealth for themselves. For the people who live in chaos, the left-out population, there is no direction. The left-out population really does not know what's going on today. But back in the '60s and '70s, people were more aware of what was going on.

Q: Why do you think the left-out people are less aware now than they were?

SANCHEZ: Because there's more government control. The government is promoting the chaos; the government is promoting the poverty. So when people are poor, they're not thinking about going to a meeting or getting involved with politics, they're thinking about getting food, they're thinking about finding a place to stay. Survival dominates all of their time and energy, whereas in the '60s and '70s it was not like that.

In the '60s and '70s many high school students had cars, [and] there was a different job market out there. The jobs aren't there any more. Here in East L.A we had a light bulb company and several other companies that hired a lot of people in this community, and they were paying high wages during those times.

Now they hire a lot of immigrants for low wages, so people who have been here for many generations are [excluded]. The companies don't pay what they used to because they have access to cheap labor. It's a big problem, the left-out population is growing. Here in East Los Angeles we're getting about 60,000 people released from the prisons every year, and that's adding to the left-out population. The high dropout rate of students is adding to the left-out sector. Because there's no political direction, the population has become very chaotic and has many times created
crime at our own doorstep. What they're doing is forcing the people to the point of leaving Los Angeles or staying in Los Angeles as homeless people who have been pushed out of society. Society doesn't do anything for those people.

Q: What are some solutions?

SANCHEZ: There are many solutions: we have to create jobs for the homeless people; we have to create shelter for the left-out sector. What we're doing is creating a huge left-out population that's only going to create more chaos in our society, more violence, more crime. The problem with chaos is that the government is real good at exploiting it. They make money from prisons, and the prisons become our homeless shelters. Instead of creating more jobs, we're creating more prisons and jobs for prison guards. Nobody's doing anything about that. Things are getting bad again, and there's no political basis to change any of it at this time.

I think an example of that is the anti-war movement. It was off to a good start when the United States was first attacking Iraq, but it kind of slowed down. Where is the student movement in this country? The student movement is under total control by the government. The government has taken over the schools and the
colleges and the universities. There's no longer any academic freedom for teachers to speak about certain issues because when they do, they're scrutinized by the same system that they work for. That's an example of the "1984" that's going on in our school systems today. Not only is that happening in schools but on jobs. Many times, if you get involved in a social action, your employer will take it out on you, and how can anybody function without a job?

[Sanchez starts up a conversation with another of the film's extras, Sergio Ortiz. The young actor says he feels a connection with Walkout: in 1968 his parents participated in the riots in Mexico City that coincided with the Olympics. When reenacting riots for this film, Ortiz says that he and other actors could feel the energy of the actual events.]

SANCHEZ: I think what he's trying to say--and I was [on the set], too--is you could feel the karma of social change. I think that's what's missing today, the karma is not there. . . . There are no strong student movements, there's no strong black movement, there's no strong white liberal movement, there's no strong Latino movement. Those are the elements that are missing. But I think this movie will change a lot of thinking because people will see what really took place at that particular time, so they can relate that to what's happening today and perhaps get more involved in the community the way people did during those times.

END

1) There was no such thing as a 60's 'Latino Movement."
It was called the CHICANO MOVEMENT.



2) The walkouts were not about anything "Latino". It was about CHICANO.



3) It was about CHICANO STUDIES, not "latino" studies.


4) The major media has been trying in recent years to re-write CHICANO MOVEMENT history by projecting the EUROCENTRIC term "Latino" back in time to an event that had nothing to do with "Latins."



LATINS are the descendents of the Romans and Latin Civilization of Europe.


CHICANOS are Mexicans and the descendents of the Indigenous People of this continent, not Europe.

(A few drops of European blood does not make us Europeans or Roman descendents.)


The walkouts had NOTHING TO DO WITH "LATINO".



CHICANO WALKOUTS are MEXICAN WALKOUTS.

...teary-eyed nostalgia & sentimentalism. Or really bad acting.

This movie sucks, and only one big reason among many why it sucks is that it helps Hollywood appropriate not only a pivotal moment in Chicana/o history, but in radical urban history and radical youth history as well--and at the same time, it erases what's happening NOW.

All this stuff in the interview above about how bad things still are--none of it appears in the film. Anywhere. How come, Moctezuma? Eddie? Not even an itsy bitsy parallel drawn between Vietnam and Iraq? Just a final shot of teary-eyed Sal Castro reminiscing about how it was a "Beautiful day to be a Chicano." Yes it was, and all props to Sal, sincerely, but the filmmakers are subsuming the radicalism and REAL beauty, and struggle--then AND now--into this glossy, false nostalgia that serves to create the Hollywood illusion that this great moment came and went (in the distant past), and now everything is okay.

