Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page
This report was given by Antonio Camejo to the August 1971 SWP convention. Printed in SWP Internal Discussion Bulletin
Transcribed & marked up by Andrew Pollack for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In his discussion of nationalities in The History of the Russian Revolution Leon Trotsky pointed out that it was only after the February 1917 revolution that several of the most oppressed nationalities in tsarist Russia began formulating their aspirations for self-determination. Some others were aroused only after the socialist revolution of October that year. The heightening of the class struggle in Russia rapidly precipitated the hopes and demands of even the smallest oppressed national groupings.
We are now witnessing a comparable phenomenon prior to the socialist revolution in the United States because of the peculiar development of U.S. capitalism and also in response to the heightening of the class struggle on a world scale, especially the colonial revolution. The profound Black nationalist radicalization and the entrance of the Chicano people onto the political stage of the current radicalization are dramatic verifications of the depth of this radicalization and give us further clues to the dynamic of the coming American revolution.
In the 1969 party discussion George Breitman pointed out that, if the upsurge in the class struggle had continued after the Second World War, and if the working class had been able to deepen the radicalization of the 1930s, to form a mass revolutionary party and start on the road to power, then the subsequent radicalization of oppressed nationalities would have proceeded along different lines. But that potential upsurge was thwarted and a general retreat and decline of the labor movement set in. This turn of events not only affected subsequent developments but has influenced the manner in which social struggle has begun to manifest itself in the present radicalization.
Chicanos, suffering a dual oppression—that is, oppressed because of their race, culture, and language, and for the most part exploited as workers—looked hopefully to the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and participated in its formation and struggles. With the decline in militancy of the class as a whole, neither Blacks nor Chicanos were prepared to await a renewed upsurge of the labor movement before beginning to deal with their special problems as oppressed nationalities. They began radicalizing in their own ways, conditioned by this turn of events in the class struggle as a whole, by their own history and conditions of life, and by international factors. The recent upsurge of Chicano nationalism flows out of this particular conjuncture and bears its indelible stamp.
At a National Committee plenum in February 1970, Jack Barnes pointed out how the rise of nationalist struggles in the 1960s was characterized by the independence, self-organization, self-confidence, and self-mobilization that occurred prior to alliances with other major forces, and outside the control of the trade union bureaucracy or the Communist Party.
This independent thrust of the rise of Chicano nationalism is central to an understanding not only of the Chicano struggle but of the present radicalization as a whole. We can confidently say that both Black and Chicano nationalism are here to stay, not only until the socialist revolution but also after the American working class comes to power. The existence of mass nationalist organizations of La Raza will play an important role, not only in the making of the socialist revolution, but in facilitating the resolution of the national question after the overthrow of capitalist rule.
From the experiences of the Russian and Cuban revolutions in particular, we can predict that nationalist consciousness will grow with the heightening of the class struggle, not disappear before or with it. As Trotsky observed in his writings between 1939 and 1940, the national struggle is itself one of the most complex, yet extremely important, forms of the class struggle.
The nationalist consciousness of La Raza flows from the pattern of oppression which is a fact of daily life. The resolution, “The Struggle for Chicano Liberation,” points out: “Except for Native Americans, Chicanos suffer the highest unemployment, the lowest per capita income, the worst education, the highest functional illiteracy rate, the highest death rate, occupy the most dilapidated and overcrowded housing, and have less political representation in local, state, or national government than any nationality in the population of the Southwest and perhaps in the nation.”
Another aspect of this pattern of oppression is the suppression of the Spanish language. Through their attempt to obliterate the Spanish language, the ruling class hoped to strip Mexicanos of their history, culture, and identity in the same manner as the slave masters stripped the African slaves of their languages and original identities. So English-speaking Canada has attempted to undermine the French language of the Quebecois.
Although the ruling class never fully succeeded in this regard, they have left their mark upon the generations of linguistically handicapped Chicanos who have had their native tongue cut out, either partially or completely, and are left without a full proficiency in English because of racist educational institutions. It is clear that the suppression of the Spanish language remains a critical ingredient in the oppression of Chicanos.
As outlined in the article, “The Forging of an Oppressed Nationality,” the expansion of the southern slavocracy and northeastern capitalism led to the forging of the Mexican inhabitants of the conquered provinces of northern Mexico into a distinct oppressed nationality. The Mexican frontier settlements had already developed a certain autonomy from the central administration in Mexico City, as well as an independent outlook, well before the Anglo invasion. The conquest of that area, one-half the national territory of Mexico, definitively put an end to the direct influence by Mexico’s ruling class over the Mexican people in that territory.
Capitalist property relations violently displaced all forms of precapitalist and sernifeudal means of exploitation in California, and, after the Civil War, throughout the Southwest. Mexican landowners, independent miners, and traders were either directly expropriated or driven into the ranks of the working class by the English-speaking foreigners. The Mexican people of the Southwest were violently coerced into the position of an oppressed nationality. Then the new waves of immigrants from Mexico during the first half of this century were forced into this mold of national oppression by the capitalist ruling class and its institutions.
