|
In Memory of Chicano Leader Rodolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzalez
by Mark Ostapiak / May 2005 issue of Socialist Action
Urban civil rights and Chicano cultural movement leader Rodolfo
“Corky” Gonzalez died from complications of congestive heart failure at the
age
of 76 on April 12, 2005, at his home in Denver.
Many know Gonzalez best as the author of the 1965 epic poem about
the Mexican and Chicano struggle, “I am Joaquin / Yo soy Joaquin.” In 1966,
he founded Denver’s Crusade for Justice (CFJ), a Chicano nationalist
organization whose political lessons point the way forward for the struggle
for justice and freedom today.
Gonzalez’ fighting spirit was nurtured at an early age by his
father, who related personal stories of serving in Pancho Villa’s army
during the 1910 Mexican
Revolution. In 1947 he began a successful boxing career.
After hanging up his gloves in 1957, Gonzalez continued work in the
political arena that he had begun in the late 1940s. A quick rise within
Denver Democratic Party campaigns led to the top spot in the national
party’s 1960 “Viva Kennedy” campaign.
While administrator of the Neighborhood Youth Corps (NYC), a jobs
program for Denver youth, the Rocky Mountain News attacked him for saying
that
lower-income Chicano youth should have first priority for jobs. The
next day, Gonzalez called for a boycott and picketed the paper. That
crossed the line of
acceptable behavior within mainstream politics, and Mayor Currigan
fired Gonzalez from his NYC post in April 1966.
Neither a 1200-person rally outside Denver’s Civic Center protesting
Gonzalez’ firing nor a year-long debate with Democratic city officials had
the effect Gonzalez was expecting—to pull the Democrats to the left so that
they would truly represent the interests of Denver’s poor and oppressed.
His ties to the Democrats and twin-party politics were not completely severed
until about 1967, though his actions the year before signaled that break.
One indication of his changed political outlook took place on Aug.
6, 1966, at a Vietnam antiwar rally in Denver. According to the records of
the FBI, which had begun to keep tabs on Gonzalez, he railed against “ruthless
financial lords of Wall Street,” who, Gonzalez said, “are the only real
recipients of the tremendous profits to be made by the conduct of wanton,
ruthless war.”
Crusade for Justice was an expression of Chicano self-determination
and radical nationalism during the relatively favorable climate for social
and political militancy of the late 1960s. It was inspired by other struggles
of the era, including the antiwar movement and the emergence of the Black
Panther Party. Though primarily focused on the Chicano community in Denver,
it supported struggles of Chicanos, Latinos, and Puerto Ricans throughout
the country and internationally.
CFJ championed the struggle of Chicanos who were demanding control of
land within the southwestern United States, an area historically a part of
Mexico. Thus, they gave backing to
Reies Lopez Tijerina’s 1966-67 Land Grant Movement in New Mexico, which claimed
that the U.S. government had broken the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo in denying property to the Mexican inhabitants of the region.
In Denver, CFJ played a leading role in the early 1970s in
organizing Chicano community members to take control of two parks that had
become popular centers for cultural and political events. CFJ, Brown
Berets, and Black Berets worked together to push back police repression in
the parks.
When local Chicano high school students demanded an end to faculty
racism and genuine teaching of Mexican history, CFJ helped them mobilize
thousands for a “blowout” in March 1969. The event involved more than
20 schools, community members, various Chicano groups from local
universities, and other groups. The effect of the “blowout” awakened the
consciousness of Chicano youth, and suddenly CFJ’s ranks filled with this
new
generation of activists.
With the momentum of the “blowout,” the first ever Chicano Youth
Liberation Conference the same month was a major success, with over 1500
Chicano, Latino, Puerto Rican and even Black youths attending. The following
year another youth conference adopted a proposal to launch La Raza Unida Party—an
independent Chicano political party—as a national party.
Though a LRUP National Convention was held in 1972, national unification
was never achieved among relatively isolated chapters throughout
California,
Colorado, and Texas.
Should a mass, independent national Chicano political party become a
reality in the future, the dynamics would dramatically shake twin-party
capitalist
politics and give a strong political voice to Chicanos as both an
oppressed nationality and a large component of the working class.
“The truth is that both parties, the Elite Republicans and the party
of promises, the Democrats, … are ruled and controlled by money and
racism,” said Gonzalez in 1970. “The two-party system is one animal with
two heads eating out of the same trough. … Look around at our politicos
today and ask them … if they have done away with unemployment, racism,
discrimination, irrelevant education, police brutality, political corruption,
organized crime, do-nothing service agencies, bad housing, high interest
rates, and WAR.”
A memorial for Gonzalez took place on April 17, with 2000 friends,
family, and activists marching from Escuela Tlatelolco (an all-Chicano
school started by
CFJ in the early 1970s) to downtown Denver.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Click here for info on how to subscribe to
Socialist Action newspaper.
|
