Chicano scholar David Montejano — whose new book “Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981” explores San Antonio’s role in that period — will sign books at 7 p.m. tonight at the Barnes & Noble, 321 N.W. Loop 410.
If you’re lucky, the San Antonio-born scholar who teaches at the University of California-Berkeley will speak about the book’s highlights.
On the ground when Chicano activists such as Willie Velasquez, Rosie Castro and Mario Compean were fighting and exposing the rampant racism and discrimination in government, schools and other institutions, Montejano had to set his research aside as other books got written.
Then a gold mine arrived in the form of Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez’s papers, held the University of Texas at Austin, which provided a critical perspective at the movement.
What Montejano has produced will fascinate students, scholars, politicians and others interested in this side of San Antonio and Texas history.
It was a time in which San Antonio was even more severely segregated, when schools in Mexican American neighborhoods were failing their students in far more vicious ways and when such areas suffered under poor infrastructure. The poverty, inadequate schools and gang warfare on one side of the city stood in sharper contrast to more affluent areas and schools. The Anglo establishment that ruled City Hall did so with impunity, and the Good Government League was its most visible symbol.
What “Quixote’s Soldiers” tells us is that a divided city, stirred by Cesar Chavez’s messages of hope and pride, played into the rise of Chicano political organizing that fell the GGL , which gave rise to single-member districts and a Mexican American mayor.
The book reveals Gonzalez as an insecure congressman who saw himself as a patron of the Mexican American community and worked against the Chicano leadership, even when it would have benefited his constituency. Henry B. monitored police surveillance of Chicano activists, for example, accusing them of being communists.
“There was no evidence of communism in the Chicano movement,” Montejano says. “I’m telling you, I looked for it.”
“So much happens in San Antonio,” the scholars says, including the rise of two key organizations, COPS and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project. “Even today, 30 years later, many organizations across the country can trace their lineage to San Antonio. No other city experienced the impact of the movimiento like this.”
In a book 30 years in the making, Montejano’s book gives San Antonio and its Chicano leadership the credit they’re due.