The Brown Berets ( ) is a Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the United States during the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Party. The Brown Berets was part of the Third World Liberation Front. It worked for educational reform, farmworkers' rights, and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. It also sought to separate the American Southwest from the control of the United States government.
The Brown Berets' high visibility and paramilitary stance made it a key target for infiltration and harassment by local police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other law enforcement agencies. The majority of the Brown Berets' chapters disbanded in 1972. Several groups reformed and became active after the passage of California Proposition 187 in 1994.
History
In 1966, a group of high school students discussed issues affecting Mexican Americans as part of the Annual Chicano Student Conference in Los Angeles County. Vickie Castro, Moctesuma Esparza, Jorge Licón, Rachel Ochoa, John Ortiz, and David Sanchez attended the conference. The students continued meeting after the conference. Later that year, they formed the Young Citizens for Community Action and worked to support Dr. Julian Nava's campaign as a Los Angeles Unified School District board member candidate in 1967. Nava became the first Mexican-American to serve on the school board.
Sanchez and Esparza learned about social action at a class taught by Rev. John B. Luce at the Church of the Epiphany in Lincoln Heights with the Community Service Organization. In 1967, Young Citizens for Community Action changed its name to Young Chicanos For Community Action or YCCA. That same year, Rev. Luce helped Sanchez and the YCCA secure a grant to open La Piranha Coffee House in a former warehouse on Olympic Boulevard.
La Piranha Coffee House became the headquarters of the YCCA. There, Sanchez sponsored activist speakers, including H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Corky Gonzales, and Reies Tijerina. Because it became a popular place for young Chicanos to socialize and organize, sheriff deputies began arbitrarily stopping individuals coming and going from the coffee house. In one instance, the deputies raided La Piranha illegally and arrested individuals for violating curfews.
In September 1967, Sal Castro, a Korean War veteran and teacher at Lincoln High School, began meeting with the YCCA at La Piranha Coffee House. YCCA's initial focus was on public school issues impacting for Chicanos, from dated textbook to a lack of Mexican cafeteria options. The group assumed paramilitary dress and brown berets like Che Guevara. As a result, the organization gained the name Brown Berets. The Brown Berets did not have any official requirements to join, but unofficially, members had to be Chicano men or women. Members were mostly in their teens and early twenties.
Chicanismo was the primary ideology of the Brown Berets. One member recalled, "We were a group of young Chicano revolutionaries from the barrios of the Southwest fighting for the self-determination of our people." Their focus was on school inequality and police brutality but expanded to include the Vietnam War and the lack of political representation, health care, and jobs for Chicanos.
The Brown Berets chose the motto, “To Serve, Observe, and Protect.” This motto reflected the Los Angeles Police Department's "To Protect and To Serve" and "indicated that the Berets believed they were, or should have been, the police of the community."
By 1969, the Brown Berets was a national organization with chapters in California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Brown Beret chapters were in 28 cities, primarily in California but also in Albuquerque, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, St. Louis, Saint Paul, and Seattle.
Law enforcement's perception was that Brown Berets was "a violent and/or subversive organization". Representatives from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms infiltrated every aspect of the Brown Berets. In addition, the FBI closely monitored the Brown Berets' activities. A modern historian notes, "These individuals and departments did not just act as intelligence agents, but as agent provocateurs as well. They created the situations that were used to discredit the Brown Berets and drive rifts between members."
By 1972, internal conflicts and ongoing issues with law enforcement had weakened the Brown Berets. On November 1, 1972, the Brown Berets' prime minister David Sanchez announced the organization's disbandment "chiefly to avoid strife in the Chicano Movement and factional violence."LA Times 11/2/72 p.OCA1 At the time, there were 36 chapters, most established near college and university campuses.
Activities
California The California Brown Berets were involved in marches, anti-war protests, and student walkouts. The group published the newspaper La Causa which included articles on national Brown Beret causes such as the United Farm Workers and the New Mexico Land Grant movement under Reies Tijerina.
The Brown Berets protested killings and abuses perpetrated by the East Los Angeles Sheriff's station in its community. On November 24, 1967, the group held its first protest against police brutality in response to the Santoya family's treatment by the police after a complaint for disturbing the peace. Through January 1968, the Brown Berets coordinated two other protests at the courthouse and sheriff's station.
In 1968, the Brown Berets planned and supported the East Los Angeles blowouts or school walkouts for some 10,000 youth who protested unequal education over two weeks. Two months after the blowout on May 31, 1968, five Brown Berets were arrested or indicted, becoming part of the East L.A. 13. Hundreds of protestors gathered in front of the Los Angeles Police Department the next day. More protesters assembled before the county jail the following day. When the community struggled to raise bail money for the East L.A. 13, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy’s political campaigns offered aid. This essentially shamed the court into setting a more affordable bail. However, this type of legal harassment intimidated current and potential Brown Berets members and pulled funds away from other projects.
