Selected Interview Segments: Jose Angel Gutierrez

  
  
  

Jose Angel Gutierrez,
Co-founder of La Raza Unida Party & Chicano Activist
Copyright 2007 South Texas Public Broadcasting System, INC.

Q: Two groups on the scene in Texas and elsewhere during your early years of political activity were Lulac and the G.I. forum. Could you explain how you and other students perceived these groups and their purposes?

A: We heard more about LULAC. LULAC seemed to be more organized and more extensive throughout, and they seemed to be the only ones who would speak up from time to time, but basically about education. But we saw them as wanting to assimilate as wanting to be Anglo-like and not proud of their Mexican heritage and very mild-mannered. They wouldn't stand up, and challenge, and point fingers at some of these injustices. So we did not have a very good feeling about LULAC.

G.I. Forum excluded us because they were concentrating on the military. And talked about veterans benefits and civil rights for veterans. Well, we didn't even know what that meant. Vietnam was just on the way. We hadn't quite got there as young people. Because the G.I. Forum was full of veterans they were super patriotic. Any kind of notion that you were out of line with White House policy, foreign policy, meant you were un-American. Of course we were out-of-step with-with the war and we were out-of-step with the president and we were out-of-step with the foreign policy in Vietnam. So that made us suspect in the eyes of the American G.I. forum. And we clashed. They were hawks and we were doves, if not communist in their mind.

G.I. Forum, particularly Dr. Garcia would admonish us for leafleting against the war, for marching and demonstrating against the war, and when we pointed out the extreme casualties that we were being suffered as Mexican-Americans, they thought that was a badge of honor, that you should be willing to put your life up for your country. We thought that was ridiculous. I mean, we're already born here. We're already Americans. We don't have to be proving anything.

Q: What were the reasons that you perceived that they opposed you? Issues? Or was it your strategy and tactics?

A: The clashes that we had with American G.I. Forum and LULAC occurred for various reasons. First of all, they did wonderful work at the time that they started. They were the only ones around protesting and raising the flag, if you will. But in so doing, they found solution to those problems they were focusing on by establishing personal relationships with powerful white individuals, like Lyndon Johnson, the famous Three-Rivers story. Those relationships lasted into the future.

We had no access to Lyndon. We saw Lyndon as the problem. I mean, he was the leader behind the Vietnam war and we were opposed to the Vietnam war. They had a vested interest. In other words, they had a personal relationship. They cut private deals and that was supposed to uplift the community. Well, it wasn't group ascendancy. It was selective ascendancy of certain G.I. Forumeers and LULACers, not the greater community. We didn't have that access, nor did we seek it. So those were some of the differences of leadership, between the G.I. Forumeers and us.

Q: So reading into that, the reason they may have opposed you is because you were putting those people, that they were in favoritism with, in embarrassing situations?

A: Well, we were jeopardizing their deals. We were eliminating their broker role. We had nothing, but contempt for these Anglo politicians who we thought were bigger than gringos. They could have solved these problems before and they still weren't solving them then. We saw our growing numbers that we needed to leverage as opposed to continuing to use the "sleeping giant" syndrome. We weren't asleep at all. We were wide-awake and we were crying out loud. We had a wet diaper. We wanted to be changed right then and there. They weren't listening. So it's a combination of-of all of these things because we were that next generation to move them out of the way.

Q: As you made the decision with others to form your own political party, was it of any importance whatsoever, as to what this older generation thought about what you were doing, or whether or not that you had their endorsement in any way at all.

A: We did not seek out the advice and counsel of G.I. forum members leadership or Lulac. We knew that they were hard-core democrats, even though they said they were non-partisan. They gave life to the stereotype that we were born catholic and democrat. So we didn't seek them out. We knew that they were going to oppose us and they did.

Q: What do you consider Dr. Garcia's strength, and what do you consider his weakness?

A: You know, it's always easy to assess an individual's contribution using hindsight, and I am certainly older than I was back then. If you would have asked me as a young person and what I thought of Hector Garcia's contributions, I probably would have given you very few and a long list of negatives. Now that I am much older and probably about the same age as Garcia when he was in his heyday, I can see that the man provided some leadership in creating this national organization. That took a lot, to go in day in and day out on top of your medical practice, on top of your family obligations, to keep organizing these chapters across the country, which he did. He single-handy built that organization top to bottom. Of course he never let go either, and that's been part of the undemocratic tendencies inside there.

He was articulate. He was at the right places at the right times. He also had the money. I mean, he was upper-middle-class, well-subsidized individual because of his medical training. He was very white-like in appearance. You know, he was able to move. He had the social skills. He was accomplished. He was prepared. He was trained. He was cultured. He was knowledgeable, and that made him un-Mexican in many ways so that he had a problem identifying with the farm workers and poor people, other than as patients. So there was a distance be-between, him, and the rest of us. He was a comfortable middle-class Mexican-American, or if he were kicking today, he'd be talking about being Hispanic. Those words are code words, for not wanting to be Mexican. And that still doesn't sit well with many of us who see, that this is still, Chicano land and the other Mexico. We can hide, uh, our Mexicaness but that's so unnatural and we've got to stop trying to be something for somebody else, and should be concentrating on being something for ourselves. Those are some of the drawbacks and some of the contributions of Dr. Garcia, in looking back.