On the surface, movies like this appear to be documenting the history of our struggles and therefore perform a very important role. In reality, they serve the exact OPPOSITE purpose--they ERASE our history, replace it with something else, something HBO will buy and then sell to white America and the new generations of Chicana/os for passive, nostalgic consumption. They contribute to the media ILL-Literacy that has been so pivotal in allowing the nascent fascism we now face to rise to power.

If you want to see a REAL movie about Chicana/o struggles, get a cheap video camera and hit the streets and DOCUMENT reality (or surreality) yourSELF as you see it--enough with the cheezy ass Hollywood fictionalizations that replace REAL Chicana/o experience with easily digestible infotainment.

Ok, for those of us that live in Iowa, how are we supposed to learn about these important struggles? I thought Walkout was great because I didn't have any idea about any of this. Now I understand, and have a deeper sense of respect for the chinco movement. Further, I hope this gives a renewed sense of energy to other Chincos. Hell, maybe even give some people the idea about walking out now. Wouldn't it be something if every time an evil military recruiter came to a school, the school would walk out....

here in la, people has been organizing walkouting 'cuz of "leave no child behind" school miltary recuiter even when they show up the students protest the recuiter. i think u should organize a protest.

"It was shock to the school system. It will never be the same."

Now there is a 50% drop out rate...

Despite some of the criticisms of the people above, WALKOUT is actually a pretty good depiction of this history of student activism which is little known outside of the Mexican American community. I was pleased with the results despite my trepidations about the people who were making it. Producer Moctesuma Esparza participated in organizing the WALKOUTS himself, so he is an authority on the subject and knows the history like the back of his hand. There has been much criticism of him in the Chicano community in the past because in the late 1970s he changed from being a militant activist into a professional film and television producer, which many in the community read as him "selling out." Although he maintained his political convictions, he also had to navigate the Hollywood film industry and make critical decisions to maintain his career and the presence of Chicanos and Latinos in the industry. This included aligning himself with his co-producer Robert Katz, with whom he's produced such great films as Gettysburg and Gods and Generals. Edward James Olmos is a veteran Chicano actor and one of the few Latinos that most Americans recognize, especially after appearances in productions like BLADERUNNER, Miami Vice, and the new Battlestar Galactica. Olmos is known in the Latino community for his social activism, although some question his motives since over the last decade he has sucumbed to the republican party. Rumours are that Esparza is trying to lure him back to the democratics, because apparently Olmos is looking toward a potential political career. Since both have moved from challenging the system to working within it, many of the more militant voices in the Chicano and Latino community have been critical of their work. I myself had reservations about WALKOUT when a friend of mine gave me a copy of the script, which seemed shoddy and too sugar-coated like a Gregory Nava movie (e.g. My Family, Selena, they're decent movies, but too old-school Hollywood and gloss over the complexities of the Chicano and Latino community). I also participated in the making of the film as an extra and had the opportunity to observe the friendly and community-oriented environment of the production, which was different from the exclusivity you see on other sets. And I have to say that I was impressed with the results. The pacing of the movie really makes it work, especially for the young people that it is targeted to, and as a result, the film serves as a valuable teaching tool to open up students to some of the more critical moments in the history of la raza in the U.S. Sure, there are many things that the film glosses over just like a Nava film, but did you really think HBO, under Time Warner, was going to allow a more complex and accurate movie? This, of course, is also an issue in that the Latino film community is currently being co-opted by HBO and Time Warner, who now sponsor the largest consortium and network of Latinos in the US film industry, NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers). But Chicanos and Latinos are also finding other ways to make movies on their own without the patronage of a large media conglomerate. It is hard though, because we don't have the economic base and privilege of other people in the film industry, who have been in it for years and have excluded Chicanos and Latinos in the past, with, of course, a few exceptions for Latino "flavor of the month" (ie. Gilbert Roland, Dolores Del Rio, Desi Arnez, etc.)

