11/18/2023 0 Comments Bert corona logoWhen he became the organization’s president in the early 1960s, Corona used the position to argue that Mexican American concerns deserved a presidential cabinet-rank position. As the first statewide Mexican American political group in California, the organization found its endorsement eagerly courted by Democratic and Republican candidates in the 1960s and ‘70s. In 1959, Corona joined with other Chicanos-U.S.-born citizens of Mexican descent-in Fresno to form the Mexican American Political Assn. In recent years, the organization was dogged by more than $4 million in debts, but Corona continued to believe in its mission. But by the end of 1992, federal grants, its largest source of income, dried up. Hermandad soon became a major immigrant services provider, with offices in North Hollywood, Santa Ana and Los Angeles. We supported an open immigration policy, as far as Mexico was concerned.” The Hermandad believed that organizing undocumented farm workers was auxiliary to the union’s efforts to organize the fields. “This involved his, and the union’s position on the need to apprehend and deport undocumented Mexican immigrants who were being used as scabs by the growers. “I did have an important difference with Cesar,” Corona wrote in his autobiography. By the 1960s, Hermandad began actively organizing illegal immigrants in California to improve their earning power in this country. That stance led him to the last great organizing effort of his life, the establishment in 1951 of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, or National Mexican Brotherhood. Chavez and the UFW supported Immigration and Naturalization Service actions to deport illegal immigrant workers, whom they regarded as scabs.Ĭorona argued that undocumented workers should be organized rather than deported. While Corona generally supported Chavez and his United Farm Workers, he openly clashed with the farm labor leader over the union’s opposition to undocumented workers. His organizing efforts in the organization often brought him into contact with another up-and-coming Mexican American Community Service Organization organizer from Northern California, Chavez, who would help establish the farm workers union in the 1960s. He also helped form chapters of Saul Alinsky’s Community Service Organization in Los Angeles. In 1938, he joined the charismatic labor organizer Luisa Moreno in building the League of Spanish-Speaking People, one of the first national organizations for Mexican Americans. “I looked at them,” Corona recalled, “and I couldn’t understand that attitude.”Īfter dropping out of college, he volunteered at a Roman Catholic Church in Boyle Heights and organized workers for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a forerunner of today’s AFL-CIO, and the United Cannery, Agriculture, Packing and Allied Workers of America. “It’s best if they don’t know if you’re Mexican. “Here it’s best not to speak Spanish,” they told him. When they reached the stop, however, the two admonished Corona in Spanish, telling him they would have answered his question if he had spoken to them in English. Two Mexican Americans on a streetcar ignored him when he asked in Spanish for directions to Fairfax Avenue. In Los Angeles, however, he was astonished by an incident that occurred shortly after his arrival in the city.
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