First Published: El Amanecer Rojo, Political Paper of the Communist Collective of the Chicano Nation, No. 1, April 1973.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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One hundred and twenty-seven years have passed since the armies of the slavers’ government of the United States invaded Mexico and seized more than half of her territory. In that vast amount of territory seized by the Anglo-American colonialists were a number of Indian tribes at various stages of economic development and the Chicano people.
One of the primary struggles in the Southwest of the United States today is the struggle of the Chicano Nation for national liberation which can only be achieved by a socialist revolution. The Chicano Nation is a historically evolved, stable community of people who have occupied a definite territory for hundreds of years. Its common language is Spanish. The Chicano people possess a common psychological make-up which is expressed through a distinct culture. The economic community existing in the Chicano Nation is similar to that of many oppressed nations in that our resources are daily plundered and our labor exploited for the benefit of the Anglo-American imperialist rulers. However, tribes or racial groupings do not of themselves constitute nations. For example, the Mexican nation is made up of a number of different ethnic groupings, e.g. Spanish, Indian, Negro, etc.; and this mixture of racial groupings did not constitute a nation until they were welded into an economic community and forced to adopt a common language. Thus we see that nations belong to a definite historic epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism, for it is this development which breaks down tribal barriers and demands the adoption of a common language in order to produce the economic community which best suits its needs, the national state. Marxism-Leninism teaches us that the Chicano people as a people do not constitute a nation but instead the development of the Chicano Nation is the result of rising capitalism in a definite territory. Within the territorial limits of the Chicano Nation (New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Southwestern Texas) reside a number of national minorities and oppressed peoples, who are part of the Chicano Nation. The oppressed peoples are the numerous tribes of Indians who have suffered in the past under Spanish colonialist rule and Mexican governments. The two prominent national minorities are the Negro and the Anglo-American.
The proletariat of the Chicano Nation is multi-national, that is it is composed of members from all nationalities in the Chicano Nation.
Many people push the line that Chicanos wherever they are found, taken together constitute the Chicano Nation; while others maintain that there is no Chicano Nation and that we are all Mexican-Americans who happen to be concentrated in the Southwest as a national minority. Both these views serve the Anglo-American imperialists by striving to liquidate the national colonial question in the South-west and divide the multi-national proletariat of the Chicano Nation along national lines and in so doing sabotage the struggles of the proletariat.
U.S. imperialism has systematically, brutally, and viciously oppressed our people from the first day it set its bloody foot in our territory. It has methodically carried out a policy of genocide against the Indians – taking special delight in causing the starvation of old people and children (the confinement of the Navajo tribe at Bosque Redondo). It has confined the Indians to the poorest land and raped and exploited the culture to the greatest degree possible. It has murdered thousands of Chicanos. It has refused to implement those articles of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which concerned protection of the rights of Mexican citizens residing in the territory conquered by the United States, which included the protection of land grants (made to Chicanos and Indians alike). Instead it has destroyed land grant records and has stolen millions of acres of our land. It has beaten our children for speaking Spanish or Indian dialects in school and has placed them in special classes for the mentally retarded. In addition to the robbery of land grant lands, it has deprived Indians (the Navajos, Utes, Apaches, etc.) of their native lands and has driven hundreds of small Negro and Anglo-American farmers off their lands into the cities.
It has forced our people into the lowest paying jobs with the worst conditions. It has brutally repressed the efforts of the proletariat of the Chicano Nation at organizing trade unions. It has taken the young men of the Chicane Nation to use as cannon fodder in its imperialist wars of aggression abroad against our class brothers and sisters in other nations. U.S. imperialism has jailed us, beaten us, killed us in cold blood, and pumped all types of drugs and liquor into our barrios and reservations to frighten us or drug us into submission, but our people fight on.
Led by devoted patriots such as Father Martinez, the Taos Indian Jose Gonzales, and Juan Cortina, our people have organized revolts such as the general uprising in Taos where the Indians and Chicanos united like a clenched fist and executed the first territorial governor of New Mexico, or fought the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers successfully for ten years. The Indians of the Chicano Nation, who had suffered greatly under Spanish rule and had united under the Pueblo Indian Pope’ to throw the Spanish colonialists out of New Mexico in 1680, have heroically fought the U.S. Army and resisted the genocidal policies of U.S. imperialism. Our peasants have organized to protect their lands from U.S. imperialism in groups such as La Mano Negra, Las Gorras Blancas, and La Alianza. The proletariat of the Chicano Nation has a long history of militancy, battling imperialism in the coal and copper mines, in the fields, and in the factories.
Hundreds of times our peoples have taken to the streets to battle imperialism and thousands of our people have sacrificed their lives in that struggle. From the hundreds of women and children massacred by drunken Anglo-American troops in Mora in 1847, to the cold blooded murders of Antonio Cordova, Rito Canales, and Larry Casuse, our people have died for the cause of national liberation.
However, despite years of struggle and sacrifice, conditions for our people are as bad as ever. The present situation is only good for those vendidos who have sold their people to U.S. imperialism in order to get their thirty pieces of silver and maybe a seat in the U.S. Senate or at the presidential inauguration.
We live in the age of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. We also live in the age of socialist revolution. All around us we see raging wars of national liberation and proletarian revolution. History teaches us that the struggle for national liberation and socialism can only be won when the struggle is led by the proletariat. And the proletariat can only successfully lead the struggle to its victorious conclusion if it is armed with the science of Marxism-Leninism and marches into battle against the ruling class with a Communist Party at its head. Thus we see that only the multi-national proletariat of the Chicano Nation is capable of leading the National struggle and only when Communists march in the vanguard of the proletariat of the Chicano Nation will it be able to lead such a struggle. However, this does not mean that at this time the Communists of the Chicano Nation need to form a separate Communist Party from the one for the Anglo-American Nation. For the struggle of the Chicano Nation for national liberation and socialism can only be won in conjunction with the struggles of the proletariat of the Anglo-American Nation and the Negro Nation. For this reason, we must resolutely unite with the comrades in the Anglo-American and Negro Nation in the struggle against the treacherous revisionism of the “communist” Party USA in order to build a real multi-national Communist Party and go on to overthrow finance capital, smash the bourgeois state, and establish the Dictatorship of the Proletariat(ful1 democracy for the toiling masses; ruthless dictatorship against the bourgeoisie).
“El Amanecer Rojo” is the voice of the proletariat of the Chicano Nation. It is the dialectical result of years of class and national struggle in the Chicano Nation. “El Amanecer Rojo” is a weapon of the proletariat of the Chicano Nation and of the Chicane and Indian people in the struggle for national liberation and socialism. Our pages are open to all letters and articles which further the cause of proletarian revolution. Where bourgeois papers (The Journal, The Tribune, El Hispano, etc.) print lies and half-truths designed to mislead our peoples, we shall print the truth, the facts and give a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the situation to increase the understanding of the proletariat and its allies so that they may direct telling blows against U.S. imperialism. We shall not leave one stone unturned in our quest to expose the bloody deeds of the U.S. imperialists. But we shall not stop at merely exposing class and national oppression, but we shall point out the road to socialism, freedom and the end of national oppression and exploitation of man by man.
We shall publish articles dealing with the history and the development of the Chicano Nation. Future issues will be published in Spanish and in English. We shall analyze the international situation, the preparations of the ruling class for fascism in the United States, and the actions of our class brothers and sisters in the Negro Nation, the Anglo-American Nation and in Puerto Rico.
Death to U.S. Imperialism! Build a Multi-National Communist Party!