____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Chicano’s Perspective on the Summer of
Love, 1967
By Frank S. Lechuga
When I was in
Monterey, California last year, attending my second daughter’s wedding
reception I had the opportunity to look back to when I drove my lowered ‘59
Chevy Impala from L.A. to San Pancho up the Pacific Coast Highway, through Big Sur,
giving rides to hitchhiking hippies.
It was my first
trip up the coast to San Francisco. I had just completed my freshman year at
what was then San Fernando Valley State College and already had some activist
experience under my belt, picketing for la Huelga
and fighting for the founding of the Chicano Studies Department.
  
The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters
It was the summer
of 1968 and my destination was Haight-Ashbury and San Francisco. I did
not know it then that the Summer of Love had already come and gone,and that the Haight-Ashbury
scene was dead. I did not know that I was being swept up by an
unprecedented wave of cultural and social change -- the counterculture.
Some would call it a renaissance.
![Hidalgo had initial success, capturing towns like Guanajuato, Guanajuato and moved towards Mexico City. However, he was unable to keep control of his popular army that looted the towns and cities they captured.[5][8] In the forested mountain area of Monte de las Cruces, he engaged royalist forces under Torcuato Trujillo. Hidalgo won but suffered heavy losses.[9] Despite probably military advantage,[6] Hidalgo decided to turn away from capturing Mexico City and moved to the north and west[10] to Guadalajara.[6] Hidalgo was pursued and attacked by royalist forces several times along the way to Guadalajara.[11] Hidalgo reached Guadalajara, establishing an alternative government with himself at the head and two appointed ministers.[12] Meanwhile, the bishop of Guanajuato excommunicated Hidalgo and those under him, declaring them to be heretics, perjurers and blasphemers on 24 December 1810.[12] The royalist army defeated the insurgents again in Guadalajara and Hidalgo fled north towards what is now the United States.[6][12] A short time later, he was betrayed and captured at Acatitlan de Bajan, Chihuahua on 21 March 1811 and taken to the city of Chihuahua.[2][11][12] Hidalgo was executed by firing squad on 1 Aug 1811.[12] Today, Hidalgo is hailed as the ‘‘Father of the Nation’’[2] Gabriel Grinberg, director general de Juego Talento nos habla sobre la convocatoria para desarrollar un juego con motivo del Bicentenario de la Independencia y el Centenario de la Revolución Mexicana.](http://www.qvoradio.com/2007-09-01.jpg)  
Conservative
America believed it was a revolution -- perpetrated by subversives and hippie
wackos.
The culture wars
had started. Not quite a year later, in the spring of 1969, I took a trip to
Denver, Colorado with some homeboys from San Fernando, California. We
went to attend the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference, an
event of historical importance for Chicanos and Latinos
Cesar Chavez Pachuco
![Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, also known as Miguel Hidalgo, born Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla y Gallaga Mondarte Villaseñor[1] (8 May 1753 – 30 July 1811) was a priest and the leader of the Mexican War of Independence. Miguel Hidalgo was born in Guanajuato,[2][3] and at the age of twelve, he was sent to school [4] choosing to study for priesthood.[3] Hidalgo was ordained in 1778 when he was 25 years old.[5] Hidalgo read and study the works of the Enlightenment from Europe[3] even though these ideas were forbidden at the time in Mexico, leading him to adopt these ideas [2] causing him problems with his ecclesiastical and academic career.[3] The Church sent him to work various parishes until he finally became parish priest in Dolores, Guanajuato.[5] Here he continued his political activities against the social and economic order.[2][6] Eventually, he became involved in politics, in particular a group in Querétaro who plotted against the viceregal government,[7] which was denounced to authorities before they could act.[2] Instead of going into hiding, Hidalgo decided to call the people of his parish to join in the struggle of independence in a speech that is now known as the Grito de Dolores.[2] People responded enthusiastically and Hidalgo became leader of the new army despite the fact that he had no military training at all.[6]](http://www.qvoradio.com/post185_vivamexico.jpg)  
Razones y efectos de
la Independencia mexicana || This photo is of members of the Mexican
army on parade during the
Independence Day celebrations on 16 September 2008
||
Warriors for Peace
Cesar Chavez and Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales
Latinos and America before the Summer of Love
Why did so many young Americans
gravitate to the vision of the Summer of Love represented? What
was it about the America they grew up with that compelled them to flee the sanctity
of home values and to plunge into the craziness and moral frontier of the
counterculture? What drove them to embrace one of the central visions
of the counterculture – world peace and humanity without racism? Clearly,
many Americans had tired of waging war in Vietnam, a war on the other side of
the world, waged against a non-white people fighting for self-determination.