Increased urbanization, the difference in class relationships, and other factors have all tended to shape Chicanos into a nationality which is similar to, but distinct from, that of Mexico. While Chicanos clearly do not fit into the Anglo cultural norms, neither do they fit into those of Mexico. La Raza in the Southwest has a culture distinct from that of Mexico, and in addition, speaks both a dialect of Spanish and a language not spoken in Mexico—English. The dynamic of Chicano nationalism is one of self-determination as a unique oppressed nationality. Its direction is not for a reunification with bourgeois Mexico.
Although the nationalist aspirations of the Chicano people have recently taken many different forms, such as the farm workers struggles, the land-grant movement, the high school blowouts, campus struggles, and the Chicano antiwar moratoriums, the thrust has been the same: an attempt by La Raza to protect itself against the evils of U.S. capitalism and to determine its own destiny, to take control of the institutions within the Chicano communities which directly affect the lives, labor, and well-being of Chicanos.
One of the most important advances in the struggle for self-determination has been the formation of La Raza Unida parties, particularly the Raza Unida Party in southwestern Texas, which has succeeded for the first time in scoring several electoral victories and gaining local governmental positions in Crystal City. These initial victories by an independent Chicano political party have set an example for all oppressed national minorities in this country, as well as for the labor movement.
They surely have had a great impact on the Chicano struggle as a whole. The capitalist ruling class has not been slow in recognizing the serious threat which this development could pose if picked up by the mass of Chicanos. In a speech in the spring of 1971 before the California Democratic Council, Senator George McGovern, an announced presidential candidate, warned that the Democratic Party had better start giving Chicanos more voice in the party and more representation in government.
He pointed out: “This is not simply an altruistic position for the Democratic Party to take. It is necessary for the survival of the Democratic Party as the party of all the people.” McGovern went on to say: “If the Democratic Party does not take positive steps to include America’s minorities in—and not just with rhetoric but a full share of power—the day will surely come when those minorities will leave the Democratic Party out in the political cold.
“You can’t play games with people any more. You either give them what they deserve or they will give you what you deserve.” One of the things troubling not only McGovern but Nixon is a recent study released by the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Mexican-American Bar Association. This study revealed that, based on the 1960 and 1968 presidential election patterns, a shift of even 6 percent in the Chicano vote in California, Texas, Illinois, and New Mexico could determine the outcome of the 1972 presidential elections.
It is no surprise then that we find the following in the August 6, 1971, New York Times: “Henry M. Ramirez, a one-time migrant worker in California, was named by President Nixon yesterday as chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking Peoples. He is the first Hispanic-American to serve on the President’s staff.” So you see, the Socialist Workers Party is not the only one preparing for 1972. We are not the only ones who see the significance of the initial steps toward building an independent Chicano party.
Our concept of an independent Chicano political party is that it will be a mass party that can mobilize Chicanos in action in the streets, as well as confront the ruling class in the electoral arena. The need for such a party flows directly out of the Chicano struggle itself and its present level of consciousness.
The development and experience of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, the Freedom Now Party in Michigan, and the Black Panther Party, have helped to enrich our understanding of what kind of party it must be, the difficulties to be encountered and the errors to be avoided. They have helped to further refine our concept of independent political action by an oppressed nationality. The lessons we have drawn from the Black struggle have enabled us to play an important role in propagandizing for an independent Chicano party.
Although no such mass independent Chicano party has yet developed, the experiences of the initiating nuclei of such parties in Texas, Colorado, and northern California have helped to deepen the general understanding of the importance of breaking with the capitalist parties, popularizing La Raza Unida Party among broad layers of the Chicano community.
The concrete changes that the Crystal City Raza Unida Party has been able to make have improved the schools of Crystal City and somewhat reduced the grosser forms of oppression suffered by La Raza. These modest gains for the better are dismissed by purist sectarians as “Brown sewer socialism.” But I should point out that at least one-third of the Chicanos in Crystal City don’t even have sewers or running water.
The victories have also shown the distinct limitations of organizing on only a local level, as well as the fact that political office is not state power—it does not change the basic economic relationship of land ownership or the exploitation of Chicano workers.
In Colorado the RUP has been based primarily on the resources and leadership of the Crusade for Justice, which is centered in Denver. While the RUP intervened in the lettuce strike in the San Juan and San Luis valleys of Colorado in 1970, giving support to the farm workers, pressure from the AFL-CIO bureaucrats forced the leader of that strike into withdrawing as a Raza Unida candidate. A modest but encouraging vote was received by the Colorado RUP last November, but this effort was not matched in last spring’s Denver city elections.
The developments in northern California, with energetic campaigns by several candidates, have shown the potential for organizing a statewide party there.
Key to the building of mass independent Raza Unida parties is the development and implementation of a program of democratic and transitional demands which can mobilize the Chicano community in mass action against the specific conditions of their oppression.
