Word: mexicanization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Embarrassed and angry, the U.S. Olympic Committee met for four hours, then issued a strong reprimand to Smith and Carlos, and apologies to the International Olympic Committee, the Mexican Organizing Committee and the Mexican people. That might have ended the incident. But a month before the games opened, crusty, old Avery Brundage, 81, perennial chairman of the I.O.C., had warned all competitors that no political demonstrations would be permitted. That challenge helped guarantee the trouble that came, and the I.O.C. bullheadedly proceeded to make a bad scene worse. Unless U.S. officials actually punished Smith and Carlos, the I.O.C. threatened...
Munoz claims that the success of the Farm Workers' Union in resisting the growers' attempts first to ignore it, and then to destroy it has enormously boosted the confidence of Mexican-American migrant workers. "In the old days," Munoz relates, "the boss told us we were cows and we just smiled and said nothing. They can't get away with that...
...many of the strikers, the union represents the first chance to establish a settled, reasonably stable community. Like a number of California's two million Mexican-Americans, Munoz was born in Mexico, but came to this country when he was thirteen to join the stream of migrant fruit and cotton harvesters. Whether migrating, or working at seasonal labor in the Delano area, he had no job security, no defense against the high risk of injury in the fields. One of the union's first moves was to write a life insurance policy for every member, and each union contract signed...
...past, too, there was bitter friction among the racial minorities in California's central valley. If the Mexican-American was not as good as the white man, Munoz explains, at least he felt better than the black. But when the Farm Workers Union launched its attack on the growers--the core of Anglo economic power in central California--and when the union won several significant victories, the Mexican-Americans began to see their fight as a part of a larger struggle of the rich against the poor. "Now I know I'm a black man, too," says Munoz...
...Nixon wins, and tries to block the United Farmworkers, Munoz says, there could be violence in the struggle which so far has been remarkably non-violent. More militant Mexican-American groups--particularly the followers of New Mexico firebrand Reyes Tijerina--have scored the farmworkers for sticking to peaceful, non-violent tactics. Chavez has insisted on non-violence, even calling off organization in areas where the threat of violence on the part of the growers seemed too high. But as Munoz puts it, "A donkey can only carry on so long before he starts kicking...