Youthful wave of Latino activists tackling both past, present issues

January 21, 2008
By Carlos Guerra

Times have changed since the late 1960s, when civil rights struggles raged in America, and I was among the students demanding solutions to civil rights issues, many of which still bedevil us.

This came to mind when I attended the National Conference on Immigration and Refugee Rights and saw how many attendees were young people ready to take on the world.

In the late 1960s, my generation also was facing a worsening war, and America was learning that having both guns and butter was easier said than done. And seething were racial and economic inequities that were tolerated, if not openly accepted.

In South Texas, Mexican American baby boomers had not inherited the patience of their antecedents. So, in the barrios and hamlets amid Texas' farms and huge ranches, young activists organized to demand more and better schooling and economic opportunities.

But most of all, they demanded dignity and respect of their worth as human beings.

The Latino baby boomers' movimiento focused on civil rights, and it spread through the Southwest where Latinos were most concentrated, and later, through the small Latino settlements that dotted virtually every state.

The popular uprising transformed many things in our nation, which finally — if begrudgingly — started giving Latinos some of the respect and visibility they had been denied.

School funding eventually was made more adequate — if not much more equitably distributed — and the doors to colleges and universities and better jobs were cracked just a bit wider.

But as more of the young activists advanced — and aged and became parents — their assertiveness diminished.

Today, many of the old issues remain, at best, only partially remedied. But a growing litany of new issues has arisen to revive a youthful activism among the progeny of warriors of the 1970s — and the many others who now have become part of the fabric of a new America.

In the 1960s, María Jiménez worked for the United Farm Workers. She now works for the Central American Resource Center. Asked if activism among youth was on the rise, she answered, "Definitely!" as did others, like Monica García, youth coordinator for San Antonio's Southwest Workers Union.

"Some of the issues go back to the '60s and the Chicano Movement," García said, "but the (immigration) raids, the separation of families are very strong issues with youth because they're happening to their families."

"They are dealing with problems with schools and access to universities," Jiménez said, "but young people are responding to their communities being denied rights in different ways, from attitudes about immigrants to many other issues.

"Many of the (young activists) are U.S. citizens, but a parent or a brother or sister may not be," Jiménez added, "so they are defending themselves, their families and their communities."

Just as in the 1970s, the new activism among Latino youth is spreading nationally. But given that Latinos are no longer heavily concentrated only in the Southwest, the emerging movement has a more national face.

And how the youth are organizing has changed dramatically.

"The activism manifests itself in very different ways these days," says Felipe Vargas, a St. Mary's grad now on the Indiana University faculty who brought a dozen students to the confab.

"We were used to seeing kids on the streets," he said. "But given that so many of these kids are challenged with their document status, they have to express themselves in different forms, in other media.

"They do this by organizing online, text messaging, MySpace, Facebook, electronic media, doing videos," he added.

"Their purpose is not so much to bring down some multinational corporation but to influence their friends," Vargas said. "They're being educated by the media, not necessarily by the schools, so they're creating new media to counter what is being said about them."

Source: The San Antonio Express-News