SPECIAL: FOUR PART SERIES

National Airdate: April 12th & 19th, 1996
Network:PBS
Description: Covers the Chicano movement from 1965 to 1975.
Features the Chicano land struggle, Cesar Chavez and the UFW,
Los Angeles High School walk-outs and the creation of La Raza
Unida third political party.

(more…)

Show remembers ‘Chicano’ struggle
CHICAGO TRIBUNE, April 12, 1996
by Teresa Puente

Ramon Cruz remembers walking into Chicago’s now-defunct Coliseum to a sea of brown faces waiting to hear the late farm worker and union leader Cesar Chavez.

“The crowd was just so inspired by this man. He wasn’t a very big man, but he spoke in a simple and humble way,” said Cruz, now 59, recalling the 1969 speech. “He was saying we must not use violence. But we can’t just give up.”

Cruz, who described himself as a mere “foot soldier” in the Chicano civil rights movement, was reminded of the Chavez speech after viewing a new documentary about that era t the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen.

The series called, “Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement,” is the first television production to explore this era of American history from 1965 to 1975. It will air over two nights, Friday and April 19 on PBS.

“We call it a landmark series because nothing like this has ever been done,” said the series producer Hector Galán, of Austin Texas, who came to Chicago last week for the showing. “I think it’s going to be eye-opening for a lot of the American viewing audience, especially non-Latinos, to find out there was another organized civil rights movement taking place in the shadow of the African American movement.”

The $3 million project was more than six years in the making, with most of that time spent on fundraising. It wasn’t easy to sell the word Chicano - a “loaded term,” Galán said, not embraced by all Mexican Americans. But the producers chose the word Chicano - derived from the Aztec language - because it fit the sentiment of the movement.

“It was a term used disparagingly to describe the poorest of the poor,” Galán said. “But we took that term and wore that badge with pride.”

The documentary primarily focuses on people and events in the Southwestern United States, but the Chicano movement influenced Mexican Americans across the nation and in Midwestern cities, such as Chicago.

A chapter of the La Raza Unida party formed in Chicago.

Meeting the educational needs of Mexican America students also was one of the paramount issues of the movement.

In 1968, more than 15,000 Mexican American students walked out of high schools in East Los Angeles in protest of an educational system they said did not meet their needs, the documentary shows. The scene played out five years later on Chicago’s Near Southwest Side.

In 1973, students walked out in protest of dilapidated conditions at the now-closed Froebel High School, 2202 W. 21st St. Parents and students wanted the Board of Education to build a new high school in Pilsen, and they won their battle in June 1973. The high school was named Benito Juarez High School.

Latino Youth Alternative High School in Chicago was founded during that period to help fill the educational void. Non-profit, social service organizations, including Casa Aztlan, Centro de la Causa and Mujeres Latinas en Accion, also were born then.

Galán hopes the series can inspire Latino youth.

“We’re hoping the series will spark a fervor in the movement or lack of movement today. The question of race is still very strong in the American psyche,” Galán said. “Given the climate, I’m hoping the series may inspire young people to get involved.”

Austin director records Chicano culture for PBS
DAILY TEXAN
by Eric Enders

Austin-based filmmaker Hector Galán hopes his latest PBS documentary production will help Americans better understand a little-known aspect of Mexican American history.

The series, titled Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, covers the years 1965 - 1975. The last two episodes of the four-part series air Friday at 9 p.m. on KLRU in Austin and other PBS stations nationwide. It is being co-produced by Galán Productions and the National Latino Communications Center.

Galán said he and others involved in the project spent six years compiling footage and interviewing witnesses.

“The richest material came from people’s garages and closets, stuff they had stored away,” Galán said. “My goal is to find these stories that are out there and introduce them to a wider audience that may not know about them.”

Galán said he tried to focus the series on everyday people who tried to fight discrimination against Chicanos.

“The most people we feature are those men and women who have participated, who had the courage to stand up and say, ya basta, enough,” Galán said.

The four parts of the series focus on the themes of labor, land, education and political power.

Part one told the story of early efforts to gain land and civil rights for Chicanos. Part two focused on César Chávez and the United Farm Worker’s struggle for higher wages and better working conditions. Esther Hernandez, an artist who was a farm worker in California as a child and whose works depict the themes of the movement, was featured in the episode.

“I wanted to use my skills to give people insight into the lives of farm workers,” Hernandez said. “Basically, they were invisible. Nobody knew anything about who they were, what they did, what they talked about. There really aren’t that many artists who have lived that life like I have. In some ways, working out in the fields is what started me shaping things….It was my creative field, so to speak, because I had nothing else.”

Part three of the series, to be aired on Friday, will feature Sal Castro, a teacher who in 1968 led a student walkout at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, after which he was arrested and spent five days in jail.

“I knew there was something wrong about the schools before I even walked in,” Castro said.

“Mexican kids were not encouraged to go to college, and there were very few Latino kids in the Student Council. They were being systematically excluded…I’m very proud and happy that it happened,” Castro said. “I was charged with fifteen counts of conspiring to disturb the peace. When we were jailed, Bobby Kennedy contributed $10,000 to our bail. He wanted to show his support for the Mexican American community.”

The series’ last episode is about the Raza Unida Party, a third part formed in Texas to address Chicano concerns.

Ricardo Romo, UT vice provost and history professor, served as a technical advisor on the project.

“I went through and saw all the footage they put together,” Romo said. “Historians can’t be filmmakers, but we make sure everything’s covered, that no key figures are missing, that there are no inaccuracies. Every single word, every single phrase uttered, was reviewed by the historians.”

Romo said the series is an important event for independent filmmakers like Galán, an Austin resident since 1984.

“Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater and Hector Galán are proving that you can be just as creative here in Austin as you can in Hollywood,” Romo said.

Galán said it is crucial that UT students learn about the history of the Chicano movement.

“The University of Texas sits right on the west side of I-35 and many students have not ventured over to the east side of I-35 to see how those people live, ” Galán said. “This is a way to introduce people to a culture they are unfamiliar with. I know that watching a television show isn’t going to change the world but people have a view of Mexican Americans that is not real.”

Romo said the series could also help educate UT students about gains made by the Mexican American civil rights movement.

“I lived through that period,” Romo said. “I stood in picket lines with César Chávez and back then most of us didn’t realize we were making history. Most students at this university are not familiar with the story. It’s just not a story that’s been told before and this documentary gives us an understanding of the struggle and sacrifice that went on in our communities.”

Jose Luís Ruiz, the series executive producer, came up with the original idea for the documentary seven years ago.

“We thought Mexican Americans had contributed a substantial role to civil rights in this country and not many Americans know about it,” Ruiz said. “But after we went through a series of rejections, we realized that we needed to sit down with major funders and re-educate them.”