Marching with Brown Berets
1 media/adelitas-3.7719783b.jpg 2023-05-29T22:13:56-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 42723 4 Gloria Arellanes (left, second row) marches in a Robert Kennedy Requiem Memorial Procession the day after he was killed, from Belvedere Park to East Los Angeles College Stadium for a Catholic Mass. Brown Berets were security. #feminism #chicanx #protest #LosAngeles plain 2023-05-30T12:27:40-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27This page has annotations:
- 1 media/adelitas-3.7719783b.jpg media/adelitas-3.7719783b.jpg 2023-05-18T13:15:42-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 Gloria Arellanes and Las Adelitas de Aztlán Claire Saguy 20 This page examines the Chicana feminists behind the August 1970 Moratorium, spotlighting the remarkable organizing and leadership of Gloria Arellanes. Not only did Arellanes serve for two years as the first female minister for the Brown Berets, but she mobilized thousands of Chicanos while working for the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against the Vietnam War in 1969 and 1970. Oppression did not originate from outside forces alone, however. Within their own Chicano organization, the Brown Berets, Arellanes and other women faced a stifling male-dominated macho culture. In February 1970, droves of women dropped their memberships and formed their own organization, Las Adelitas de Aztlán, led by Arellanes. The Adelitas played an active role in demonstrations, reclaiming their power. Six months after the August Moratorium, they opened a medical clinic, La Clínica Familiar del Barrio, which supplied free medical services to the community, including women’s reproductive care. The clinic continues to serve the East L.A. community today as AltaMed. plain 2023-05-30T12:48:03-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
- 1 2023-05-30T12:35:56-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 Although Gloria Arellanes was a Brown Beret minister, her leading male counterparts overshadowed her. Claire Saguy 3 plain 2023-05-30T12:43:57-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
- 1 2023-05-30T12:36:15-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 Leading the march, Brown Beret men served as security. Claire Saguy 2 plain 2023-05-30T12:43:11-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
- 1 2023-05-30T12:36:41-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 Community members march in support of the cause. Claire Saguy 2 plain 2023-05-30T12:43:09-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
- 1 2023-05-30T12:37:08-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 The Brown Berets and their community walk through lower-income East L.A. neighborhoods. Claire Saguy 2 plain 2023-05-30T12:43:10-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
- 1 2023-05-30T12:38:09-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27 The Brown Beret men model Chicano masculinity and leadership to young boys. Claire Saguy 2 plain 2023-05-30T12:43:10-07:00 Claire Saguy 962579d84737790111312949a61f6c7c45818d27
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Chicano Moratorium
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Por Lindsay Beckwith, Gabi Siegel, Claire Saguy, Aidan LeFrancois
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The Chicano Moratorium emerged as a response to the disproportionate impact of the Vietnam War on Mexican Americans. With a high number of Latino troops drafted and experiencing higher casualty rates, Mexican Americans faced discrimination and inequality both in the war and back home. Factors such as limited access to education and economic opportunities contributed to their overrepresentation in Vietnam casualties. Initially motivated by patriotism and a desire to prove themselves, the Chicano community eventually grew disillusioned with the war and formed the Chicano Moratorium, a massive protest in East Los Angeles in 1970. This movement, joined by over 20,000 Mexican Americans, aimed to raise awareness about the unjust treatment of their community, demand equal rights, and challenge systemic racism and oppression.
The Chicano Moratorium, a protest on August 29, 1970, initially intended to be peaceful in response to Latino deaths in the Vietnam War, quickly turned chaotic. It resulted in the death of Ruben Salazar and around 200 arrests. The protest started near Belvedere Park, with participants marching along various streets until reaching Laguna Park for a rally. However, clashes between police and protesters erupted at a liquor store, escalating with the use of riot control measures and tear gas. The situation intensified, leading to fires and confusion, and eventually required additional law enforcement units. Eventually chaos subsided leading to a day that will never be forgotten.A remarkable feminist leader and organizer of Tongva and Mexican heritage, Gloria Arellanes played a key role in the Chicano Moratorium. Not only did Arellanes mobilize thousands of Chicanos while working for the National Chicano Moratorium Committee in 1969 and 1970, but she had also previously served for two years as the first female minister for the Brown Berets. In February 1970, she and the female membership separated from the Brown Berets due to their discriminatory macho culture and formed the women's group "Las Adelitas de Aztlán," which Arellanes led. The Adelitas played an active role in demonstrations, reclaiming their power. Six months after the August Moratorium, they opened a medical clinic, La Clínica Familiar del Barrio, which supplied free medical services to the community, including women’s reproductive care. The clinic continues to serve the East L.A. community today as AltaMed.
