First Published: The Call, Vol. 5, No. 18, September 6, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Denver, Colo.–A forum on Chicano liberation on August 28 celebrated the sixth anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, the heroic rebellion of the Chicano people against imperialist aggression in Indochina.
Sally Miranda, a member of the October League, gave a speech which traced the history of the Chicano people and their development as a national minority in the U.S. “It is necessary,” she explained, “to examine the history of Mexico to understand how the Chicano people developed.” In the period of the rise of capitalism and the resulting rise of nations all over the world, the Indian, Spanish, and Mestizo people developed into the Mexican nation. During a long historical period of more than 350 years, they developed a common language, economic life and culture within the boundaries of a common territory–in short, all the scientific criteria of a nation.
Miranda explained how the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican War and, later, the dispersal of millions of Mexican immigrants throughout the expanded territory of the U.S. resulted in the development of the Mexican-American or Chicano national minority.
A member of the OL’s National Chicano Commission, Yolanda Birdwell, presented the OL’s program for Chicano liberation. Pointing out the long history of the struggle against imperialism, she explained that only by getting rid of the system which creates national oppression can the Chicano people win full democratic rights. These democratic rights include the right to set up autonomous regions in the main areas of Chicano concentration.
Birdwell warned of the great danger which the revisionist CPUSA presents to the Chicano people’s struggle because of their view that Chicano liberation can be achieved under capitalism.
Birdwell also stressed the connection between the Chicano people’s struggle and the struggle for socialism. She said that revolutionaries must join and win the leadership of the powerful movement of Chicanos for democratic rights and be the hardest fighters against every example of national oppression. But she also explained that the history of the struggle has shown that democratic reforms under capitalism, however important, are always only partial and temporary. “Regional autonomy and every other democratic right cannot be totally implemented until the working class is in power,” she said.