La Raza, 1967-10-15

              C ZM
Vol. 1 No. 3 October 15, 1967 Los Angeles
Mexican-
WILL Elpaso SPARK American UNITY?
If the temperament of the
more thanZOO Mexican-Ame-rican
activistswho gathered
for the "Pre-El Paso Hear-ings
meeting in Malibu this
past weekend is indicative of
the mood of Mexican-Afne ri-can
throughout the Southwest,
the political sky at El Paso
might be ablaze with fire-works
from Oct. ¿7-29. Pre-sident
Johnson may think he
has scheduled hearings he
can control, but it wouldap_
pear he is in for some real
surprises.
basta de
promesas faIs!
Bert Corona of Oakland,
MAPAs national president
summarized the feelings of
the chicanos presentwhenhe
said, AlthoughMr. Ximenez
( President!a advisor on Me-xican-
Ame rican Affair s ) has
picked some wonderful men,
such as Ernesto Galarza of
Los Altos and Eduardo Mo-reno
of Camarillo, . . . we re-s
cnt the fact that he didn't
trust t h e organizations and
our people to pick our own
representatives, forwepro-bablywouldhave
seiected Dr.
Galarza and Mr. Moreno.
But we don't know who some
of the others may be, nor do
we knowwhere theyhave been
in La Causa of La Raza. Fur-thermore,
at the MAPA Con-ventioninRiverside,
Mr.
Ximenez said that the long
contemplated White House
Conference , which President
Johnson back in 1965 promis-ed
to hold and permit it to be
structured by Mexican-Ame-ricans,
would not be held.
He is not holding the Confer-ence
it is true, but instead
he is holding hearings where
our people will repeat the
numerous complaints we
have repeated for years and
which no administration has
ever attempted to work with
us to solve.
LBJ backs down
It seems that the President
after he promised the White
House Conference, had se-condthoughts
and realized
the power of grass roots ci-vil
rights activists to use
such conferexes totheir ad-
MEXICAN AMERICANS PLAN
TAKE-OVER NOT TALK-OVER
vantage and to criticize the
administration.. Still the
Democratic Party will need
the Mexican-American vote,
so the White House began
"Operation W i n d o w Dres-sing".
Anlnter-AgencyCom-mittee
on Mexican-American
Affairs, akin to the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, was crea-ted
and directives were sent
out to all Departments and
Agencies to hire themselves
some Mexicans--just the
thing that Ronald Reagan is
doinginCalifornia. The President even createda
"Cabinet level"positionto be
filled bya commissioner (Mr.
Vicente Ximenez mentioned
above) who would preside o-ver
the growing Mexican-A-merican
Club in Washington,
D. C.
hearings or magic
The "hearings" which are
intended to substitute for the
Conference will be honored
with the presence of the Sec-retaries
of Labor (Wirtz),
Agriculture Freeman), Ed-ucation
(Gardner), and Hous-ing,
and Urban Development
(Weaver), and the director of
the War on Poverty (Shriver).
Vicente Ximenez will serve
Chairman for the hearings.
At the same time , it was
announced, but by accident
the Presidenthimse.jfwould
be i n El PasoohOdtôbèr28
for the official ceremony of
"signing of the Cham izal
Treaty with President Diaz
Ordaz. A veteran of the Al-buquerque
"walk out", after
hearing of th i s "accident",
said: "Here we go again.
That man LBJ believes in
black magic. Afte r having
his underlings hear a few
Mexicans tell them whatthey
know so well, LBJ will go to
the Chamizal and say, 'Viva
la Causa!' There boys, I
have given some of the land
back toMexico. Whatelsedo
you Mexicans want ? , and he
willexpectus to go back home
quietly and remain quiet until
after the 1968 elections. "
hell no we won't go
For weeks following these
twin announcements, the ar-gument
among activists was
whether chicanos should go
or not go to El Paso. T
vendidos were convinced they
should go "because LBJ
calls "; many others wanted to
go, but weréawarethatthose
going were going to be "used"
for window dressing. To them
the choice was between boy-cotting
the hearings altoge-ther
or going butmaking sure
that they didn'tjust come back
home quietly without having
accomplished a damn thing
for the people.
And that was the feeling at
,#J L. NAVA
EI Gavilan
EI Alacran
UCLA Report
the Malibu conference, even
after Congressman Roybal
tried to soften the blow by
saying; "Since the hearings
are taking placeanyhow, you
might as well go to the con-ference
and havea good time;
like everyone else.
turning the tables
The turning point of thePre-
Hearings meeting at Malibu
was Saturday morning. Dr.
Ernesto Galarza, at present
a consultant with the Ford
Foundation, discgssedin de-tail
the hear ings and the
shortcomings of diffe rent
ways of approaching the is-sue.
HermanGallegos, also
with the Ford Foundation,
gave a report of a two year
study thatDr. Zamora, from
Texas, Dr. Galarzaandhim-self
had done.. Of the present
problems of the Mexican-A-mericans
in the Southwest.
While several workshops
were held on issues having
to do with housing, welfare,
jobs and manpower, and po-lice
malpractice , a n o t h e r
workshop dealt with "unity
and action' This finalwork-shop
dealt with plans for El'
Paso and will be reported
here. (Resumes of the other
workshops willbe printed as
soon as they become availa-ble.
)
The "Unity and Action"
workshop was composed
mostly of delegates from the
m aj o r statewide organiza-tions
of Mexican-Americans.
DiscussingDr. Galarza's
criticisms of the hearings,
the unity workshop came up
with a plan to guarantee that
whatever happens in El Paso
will result for the benefit of
all Mexican-Americans and
not just for window dressing
the White House.
challenge & response
I) Sincethehearingsare be-ing
planned in relative se-.
crecy, it was suggested to
demand from Mr. Jiménez
that the names of all people
invited to attend be madepub-lic,
as well as to demand
thatall organizations of Mex-ican
Americans be invited to
go, and not only the "safe"
ones.
(páge 5 mex-am unity)
1O