Category Archives: La Raza

Alumni and incoming members reflect on group’s legacy

“For all people, as with individuals, the time comes when they must reckon with their history. For the Chicano, the present is a time of renaissance, of renacimiento.”

These are the first words of El Plan de Santa Barbara, a constitution of sorts, adopted at a conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969 by a group of students from dozens of universities across the state. That same day, they formed the social movement organization Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán, focused on the advancement of Chicanos in higher education.

The Western Washington University chapter took shape shortly after. Despite its decades-long history, its activities were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, five years later, first-year student Jasmin Montano and second-year Venecia Iraola will serve on the board for the reestablished chapter this fall.

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“Aztlán is all about Chicanos, power, and being fucking relentless,” says Nate Rebolledo, Xibalba’s frontman.

Xibalba is perhaps the heaviest band out of Los Angeles since Slayer. The members are from all over the city, and the band’s insanely raw and powerfully relentless sound has led them to have a loyal base of fans since forming in 2006.

To celebrate their newest E.P., Aztlán, the five-piece band threw a free show at 1st Street Billiards in Boyle Heights on Friday, January 13. The show doubled as a music video shoot for Desmadre, another emerging hardcore band out of Los Angeles. Hundreds of punks and fans of aggressive music showed up to support.

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At the beginning of his speech, Montes asked attendees about the definition and importance of Aztlán, the mythical city of paradise that the Mexica (known to settlers as the Aztecs) envisioned when they settled in Mexico. Montes explored the symbolism of spiritual and national unity that Aztlán represents for Mexicans and the Chicano community in the United States.

On May 25, UW’s Progressive Student Union (PSU) and several other RSOs held a discussion board with Carlos Montes, a nationally respected Chicano leader, to discuss the rise of Chicano activism and the continued struggle for immigrant rights in the United States.

Montes is an activist who co-founded the Chicano youth organization the Brown Berets, which took direct inspiration from the Black Panther Party. He stopped by Seattle on a fundraising tour alongside the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a national organization of working-class socialists.

The discussion covered Montes’ activism since the late 1960s, the current conditions of the Latino community, immigration policies of the United States, and the importance of continued activism for the Chicano and immigrant communities. After his prepared remarks, Montes took questions from attendees.

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Mexican-American workers have a long tradition of radical organizing, stretching back to the days of the Industrial Workers of the World and the mid-century Communist Party. And in 1968, with a longtime Communist Chicano family at the center, Mexican-American students in LA launched the largest student walkout in US history.

During the first week of March in 1968, more than fifteen thousand students walked out of their high schools in Los Angeles, kicking off the largest student walkout in US history. The students, mostly Mexican Americans, were fed up with a school system that had given them de facto segregation, English-only instruction, and irrelevant curricula. The walkout, coordinated by student committees at each school, demanded more Latino faculty members, better facilities, and educational material that spoke to Mexican Americans’ diverse experience.

An East LA family named the Cuaróns were at the center of the walkout. Even before the events of March ’68, the Cuarón home had served as a meeting place for radicals. Mita Cuarón was a student at Garfield High School, so involved in organizing the walkout that the administration singled her out as a leader and school guards attacked her. Mita’s mother, Sylvia Cuarón, was one of the first parents down on the picket line to help support and protect the striking students. And her father, Ralph Cuarón, was elected as the students’ representative in subsequent negotiations with school administrators.

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