The basic components of a program for Chicano liberation flow from the nature of the oppression suffered by La Raza. Since Chicanos are not only exploited as workers but are also oppressed as a nationality, they have the right to fully and unconditionally determine their own destiny, including the right to establish a separate state if they so decide collectively. The demand for Chicano control of the Chicano community is a concretization of this right of self-determination. It is a basic democratic right that Chicanos control all the institutions within the Chicano community. The fight around control of specific institutions in the Chicano community, such as the schools, can serve to mobilize broad layers of the community and raise their consciousness about the nature of their oppression.
Self-determination for oppressed nationalities is one of the uncompleted democratic tasks of the American bourgeois revolutions, a task which can now only be carried out through the socialist revolution. The overwhelmingly proletarian composition of the Chicano nationality requires that a program for Chicano liberation include a series of demands aimed at mobilizing Chicano workers against capitalist exploitation. It is the combining of the national-democratic tasks left over from the epoch of the bourgeois revolution with the proletarian tasks of the socialist revolution which gives the Chicano struggle its profoundly revolutionary dynamic. It is the Chicano working masses who will be in the forefront of the Chicano liberation struggle, as well as in the vanguard of the working class struggle as a whole in the coming American revolution.
The basis for a transitional program for Chicano liberation as developed in the resolution does not come from a rewording of “A Transitional Program for Black Liberation.” It encompasses many demands which have been raised over the past several years in the course of the Chicano struggle itself. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, El Plan de Delano, El Plan de la Raza Unida, El Plan del Barrio, and El Plan de Santa Bárbara are some contributions toward formulating such a program. This document attempts to apply the method and strategy of the Transitional Program, “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.” It incorporates aspects of the programmatic section of “Toward a Mass Feminist Movement,” as well as “A Transitional Program for Black Liberation.” Such a program, based on the objective needs as well as the present consciousness of La Raza, can point in the direction of mass anticapitalist mobilization, and lead toward the goal of Chicano liberation, while at the same time maximizing the gains that can be won short of that goal.
Among the incorrect perspectives for the Chicano movement is that of the liberals. They make the error of believing that the problems of Chicanos can be solved under capitalism. The axis of their strategy is characterized by their attempt to look to one or another section of the ruling class to grant token concessions, in particular the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. An example of this outlook is a Mexican-American Political Association (MAPA) brochure which states: “We have contended since our inception that, with a sound political instrument at our command we would again reenter the political arena and again become a part of the total economic and political life of our country.”
Founded by Chicano Democrats, MAPA has mobilized the Chicano vote for the Democratic Party in almost every election since 1960. Other Chicano organizations such as PASO (Political Association of Spanish-speaking Organizations), the GI Forum, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and the Congress of Mexican-American Unity (CMAU) have a similar orientation.
The most serious of our political opponents within the Chicano movement is the Stalinist Communist Party. Together with the liberals in the Chicano community, they have been instrumental in keeping La Raza tied to capitalist politics. Starting with their “popular front” period in the 1930s, they used their influence in the Chicano community and particularly among Chicano trade unionists to tie Chicanos to the Democratic Party through the Roosevelt campaign in 1936. During the Second World War they urged Chicanos to enlist in the armed forces to fight in what they characterized as a “war for democracy.” In the July 1949 issue of Political Affairs, the theoretical journal of CPUSA, under a section entitled “The Mexican People and the War,” they state, “. . . Mexicans have continued to contribute to the nation’s progress and made an outstanding contribution to the war effort” (emphasis added).
After supporting the imperialist war the Stalinists mobilized the Chicano people to support the Progressive Party campaign of capitalist politician Henry Wallace. They played a key role in an organization called Amigos de Wallace, which they used to hustle the Chicano vote. In the same issue of Political Affairs the CP evaluated the 1948 Wallace campaign as representing for the Chicano people “... the highest stage of political development and activity since the unemployed struggles of the 30’s.”
The present goal of the Communist Party for the creation of what they call a “New People’s Party” is no different from the class-collaborationist Progressive Party of 1948. In the “New Program of the Communist Party, U.S.A.,” adopted by their nineteenth National Convention in 1969, they state the following: “We are for maximum political struggle, for independent positions and forms, within the two-party vise. But the historical direction we see in this struggle, the desired goal, is creation of a new people’s party.” Their concept of a precapitalist third party is directly counterposed to an independent Chicano political party, which is a nationalist formation independent of the capitalist class. Until the forces are assembled for such a third capitalist party, the CP contends that the electoral expression of the Chicano movement “. . . necessarily continues mainly within the Democratic Party, because of the overwhelming participation in the Mexican community in that particular organization” (Viva La Raza, A Communist View on Chicano Liberation). And they want to keep it there!
The Communist Party’s role has been to subordinate the Chicano struggle to the foreign policy needs of the Soviet bureaucracy. Thus during the “third period” (1928-35) ushered in by Stalin, they built “red” trade unions among Chicano farm workers. These led to numerous victimizations of workers, including deportations; then the CP abandoned those unions when the Kremlin changed its line to that of the popular front. While in 1932 they denounced Roosevelt as a fascist and an imperialist, in 1936 they were urging everyone to defeat Landon, the Republican candidate, “at all costs,” thus signaling to those they influenced to vote; for FDR in preference to the CP candidate.
