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Chicano conference programs and speeches, April 1973-May 1974

1973-04-14 Keynote Speech Page 5

to ride the horses, refused to gather the cattle, to bring the markets to Kansas City and Omaha. This was the first vaquero strike in Texas, and the whole country for that matter. They too were soon lost because like some people in New Mexico, they were picked up and put on trains and deported. When Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, they sent two gringos after him, General Pershing and Lieutenant General Joseph Swing. They couldn't catch Pancho Villa. Joseph Swing was the same man who loaded Mejicanos by the thousands in boxcars and deported them.

The people of Columbus, remembering the raid of Pancho Villa refused to let these people disembark at Columbus, New Mexico. So the Mejicanos, 1, 300 strong, were forced to walk the desert from Columbus into Mexico. There were not more than 80 to 90 that survived. Joseph Swing, that same man, who was anti-Mexican, a bitter racist, then became under Eisenhower the Commissioner of Immigration. While everyone assumes the "white knight", Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not do anything for this country. Chicanos have a very bitter memory because this is the man who set quotas not on immigrants but on deportees. Under the regime of Eisenhower from the city of Los Angeles, 75,000 Chicanos were deported because that was the quota in the city of Los Angeles. Many of those people were not citizens of Mexico, they were citizens of this country. This question of citizenship is very interesting because we are made to feel we are foreigners, as if we do not belong here. There was never a referendum giving us a choice. We were here all this time, it was they who came to us through war and through conquest. So we are not migrating anywhere. If you do not accept that point, then take a more human approach. You cannot separate the blood that runs on our veins. Behind every Chicano family there is a Mejicano. One of your roots from many of your families goes back to Mejico. So while the river may serve as a legal boundary between two countries you can't separate culture and you can't divide language and you can't erase history and most of all, no se puede divivir nuestra familia en esta manera.

So, all these attempts of deporting people because they are not citizens finally lead to two events. One, el Plan de San Diego. El Plan de San Diego was a very revolutionary plot. Mejicanos in San Diego, Tejas, got together and decided they were going to lash out, reconquer the Southwest, establish a provisional government and declare their independence from the United States. These men at that time, in 1915, already saw their solidarity with the Afro-Americans in the deep South, with the Indian and the Oriental. These weer planks in their revolutionary plan. And point six which caused much

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to ride the horses, refused to gather the cattle, to bring the markets to Kansas City and Omaha. This was the first vaquero strike in Texas, and the whole country for that matter. They too were soon lost because like some people in New Mexico, they were picked up and put on trains and deported. When Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, they sent two gringos after him, General Pershing and Lieutenant General Joseph Swing. They couldn't catch Pancho Villa. Joseph Swing was the same man who loaded Mejicanos by the thousands in boxcars and deported them. The people of Columbus, remembering the raid of Pancho Villa refused to let these people disembark at Columbus, New Mexico. So the Mejicanos, 1, 300 strong, were forced to walk the desert from Columbus into Mexico. There were not more than 80 to 90 that survived. Joseph Swing, that same man, who was anti-Mexican, a bitter racist, then became under Eisenhower the Commissioner of Immigration. While everyone assumes the "white knight", Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not do anything for this country. Chicanos have a very bitter memory because this is the man who set quotas not on immigrants but on deportees. Under the regime of Eisenhower from the city of Los Angeles, 75,000 Chicanos were deported because that was the quota in the city of Los Angeles. Many of those people were not citizens of Mexico, they were citizens of this country. This question of citizenship is very interesting because we are made to feel we are foreigners, as if we do not belong here. There was never a referendum giving us a choice. We were here all this time, it was they who came to us through war and through conquest. So we are not migrating anywhere. If you do not accept that point, then take a more human approach. You cannot separate the blood that runs on our veins. Behind every Chicano family there is a Mejicano. One of your roots from many of your families goes back to Mejico. So while the river may serve as a legal boundary between two countries you can't separate culture and you can't divide language and you can't erase history and most of all, no se puede divivir nuestra familia en esta manera. So, all these attempts of deporting people because they are not citizens finally lead to two events. One, el Plan de San Diego. El Plan de San Diego was a very revolutionary plot. Mejicanos in San Diego, Tejas, got together and decided they were going to lash out, reconquer the Southwest, establish a provisional government and declare their independence from the United States. These men at that time, in 1915, already saw their solidarity with the Afro-Americans in the deep South, with the Indian and the Oriental. These weer planks in their revolutionary plan. And point six which caused much