DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Chicano conference programs and speeches, April 1973-May 1974

Transcribe
Translate

Chicano conference programs and speeches, April 1973-May 1974

1973-04-14 Keynote Speech Page 2

2
it has not been written or just beginning to be written. It has not been written by our writers, our history 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 with. 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, right after the American invasion into Mexico. This was an imperialist effort, land grabbing effort, a war that saw more than half of the territory of our mother country ripped off, stolen and made U.S.. After that, we begin accepting the fact that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which resolved that conflict afforded us equal citizenship, something we are still waiting for. We saw in that treaty and we can read today that treaty respected our property rights. Just to give an example, Nueces, Country, corpus Christie, Texas, the time when the war 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 by the Texas rangers. You find on and on, examples of how our people gave away our land. In the style of the Mafia we had to sell the land for protection against the law enforcement, protection from the rangers who were doing the brutality and exploration of our people.  This is how the matter went throughout the Southwest. That our land was stolen, including among these agents of theory in land grabbing, was the U.S. Government. You find today a good quarter of the land in the Southwest to be in the ownership of the U.S. Government in terms of parks and reservoirs. One can recall hoe Tijerina was jailed for fighting to get back some of this land.  
Our response to this vicious discrimination and this imposition, because this is where 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 reactions was to try to work within this system. The first organization we have on the records today was something called Alianza Ispano Americano, dating back to 1894.

Saving...

2 it has not been written or just beginning to be written. It has not been written by our writers, our history 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 with. 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, right after the American invasion into Mexico. This was an imperialist effort, land grabbing effort, a war that saw more than half of the territory of our mother country ripped off, stolen and made U.S.. After that, we begin accepting the fact that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which resolved that conflict afforded us equal citizenship, something we are still waiting for. We saw in that treaty and we can read today that treaty respected our property rights. Just to give an example, Nueces, Country, corpus Christie, Texas, the time when the war 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 by the Texas rangers. You find on and on, examples of how our people gave away our land. In the style of the Mafia we had to sell the land for protection against the law enforcement, protection from the rangers who were doing the brutality and exploration of our people. This is how the matter went throughout the Southwest. That our land was stolen, including among these agents of theory in land grabbing, was the U.S. Government. You find today a good quarter of the land in the Southwest to be in the ownership of the U.S. Government in terms of parks and reservoirs. One can recall hoe Tijerina was jailed for fighting to get back some of this land. Our response to this vicious discrimination and this imposition, because this is where 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 reactions was to try to work within this system. The first organization we have on the records today was something called Alianza Ispano Americano, dating back to 1894.