The history of the Chicano Nation can be divided into two major periods: the period before the Anglo-American conquest; and the period after the Anglo-American conquest. These two periods can then be divided further. The period before the Anglo-American conquest may be divided into three sub-periods: the sub-period from 1540 to l680, with the Spanish exploration and colonization of New Mexico, the establishment of a feudal economy based entirely on the exploitation of the Pueblo Indians, and the revolt of the Pueblo Indians in 1680 which terminated this sub-period; the sub-period from l680 to 1820 which includes the reconquest of New Mexico by the Spanish, the establishment of a feudal economy based on the exploitation of Chicano peasants, the colonization of Texas, the beginning of Chicano culture, the beginnings of capitalism, and the end of Spanish rule over Mexico; and the sub-period from 1821 to 1846 which includes the opening up of trade with the United States the development of a Chicano bourgeoisie and its almost immediate split into a comprador and a national bourgeoisie, the beginning of the bourgeois democratic movement, and the invasion of Mexico by the United States. The period after the Anglo-American invasion may be divided into two sub-periods: the sub-period of the bourgeois democratic national movement; and the sub-period of the national liberation movement.
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins, signaled the rosy dawn of capitalist production. – Karl Marx
The conquest of Mexico by the Spanish opened up hitherto untapped sources of wealth to the Spanish aristocracy. In the following development and exploitation of the mineral and agricultural resources of Mexico, thousands of Mexican Indians were enslaved for the enrichment of their Spanish masters. The exploration and subsequent colonization of the Southwest of the United States must be seen as only a part of the gigantic quest for mineral wealth, that the Spanish were conducting throughout the New World.
The atrocities committed by the Spanish in their explorations of the Southwest were typical of the brutality of the conquistadores throughout the Americas. During the expeditions the Spanish survived by requisitioning supplies from the meager stores of the Pueblo Indians and in doing so severely strained the Pueblos’ food stores. Whenever the Indians refused to aid the Spanish or rose in defense of their pueblos, they were ruthlessly repressed by the Spanish and often extremely brutal retaliatory measures were taken against the entire pueblo.
The actual colonization of the upper Rio Grande valley was a direct outgrowth of the discovery of the rich silver mines at Zacatecas in 1548 and at Santa Barbara and San Bartolome in the southern part of the present Mexican state of Chihuahua. The development of these mines demanded a labor force and thus brought into existence slaving expeditions into Northern Mexico and the Southwest. The importance of the mineral wealth of the New World to the rise of capitalism in Europe is undisputed and the signal importance of the mines at Zacatecas and the northern movement in search of silver in general can be seen from the fact that between 156O and 1821 Mexico and the rest of the Americas minted two billion dollars in silver and sent another two billion in ingots to Spain. Before the nineteenth century two-thirds of the world’s silver passed through the port of Veracruz and the mines of Zacatecas alone produced one-fifth of the world’s supply of silver.[1]
The first colonizing expedition set out for New Mexico in 1598 and was headed by Juan de Onate, a Zacatecas millionaire and one of the four richest men in Mexico. New Mexico was colonized not only as part of the general movement in search of mineral wealth, but also as a northern outpost to make good Spain’s extensive territorial claims in the Americas and to serve as protection against the colonizing efforts of rival European nations.
The colonists established the village of San Juan de los Caballeros at the junction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Chama and remained there until 1600 when they established a new capital at San Gabriel.
The small colony did not become self-sufficient from Mexico until 1601 and even then it depended on the plunder of Pueblo Indian food stores for survival. In addition to requisitioning food from the Indians, the Spanish explored the surrounding area for mineral wealth. It was during these expeditions that the Spanish earned the unforgiving hatred of the Indians.
The pueblo of Acoma refused to aid the Spanish with food and instead attacked a detachment of Spanish soldiers. In retaliation, the Spanish destroyed the pueblo. Some 600 to 800 Indians were killed in the battle. Almost 600 were captured. The revenge taken by the Spaniards reverberated throughout Puebloland. All males over twenty-four years of age had one foot cut off and were bound in servitude for twenty-five years. All other Indians, men and women, over twelve years of age were bound in servitude for twenty years.
The colony proved unproductive and the Council of the Indies recalled Onate in 1606, suspended exploration of the area, and announced that only mission work would continue in New Mexico. From 1606 to 1680, the Catholic Church became the primary tool of Spanish rule in New Mexico. In 1609 a new secular capital was established thirty miles south of San Gabriel and was called La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco. Today it is known as Santa Fe. The missionaries established their headquarters at the pueblo of Santo Domingo.