Although the CP claims to be for the right of self-determination for the Chicano people, in reality they view this demand as a tactic, not a principle. In a report to a recent National Committee meeting of the Communist Party, their reporter said the following: “We must put forth a slogan of self-determination of destiny for the Mexican (sic) movement, to stay with the tempo and the mood of that movement today” (emphasis added). “The character of the self-determination, as Lenin ably pointed out, is determined by the historical conditions when socialism is established.” Meaning, of course, that they reserve the right to drop the slogan if the Chicano movement develops in a manner that cuts across their class-collaborationist schemes or the needs of the Soviet bureaucracy. On the theoretical as well as the practical level the Stalinists oppose the independent thrust of Chicano nationalism.
One way the CP covers its support to the Democratic Party in California is to blast Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty while supporting other Democrats such as Senator John Tunney and Congressman Ed Roybal. Thus La Marcha de la Reconquista, in which the CP has significant influence, has issued leaflets calling for Chicanos to register in La Raza Unida Party and at the same time warning that the central need is to prevent Yorty from being the Democratic Party nominee for president.
Since the upheaval on August 29, 1970, in East L.A., some leaders of the Chicano Moratorium Committee who were influenced by the CP have retreated from building mass actions against the war. The Communist Party remains our main opponent within the Chicano movement and an obstacle to building a mass independent Chicano political party.
Other incorrect strategies are put forward by the ultraleftists and by the antinationalist sectarians. The militancy and combativeness among barrio youth was revealed in the aftermath of the police attack on the Chicano Moratorium in East L.A. This same combativity, an expression of deepening nationalist sentiment, was again expressed in the upheaval in Albuquerque this summer, which resulted from an incident involving police brutality. The rebellion in Albuquerque was due to smoldering frustrations in the barrio similar to the conditions which touched off the Black rebellions in 1965 and 1967. But this is quite different from the conscious adventuristic strategy of groups such as the Brown Berets in a number of areas, the Chicano Revolutionary Party (now the Raza Revolutionary Party), and the sectarian socialist tendencies such as the Workers League, the Progressive Labor Party, and the Spartacist League.
Groups such as the Brown Berets, in most places, and the Raza Revolutionary Party attempt to substitute a small vanguard for the mass mobilization of the Chicano community. They reject the possibility of organizing and mobilizing the Chicano community and instead project “armed struggle” by small groups. The Raza Revolutionary Party (RRP) in East Oakland, patterned after the Black Panther Party, tried to do the Panthers one better with their slogan, “Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win, Shoot to Kill.” They refused to support the 1971 Raza Unida Party election campaign in East Oakland. Although most of these youth have been students at Merritt College at one time or another, they belittle Chicano students and the concept of the Brown university. To a mass struggle perspective that includes using the bourgeois educational institutions as organizing centers to reach out to and mobilize the Chicano community around immediate, democratic, and transitional demands, the RRP counterposes a “serve the people” counterinstitutionalism. Their rhetoric of “being on the streets where the people are” and “relating to the people where they are at” amounts to nothing more than social workerism and doing nothing to involve the masses in struggle around demands aimed at the government. By trying to play at having state power and “feeding the masses” (usually about thirty children) they take the capitalist government off the hook.
The Brown Berets in East L.A., who are composed predominantly of working class barrio youth, use a lot of ultraleft Maoist rhetoric. But they became totally paralyzed when a real mass upheaval and confrontation with the police took place in the Chicano community after the Chicano Moratorium. Their response was to go underground. They had no idea of how to respond effectively to the ruling class attack.
The development of mass actions such as the Chicano Moratorium and the establishment of Raza Unida parties have helped to cut across ultraleftism and expose the inadequacy and incorrectness of this line in some cases.
Among the antinationalist sectarians is the Healyite Workers League. Besides their distortions of what Lenin and Trotsky had to say on the national question they have made some odd contributions to the general theoretical impoverishment of ultraleft sectarians. In their pamphlet Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory, the Workers League makes the following observation: “It is precisely the fact that the bourgeois revolution has long been completed in Belgium, England, Canada, and the United States which makes the current nationalist and semi-nationalist movements in these countries so completely reactionary and the demand for the right to self-determination absolutely out of place.” The fact is, however, that for La Raza, for Black people, and for other oppressed minorities, many elementary bourgeois democratic rights have yet to be granted under U.S. capitalism. It has been the inability of U.S. capitalism to assimilate these peoples with full rights into Anglo-American society politically, economically, and culturally, that has left certain tasks of the two bourgeois revolutions in this country unfinished. That and that alone is what gives the coming socialist revolution its combined character. If the democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution have been completed, then, you see, there is no national question. That simplifies the problem exceedingly. It is only a matter of workers in general overthrowing capitalism. That is why the Workers League can say with a straight face that the: nationalist demand for Black control of the Black community “. . . only proposes that the blacks separate themselves from the whites and administer their own oppression.”