The Civil Rights Act, which prohibited
discrimination in voting, public accommodations, and employment -- was not
passed by Congress until July of 1964.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law
in August of that year. This legislation provided federal protection
for federal, state and local elections. Both Acts were legislated
after a long and grueling Civil Rights struggle, led by Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. and supported by many Americans, including our own great civil
rights and labor leader, Cesar Chavez.
What was America like for Chicanos
before the Summer of Love, 1967? Latino political power as we know it
today in California did not exist. Edward Roybal,
the first Latino elected to Congress from California since 1879, had just
been elected to Congress in ’62. For years, J. Edgar Hoover’s goons in
suits followed him around like a suspected criminal. There wasn’t even
one Latino on the L.A. city council.
Segregation was
alive and thriving. The concept of diversity in America as we know it today
did not exist at that time. For most people of color the social system in
place was an American form of apartheid reinforced by brutal, racist cops,
the gerrymandering of voting districts and governmental/business practices
like redlining.
  
Almost a year after
the enactment of
Voting Rights Act, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Some us who would later became activists,
artists, leaders and foot soldiers in El Movimiento
were still in high school and middle even elementary school around that
time. Some were still in gangs or just cruising or partying in the
neighborhood. It was a time of prelude and gestation.
In fact, it was at
the beginning of the Summer of Love in June of ’67 that Reis Lopez Tijerina
led the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid, in the
land grant struggle for the return of lands stolen in New Mexico after
Mexican War of 1846-1848.
That political act of rebellion, labeled
criminal by the Establishment, helped inspire Chicano leaders to become more
militant in their civil rights activism and to frame their politics in the
context of the greater historical issue of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
Tijerina may have awed and galvanized
Chicanos with his fiery rhetoric and armed tactics but we had other leaders,
leaders who were taking on broader, national issues. They were leaders who in
their own right were also warriors, but whose philosophies and methods were
more in the tradition of nonviolence. Right alongside Cesar Chavez and
Dolores Huerta was Denver-based Chicano civil rights leader, Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales who criticized the Viet Nam war
with eloquence in 1966, two years before Dr. King spoke up against the war.
Two years after the
Summer of Love, Corky’s organization, the Crusade
for Justice hosted the national Chicano youth conference. It was an
event of historical importance for Latinos. Activist Latino youth,
including Brown Berets and Young Lords, from all over the country attended.
In 1976, Benjamin F. Hernandez published
the inaugural issue of (El Papel de la Gente) Q-VO Magazine and Firme
Magazine were published in Riverside,
California. Subsequent issues during its publishing history were
distributed and sold successfully throughout the country. For many youth it
was a heady initiation into real militant activism. I recall participating in
a demonstration against racism and the Vietnam War during the Chicano Youth
Conference.
  
The march went
through downtown Denver and the city civic center. My homeboys spotted
a flagpole flying the American flag. Without any deliberation, they ran
past the Crusade for Justice security, and before anybody could do anything,
they were tearing down the flag. The media was there and took pictures
that were published in newspapers and aired nationwide. The taking down
of that flag was an act of raw, youthful anger and defiance, the stuff of
counterculture – but it was Chicano and so it was colored as treasonous
disrespect for the national emblem.
In the spring
following the Summer of Love, a year before the Denver youth conference, the
Brown Berets and East L.A. high school students surged onto the streets in
the protests known as the East L.A. Walkouts. These were youth-driven,
near spontaneous mass demonstrations against inadequate education. The
walkouts reverberated throughout California and the Southwest.
  
(1). National Brown Berets A Chicano Militant
Organization-West Coast, South West.
(2). The Young Lords Puerto Ricans
Liberation Struggle for Civil Rights. Midwest, New York
Brown Beret
chapters sprung up all over the Southwest and Southern California.
There was the 57th Brown Beret Chapter
in the City of Riverside and the 46th in Barrio Casa Blanca that
organized to challenge racist retailers and educational
bureaucrats. In the towns of Fontana, Colton, Corona, Mira Loma,
chapters of organized, uniformed, youthful Chicanos stood up in the late 60s
and early 70s for community empowerment and against racism and police
brutality – and against the internecine bloodletting of gang warfare and
organized drug dealing in the barrios.