The Los Angeles Brown Berets opened the East Los Angeles Free Clinic or Barrio Free Clinic in May 1969. The clinic provided full health services and a pharmacy staffed by volunteer nurses and doctors who were mostly White.Herrera, Juan (March 26, 2015). "La Lucha Continua! Gloria Arellanes and Women in the Chicano Movement" (PDF). East of East. via KCET. It was open in the evenings, providing access for working people. The Barrio Free Clinic helped elevate the community's impression of the Brown Berets, helping them see beyond the paramilitary uniforms. Brown Beret Gloria Arellanes became the clinic's director in July 1969. She recalled, "The clinic became my passion because it really addressed a real need in the community."
Also in 1969, the Brown Berets organized the Chicano Moratorium Committee which planned annual protest marches against the Vietnam War. A few months later in 1970, nearly 20,000 Chicanos marched in the National Chicano Moratorium March in Los Angeles which protested the high number of Chicanos in the military draft and Vietnam casualty lists. This peaceful march was one of the largest Vietnam War protests in the United States. The march became chaotic when police responded to a minor incident by attacking peaceful participants. The officers killed three Chicano activists, including two Brown Berets and journalist Rubén Salazar.
On April 22, 1970, the San Diego Brown Berets (also known as the National Brown Berets de Aztlan) and other community activist organizations took over a piece of land in Logan Heights scheduled to become a highway patrol sub-station. This plot of land is now Chicano Park, and Chicano graffiti art on the pillars of the San Diego–Coronado Bridge memorializes the protest.
The Brown Berets organized the March Through Aztlán in 1971, protesting police brutality, racial discrimination, and the Vietnam War by marching one thousand miles from Calexico to the state capital in Sacramento. In August 1972, the Brown Berets staged Occupation of Catalina Island, claiming it for Chicanos and the Brown Berets under the leadership of David Sanchez. The Brown Berets said the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave California to the United States in 1848, did not include the offshore islands. Occupation of Catalina Island attracted significant national media attention to the Brown Berets.
Chicago In 1972, the Chicago Brown Berets set up the Benito Juarez People's Health Center at 1831 S. Racine in the Casa Aztlán Center, just outside downtown Chicago.Jessica Jerome (2019) Much More than a Clinic: Chicago’s Free Health Centers 1968-1972, Medical Anthropology, 38:6, 537-550, DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2019.1633641 The health center was named after Juarez, the "Abraham Lincoln of Mexico." The clinic's director, Dorthy Cutler, worked with Cook County Hospital and other major hospitals in the Chicago area to provide free medical care in the Chicago area.
The Chicago Brown Berets were activists for public education. The group occupied Frobel Middle School for a day before the Chicago Police removed the protestors from the school. That evening, a riot broke out; several rioters and one policeman were injured as the police tried to disperse the crowd. The rioters also destroyed six police cars.
Texas Founded in 1972, the Brown Berets Chapter of Austin focused on issues similar to the original chapter of Los Angeles that plagued the Chicano community. A quote from Gilberto Rivera, a prominent East Austin activist states, "the formation was due to a ‘call’ from the community & out of their own direct experiences of police violence which followed a persistent pattern in Austin & nearby communities". In addition, the Brown Berets "formulated the ‘Brown Beret Manifesto’ which sought short & long-term goals on community matters like: police oppression, economics, immigration, education, housing, prison reform, medicine, communication (news/media channels)".
The Austin Brown Beret chapter was considered a grassroots organization with the intentions of protecting youth and the rights of citizens. During its active years it worked closely with other grassroots organization and other local chapters when necessary. The chapter ultimately dissolved in 1983. Despite this, the legacy it left continued through the efforts of several other organizations such as PODER, CAMILA – Chicanos Against Military Intervention in Latin America, League of United Chicano Artists (LUChA), Youth Advocacy (formally known as CARNALES Inc.), and East Austin Economic Development Corporation.
Washington The Washington Brown Berets formed in Granger, Washington, around 1968. The group expanded to Seattle in 1969 as students from the Yakima Valley enrolled in the University of Washington. Between 1968 and 1984, the Brown Berets organized youth and college students in Washington. Together these chapters formed a La Raza Unida Party in their state.
The Seattle Brown Berets occupied Beacon Hill School in Seattle. This protest led to the founding of El Centro de la Raza, now one of Seattle's most prominent civil rights organizations. In 1970, the Seattle chapter supported the United Farm Workers movement with a Harvest for Peace, gathering food, clothing, and money for Christmas baskets for Yakima Valley's Chicano farm workers. The group also organized a grape boycott.