They go on to say, “Such a ‘reform’ changes nothing essential to capitalist survival and in fact contributes to that survival by isolating the black workers from the rest of the working class and bringing them closer to the bourgeoisie.” They miss the small fact that it’s the ruling class that has isolated Black and Chicano workers from the rest of the working class, and that the self-organization of the oppressed is an essential step toward their liberation, as well as toward real alliances with other sections of the working class.
Like the Communist Party, the Progressive Labor Party projects a fight against an abstract conception of racism and in practice sees the members of oppressed nationalities solely as workers. PLP [which was then Maoist] was at the height of its influence in the Chicano movement during the Third World Liberation Front strike at San Francisco State College in 1968 and 1969. They have since sharply declined and are now the most despised of the antinationalist sectarians within the Chicano movement.
What the logic of seeing only the class aspect of the oppression of national minorities leads to is reflected in the Spartacist League, which views the Raza Unida Party as petty bourgeois. This is what they say: “Because the leadership of La Raza Unida focus their efforts almost exclusively on winning city council elections in various towns, and because the program of La Raza Unida is vague and ‘class independent,’ while at the same time profoundly reformist—we characterize it as a petty-bourgeois party and our attitude is one of opposition and sharp criticism.” They hasten to add, however: “Our tactical approach is somewhat more friendly as we seek to break the ranks and the best of the leadership of La Raza Unida away from classless third partyism, and win them to the fight for a workers party.” And for Chicano nationalists who feel left in the lurch they add, “Chicanos can form the backbone of the Texas chapter of a nationwide labor party.”
The inability to comprehend the oppression of La Raza on the basis of race, language, and culture, as well as their superexploitation as part of the working class—the dual character of their oppression—is what characterizes all of the reformists as well as the ultraleftists and sectarians. This is their common error. Under pressure from the ruling class all have buckled on the fundamental question of the right of oppressed national minorities to determine their own destiny. This is an antisocialist and antidemocratic attitude.
Yet another current within the Chicano movement is composed of revolutionary nationalists. They are distinguished from the liberals, reformists, ultraleftists, and sectarians by their general understanding of, and support for, what is to one degree or another an independent mass-action perspective. They best express the independent thrust of Chicano nationalism, its uncompromising attitude toward all forms of oppression, and its logic toward an alliance with a revitalized labor movement.
Many people have incorrectly referred to the liberals as cultural nationalists to distinguish them from the revolutionary nationalists. But cultural nationalism is the one thing they have in common. Both support the need to study Chicano history and to build pride in their Indian and Mexican heritage and culture. What separates them is the fact that the liberals and reformists think Chicano oppression can be ended under capitalism, while the revolutionary nationalists are aiming more and more for a complete break from the system.
The term cultural nationalists has been used in a derogatory way by the Black Panther Party in their retreat from Black nationalism. Around the same time that they began to popularize that term they dropped the nationalist slogan “Black Power to Black People,” and began using the slogan “Power to the People.” This latter slogan has been encouraged by the CP as well because it has a deceptively dual character. It both facilitates the blurring of class lines and is antinationalist in spirit.
We support the fight of the Chicano people to reassert their language, their music, their folklore, and other aspects of their culture. This is necessary and progressive. What we point out is that this alone cannot bring about liberation, and that an unrestricted rebirth of the cultural inheritance of the Southwest will only come about as the result of a political and social struggle for complete self-determination.
Revolutionary nationalists such as Corky Gonzáles, José Angel Gutiérrez, and others, have so far generally avoided the traps of adventurism by trying to reach out and mobilize the Chicano community. Gonzáles, in particular, has supported and helped to build mass actions against the war, as well as the Denver high school blowouts. Since his break with the Democratic Party he has maintained an independent nationalist organization—the Crusade for Justice—with support among broad layers of the Chicano community.
Many revolutionary nationalists, however, have no clear, thought-out perspective of how liberation will be won. Thus they are subject to pressure from the liberals and reformists, leading them sometimes to red-bait socialists in the movement and at other times to use ultraleft rhetoric and engage in ultraleft actions. While generally sympathetic to our socialist views, they have not yet fully come to the conclusion that only socialism can provide the solution to the national oppression and class exploitation of the Chicano people. This will become clearer as the struggle unfolds, and we can expect to win many of these militant activists to the banner of revolutionary socialism.
The “For a Proletarian Orientation” minority tendency (FAPO) in the SWP makes many of the same mistakes as our ultraleft sectarian opponents. In the three line-resolutions presented as the basis for their tendency and for reorienting the party, their analysis of the present nationalist movements, and particularly of the Chicano movement, is both inadequate and incorrect. They give absolutely no analysis of the two most important developments in the nationalist movement over the past two years, namely, the Raza Unida parties and the Chicano antiwar movement, particularly the Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970.
In their first document, “For a Proletarian Orientation,” they quote Comrade Frank Lovell to this effect: “The labor party movement may well be sparked by the successful efforts of the Raza Unida Party or the organization of an independent all-Black mass party.” They then add in ridicule, “The workers, don’t you see, will automatically follow the examples of Blacks and Chicanos.” But in their second document, entitled “The Meaning of a Proletarian Orientation,” they explain the meaning of this supposedly incorrect view of Lovell’s by, surprisingly enough, agreeing with him. They state: “In addition, of course, successful Black and Raza Unida parties must be based on Black and Chicano workers. The lessons will not go unnoticed by the white working class, either.” That is the extent of their reference to this major development (i.e., the Raza Unida parties).
In all three of their documents they present a vague conception of community struggles, which they limit to struggles around what they define as class demands. In none of the documents do they raise the question of Chicano control of the Chicano community, either for or against. Do they perhaps feel that this demand can only mean that the Chicano community will come under the control of the Chicano bourgeoisie? Although they don’t state that, such is the logic of their position.
If we were to base our orientation toward the Raza Unida parties on the basis, of what is contained in the three tendency documents all we would have to go on is that the Raza Unida Party must be based on workers. Their failure even to mention the Chicano Moratorium and its impact on the Chicano community shows either ignorance of what is happening there or a complete lack of understanding of how to even begin an analysis. Invariably when they mention Chicanos it’s only as an adjective preceding the noun worker. This tells a lot about their real position.
This one-sided view of the oppression of La Raza leans dangerously close to the antinationalist position of the Workers League or PLP, in spite of occasional FAPO statements that they support the right of self-determination. One can only have grave doubts about this when they agree that the revolution will have a combined character and then refer only to half of the combination, and incorrectly at that.
Another document, “Third World Work and a Proletarian Orientation,” has been presented to the party as a counterresolution to “The Struggle for Chicano Liberation.” This document does not offer a viable alternative to the party’s program and in fact contains serious shortcomings, erroneous conceptions of how the nationalist radicalization of Chicanos has taken place, and incorrect views on the question of party-building and the party’s past activities within the Chicano movement.
One of the strangest things about the “Third World Work” counterresolution is that it makes no mention whatsoever of the resolution which it counters. It has no analysis of where our resolution goes wrong, what its shortcomings are and why it must be rejected. It presents no program for intervening in the Chicano struggle other than the abstract call for going to the community and the working class, as was made in the three Proletarian Orientation tendency documents. They outlined no specific tasks whatsoever for the party to carry out in this sector in the coming period.
Although they mention community control, it is only in relation to Chicano workers, both men and women, and with no analysis of the nationalist dynamic of the struggle for Chicano control of the Chicano community. It makes no sense to talk about being in favor of self-determination without giving an analysis of the concretization of that right in the democratic demand for Chicano control of the Chicano community.
For all their talk about doing Chicana work they don’t even mention the historic Chicana conference in Houston this spring. Perhaps they didn’t identify with the militantly feminist thrust of this conference.
Their document contains a whole series of factual errors. They state on page 3: “During the period 1964-1967 the party did not have any position on the Huelga movement. For that matter, the party has not had a position on the Mexican-American question to this date.” That is just not true. We have always had a position of support for the farm workers’ struggle that goes back before 1964 to the 1930s and 1940s.
On the second point, George Breitman made an important observation in an article in 1969 entitled, “Black Nationalism, Class Struggle and Party History,” that our positions and analysis are developed in our press and literature and not just in formal convention resolutions. Our analysis neither begins nor ends with the adoption of a line resolution. Our participation in the actual struggle over the past several years and our general theoretical understanding of the national question has made the present resolution possible. Further experience will deepen our understanding and further round out our line. That is the only realistic and Marxist approach to the relation between theory and practice.
One of their most barren contributions is the Proletarian Orientation tendency’s schematic conception of the universities, the state colleges, the junior colleges, and the high schools. The latter two, they say, have proletarian Chicanos, while the four-year institutions have what they refer to as “the most privileged and most bourgeoisified within the community.” “These elements are susceptible to the most blatant petty-bourgeois dilettantism.”
They falsely claim that we are for orienting only to these four-year institutions, although, according to them, only one-half of one percent of Chicano youth are to be found there. First of all, do they consider the historic San Francisco State strike in 1968 and 1969 at a four-year institution and the Third World Liberation Front strike at U.C. Berkeley, another four-year institution, to be examples of petty-bourgeois dilettantism? This, by the way, was the reason the Black Panthers gave at that time for abstaining from these militant struggles which mobilized significant layers of the Black and Raza communities. These struggles paved the way for Merritt College and without them a Chicano studies department would not have been formed there at that time. Not having fetishes about the size or the supposed class compositions of bourgeois educational institutions, we were able to retain a flexible attitude and use political criteria for intervening first at San Francisco State, then at U.C. Berkeley, then at Merritt, and soon after in the Oakland High School Chicano blowout in the fall of 1969.
This tendency tries to make a case against the four-year institutions in favor of the two-year junior colleges, on the basis of dissimilar Raza enrollment. This is a sterile conception. If that were the case we should have abandoned Merritt College long ago. At the new Hill Campus there are only 50 Chicanos. At the Grove Street site, where a protracted struggle took place this spring for community control, there are only about 150 Chicanos. Yet at the University of California in Berkeley there are 625 Chicano students. But we didn’t abandon Merritt, because it is a political question where one intervenes and not just a numbers game.
