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<h3 class="title"><a
href="http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76492&pageid=&pagename=">Remembering
the Black Berets and the Struggle for La Raza in New Mexico</a></h3>
Monday February 03 2014<br>
Kent Paterson<br>
<h2 class="byline2"><small><small><small>Frontera NorteSur</small></small></small></h2>
<div class="article"><b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76492">http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=76492</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<p>A little more than a half-century after conquered New Mexico became
a U.S. state, resistance and rebellion percolated throughout the land.
Dispossessed of their land base, thousands of people joined the Alianza
Federal de las Mercedes, an organization of Spanish and Mexican land
grant heirs led by Reies Lopez Tijerina, demanding the return of their
patrimony. </p>
<p>The Alianza’s 1967 armed take-over of the Tierra Amarilla court
house and subsequent National Guard deployment cast international
attention on an unresolved issue that remains very much alive in the
21st century. </p>
<p>Across New Mexico, young people calling themselves Chicanos demanded
recognition of and respect for their Spanish language, their culture
and their history. And in the barrios of Albuquerque, Las Gorras
Blancas, the Black Berets, rose up to challenge the power structure. </p>
<p>Founded in 1969 and similar to the Black Panther Party, the Berets
mounted community patrols, opened free medical and dental clinics, fed
hungry children and issued a 12-point program that called for Chicano
self-determination, community control of institutions, armed
self-defense and liberation. Ahead of the times, the program attacked
machismo by name and upheld equality for women. </p>
<p>In the late 1960s, police brutality was a huge issue in Albuquerque,
and community members turned to the new activist organization for
protection, recalled Black Beret co-founder Richard Moore. “They were
beating and shooting our people throughout the city”, Moore said at an
Albuquerque forum held this month on the history and legacy of the
group. “We were facing incredible, incredible police repression.”</p>
<p>Moore joined several other former Berets in a presentation to an
overflow crowd at Albuquerque’s South Broadway Cultural Center. The
event was emceed by Nita Luna Davis, an ex-Beret and well-known New
Mexico theater producer and writer. Prior to the discussion, the
audience watched a short piece by New Mexico filmmaker Dr. Federico
Reade, “American Blowback: New Mexico’s Black Berets,” which is a
documentary-work-in-progress about the group. </p>
<p>Movement veterans Joaquin Lujan and Placido Salazar placed the
emergence of the Berets within the context of New Mexico’s particular
historical, cultural, economic and social relationships. </p>
<p>Growing up in the Duranes barrio of Albuquerque’s North Valley,
Lujan described feelings of oppression and frustration by the time he
was a teenager in the mid-1960s, an era when the freeway symbolized the
racial divide between the Chicano river valley and the then-largely
Anglo and more affluent heights. Police beat young people, and the
schools did not properly educate their students, instead grooming the
young for low-wage work, the military or prison system, according to
Lujan. </p>
<p>“I’m 16 and in school, and they’re already pushing me to join the
Marines,” Lujan told a packed room. </p>
<p>The longtime activist spoke about the heroin scourge that afflicts
New Mexico to this day, recounting how use of the drug had become a
multi-generational disease decades ago. “There was already a
grandfather, a son and a grandson who were all strung out,” Lujan said.
</p>
<p>Hungry for a different direction in life, Lujan found his answer in
the Chicano movement. First a member of the Brown Berets, the young man
then joined the Black Berets when the group formed. “My true history
came out when I hooked up with the gente,” he said. </p>
<p>Lujan reminded his listeners that a long line of resistance preceded
the Berets, evident in such movements as Las Gorras Blancas, a
guerrilla organization that cut fences and fought against land
encroachment in northern New Mexico in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
and in the miners’ strikes during the last century. </p>
<p>Sporting a long gray pony-tail, Placido Salazar introduced himself
in Spanish and then explained he was from a land grant community. As a
young man, Salazar joined the Navy and received training as an
electrician. Unable to find a job after leaving the service, the New
Mexico native enrolled at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to study
engineering but discovered that he had “the only brown face” of 1,000
students in his class. </p>
<p>Salazar became active with the United Mexican American Students, a
group he credited with starting Chicano Studies at the state’s flagship
institution of higher education, and the Black Berets. Salazar depicted
the Berets as bold, innovative and unafraid to challenge power on its