Ruben Salazar was a prominent journalist and civil rights activist during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Born in Juarez, Mexico, Salazar grew up in El Paso, Texas, and went on to study journalism at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso). He later worked for several newspapers in California, including the Los Angeles Times, where he served as a foreign correspondent in Vietnam. Salazar’s involvement in the Chicano Movement was primarily through his journalism, which focused on issues facing the Mexican-American community in the U.S. He was an advocate for civil and human rights, and his reporting helped bring attention to police brutality and discrimination against Chicanos. Salazar’s life was tragically cut short on August 29, 1970, during the Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles. Salazar was covering the peaceful protest against the Vietnam War when he was struck and killed by a tear gas canister fired by a sheriff’s deputy. His death sparked outrage and protest within the Chicano community, who saw it as an example of police brutality and the government’s disregard for their rights. Salazar’s legacy continues to inspire journalists and activists today. He was posthumously awarded the George Polk Award for Journalism in 1971, and a park in East Los Angeles was named in his honor. There are also annual Ruben Salazar scholarships and journalism awards given to students who demonstrate a commitment to social justice and equality. -
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Gloria Arellanes and Las Adelitas de Aztlán
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This page examines the Chicana feminists behind the August 1970 Moratorium, spotlighting the remarkable organizing and leadership of Gloria Arellanes. Not only did Arellanes serve for two years as the first female minister for the Brown Berets, but she mobilized thousands of Chicanos while working for the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against the Vietnam War in 1969 and 1970. Working with the Brown Berets, Arellanes and other women faced a stifling male-dominated macho culture and ultimately dropped their memberships in February 1970 to form their own organization, Las Adelitas de Aztlán, led by Arellanes.
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[The] Brown Berets [were] a good group of young people who wanted to make changes; who were tired of the police brutality; were tired of not being able to go to college; were tired of not getting good jobs; living in poor housing; knowing that people around them, their own family, needed healthcare and didn’t have that. These were all things that touch my heart and I have passions for (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
Gloria Arellanes began working with the Brown Berets in 1968, when appointed Minister of Finance and Correspondence. As the only woman minister, however, she held little to no decision-making power. In fact, if not for her “big-mouthed” and physically large presence—at 300 pounds at five-foot-eight-inches—she likely would have never entered Brown Beret leadership at all. Still, the title “Minister of Finance and Correspondence” meant little more than “glorified secretary,” according to Arellanes, who recalls receiving mostly administrative work (Juan Herrera, 2015). Brown Beret male leadership, for instance, allotted Arellanes and the women with assembling their newsletter, titled La Causa. Unfortunately, however, scant financial resources severely limited production and distribution (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.).
We were not accepted. It was very difficult. When people learned about Brown Berets as time went on, they looked at it as militant troublemakers…So, we were told, “You’re going to come across people that don’t like you, and you’re just going to have to take it." (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
In spite of the organization’s economic struggles and macho culture, Arellanes persevered. Just as she had to rise above the Brown Berets’ reputation as “militant troublemakers” to win neighborhood support, she tried to get along with Brown Beret members. Having become sufficiently accepted by their community in 1969, the Brown Berets opened the East L.A. Free Clinic, later to be known as El Barrio Free Clinic, on Whittier Boulevard (Juan Herrera, 2015). David Sanchez, the Brown Beret prime minister, asked Arellanes to run it. Even with no medical training or expertise whatsoever, she rose to the occasion, acquiring volunteering doctors, nurses, and technicians as well as medical equipment. As Arellanes later stated in a 2016 interview conducted by the Southern Oral History Program, “No one had ever done that in East L.A. (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
Once established, community members constantly filled the clinic, worked exclusively by women. Despite high demand, however, the Clinic’s high-demand services were short-lived. Brown Beret men consistently came to the Clinic at night to party, leaving behind a mess for the women to clean. Ultimately, Arellanes says she gave Sanchez an ultimatum: “‘I will leave if you don’t change this, and I will take all the women with me, and maybe some of the younger men” (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016). In February 1970, the Brown Berets lost virtually all their female membership (Juan Herrera, 2015).