One of the serious problems at Merritt College, which generally prevails on two-year campuses, is that some 15 to 20 percent drop out during the fall quarter and during the spring quarter some 40 percent drop out. About 30 percent transfer to four-year institutions. This high turnover rate makes continuity in work and activity with Chicano students more difficult.
These are concrete problems which the “Third World Work” counterresolution doesn’t mention in relation to important achievements at Merritt College. Among these achievements have been the building of two Northern California Chicano Moratoriums, the Raza contingent to the November 15, 1969, antiwar demonstrations, support to the Oakland High School Chicano blowout, and the building of the community-based Raza Unida Party in the East Oakland barrio—all of which we played an important role in building. Contrary to the statement on page 6 of the counterresolution, the Northern California Raza Unida Party did not just “spring up” but was the result of two years of consistent work and propagandizing at Merritt and in the Chicano struggle as a whole.
One of their most serious errors is the evaluation of the September 16 mass action in East Los Angeles and our role in it. The document contends, “All it showed was the Chicano community trailing behind the gubernatorial candidate of the Democratic Party.” Quite to the contrary, it was a militant outpouring of Raza youth, though under a reformist leadership which attempted to blunt the militancy through tight monitoring to prevent people from joining the march, and by inviting the California state Democratic leader Jesse Unruh and the navy to have floats. Without our participation we can confidently say that even that action, with all its limitations, would not have taken place.
Another serious factual error is their evaluation of what occurred in Crystal City and how the Raza Unida Party was formed there. In their attempt to make reality fit their schematic view of how they would have liked to have seen it take place, they say the following: “A combination of both high school blow-outs over racist practices and a labor struggle at a nearby Del Monte plant merged not only to politicalize but guide the predominantly Chicano community in organizing the Raza Unida Party.” Unfortunately for our misnamed Proletarian Orientation tendency, it all began around the demand of Chicanos to elect their own homecoming queen and elect their cheerleaders. This demand raised the whole question of who controlled the schools which led to a confrontation between the entire Chicano community and the racist Anglo power structure.
It was in the process of this struggle over democratic demands around community control of the schools that the Chicano workers became radicalized. The victories of the Raza Unida Party in April 1970 further inspired them, and imitating the student youth they began “taking care of business” at the workplace. They didn’t look around to see who had been rooted in the cannery for the last fifteen years to be their leader. Instead they elected José Angel Gutiérrez, a graduate from a four-year bourgeois institution with a master’s degree and with no other credentials than having led a student strike to its logical conclusion and victory!
If these workers had read the “Third World Work” counterresolution they would have known to expect “only the most blatant petty-bourgeois dilettantism.” The developments in Crystal City confirm our analysis of the present radicalization 100 percent and prove that the drafters of the counterresolution do not understand the dynamic of the nationalist struggle. In spite of their protests the logic of their position leads them away from our analysis of Chicano nationalism and the combined character of the third American revolution.
Since our convention in 1969, a series of key questions has emerged or taken on added importance in discussions within the Chicano movement. One of the most important is the question of the war in Indochina. The war remains the central political question to which revolutionaries have to address themselves on a world scale. The growth of the antiwar movement and the deepening of antiwar sentiment have helped to create the climate for the Chicano moratoriums which have taken place over the past year and a half. After the August 29,1970, National Chicano Moratorium, which was the largest mobilization of an oppressed nationality to date against the war, the moratorium leadership, under the pressure of the ruling class attack and the influence of the Communist Party, retreated from united-front mass mobilizations against the war. However, other sections of the Chicano movement have begun to understand the importance of mass actions against the war, particularly in relation to building the Raza Unida parties. The successful mobilization of 4,000 Chicanos and Latinos in the Raza contingent in the April 24, 1971, antiwar action in San Francisco testifies to the potential for mobilizing the Chicano community in antiwar demonstrations that could surpass the August 29 Chicano Moratorium. In addition Corky Gonzáles recently addressed 700 Black and Chicano GIs at the base named after the notorious Mexican and Indian killer, Fort Kit Carson!
We must consciously understand the significance of these events in order to enlist the support of Chicano activists in building antiwar actions. During the fall of 1968 and the spring of 1969 extremely important struggles took place around the demands for Chicano studies and open enrollment, in which we played an important role. This continues to be an issue that generates controversy and leads to broader struggles over Chicano control of the Chicano community.
The question of Chicanas as women, which was tentatively discussed at the first two Chicano Youth Liberation conferences in Denver, has now emerged as a full-blown issue and is rapidly becoming a major point of discussion and debate within the Chicano movement. The deepening of nationalist consciousness among Chicanos and the development of the women’s liberation movement have helped to spark feminist consciousness among Chicanas and Latinas. The appearance of such Chicana newspapers as El Grito del Norte and the Conferencia de las Mujeres por La Raza are all indications of a growing feminist consciousness among Chicanas.
