The Last of the Chicanos: Jose Angel Gutierrez

By Franco

August 12, 2015

Jose Angel Gutierrez

Time moves on relentlessly, taking in its momentum everything that exists. The great Chicano leaders and heroes that stood up and lifted their heads during the civil rights era have now ridden into the sunset, only one remains with us today: Jose Angel Gutierrez. Gutierrez's life and activism can be summed up by the conviction that justice must be observed even to the lowest in society. Gutierrez is known for speaking truth to the powerful who are hypersensitive about having their activities revealed in public, for this reason he has been often labeled a radical. Nuestra Voz de Tarrant County was able to contact the last of the great Chicano Leaders and this interview is the result.  

Franco: You were born into a middle class family, your father was a doctor. What motivated you to seek social action, who were your influences, what ideologies influenced you?

Gutierrez: Yes, born into that status with some nuances you may not be aware of.... My dad was Mexican hasta las cachas! No hospital privileges, no speaking English at home, 100% poor Mexican clients, mostly migrants, barrio office, own lab since he did not have access to hospital-all was done in office inside our home. I saw everything.  He got paid sometimes and many times with a chicken, tamales, car wash, etc.  We were not migrants but certainly not wealthy as you would imagine a doctor's earnings to be.  He died when I was 12.  My mother had no clue about our financial situation nor was on any bank account, real estate, etc.; nor did she have any licenses to continue any aspect of health delivery.  My older half brother, also a doctor in Torreon, Mexico (Horacio Gutierrez) manage to steal all the properties in Mexico, bank account money, car, and took half of the equipment from my dad's office. We just kept the house. We had to become migrants and poor like everyone else. I learned a lot having to grow up without a father and quickly.  Both parents stressed education, going to college was assumed and I did internalize that goal. I remained a migrant until my junior year in college. I learned to channel my rage and anger at discrimination and unequal opportunity by engaging in direct protest and mass social action beginning my 11th grade in high school. See my book The Making of a Chicano Militant; Lessons from Cristal, Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.  All of this is there and more.

Franco: One of the significant characteristics of the Chicano movement was a strong emphasis on our Native American heritage, whereas today most Mexican-Americans are not aware of their Native-American roots. Many Mexican-Americans mistakenly believe they are descendants of European immigrants who arrived through New York City. What are your thoughts on this?

Gutierrez: We are not in charge of our group labeling, racial or ethnic. See Office of Management and Budget Directive 15, May 1977 for definitions. The government uses labels for social control. They established the white racial dictatorship we have still since 1790 (see Naturalization Act of 1790) and with labels and subsequent policies to implement these categories created the middle groups such as other white ethnics and the lower groups such as us, Native Americans and ex-slaves and their descendants. Once these strata was set in place all the white elites have to do is divide and conquer. We fight one another over skin color, nationality, physical features, and group label......Chicano, Indio, prieto, Moreno, negro, agabachado, guero, Hispanic, latina, gay, bisexual, citizen, mojado, etc.  Our parents make us become them; we grow to choose what we want to be; and life's circumstances make us what we become--its is a process.  Some of us are for group ascendency, others are opportunists, still others are selfish to the max---YoYo's I call them, no mas Yo. And still other are traitors---wanna be anything but of Mexican ancestry. Our hybrids, say Afro Latinos, have it worse....blacks don't accept them and Latinos don't want them as part of the group or nationality, particularly in the US.  Case of Dominicans: in Santo Domingo they see and call themselves as whites; migrant to Massachusettes,. New York, etc. and they are considered as Negros. The negros in Santo Domingo are the Haitians. Yet, they are the same people on the same island. Historically, they have killed each other over who is Spanish white and who is African French negro.  

I grew up as a Chicano, neither Mexican from Mexico nor American in terms of treatment; so we made our own space to fit. The Mexicans didn't like us much then, even my relatives, called us names, ridiculed our pocho Spanish. Whites look down on us and see us as their historic enemy. I try to do for the greater good including sacrifice and activism but it seems now that is viewed as "radical" and not acceptable strategy for the white wanna-bees.

Franco: You were active as a student working to improve education for Mexican-Americans, what is your view of the public education system and its effect on Mexican-American students today?

Gutierrez: The Anglo-centric system of public education in the US, pre-K through college is designed to make Anglos out of all of us in mind, attitude, opinion, identity, and heritage erasing all we have been and ought to be: hybrid indigenous people of Mexican ancestry; the only real Americanos because our indigenous ancestors were immigrants from Eurasia like the Spaniards and whites from Europe. Our hybrid Latinindad includes a Spanglished borrowed Romance language, imposed Catholicism legacy, repeated conquest and colonized mindset, and, structural status of impoverishment and robbed of wealth, namely our land and its riches both surface and subterranean.

The public schools continue to make Anglos out of all us hence we continue to have disputed group identities, confused loyalties, and repeated cycles due to immigration of system illiterate peoples who do not know how the Anglo world works much less how to make it work for them and even less how to make a new world. Since the era of the Chicano Movement we do not have group ascendency as a goal, little solidarity, and no underpinning ideology of Chicanism (caring for our group first then others).