So WALKOUT is an accomplishment that has to be viewed in terms of its value in raising the consciousness of our youth and developing their interest in their own history. We currently live in a society under a regime where historical amnesia is the norm because it suits the interests of the people in power to keep America stupid and as sheep who will follow their every whim (like sending us off to Iraq for things that don't exist). WALKOUT provides context to the conditions of Latinos in schools, which have not changed unfortunately. The legacy of Chicano and Latino failure in education began with the segregated schools for Mexicans in the 1920s and 30s, which basically trained youth to become laborers and housewives. Spanish was prohibited in the classrooms and Anglo teachers and administrators were oppressive to students of a culture they didn't understand. By the mid century, students were integrated into regular high schools, but given the same curriculum. A student's only opportunity for success was to deny his or her heritage and accept assimilation in to a society that expected you to act white but still treated you like a second class citizen. State agencies didn't even recognize Mexican as a racial category and forced la raza to chose between white, negro, or other. Some Mexican Americans who had their own middle class values or were just desperate to escape poverty and succeed, accepted this. The institutional racism in this country in evident in how once the public school system started to change color from white to black and brown after desegregation, Anglos stopped wanting to support it with their tax dollars. Public schools went by the wayside and even ones that developed new programs and curriculum had to drop them because of a lack of funding.

Chicano and Latino students today are still walking out to protest injustices like prop 187, the three strikes law, the inauguration of bush, the targeting of youth by military recruiter, and just recently, the war in Iraq and the president. And they have experienced represssion, just like the students in the late 1960s. Visit the world can't wait website for details on how Van Nuys High School locked up its students like prison to keep them from protesting. A student at Belmont High School was assaulted by police when he tried to express his right to free speech on Nov. 2 of last year. Chicano and Latino students in a sense are seeing problems today that are similar to the ones of the past. WALKOUT provides them with a validation of their feelings through their own history and empowers them that their form of social protest is the right thing.

The dropout rate for Latino students who attended U.S. schools is alarmingly high at 15 percent --twice as high as for whites--but still considerably lower than common calculations of a Hispanic dropout rate of 30 percent or more that include many thousands of immigrants who quit school before coming to this country.

The dropout rate for native-born Latinos declined from 15 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2000, which is in line with the downward trend in dropout rates for other racial and ethnic groups.

About one-third of all Hispanic youth counted as high school dropouts are immigrants who had little or no contact with U.S. schools.

A lack of English-language ability is a prime characteristic of Latino dropouts, but it pertains primarily to immigrant youth.

A greater share of Latino dropouts (56 percent) are employed than of whites (49 percent) or blacks (35 percent), and 78 percent of the Latino dropouts who work are employed 36 hours a week or more compared to 52 percent of white dropouts and 54 percent of black dropouts.

Hispanics who dropout of U.S. schools are much more likely to be employed and working fulltime than their white or African-American counterparts. Nonetheless, about a third of these youth live in poverty.

Among immigrant Latino dropouts who did not attend U.S. schools, employment and earnings are higher than for any other category of dropouts and their poverty rates are lower.

For TV it was great. It was told from the perspective of a student that helped organize the walkouts. It depicted the disparity of treatment a racist society placed on Chicanos.

It was a tamed depiction of what happened, but if we told the whole truth no one would believe us.

¿Soy Chicano, Y Que?

C/S

"yet it is still the European-American people that are the largest population of welfare collectors. "

That's nonsense!

Do some research jackass.

The rate of white welfare rates is SUBSTANTIALLY below that of hispanics. Well below them on a nationwide level as of the 2004 data.

Hispanics have such a high rate of welfare dependence due primarily to there lack of emphasis on education.

What has the latest wave of mass immigration brought us? The passage rate for hispanics as a general class is 65% in California. But in the LA area its less than 50%, based on conversations I've had with people in the area.

The flood of mexicans (which now are the majority of school students) has put California dead last per capita in the number of high school students who enter college. And guess what? I actually have a source for my information, unlike the rest of you.

Welcome to the third world.

"George" has a link to a news story about today's walkouts. Thanks for the favor, ese.

As for your other claims, I can't trust the words of a man who cites himself as a source.

Don't thank immigration, thank the devaluation of the peso under the transnational economic policies of U.S. and the corruption of Mexico's elite. Education scholars in the early 1970s predicted the rise in Latino student enrollment in L.A. schools, but the state didn't respond because it wasn' t in their interest, so instead we got Prop 13, which allowed self-interested middle class voters and elites to withdraw their funding for public education.

You can't blame people for wanting to put food on the table and try to offer their kids something better than poverty. And you can't deny the contribution of immigrants in terms of paying taxes for public service which they don't receive.

Wrong posting. BTW, the students from Huntington went to two other high schools and tried to disrupt classes. No wonder, since most of LA students wont go to collegeanyway-- so why bother studying when you can protest and get exactly the same benefits from the taxpayer.

Becuase of illegal immigration, California is now dead last in education. Why dont the white liberals send their kids down to LA, since they love illegal immigrants so much.

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=4677853&nav=9qrx

So many more uneducated young people, high unemployment. Guess what's next?