  
The seeds had been
planted for what was to follow at the First National Chicano Liberation Youth
Conference in 1969. There, a national committee was formed to protest
the Vietnam War and the disproportionately high death rate of Latino soldiers
in the war’s frontlines and the racism these soldiers had to come home
to. These young Latinos, the nation’s real foot soldiers – had become
cannon fodder for what President Eisenhower had warned Americans against --
the military industrial complex
Led by leaders like
Rosalio Munoz, student activist and Carlos Montez,
a Brown Beret founder -- a series of protests against the war and for peace
culminated in 1970 on August 29 in the East L.A. Chicano Moratorium.
Unfortunately, probably disrupted by agents provocateurs (perhaps by
overzealous militants manipulated by agents --the truth may never be known)
the protest did not end peacefully. What we do know is that during the
riot that followed the break-up of the protest, the life of L.A. Times
reporter and columnist and TV KMEX station director, Ruben Salazar was snuffed
out by a tear gas projectile fired into the Silver Dollar Café, where he was
taking a break. Chicano Studies professor, Raul Ruiz and Joe Razo of La
Raza magazine were outside the bar
photographing Los Angeles County Sheriffs shooting tear gas through the
building’s storefront windows at the very moment Salazar was killed.
August 29, 2010
will be the forty-year anniversary of this historical event. In the months
that followed and throughout the early 70s, Chicanos continued to protest for
community empowerment and against the war and institutional racism.
Everywhere, even if they were not members of the Brown Berets, Mexican
Americans and Latinos, men and women, including this writer, wore the brown
beret. Chicanos were on the march and it was no longer just the
youth. El Movimiento was picking up speed,
not too far behind the larger swell of the American counterculture.
While Chicano and
Latino connections to a counterculture event like the Summer of Love and the
counterculture in general may not seem evident at first, they are there, if
you look for them. Take Chris Montez, a Chicano rocker of the early
sixties who followed in Ritche Valens’ footsteps,
and who was a trailblazer for other young Chicano musicians and
performers. Chris Montez is not always identified with the British Rock
n’ Roll Invasion and the counterculture icons that led it, the Beatles -- but
he was there.
His early 60s hit,
Let’s Dance was huge in England. In one of his tours in England, the
early Beatles were his opening act. By the time of the Summer of Love
in ’67, Chris Montez had left behind a legacy for other young Chicano rock
and R&B artists. Thus, the tradition of the The
Eastside Sound was planted and creative musical talent blossomed and
branched out.
Chicano rock and
R&B groups were all over the charts. By 1967, one of these groups,
Cannibal and the Headhunters was already touring with the Beatles
The Summer of Love was the landmark
event of an American renaissance in cultural invention, social consciousness
and social justice. What happened in America in the sixties and
seventies inspired movements for social justice all over the world. El Movimiento was our own Chicano renaissance -- our own
political, cultural and spiritual reawakening -- and the rebirth of our
historical consciousness.
In 1976, Benjamin F. Hernandez published
the inaugural issue of (El Papel de la Gente) Q-VO Magazine and Firme
Magazine were published in Riverside,
California. Subsequent issues during its publishing history were
distributed and sold successfully throughout the country.
Cruising on Lowrider
Magazine’s (originally a grass-roots Chicano endeavor) basic format of social
exposure, fine rucas and cool ramflas,
Q-VO Magazine and Firme provided publicity to new
Latino/a entertainers, and documented the recent and
current Chicano Movement. This served to create amongst its largely
male, Mexican American readership -- an interest in Chicano history and
sociopolitical issues. It extended the renaissance into the Latino working
class and plebe like no other Chicano political or ideological tract or
newspaper.
Throughout the late sixties and early
seventies, African Americans, Native Americans, women, Pacific Islanders,
minorities everywhere experienced the rebirth of interest in their history.
The revision of American history with a diverse perspective began in the
60s. It was in this great spirit of righteous historical revisionism
that in 1972, Dr. Rudy Acuna – wrote and published
the seminal and controversial, historical work, Occupied America. (This
writer is proud to say he served as a foot soldier in the fight to establish
minority programs at Cal State Northridge and to bring Dr. Acuna to the campus to found the Chicano Studies
Department.)
The counterculture was exploding everywhere
in the 60s and 70s, at all levels. It was happening on university
campuses and in the minds of intellectuals and artists as well as workers and
musicians. Many Chicano and Latino rockers and R&B artists were
creating their own renaissance at the same time they were riding the wave of
the larger counterculture. With the new consciousness, the East L.A.