The women did not give up their activism along with their membership—far from it. Under the leadership of Arellanes, they formed Las Adelitas de Aztlán, a group for Chicana’s rights named after La Adelita, the revolutionary woman who fought alongside the men in Mexico’s Revolution (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.). By this time, Arellanes had also joined the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, helping coordinate marches protesting the disproportionate drafting of young Chicanos in the Vietnam War. Her contributions to the August 1970 moratorium cannot be understated. Without her instrumental outreach in the North California Bay Area region, traveling, making phone calls, and distributing flyers (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.), the Moratorium’s participants may not have reached twenty or thirty thousand (Carlos Francisco Parra, 2020).
Arellanes also played a leading role in the Moratorium procession. Flying a banner from her father’s truck, she sat on the back shouting chants into a megaphone. Later, she got up on the stage to speak. Soon after, however, she was tear-gassed. The police had arrived, helicopters circling above the peaceful march. Everything became a blur. Stampedes of panicked people pushed through the hot summer air in search of safety.
We’re trying to listen to the news, and then all of a sudden, we see from the direction of Whittier Boulevard, the smoke going up. And people are crying. They can’t believe that such a beautiful event ended so tragically terrible. Because it took so much work to bring people out... It was the largest gathering I had ever seen the Chicano people do. And not only Chicano people—there was all kinds of people there... It was a real unifying force, and it was destroyed like that (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016).
The violent aftermath of the march marked the end of Arellanes' involvement with the Moratorium Committee and the Chicano Movement altogether (Gloria Arellanes, personal communication, June 26, 2016). Even removed from the Chicano Movement, Arellanes continued to pursue her passion in providing free community healthcare. About six months after the August Moratorium, she opened another clinic on Atlantic Boulevard, which supplied free medical services to the community, just as the Brown Berets' Barrio Free Clinic did before shutting down. It also provided important reproductive care and abortion counseling to women. Although Arellanes resigned from the board in 1972, the clinic continues to serve East L.A. inhabitants as AltaMed (Gloria Arellanes Facts for Kids, n.d.).
Works Cited
Carlos Francisco Parra. (2020, August 20). The Chicano Moratorium 50 Years Later: Retracing the Mexican American Struggle Against the Vietnam
War. http://www.nomadicborder.com/the-chicano-moratorium-50-years-later.html
Chicano Moratorium Flyer. (n.d.). https://www.lucypr.com/theater/august-29/august-29-photos/
Gloria Arellanes. (2016, June 26). Civil Rights History Project Interview completed by the Southern Oral History Program under contract to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Library of Congress, 2016 [Personal communication].
Gloria Arellanes facts for kids. (n.d.). https://kids.kiddle.co/Gloria_Arellanes#Las_Adelitas_de_Aztl.C3.A1n
Juan Herrera. (2015, March 26). ¡La Lucha Continua! Gloria Arellanes and Women in the Chicano Movement. KCET. https://www.kcet.org/history-society/la-lucha-continua-gloria-arellanes-and-women-in-the-chicano-movement
La Causa Newspaper. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Letter Resignation. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Marching with Brown Berets. (n.d.). https://www.california-mexicocenter.org/the-chicana-revolt-las-adelitas-de-aztlan/
Oscar Castillo. (mid 1970s). Free Barrio Clinic Signage.
Taylor Davidson. (n.d.). Gloria Arellanes. Chicana Por Mi Raza. https://chicanapormiraza.org/chicanas/gloria-arellanes
Vanessa Martínez & Julia Barajas. (2020, August 23). The Chicana Revolt: Las Adelitas de Aztlán. The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc.