These are two excerpts from a speech made by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales in 1969 at UCLA, one of the four founders of the radical Chicano political movement. The “Mission” incident he talks about is apparently a then well-known case, in which Chicanos killed a cop in the Mission District of San Francisco in 1969. The Chicanos were members of radical Chicano organizations, including the Brown Berets de Aztlan. See video description for a link.

These revolutionary ideas are still taught in Chicano studies classes in universities and high schools across the nation. Corky’s ashes are scattered around the Zapata statue are Chicano Park in San Diego, which makes the place “sacred” according to the Chicano Park Steering Committee chairman.

A Chongo is slur for the police and “vato” means “guy”. The “Comancheros” was a group that terrorized innocent ranchers, whom they claimed were living on land that belonged to them, based on original Spanish and Mexican land grants.

The followers of another founder, Reies Tijerina, shot two Hispanic law enforcement officers in a raid on a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla in New Mexico. They were attempting to kidnap the Hispanic District Attorney, who had vowed to bring him to justice. Tjerina wrote in his biography that his biggest enemies had always been other Hispanics, who wanted to live the American way of life.

One of the wounded officers was going to testify against him and he was brutally murdered shortly before the trial. They beat him to death, put him in his vehicle and pushed it off a cliff into a ravine. They didn’t have enough evidence to charge anyone, but it was thought pretty certain to have been Tijerina’s men who killed him.