Group the V.I.Ps morphed into El Chicano and went on to become a national and
international success. Los Lobos independently released their first album,
their statement on behalf el Movimiento, taking a
title borrowed from a United Farm Workers slogan, Si Se Puede. Tierra
was another Chicano-inspired East L.A. R&B and rock group that went on to
phenomenal, world-wide success.
Outside the Eastside Sound orbit, Joan
Baez was well into the forefront of her genre. Carlos Santana fused
rock with R&B and Latin sounds, taking off into new musical
territory. His brother, Jorge led the group Malo
to enjoy great success. Other artists like Coco Montoya and Linda
Ronstadt were in training for careers that would blossom in the later 70s.
Latino
Counterculture Icons and the Wave of Change
There was another Carlos, a Latino
counterpart to another counterculture icon, Timothy Leary. Carlos
Castaneda challenged fundamental perceptions of reality with the Toltec path
with heart he had learned from the Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan. Then there
is Jose Arguelles who participated in the founding of Earth Day in
1970. Initiating the Harmonic Convergence, he laid a foundation that
helped to extend the New Age into the eighties and to the present and has
continued since as career activist for peace and the planetary transformation
of consciousness.
While neither Castaneda nor Arguelles
made ethnic self-identity a part of their message or their literary persona,
they never apologized for or denied their heritage. Yet, it can be
argued it is the stuff of heritage that is at the heart of their statements
to the world. Certainly, by example, Castaneda in his time and now Arguelles
bring that message to Chicanos and Latinos in the present. Our
trailblazing musicians have been embodying that message as well.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we bring with us into the world a
certain essence that our ancestors bestowed upon us through blood and
cultural heritage.
Too Late to Turn Back -- Mighty Currents and Tidal Waves
I did not mention that when I went on my
trip up to San Francisco that summer of ‘68, I had just finished a job as a
dorm coordinator. I recall walking away with extra money and time after
the program ended, happy I was out of that cramped and smelly dorm room.
Within days, I was cruising up Pacific
Coast Highway.
 
I listened to the Beatles and the
Headhunters and everybody else on the way up and I saw the beautiful
California coastline for the first time. In my youthful naiveté, a nice
way of saying, pendejismo, I thought the action in
Haight-Ashbury and San Francisco I had heard about was an ongoing happening.
The hitchhikers I picked up in Big Sur told me that everything had ended, but
it was too late for me to turn back. I had driven too far. I
remember one of them, a real hot hippie babe inviting me to join her and
her friends up in Los Padres National Forest. They had their own summer
of love happening up there in the coastal redwoods. I’m glad now that I
didn’t accept her offer. I found out later that travelers were being
waylaid at that camp. Oh, did I mention that all these years I did not know
that the big happening I drove up to find that summer was . . . THEE Summer
of Love? My fate was to find my way back into el Movimiento
and to plunge into that mighty upsurge raging in the great tidal wave of the
counterculture.
We are Elders now. Some of us
lived that great storm’s vibrant energy. We should pause and applaud
ourselves. We survived. We got ourselves educated, got jobs and raised
families. We can now join our fellows, young and old in recognition and
commemoration of what happened back in those glorious days. Join
us in San Francisco on September 2 at the Summer of Love, 2007.
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![The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Monterey was the first widely-promoted and heavily-attended rock festival, attracting an estimated 200,000 total attendees with 55,000 to 90,000 people present at the event's peak at midnight on Sunday.[1] It was notable as hosting the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin and Otis Redding.](http://www.qvoradio.com/qvo_monterey_pop.jpg)
![The Brown Berets was a Chicano nationalist activist group of young Mexican Americans during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The group was modeled on the Black Panther Party[citation needed], and inspired by the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Young Lords, Anti-war Movement(s), Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers movement, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, Reies Tijerina, and Revolutionary movements around the world. The group was seen as part of the Third Movement for Liberation. The Brown Berets focused on community organizing against police brutality and were in favor of educational equality. As a decentralised movement, several groups have been quite active since the passage of California Proposition 187, carrying on the militant stance and paramilitary garb of the original movement. Units exist in most sections of California and a few in other southwesten states. They primarily serve as a visible symbol of historical Raza resolve at demonstrations and political parades.](http://www.qvoradio.com/qvo_Berets_web.jpg)
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