Throughout Mexico, including New Mexico, a feudal system developed in which the Indians formed the most brutally exploited class. The Catholic Church managed to concentrate in its hands the greater part of the land and wealth of the country. By 1800 the Church had in its possession fully two-thirds of all the arable land in Mexico.[2]
In New Mexico agriculture, stockraising and trade formed the basis of society. Feudal society in New Mexico consisted of four distinct classes: the Pueblo Indians, the most oppressed and exploited of the classes, forced to work in the fields of the Church and the aristocracy; the Hispanic peasants who were exploited by the aristocracy in the feudal exchange of economic and military services for protection and favors; the aristocracy, the gachupines (Spaniards born in Spain) and criollos (Spaniards born in Mexico), who were responsible for the military protection of the missions and were the secular rulers of New Mexico; and the various Church officials, the real rulers of the colony and primary exploiters of the Pueblo Indians.
The Pueblo Indians had occupied that Rio Grande valley since early in the 11th Century and held the best land, Puebloland and the small Spanish colony were ringed by hostile nomadic tribes who prevented expansion to uncultivated lands. Thus it was inevitable that great competition would arise between the Pueblo Indians and the Spanish colonizers on the one hand and between the aristocracy and the Church on the other. In addition, competition between the aristocracy and the Church over the use of Indian labor power generated fierce political struggles in the colony. This competition grew out of the establishment of the encomienda system in New Mexico. The encomienda had its historical roots in Roman Spain and in feudal Spain developed into the simple exchange of services to a lord in return for his protection. The encomienda system served only as a means of intensifying the already severe exploitation of the Pueblo Indians.
Between 1600 and 1680 a number of workshops were established in Santa Fe by the governors of New Mexico where Indian slaves were forced to work long hours producing cotton cloth and blankets which along with the export of sheep formed the basis of commerce for the colony.
By 1680, there were some 2,500 Hispanic settlers in New Mexico, the majority of whom were peasants located in the Rio Grande valley north of Santa Fe. In contrast, the vast majority of the aristocracy were located in the Rio Grande valley south of Santa Fe where they possessed large amounts of land and were completely dependent on Indian labor for the maintenance of their vast herds of stock.
The Pueblo revolt of 1680 was the culmination of nearly a century and a half of oppression, cultural and religious persecution, and brutal exploitation at the hands of the Spanish. The immediate causes of the uprising were the drought and pestilence of 1670 in which the Pueblos suffered greatly and the vicious persecution of the religions of the Pueblos. Many Pueblo leaders were arrested between 1675 and 1677 for witchcraft and hanged. A few escaped, among them Pope, the architect of the revolt. The revolt was carefully planned and coordinated and it was a great victory for the Indians. The Spanish were driven completely out of Puebloland and retreated to El Paso del Norte taking with them a number of Christian Indians. Spaniards were killed wherever they were found and all the churches, houses and fields of the Spaniards were sacked and burned. However, the victory was only transitory.
In 1692, Don Diego Jose de Vargas Zapata y Lujan Ponce de León y Contreras, the newly appointed Governor of New Mexico, moved northward from El Paso up the Rio Grande valley to Santa Fe. The capital was occupied without bloodshed, but Spanish rule in New Mexico was not secure until 1696 after a number of sharp battles were fought throughout Puebloland.
The effects of a hundred and fifty years of oppression and resistance had taken their toll of the people of Puebloland. By 1800, only 8,000 Pueblo Indians would remain out of the estimated 75,000 who had lived in Puebloland prior to Spanish colonization.[3] The Spanish had effectively destroyed the base of their former feudal system in New Mexico. Thus it was imperative to shift the entire weight of feudal exploitation onto the backs of the Hipanic peasantry. This made it necessary to increase the Hispanic population of New Mexico and in so doing to make the colony self-sufficient by bringing more land under cultivation and by increasing the amount of stock in the colony. Further economic development was also demanded by the establishment of an elaborate system of presidios (garrisons) which eventually would stretch from San Francisco to San Antonio as a ring of defense against encroachments by the French and English and later the Americans, and as protection against the nomadic Indians.
The increased number of soldiers and the drastic reduction of the Pueblo Indians opened up large amounts of land to be settled. This settlement was accomplished by means of landgrants of which there existed three types. The first type was the community grant and charter made to a group of persons who promised to lay out a village site with a plaza, a church site, and delineated residential lots.
Home sites and land for irrigation were distributed by lots. Each family received a title to its residential site and irrigated land and the right to graze stock and cut timber on the village common. The majority of this type of grant were made to peasants in the North of New Mexico and to the various pueblos.
The second type of grant, also leading to the formation of a town, went to an individual who promised to secure settlers, distribute residential sites and irrigated land, secure a priest, build a church, and provide for the building of dams, canals, and other necessary edifices. This individual became the patron or feudal lord of the village and had the right of appropriating agricultural produce or labor power in exchange for protection. The peasants of the village were subject to call for military duties in the service of the patron.
The third type of grant was the sitio. It was usually made as a reward for some type of service to the Spanish crown. The grantee was merely required to settle the land. The last two types of grant predominated in Texas and Southern New Mexico.
The economy of the colony during this period was based on subsistence agriculture and the wealth of the ruling class, i.e., the landed aristocracy and the appointed Spanish officials, was concentrated in the form of livestock.
In 1690, the Spanish made their first attempt to colonize Texas. By 1800, some 3,500 settlers lived in Texas, and more than half were concentrated in San Antonio.
During the 18th Century the Chicanos began to develop as an ethnic group distinct from the Pueblo Indians, the Mexicans and the Spaniards. Intermarriage between the Hispanic settlers was extremely common. By 3.822, out of some forty-two thousand Chicanos, a more one thousand were of pure Spanish ancestry. Coinciding with the development of the Chicanos came the development of a Chicano culture. This development came about because of the isolation of the colony from the mainstream of Mexican life. This isolation is reflected today in the Spanish spoken in Northern New Mexico where antiquated words and expressions are still used by the people. The Spanish spoken there is the Spanish of Cervantes. The Chicanos achieved great artistic distinction in the carving and painting of Santos, the working of gold and silver, weaving, and the making of finely carved chests, cupboards, etc. A distinctive architecture was developed out of the adobe structures of the Pueblo Indians, In essence, the Chicano culture represented the merger of Spanish medieval folk culture with the culture of the Pueblo Indians and the further development of the resulting product.
A feudal economic system continued to exist throughout this period and the only changes that took place occurred in the superstructure.
The role of the Church was greatly diminished as the development of a powerful landed class saw the political power shift to Spanish governors who were directly supported by the landed class. At the base of the superstructure was the feudal exploitation of both the Pueblos and the Chicano peasantry. As the Chicano peasantry grew the burden of exploitation was shifted more and more onto their backs and the Pueblo Indians, instead of being assimilated into the economic and social structures of the colony, as so many Indian tribes were in Mexico, successfully resisted assimilation and continued developing as an oppressed people within the colony. They remained, however, Spanish subjects, adopted the Spanish language as the common language of the colony, and were an integral part of the colony. In addition to the above classes, there began the development of a merchant class which was brought into existence as an intermediary in the exchange between town and country and between New Mexico and Mexico. This was the embryonic Chicano bourgeoisie whose development would necessarily call into existence the Chicano proletariat, the wage-laborers who have nothing but their labor power which they must sell to survive.
The entire period of Spanish colonial rule in Mexico was marked by numerous revolts and insurrections by Indians and mestizos. However, the actual cause of the Mexican Revolution for Independence lay in the contradictions between the criollos and gachupines. The independence of Mexico brought no real changes in the plight of the Indians and mestizos, but it did allow for the independent development of Mexico, the rise of capitalism, and the beginning of the bourgeois democratic movement which would culminate in the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of this century. The armed struggle for independence began in l8l0 in September with the famous “Grito de Dolores” of Father Hidalgo, but it was only when the conservative landed classes in Mexico joined with the Hidalgo movement that Mexico was declared independent in 1821. The conservative elements had felt threatened by the results of the bourgeois democratic revolution in Spain in 1820 which forced the Spanish king to accept a liberal constitution. In 1823, a revolutionary republican coup defeated the reactionary elements and installed General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana in power.
The events in Mexico had little direct effect on the developing Chicano Nation. The most important repercussion was the opening up of trade with the United States.
During this period a number of important economic events took place which contributed greatly to the development of the Chicano Nation. Copper was discovered and mined at Santa Rita. Gold was discovered in the Sierra del Oro and the Ortiz mine alone produced three million dollars worth of gold by 1846. The production of sheep increased greatly and some 400,000 head of sheep were sent down yearly to Chihuahua. And finally, trade with the United States brought about increased trade with Chihuahua and in the quest for the accumulation of agricultural surplus, handicraft goods, minerals, the Chicano bourgeoisie developed quickly. Contemporaneous with the bourgeoisie’s development was the development of the proletariat which first appeared as miners, teamsters and wage-laborers in small manufacturing enterprises.
From its inception the Chicano bourgeoisie was divided into two sections: the section completely tied to Anglo-American capital; and the section which sought national privileges for itself. The landed class, on the other hand, remained loyal to Mexico.
Further development of the Chicano Nation demanded the struggle against feudalism and the separation of the peasant from his land, thus converting him into a proletarian.
The bourgeois democratic movement in the Chicano Nation began in 1834 with the publication of “El Crepusculo de la Libertad” by Father Antonio Jose Martinez, the owner of a few small ranches and a flour mill. In the paper he called for a redistribution of land and denounced tithes and church fees. Father Martinez founded many of the first schools in the Chicano Nation and served in the provincial assembly.
The Chicano bourgeoisie chaffed under Mexican rule and the domination of the home market by merchants from Chihuahua, and in 1835 when Santa Ana sought to impose tighter control over New Mexico, the Chicano bourgeoisie incited the peasants and the Taos Indians to revolt. The peasants and Indians attacked Santa Fe, beheaded the Mexican governor, and elected Jose Gonzales, a Taos Indian, governor of New Mexico. The peasants and Indians had no intention of giving up state power, and filled all government posts with. Indians and peasants. At that point, one of the major instigators of the revolt, Manuel Armijo, a wealthy merchant with close, ties to the Anglo-Americans, gathered a force of soldiers and brutally suppressed the revolt. He then installed himself as governor of New Mexico.
In 1823, Stephen Austin received an empresario landgrant from the Mexican government to settle Eastern Texas. The Mexican government made this grant in the hope of displacing the nomadic Indian tribes in Eastern Texas and in doing so of easing the pressure of Indian attacks on the settlements between the Rio Nueces and the Rio Grande and on San Antonio. By 1830, there were some 25,000 Anglo-Americans in Texas as compared with a mere 4,000 Chicanos. The Anglo-Americans in general came from the slave states of the South of the United States and established themselves in Eastern Texas as slave-holders growing cotton.
The Anglo-American colonists brought with them, besides Negro slaves, the concept of the superiority of the “White” race to all others; in other words, white supremacy. It grew with Anglo-American expansionism and served as a justification for the genocidal policies of the Anglo-Americans toward the Indians and for the enslavement of Negroes. Because of the historic role which white supremacy has played in the development and expansion of the Anglo-American nation it was and is quite logical that the specific form that Anglo-American national chauvinism would take would be that of white chauvinism. White chauvinism dominated relations between the United States and Mexico and provided the justification for the Colonialist war of 1846 which the United States launched against Mexico.
The Texans chaffed under the rule of a “colored” people. Mexico in turn was worried about the large presence of white supremacist Anglo-Americans for she had no illusions about the territorial ambitions of the aggressive Anglo-American Nation. The Mexican government sought to stem the tide of Anglo-American immigration through a series of measures beginning in 1829 with the abolition of slavery in Mexico, a measure aimed directly at Texan slaveholders. Relations between Texans and the Mexican government steadily worsened until, in 1834, Santa Ana sought to change the government from a federalist to a centralist one. At this point the Texans declared conditional independence. By 1836, after a number of battles, Texans won independence and by 1840 had secured the recognition of the United States, France and England.
During the nine years of the existence of the Texas Republic, a policy of white, chauvinist expansionism was carried out. Texan territorial claims, were exorbitant and totally unfounded, claiming as her boundary the Rio Grande and in l84l invading New Mexico to make good her outlandish claims. The invasion was soundly defeated and many of the Texans were hanged in Santa Fe while the rest were force-marched across La Jornada del Muerto to prison in Mexico City.
The economics of slavery demanded the constant expansion of slavery into fresh and fertile soils and the only way for this, expansion to take place, was in a westward direction.[4]
The annexation of Texas by the United States provided the slave system with, fresh territory and with ready made border disputes which could be. utilized for provoking war with Mexico and conquering vast amounts of territory – for the further expansion of slavery.
In December, 1845, Anglo-American troops-were deployed in the disputed border area between the Rio Nueces- and the Rio Grande. In May, 1846, Anglo-American troops had penetrated Mexican territory by two hundred miles when they were engaged by Mexican troops. After two years of bloody warfare, the loss of vast amounts of territory, and the fall of Mexico City, Mexico was prepared to surrender.
The Colonialist war of 1846 set a standard of brutality which the armed forces of the United States have maintained and perfected right up to the present time with the aggression in Vietnam. Murder, robbery and rape were everyday affairs. Mothers were raped in front of their husbands and children. Children were murdered in front of their parents. The overwhelmingly Protestant Anglo-American troops desecrated churches and got drunk from wine out of holy vessels. Partially out of sympathy for the Mexicans and partially out of outrage at the atrocities, some 250 Irish-American soldiers sent over to the Mexican side and fought the Anglo-American invaders in the San Patricio batallion. Eighty of these heroic soldiers were subsequently executed by Anglo-American troops in a village outside of Mexico City after the Mexican surrender.
Mexico was forced to cede to the United States what is now California, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, a corner of Wyoming, and the western half of Colorado for fifteen million dollars, the same price Mexico had been offered before the war. Peace was formalized by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which in addition to those articles dealing with the peace and the cession of territory, provided for certain rights of Mexican citizens who remained in the ceded territories. All such persons became US citizens after one year (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Article VIII). The property of Mexican citizens was to be inviolably respected (Article VIII), It was the responsibility of the government of the US to secure surveyors, etc, to determine boundaries of the land held by Mexican citizens. The United States was also required to set up a special appeals court to deal with land questions. All the original records of landgrants in the ceded territories were to be turned over to the US government. In general, the treaty allowed the people to continue utilizing the land as they had under Spanish and Mexican rule, the only major exception being that the land now became taxable.
In the Chicano Nation, the ruling classes were split over the question of resistance or capitulation to the Anglo-American invasion. The landed class and what was to become the national bourgeoisie pushed for resistance, while the section of the bourgeoisie tied to Anglo-American interests, the comprador, headed by the treasonous Governor Armijo, advocated surrender. The question was settled when the latter sabotaged immediate resistance and fled New Mexico. The Anglo-American General Kearny took possession of New Mexico in the Old Town Plaza in Las Vegas in l846 and proceeded to occupy Santa Fe and establish a military government.
The Anglo-American invasion forever split the Chicano bourgeoisie into two parts, the comprador and national. The former facilitated the Anglo-American occupation and participated in the formation of a new government; the latter advocated resistance and allied itself with the landed class, which favored resistance in order to re-establish Mexican rule. The chief organizers of the resistance were Tomas Ortiz and Colonel Diego Archuleta, members of the landed class, the Armijos of Albuquerque, also large land-owners, and several priests, including Father Martinez, who were members of the national bourgeoisie.
In 1847, an uprising occurred in Taos and the peasants and Indians of the village killed and scalped Charles Bent, the first Anglo-American governor of New Mexico, and five others. The revolt spread throughout New Mexico and Anglo-Americans were killed wherever they were found. However, Anglo-American troops acted quickly to suppress the uprising. In Taos, 150 Chicanos and Indians were killed in a battle with Anglo-American troops; some thirty Chicanos and Indians who surrendered were executed by a firing squad. Many were publicly flogged before being shot. About three hundred Chicanos, many of them women and children, were massacred by drunken Anglo-American troops in Mora as they destroyed the entire village. Two men were directly responsible for the brutal suppression and aftermath of the revolt, Kit Carson and the despicable comprador Domiciano Vigil. The leaders of the revolt were tried for treason and murder and fifteen of them were hanged. The charge of treason did not apply since the Chicanos were not citizens of the United States. One of the judges was a close friend of the dead governor and the other judge’s son had been killed during the revolt. The foreman of the jury was the dead governor’s brother. Such was the introduction of the people of the Chicano Nation to the bourgeois justice of the Anglo-American state.
The period of the bourgeois democratic movement runs from 1850 to 1934 in the Chicano Nation. The national bourgeoisie had actually become incapable of leading the national liberation struggle well before 1934. The objective conditions for the proletariat to assume leadership existed due to the shift in the political forces involved in the national movement brought about by imperialism and the October Revolution in Russia.
The territory which today is the Chicano Nation was not flooded by Anglo-American colonists after 1848, as was the case in California. Instead of fleeing to Mexico or being wiped out, the Chicanos expanded their territory, founding new towns and bringing more land under cultivation. The genocidal wars conducted against the Navajos, Apaches, Utes and Comanches opened up vast areas which were quickly settled by Chicanos.
The Chicano Nation was of no immediate interest to the Anglo-American colonialists and so their objectives were not the elimination of Chicanos, the immediate seizure of their lands, and the development of the resources of their nation. Instead, the Anglo-Americans were primarily interested in securing New Mexico, a link in the lines of communication with the West Coast, and in preparing for future exploitation.
To accomplish this, the Anglo-American colonialists began their methodical campaigns against the Indians and their campaign against the primary base of the Chicano national bourgeoisie and the bulwark of the resistance, the penitentes.
The penitentes were a peasant religious group which had come to hold great secular power in Northern New Mexico after the expulsion of all Spanish priests from Mexico in 1821. They were primarily a service organization which aided the sick and poor of the peasant communities. However, after 1846 the penitentes became centers of resistance against Anglo-American rule and played an important role in the uprising of 1847. For this reason, the arrival of Jean Baptiste Lamy as Bishop of New Mexico must be seen as one of the major tools to the Anglo-Americans for combating resistance in New Mexico. Under Lamy, the Church reinstated tithing, which caused hardship for the Chicano peasantry. Father Antonio Martinez, an outstanding member of the national bourgeoisie, vocally opposed Lamy and consequently was excommunicated. Nevertheless, he continued to oppose him and the Anglo-Americans until his death in 1867. Bishop Lamy repeatedly sought to bring the penitentes under official church control, but this resulted only in increasing secrecy within the order. In 1859, the Church disbanded the organization and excommunicated its members. It was left to the Anglo-American military to suppress the penitentes who organized militant peasant organizations like La Mano Negra and Las Gorras Blancas. It was a literal case of what Lenin called “the priest and the hangman” approach to keeping people in their place.
The two-pronged attack against the forces of the national bourgeoisie allowed the Anglo-American colonialists to consolidate their position within the Chicano Nation, which they did by cultivating and solidifying the comprador bourgeoisie. The political dominance of the comprador was formalized at the territorial convention of 1850 which resulted in great numbers of vendidos (comprador Chicanos) holding high territorial positions. The most outstanding representative of the compradors during this period was Miguel Otero, who served three terms in the US House of Representatives. He formed the important business house of Otero, Sellar and Company. He was director of the Maxwell Land Grant Company and a vice-president of the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. His son served as territorial governor from 1897 to 1906. The political base on which his power rested was inherited by Senator Dennis Chavez and today belongs to Senator Joseph Montoya.
Conditions in Southeastern Texas did not allow for the development of a definite comprador class. Individual Chicanos capitulated but the ideology of white chauvinism reigned supreme and all manners of atrocities were committed against Chicanos. These conditions resulted in militant struggle. Beginning with the Cart War of 1857, Chicanos fought the Texas Rangers and Anglo-American vigilantes as well as the US Army. In 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, a large landowner, enraged by Texan atrocities, seized the town of Brownsville, Texas, freed several peasants who worked on his ranch, shot three Texans who were accused of mistreating Chicanos, and began a decade of warfare in the border region between the Rio Nueces and the Rio Grande.
The Civil War found the Chicanos siding with the Union, but only after Texas-Confederate forces invaded New Mexico in 1861. Chicanos viewed this primarily as a repeat of the 1841 Texan invasion. Some 5000 Chicanos volunteered for military service in the Union Army. Many of them did this as a means of earning enough, money to pay off their debts to their patrones. In Texas in the part of New Mexico occupied by the Confederacy, Chicanos harrassed Texan soldiers by “liberating” their horses and cattle and by staging numerous small ambushes. In 1864, Union troops under the command of Colonel Manuel Chavez destroyed the Confederate supply base during the battle of Glorietta Pass and thus brought about the withdrawal of Confederate forces from New Mexico.
Improved transportation and the increased demand for beef after the Civil War brought about a boom in the cattle industry in Texas and New Mexico. It was this combined with, the coming of the railroads into New Mexico which, made the expropriation of the Chicano peasant possible.
One of the prerequisites of wage labor and one of the historic conditions for capital is free labor and the exchange of free labor against money, in order to reproduce money, not as use value for enjoyment, but as use value for money. Another prerequisite is the separation of free labor from the objective conditions of its realization – from the means and material of labor. This means above all that the worker must be separated from the land, which functions as his natural laboratory. This means the dissolution both of free petty landownership and of communal landed property, based on the oriental commune.[5]
The capitalist development and exploitation of the Chicano Nation and indeed of the entire Southwest could only take place through the expropriation of the land and the creation of a large proletariat to build the railroads, work the mines, and labor in the fields. The seizure of the landgrants was not the result of the “greedy nature of the gringo” as some Chicano petty-bourgeois nationalists wish people to believe; it was the prerequisite of the imperialist exploitation of the Chicano Nation.
The US government quietly began their offensive against the Chicano peasantry in 1854 when the Congress passed an act reserving the right to pass upon private land claims in New Mexico by direct legislative enactment. It was impossible to judge decisions, nor were provisions made for surveying land claims. After the Civil War, hordes of Anglo-American lawyers descended on New Mexico sensing that a profit could be made out of the expropriation of land. At one time it was estimated that one out of every ten Anglo-Americans in New Mexico was a lawyer. The infamous Santa Fe Ring developed as the ruling circle of the territory. The Ring was a tightly-knit alliance of Anglo lawyers and business men with some twenty Chicano families, the comprador bourgeoisie, included. The most well known member was Thomas B. Catron, a lawyer and the Ring’s political leader. By 1894 he personally owned about two million acres of land and was part owner or attorney for an additional four million acres.
A variety of methods were used to force Chicanos off their land. Because of the long period of time and great expense involved in securing congressional affirmation of land titles, many Chicanos simply could not afford to have their claims approved. Both lawyers and surveyors demanded their payment in land. Another method utilized to whittle down or seize land was county taxes. They were juggled so as to be unbearably high for peasants, but went down greatly when the land fell into the hands of the Ring or other Anglo-American businesses. In cases where Chicanos paid the taxes, they were given false receipts or else the payment was not recorded at all in the county tax records. The system of seizing land through taxation reached a new high in 1926, when the New Mexico legislature passed a law saying that any land which was tax delinquent for three years could be sold by the county.
When the need for land became very great in the late l800’s with, the building of the railroads and the maturation of US imperialism, legal means of seizure were supplemented by legal and extra-legal terror. Ruthless, barbarian bands of Texans rode through the countryside murdering Chicanos, burning their homes and ranch buildings, and running off their herds of sheep and cattle. To this very day “the word Texan is a hiss and a byword” throughout the Chicano Nation.
The activities of the Federal Government was also costly to the land holdings of Chicanos. The establishment of national forests meant the enclosure of millions of acres of pastureland and to this day forest administrators harass the semi-proletarian Chicanos of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado by denying them grazing rights and by impounding stock.
The homestead laws were a vicious means by which the imperialists came to possess the land. The ideology of white chauvinism and the usage of Anglo-American farmers as pawns in seizing land effectively generated hatred and distrust between two peoples with a common enemy. The homesteaders settled on millions of acres of Chicano land, thus depriving the Chicano peasants of the basis for their existence as peasants, and when droughts or taxes forced the Anglo-American farmers off, the land fell into the hands of the imperialists.
Since 1854, owners of Spanish and Mexican land grants throughout the Southwest have lost 2 million acres of private lands, 1.7 million acres of communal lands, 1.8 million acres lost to the states, and vast areas lost to the Federal Government. In New Mexico alone the United States government holds 27 million acres excluding federal Indian reservations, that is, 34.6% of the entire area of the state.
However, life is dialectical, and where there is oppression there is resistance. Chicano peasants organized armed groups to combat the expropriation of their lands. These groups were organized to protect villages from rampaging Texans. Las Gorras Blancas appeared in the 1890’s in San Miguel county in New Mexico and sought to sabotage the fencing off of grazing lands. La Mano Negra appeared about the same time in the Northwestern part of the state and was active in the area as late as the 1920’s.
The arrival of the railroads meant the beginning of the imperialist exploitation of the Chicano Nation. Almost immediately the mining and timber industry expanded and copper became one of the most important products of New Mexico. The railroad made possible the settlement of the Pecos Valley which produced a thriving truck farming industry.
The expropriation of the peasants and the development of the resources of the Chicano Nation went hand in hand. The proletariat become the growing class in the nation while the national bourgeoisie increasingly lost its ability to lead the national liberation movement. It was in a desperate attempt to turn back the hands of time that the people of Socorro fought the railroad crews to prevent the building of the railroads and preserve the old order.
Imperialism is the most barefaced exploitation and the most inhuman oppression of hundreds of millions of people inhabiting vast colonies and dependent countries. The purpose of this oppression is to squeeze out super-profits. But in exploiting these countries imperialism is compelled to build there railways, factories, and mills, industrial and commercial centers. The appearance of a class of proletarians, the emergence of a native intelligentsia, the awakening of national consciousness, the growth of the liberation movement – such are the inevitable results of this ’policy.’ The growth of the revolutionary movement in all colonies and dependent countries without exception clearly testifies to this fact.[6]
Thus the October Revolution, having put an end to the old bourgeois movement for national emancipation, inaugurated the era of a new socialist movement of the workers and peasants of the oppressed nationalities, directed against the rule of the bourgeoisie, their own and foreign, and against imperialism in general.[7]
The consolidation of the rule of US imperialism over the Chicano Nation was achieved by the careful cultivation of the comprador bourgeoisie and its own consolidation of its position. The comprador was able to convert the penitentes into its own reserve. A number of small concessions were made on the question of land grants, e.g., the establishment in 1891 of a Court of Private Land Claims.
This scrap from the imperialist table approved only one-third of the land claims brought before it, but nevertheless served to pacify the explosive situation in the Chicano Nation. The Nation was carved up between three different states and territories and when the imperialists felt their political control over the Chicano Nation was secure, Colorado and finally New Mexico were admitted as States. The only victory which the national bourgeoisie was able to bring about during this period was the inclusion of those articles in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which concerned the protection of the rights of Chicanos.
However, imperialism, in its quest to extract super-profits from the Chicano Nation, was forced to develop its resources, to build cities, and to construct means of transportation. In the process of doing these things, the proletariat developed as the most important and revolutionary class in the nation.
As early as 1890 Chicano miners organized Los Caballeros de Labor in Colfax County. The organization was eventually destroyed by means of extra-legal terror, but the miners of the Chicano Nation continued to be the vanguard of the proletariat. In 1912, one delegate to the state constitutional convention identified himself as a socialist and was elected from an area of proletarian concentration. The organizing efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World among the coal miners, in Raton, New Mexico, prompted the state to call out the National Guard in 1928.
The depression years (1930-37) drove thousands of Chicanos into the ranks of the proletariat. These were the years of the most violent struggle the proletariat of the Chicano Nation has to date waged. There was not a single strike by Chicano workers that was not met by violence. Largely ignored by the Communist Party and the American Federation of Labor, the Chicano proletariat stood as a beacon to the entire nation. Among the most significant strikes were those by the pecan shellers in San Antonio in 1934 involving six thousand workers and by several thousand miners in Gallup who sought recognition of their recently formed union, La Liga Obrera de Habla Espanola, which claimed eight thousand members at its height. One of the few unions to organize workers in the Chicano nation was the United Mine Workers, but their efforts came only after Chicanos had violently struggled alone. The only significant work done by the Communist Party was at the huge copper mine at Santa Rita.
During this period of unrest and widespread opposition to US imperialism, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was formed. It was an organization of the compradors seeking to co-opt the struggles of the people and to divert them onto the path of cultural autonomy, and at the same time to cash in on these struggles by utilizing them to consolidate and expand their influence in the Chicano Nation. LULAC spread its influence over all the Southwest and consciously served the Anglo-American imperialists by glossing over the national-colonial question in the Southwest, making no distinction between Chicanos and the Mexican national minority; between the border question (the question of the massive importation of Mexican workers) and the Chicano national-colonial question. In addition, it sought to divert attention from the particular questions of the of the Southwest by seeking unity with all Latin Americans in the United States on the basis of a struggle for “democratic” rights for the Spanish-speaking. In reality this meant only a struggle for the advancement of the Chicano comprador and the petty-bourgeois elements in Latin American communities achieved through the bloodshed of the masses.
The rapid development of the Chicano Nation after 1947 has resulted in the magnificent struggles of recent years. The single most important economic development since World War II has been the massive presence of Anglo-American military forces particularly those sections which are occupied with atomic weaponry. Today, the largest nuclear stockpile is located inside the Manzano mountains outside of Albuquerque. Three large and extremely important facilities connected with atomic weapons are located in the Chicano Nation: Los Alamos, a research center; White Sands Proving Grounds; and the military facilities at Albuquerque. The facilities under the Atomic Energy Commission and a number of other military bases such as Kirkland Air Force Base account for more than 20% of the income of the total labor force in New Mexico. Fort Bliss is another important installation where NATO troops, particularly West German, are trained in the use of atomic weapons.
In addition to the military presence, major discoveries were made of uranium, oil, natural gas, and potash, which contributed to the growth and concentration of the proletariat. The growth of manufacturing industries is recent but the arrival of Levi Strauss Inc, Lenkurts, Singer Freiden, in addition to older establishments such as Farah, points to the further growth of the proletariat. Since 1947 the number of workers employed in non-agricultural activities has increased 78.6%.
The increased imperialist exploitation of the Chicano Nation has been met with militant resistance. Among the first to feel the stepped up oppression were the Chicanos living in Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. No longer were they peasants but semi-proletarians, selling their labor power when possible to supplement their meager earnings from the land. In 1963 these Chicanos founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes, which became the leading organization of the Chicano national bourgeoisie. The Alianza believed that all the problems of the Chicano people derived from the loss of their lands. They demanded their return and the complete implementation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. They further denied the validity of Anglo-American law over Chicanos and stated that each Chicano village was self-governing and had the right of self-determination. By 1966 the Alianza claimed some twenty thousand members and organized armed actions against Anglo-American ranchers who were occupying landgrant land. The Courthouse Raid in 1967 struck fear into the hearts of the imperialists. Armed alianzistas entered the county courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, freed two alianzistas held prisoner and shot two deputies. The naked force of the US imperialists was poured into the area as troops, tanks and helicopters were used to search for the alianzistas. People were dragged from their homes at gunpoint and herded into a barbed-wire corral. The repression was quick and brutal.
The decline of the Alianza in recent years has been paralleled by the growth of militancy in the proletariat of the Chicano Nation. Its growth and concentration dialectically brings with it unionization and the growth of the communist movement. Throughout the Chicano Nation workers are struggling to organize. The role of the most militant sector of the working class has passed from the miners to the industrial and service workers. The organizing drives and militant strikes at Farah, the University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque city workers, the city workers of Santa Fe and Artesia, and at many other workplaces throughout the entire Chicano Nation testifies to this. Of great significance is the fact that the proletariat is increasingly coming to reject petty bourgeois leadership (the wildcat strike at UNM in 1970) and is thus becoming more and more open to Marxism-Leninism.
The more the struggles of the Chicano Nation have taken the path of the struggle for national liberation, the more frantic the efforts of the comprador class to re-establish hegemony over the Chicano people’s movement. The founding of El Partido de la Raza Unida typifies these efforts. This organization comes to the masses with militant rhetoric, but in reality LRUP seeks to liquidate the national-colonial question in the Southwest; it pushes the bourgeois line of cultural autonomy in order to divide the proletariat of the Chicano Nation along national lines and to distract the Chicano people from the cause of national liberation; and it diverts the struggles of the Chicano people into electoral channels and the fight for cheap concessions from the US imperialists.
However, everyday it becomes clearer that the people of the Chicano Nation are becoming aware of the real intentions of these traitors and the objective conditions exist for the people of the Chicano Nation to come to look to Marxism-Leninism and communist leadership for the organization of the national liberation movement and the attainment of a victorious socialist revolution.
[1] McHenry, A Short History of Mexico, p. 71.
[2] Ibid., p 73.
[3] Meinig, Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600-1970.
[4] Communist League, The Negro National-Colonial Question, p. 13.
[5] Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, International Publishers, 1971, p. 67.
[6] J. Stalin, op. cit., Foundations of Leninism, pp. 5-6.
[7] J. Stalin, Marxism and the National-Colonial Question, International Publishers, 1934 p. 34.