Certain leaders within the Chicano movement tend to view the women’s liberation movement as a “gringa thing” and are suspicious and hostile toward developing Chicana feminism. But as the resolution “Toward a Mass Feminist Movement” points out, feminism and nationalism are complementary. Feminism leads Chicanas to discover their worth as human beings and therefore strengthens their confidence and desire to struggle against all forms of oppression they face. The national campaign for repeal of all antiabortion laws will play an important role in sharpening the debate which is now being started, and by involving Chicanas in actions against their oppression as women, deepen Chicana feminism.
At the recent Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, the idea of a national Raza Unida Party was raised and a conference was projected for November 1971, to discuss the possibilities of forming one. In viewing this question several things have to be taken into consideration. First is the current strength—and size—of the local and state Raza Unida parties and the existence of a developing leadership and apparatus which can function on a national scale. It is not possible simply to declare a national party into existence. Its growth must flow from the actual strength and consciousness of the parties as they are in real life. The crisis of leadership has not revealed itself as severely within the Chicano movement as in the Black community, but nevertheless, the number of Raza nationalists who understand the need to break with capitalist politics is still limited.
José Angel Gutierrez expressed the opinion that the task now before the Raza Unida parties is to organize statewide, strengthen their apparatuses, and get on the ballot statewide for 1972. This would be a great step forward for the Raza Unida Party and is the prerequisite for a viable national organization to be launched.
The 1972 presidential elections will put every Raza Unida Party leadership to the test. The maneuvers of McGovern and other slick Kennedy-type liberal Democratic Party politicians will bring tremendous pressure on these new independent formations to come back into the Democratic Party fold, if not on the local level, at least on the state or national level. Support to the Democratic Party in 1972 would be a serious setback to the development of independent Raza Unida parties and greatly miseducate the Chicano people as to who their oppressors and enemies really are.
The resolution presents a realistic and rounded set of tasks for the party in the coming period. The resolution states: “In aiding the development of an independent mass Chicano movement, the Socialist Workers Party must help popularize the ideas of and help in other ways to build the Chicano parties, the Chicano antiwar movement, the high school and college struggles, and other important actions, including the farm workers’ and boycott movements, the struggles of Raza women, the developing movement of Chicano prisoners, and the defense of victims of political frame-ups.”
The 1972 SWP election campaign will present a unique opportunity to carry our program to thousands of Chicanos and play an important role in the fight to maintain the independence of the Raza Unida parties in opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties and whatever New Politics formations or tickets the CP and various liberals or muddleheaded radicals may conjure up. Our election campaigns will serve as an excellent model for Raza Unida Party activists of how to utilize the electoral arena to advance the struggle. Carrying out these tasks is the responsibility of the entire party and not solely the job of our Raza comrades. It is important for revolutionary socialists to understand and help provide leadership for the Chicano movement.
Since the 1963 “Freedom Now” resolution we have had a very rich discussion on the national question in relation to the Black population in the United States. This theoretical and practical preparation has been of singular importance in enabling us to understand and participate in the present radicalization. We must now begin a similar process in relation to the history of the Chicano people. This is not only a matter of making contributions to the Chicano struggle, but also involves learning from it. The rich experience of struggle of the Chicano people against their oppression is not only an important, but an essential, chapter in the history of the working class of the United States. This history as well as the fresh lessons which we are gathering will greatly enrich our understanding of, and activity in, all the other mass movements, including, for example, the Puerto Rican movement.
Among our major campaigns this fall will be the antiwar actions November 6. Where possible we should support or help organize the September 16 Chicano Moratoriums against the war which were projected in Denver this past June. The national abortion law repeal campaign will play an important role in mobilizing and linking up with the emerging Chicana feminists who can be expected to have as much impact on the Chicano movement as the women’s liberation movement has had on the nation as a whole. We will also be giving support to the developing Raza Unida parties. With the kind of unprecedented election campaign we are projecting, plus the Militant’s increased circulation throughout the Southwest, we can confidently predict important gains.
To maximize our ability to take advantage of the opportunities before us, we will be doing a number of things. We have the immediate perspective of strengthening our press coverage and the national coordination and direction of our Chicano work. We want to increase the writing and publication of our general literature on the Chicano struggle, which plays an especially important educational role.
We also hope to be able to increase our collaboration with our Mexican cothinkers, demonstrating the kind of internationalism that is necessary to advance the Chicano struggle. One concrete area of collaboration will be defense of the political prisoners in Mexico and throughout Latin America.
In conclusion, let me quote the final paragraph of the resolution, which summarizes our perspectives on the revolutionary party and the struggle for Chicano liberation: “The mass revolutionary socialist party we seek to build must be multinational as well as proletarian in composition, uniting revolutionary Marxists from the different nationalities in this country into a single, centralized combat party. At the present stage of building such a party, the recruitment and training of cadres is our foremost task. More and more Chicano activists will join the SWP as they come to see the need for a socialist revolution and for a Leninist party to lead that revolution to victory, a party with a correct program on all aspects of the anticapitalist struggle, which unconditionally supports the fight of the Chicano people for self-determination, fights alongside them for their full liberation, and for the full liberation of all humanity.”
Main Document Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive