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Chicano conference programs and speeches, April 1973-May 1974

1973-04-14 Keynote Speech Page 2

it has not been written or just beginning to be written. It has not been written by our writers. has been distorted. What little has been put down in writing. So, I would like to share with you what has been happening from my point of view historically in the Chicano movement, because the topic I was given is, "the Chicano on the eve of the third American Century."

When we first encountered the Norte Americano, the people of the United States, the Anglo Saxon if you will, we developed two different strategies to cope, One, has been a strategy of accommodating, of assimilating, of integrating, of accepting what has been handed out to us. The other strategy has been to resist.

When we started, our efforts were at trying to make friends, at trying to accept and resign ourselves to the fate that we were now U.S. property, after the American invasion of a war that saw more than half of the territory of our mother country ripped off, stolen and made U.S. property. After that, we begin accepting the fact that the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which resolved that conflict, afforded us equal citizenship, something we are still waiting for. We read that the treaty respected our property rights. Just to give an example, Nueces County, Corpus Christie, Texas, at the time when the war was resolved and the treaty signed, all the land, 8,000 square miles was owned by Mexicans. Ten years later all the land except one piece of 300 acres was owned by whites. You look at the deed records and you find that 3,000 acres were sold for a pound of coffee and other valuable considerations. You find that 10,000 acres were sold for protection against Indians and against Mexican bandits to the Texas Rangers. You find, on and on, examples of how our people had to give away our land. In the style of the Mafia we had to sell the land for protection against the law enforcement officials, protection from the Rangers who were doing the brutality and exploitation of our people. This is how the matter went throughout the Southwest. That our land was stolen is well documented by the U.S. Government. You find today a good quarter of the land in the Southwest to be in ownership of the U.S. Government in terms of parks and reservoirs. One can recall how Tijerina was jailed for fighting to get back some of this land.

Our response was immediate to this vicious discrimination and this imposition, because this is when we became a colony of the United States. When a new government was put on us, a new language was stamped on our foreheads as the official language, when a new religion was introduced, a new life style was forced upon us. Our reaction was to try to work within this system. The first organization we have on the records today was something called Alianza Hispano Amaricano, dating back to 1894.

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it has not been written or just beginning to be written. It has not been written by our writers. has been distorted. What little has been put down in writing. So, I would like to share with you what has been happening from my point of view historically in the Chicano movement, because the topic I was given is, "the Chicano on the eve of the third American Century." When we first encountered the Norte Americano, the people of the United States, the Anglo Saxon if you will, we developed two different strategies to cope, One, has been a strategy of accommodating, of assimilating, of integrating, of accepting what has been handed out to us. The other strategy has been to resist. When we started, our efforts were at trying to make friends, at trying to accept and resign ourselves to the fate that we were now U.S. property, after the American invasion of a war that saw more than half of the territory of our mother country ripped off, stolen and made U.S. property. After that, we begin accepting the fact that the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which resolved that conflict, afforded us equal citizenship, something we are still waiting for. We read that the treaty respected our property rights. Just to give an example, Nueces County, Corpus Christie, Texas, at the time when the war was resolved and the treaty signed, all the land, 8,000 square miles was owned by Mexicans. Ten years later all the land except one piece of 300 acres was owned by whites. You look at the deed records and you find that 3,000 acres were sold for a pound of coffee and other valuable considerations. You find that 10,000 acres were sold for protection against Indians and against Mexican bandits to the Texas Rangers. You find, on and on, examples of how our people had to give away our land. In the style of the Mafia we had to sell the land for protection against the law enforcement officials, protection from the Rangers who were doing the brutality and exploitation of our people. This is how the matter went throughout the Southwest. That our land was stolen is well documented by the U.S. Government. You find today a good quarter of the land in the Southwest to be in ownership of the U.S. Government in terms of parks and reservoirs. One can recall how Tijerina was jailed for fighting to get back some of this land. Our response was immediate to this vicious discrimination and this imposition, because this is when we became a colony of the United States. When a new government was put on us, a new language was stamped on our foreheads as the official language, when a new religion was introduced, a new life style was forced upon us. Our reaction was to try to work within this system. The first organization we have on the records today was something called Alianza Hispano Amaricano, dating back to 1894.