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=4675500&nav=9qrx

the peso crisis occurred before NAFTA was put in place, if i'm not mistaken. the problem is poverty. bad trade policies made problems worse, yes, but the problem is ultimately mexico's corruption and ineptness. i'm sick of the hand wringing about the u.s. being at fault.

Viva La Raza!

Poverty and Welfare Statistics US Census Bureau

Focusing on poverty rates by race and Hispanic origin, we see that the only group to show an increase in its poverty rate in 2004 was non-Hispanic Whites, at 8.6 percent, up from 8.2 percent in 2003. Asians were the only group to show a decline in poverty, down 2 percentage points from 11.8 percent in 2003 to 9.8 percent in 2004.

the number of U.S. Hispanics is growing faster than any other racial or ethnic group and the relative youth of the U.S. Hispanic population means that it will supply much of the U.S. population growth for decades to come.



Looking at the figures at the bottom of the table first, we see a striking contrast. The white non-Hispanic population of the United States, generally considered to be the traditional majority population at 67 percent, accounted for only 18.5 percent of the country's population increase between 2000 and 2004. The U.S. Hispanic population accounted for 14 percent of the population, but 49.2 percent of the four-year population increase. This surprising fact reflects a good bit about each group's demographic composition.

Notice the tremendous dissimilarity in the vital index—the ratio of births to deaths—in these two populations. The vital index among white non-Hispanics is 1.2 (approximately one birth for every death). Among Hispanics, the same ratio is 8.2—approximately eight births for every Latino death.

I apologize for the error. The last draft of the article was done in great haste and under difficult circumstances. Although my Webster's dictionary is somewhat vague re: "Chicano" and "Latino," an activist I know, who is of South American descent and a professor in indegenous studies, corroborates what you said--and, of course, the movement is known as the Chicano Civil Rights Movement

Thank you for pointing this out.

====

IT WASN'T "LATINO"
by Mexica Thursday, Mar. 23, 2006 at 10:29 PM




1) There was no such thing as a 60's 'Latino Movement."
It was called the CHICANO MOVEMENT.



2) The walkouts were not about anything "Latino". It was about CHICANO.



3) It was about CHICANO STUDIES, not "latino" studies.


4) The major media has been trying in recent years to re-write CHICANO MOVEMENT history by projecting the EUROCENTRIC term "Latino" back in time to an event that had nothing to do with "Latins."



LATINS are the descendents of the Romans and Latin Civilization of Europe.


CHICANOS are Mexicans and the descendents of the Indigenous People of this continent, not Europe.

(A few drops of European blood does not make us Europeans or Roman descendents.)

The walkouts had NOTHING TO DO WITH "LATINO".



CHICANO WALKOUTS are MEXICAN WALKOUTS.
www.mexica-movement.org

Thanks for the good post, Mescalero Apache.

The message is even borne out in the article that George (finally) linked. It reads:

"A new report released today finds that California sends the second-smallest percentage of high school seniors to four-year college, ahead only of Mississippi."

"The report also finds that there are too few counselors, teachers and college prep courses, especially at schools with a high percentage of low-income students and English-language learners."

------------------------

There's also a shortage of schools, and of will. Right now, the State mandate is to guarantee that the top 10% of students can attend a UC... down from 12% around a decade ago. (A fat 17% decrease.) This means that UC has less claim to a share of the budget than before.

Funding for education in the Cal State and CC systems has also had its ups and downs, with general fee increases at the CSUs, and increases and decreases in the CC system.

A recent article in the SJ Merc explains that per-pupil spending in California is screwed up. Rich districts get more money, even as poor ones go begging. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/northern_california/14186421.htm

"When adjusted for regional cost of living, California's per-pupil spending ranked 43rd in the nation in 2003-04, according to Quality Counts, the country's largest survey of education funding."

Obviously, if the state is failing to dedicate resources to education, education will decline.

in the film, Paula's dad discribe her as a jalapeno as in a chicano filipino. also, the last name is pure filipino.

also, in ufw, a filipino, philip vera cruz was one of the founding fathers.

for the record, I back off a little from my initial harsh response to the film. I still have the same issues with nostalgia and sentimentalism, and the general Hollywood commercialization involved and how the film was made, the role it plays in erasing radical history and the present, etc., but after the past few days of student walkouts and of course the march on Saturday, I have to admit with full respect that even the cheesiest Hollywoodization can sometimes play an important role in the larger political process.

In this case, I would be a fool not to see the direct connection. Critical analysis involves a more complex and nuanced reading than knee-jerk reaction to problems with a particular work. Lesson learned. Que viva la raza!

Now, whoever makes Walkouts Part II---keep a radical, critical focus, and cut out the teary eyed stuff!