own turf. </p>
<p>“We crashed Bruce King’s (gubernatorial) inauguration. We just
walked in and sat in on the front row of the inauguration,” Salazar
recalled, adding that the New Mexico State Police quickly mobilized a
large force to evict the uninvited guests. </p>
<p>Salazar said King, ever the politician and speaking in his rural
“Texas drawl” commanded the police, “’No, these boys are staying
here’!” The legendary rancher/politico then asked the Berets what they
wanted, and the new governor was presented with the organization’s
12-point program, Salazar said. </p>
<p>Like the Black Panthers, the Berets had a very strong community
service component. They began a free breakfast program for low-income
children even before the Albuquerque Public Schools had one,
distributed clothing to the poor, launched a wood cooperative, ran a
“liberation school” for pre-school age children, opened a dental
clinic, and delivered health care at the Bobby Garcia Memorial Clinic,
named after the young Chicano activist, UNM student and Beret associate
who was found murdered outside Albuquerque. </p>
<p>The Berets even had a short-lived newspaper. A 1971 issue, published
in a year when a youth uprising shook the city, was headlined “La
Revolucion de Albuquerque,” or “The Albuquerque Revolution.” </p>
<p>Politically, the Black Berets were soon embroiled in virtually every
issue that cropped up in New Mexico-labor strikes, student struggles,
prisoner rights, protests against a noxious sewer plant in the Duke
City, the Chicano Moratorium against the War in Vietnam, and opposition
to gentrification, including a landmark fight over urban renewal and
the fate of the Martineztown neighborhood near downtown Albuquerque. </p>
<p>“We were saying Martineztown is not for sale, and this year we are
saying that New Mexico is not for sale,” Moore said. </p>
<p>The Berets made alliances with many groups both inside and outside
the Chicano community. They supported the American Indian Movement,
backed Navajo movements against racism in the border town of Gallup,
linked up with the new National Organization for Women and worked with
African-American community organizations. </p>
<p>The black beret itself evoked the group’s international outlook, as
the hat was chosen in honor of Latin American revolutionary Che
Guevara. “It was said Che is alive and well in the mountains of
northern New Mexico,” Moore said, repeating a popular slogan of the<br>
times. </p>
<p>John Goldsmith served as the chairman of the New Breed, a
predominantly African-American organization in Albuquerque. Recalling
collaborations with the Berets and others on community redevelopment
issues, Goldsmith sketched a city where racial and class divisions and
police abuse were the order of the day. </p>
<p>Fast forwarding years later, Goldsmith lamented the erosion of
progress from the earlier struggles, with two or three generations
“lost” in the aftermath, the doors of economic opportunity shut tighter
for African-Americans and others and civic education for the young
neglected. </p>
<p>“Now more than ever, we have to become more involved in our
community,” Goldsmith urged. </p>
<p>Filmmaker Reade credited an 80-year-old retired priest in
attendance, Father Luis Jaramillo, for providing the spiritual guidance
to a “rag tag group of vatos (dudes)” that became a disciplined force. </p>
<p>In comments that delighted the crowd, Jaramillo said there was no
contradiction between his career as a man of the cloth and his life as
an activist. “I love being a priest, but that doesn’t exclude me from
being a radical,” Jaramillo said. “You can’t be too intellectually
radical, you just need to be intelligently rational, and that will make
you radical.” </p>
<p>Jaramillo warned that tough times were coming, and it was time for a
new generation to stand up. “Caca smells really bad no matter what, and
when you smell it you fight it,” Jaramillo said to a roused house. </p>
<p>The Albuquerque forum did not go into detail about repression
against the Berets, but the group’s activities drew the wrath of
authorities and shadowy right-wing groups like the Minutemen, which
regularly mailed the Berets cross-haired threats, Moore later told FNS.
</p>
<p>The most well-known case is the police killings of Beret members
Antonio Cordova and Rito Canales at an isolated site near Albuquerque
in January 1972. The police agencies involved in the affair, including
the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), New Mexico State Police and
Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, alleged that the pair was
attempting to steal dynamite from a construction shed and resisted
arrest. </p>
<p>In 1996, a man named Tim Chapa came forward to declare that he had
been a police informant who set up Cordova and Canales for
assassination. Chapa’s testimony formed the basis for an unsuccessful
lawsuit filed by the families of Cordova and Canales against several
former police officers and governmental entities. </p>
<p>Two months prior to the killings, the Berets attempted a citizen’s
arrest of New Mexico State Penitentiary Warden Felix Rodriguez.
According to multiple accounts, Cordova and Canales were killed just as
they were getting to expose official wrongdoing at the pen to the
press. For years, the Berets’ criticisms of corruption and violence at
the joint mainly fell on deaf ears in state government. </p>
<p>In 1980, the prison finally exploded in a gruesome riot that left 33
inmates brutally murdered, upwards of 100 injured and several guards
tortured, according to press accounts and the New Mexico Office of the
State Historian. A smoldering heap of blood, smoke and ash was the
result of the long-neglect and tolerance of drug-dealing and corruption
at the prison. </p>
<p>Besides Cordova and Canales, Black Berets Juan Baca and Ramona
Griego also met suspicious deaths at different times. The violent
deaths of Black Berets and associates occurred at the same time FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO campaign was in full gear to
disrupt, divide and neutralize the Black liberation, Chicano, Native
American, Puerto Rican, and antiwar movements. </p>
<p>Locally, an insider slipped the Berets a document that revealed a
political spying unit in the APD, the Metro Squad, which kept dossiers
on Chicano, African-American and antiwar activists. </p>
<p>South of the border, meanwhile, U.S.-backed governments in Mexico
and other countries unleashed bloody dirty wars against dissidents,
while the Nixon administration conspired to overthrow the elected
government of socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. </p>
<p>Although the Berets dissolved in 1973, many members stayed active in
different causes. Beret veterans became cultural workers, labor
organizers and environmental justice activists. Founded in part by
former Berets, the Albuquerque-based Southwest Organizing Project and
Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice were both
pivotal in the environmental justice movement that swept many
communities of color in the United States during and after the 1980s. </p>
<p>In an interview with FNS, ex-Beret leader Richard Moore told the
stories behind 29 photos that are on display at the South Broadway
Cultural Center until October 13. </p>
<p>The black and white images show young women and men in an
extraordinary period of New Mexico history that is still largely
hidden. Photos show the Bobby Garcia Memorial Clinic, a Christmas party
for children, a sit in at Gov. King’s office, an antiwar march, the
1971 Albuquerque Rebellion, and much more. In one scene, Bobby Garcia
is shown holding a protest sign during a demonstration in front of the
New Mexico State Fair grounds that was held to demand a Chicano village
as part of the annual event. </p>
<p>“These demonstrations were what made it possible for there to be a
Spanish Village at the state fair,” Moore remarked while scanning the
testament to history. “A lot of people don’t know how it started.” </p>
<p>Moore detailed how the Berets’ activism was done on a financial fly,
with people donating supplies, labor and skills to keep the movement
pumping. Sympathetic mechanics kept the troops’ old cars humming, while
gas station franchisees quietly donated free tanks of gas to keep the
vehicles running. Carpenters lent their muscle, and 32 doctors
volunteered their time and talent when the Bobby Garcia Memorial Clinic
got started, he said. </p>
<p>“There was no way we could do all this without community support,
tremendous community support,” Moore reflected. </p>
<p>Accurately gauging the popular “pulse” and making everyone a
stakeholder were two crucial lessons in community organizing the Berets
took away with them from those years, Moore affirmed. “Everybody
volunteered something,” he said. “Everybody can do something, no matter
how old or young you are. And to us, those somethings add up to a lot.”
</p>
<p>The Berets’ motto, Moore continued, was “Serve, Educate, Defend.” </p>
<p>At the Albuquerque forum, the former Berets turned over the
microphone to the audience. In a mea culpa, ex-DEA and CIA agent Eli
Chavez expressed regret for his military leadership in the U.S’ secret
war in Laos and the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of people” during
the 1960s and 1970s. The one-time Green Beret said he now wanted to
wear a different hat. “I admire what you did,” the retired U.S.
government official said. “I want to be a Black Beret.” </p>
<p>Community activist Henry Rael told the crowd that studying the
histories of groups like the Black Berets “probably kept me out of
jail, completely strung out.” Judy from Martineztown delivered an
emotional thanks to the Black Berets for their activism in her
community. Ken Ellis, father of an Iraq War veteran shot to death by
Albuquerque police in a controversial incident two years ago, updated
1969 with 2012. Ellis asked people to sign a petition aimed at
convening a grand jury to investigate the shooting of his son and 16
other men by the local police department since 2010, and announced an
October 22 protest at APD headquarters. </p>
<p>“I think it’s more than an untold story,” said one young man of the
Berets’ legacy. “I think it’s a story still being written.” </p>
<p>New Mexico ethnographer Dr. Tessa Cordova offered one of the
Albuquerque forum’s final observations on the Black Berets. “It’s a
movimiento that’s not over,” Cordova said. “It’s a movimiento
transformed.” </p>
<p>The film showing and discussion in the Duke City were part of a
series co-sponsored by the New Mexico Humanities Council, New Mexico
Film Institute, UNM Center for Regional Studies and other
organizations. Previous events also attracting lively turn-outs were
held in Las Cruces, Santa Fe and Las Vegas. </p>
<p>For future activities on Black Beret history and the Chicano
movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, see <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/118576034958775/" target="RANDOM">here.</a>
</p>
<p><em>Kent Paterson is the editor of Frontera NorteSur: on-line,
U.S.-Mexico border news sponsored by the Center for Latin American and
Border Studies at New Mexico State University.</em></p>
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