REVOLUTIONARIES
This interview brings out a part of our history that is rarely taught in schools and some lessons for today�s activists from our movement�s past.
The newspaper Fight Back!interviewed Carlos Montes, one of the founders and former Minister of Information of the Brown Berets National Office in East Los Angeles from 1967 to 1970.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Brown Berets emerged as one of the most powerful and militant organizations in the Chicano liberation movement.
Like the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets were hit hard by government repression.
WHO WERE THE BROWN BERETS?
Fight Back!: Carlos Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets in 1967.
Carlos Montes: We were a group of young Chicano revolutionaries from the barrios of the Southwest fighting for the self-determination of our people.
We organized in our barrios, published the newspaper La Causa, ran a free clinic and fought against police brutality as well as against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
We evolved from a youth group called Young Citizens for Community Action, to Young Chicanos for Community Action then to the Brown Berets.
We evolved from civic participation and assimilation to revolutionary nationalism.
The brown beret was a symbol of the pride in our culture, race and history. It also symbolized our anger and militancy and fight against the long history of injustice against the Chican@ people in the U.S., especially the Southwest.
We claimed the Southwest as Aztlan, the original homeland of the indigenous Aztec ancestors and founders of Mexico City, Tenochtitlan. We were from poor working class families growing up with the racism and police abuse.
Fight Back!: Why did you join?
Carlos Montes: My family came to L.A. from Juarez, Mexico in 1956. I grew up in the barrios of South L.A. and East L.A. and experienced the racist conditions in the schools, police abuse, drugs, and the poor living conditions.
This led me to get involved in the first Chicano student group, the Mexican American Student Association (MASA), at East L.A. College in 1967 which saw using education as the solution to injustice.
I was also working as a youth center director and came across Young Chicanos for Community Action and La Raza newspaper, which were starting to voice opposition to the racist conditions in the barrio.
I was drawn to the more active and direct action approach of Young Chicanos for Community Action, which became the Brown Berets in late 1967.
