Chicano Mexicano Prison Project:

Editor’s Note - The following is a presentation made by David Rico from the Chairperson of the Brown Berets de Aztlán to the conveners of the Second Annual Conference on Raza Prisoners and Colonialism, organized by the Chicano Mexicano Prison Project (CMPP). The Conference took place on May 16, 1998 at Chicano Park Building (Cesar Chavez Center) in San Diego Califas.

Going on what other speakers were talking about, the Berets de Aztlán could give a few examples of networking that might be useful. Sometimes I get a little upset about the word networking, because the Berets de Aztlán and Unión del Barrio are one and the same. In a lot of ways we are together. Even though we have separate meetings; and we are separate organizations. We’re not even allowed into each other’s meetings, at least I don’t think.[laughter] Yet there are organizations that are out there and what they say is ‘what we need is unity.’ You know, unity is a hard damn thing to accomplish. Many times you can’t even unite with your own wife or girlfriends. [laughter]

Try to unite with organizations! One of the craziest organizations or what some some people call crazy, radical, militant- it’s all right if you want to label us that- are the ones that are actually building unity. We’re uniting so close that they say we’re the same organization. This is not the same organization, and a lot of you know what I’m saying. [laughter] What I’m saying, in a joking way, is the truth. We know what unity is all about because we practice it. When we talk about network, unity has to be part of it. Even though the CMPP is Unión del Barrio’s project, when they organize in our community, that doesn’t mean that project belongs to them alone. This issue affects all our people, the Berets say this projects is also ours.

I want to talk about the prison system and an idea that the Berets have. We want to talk about religion... all right religion! I want to talk about a revolutionary religion. The basis of a revolutionary religion is freedom. And why I’m using the word religion is because if we want to free ourselves, if we want to have an Aztlán, we have to practice political struggle, just like other people practice a religion for God. Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, that’s fine. I’m just saying if your serious about freedom then you have to have another religion on the side, and that’s a revolutionary religion and this is a religion for freedom and an Aztlán.
We know that revolution and creating an Aztlán is not going to be here tomorrow. But its never going to happen unless we take it seriously, and we move in that direction with the idea that that’s what we want. This idea also includes prisoners, because although they’re locked up, they’re also part of the revolution because they can contribute to our movement.

Many Raza don’t belong in jail, and there are some that say they’re pintos. They’re not pintos, they’re Chicanos and Chicanos are revolutionary. I don’t want them calling themselves that again because they don’t belong to the system, they belong to Aztlán! They’re Chicano activists, only they don’t know it yet.
There’s a lot of Mexicanos in prison and they’re in prison maybe because of something they did wrong, maybe it’s something they did right.I don’t know. I’m not the one to say. But there’s a potential network there, and we want to tap into that network, we want to tap into that network and say they’re part of a movimiento that’s out here, just like in there.

They have the full attention of everyone that’s in there because they have no where else to go. When you go to prison you should go for something that counts. There are two things the system is going to do to us. They’re going to kill us or they’re going to lock us up. If we die we can still be alive, you don’t think so? You ever heard of Che Guevara, he’s dead, but we talk about him all the time. Zapata, Pancho Villa, they’re all gone, but they still live in a lot of ways. So if you put some commitment into your lives, you can be an inspiration even after your gone. And I’m not telling you no lie, because you know it, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.There’s a net work in there and Unión is right about tapping into that.

The Berets de Aztlán have a real close relationship about prisoners and prisons. Half of us are locked up, and some of us are going to get locked up. I have a badge for what I got locked up for, fire bombing; Fuck Yeah! I wish I did a better job. [applause]

They tried to give me fifty to sixty years if they wouldn’t have made the charge [crimminal syndicalism] unconstitutional. They only made the charge unconstitutional because there was a gabacho who was being charged with the same crime. The only difference was that he had a good lawyer. I knew if he beat the case I was just going to ride along. [laughter] Don’t think I wasn’t sweating bullets either. I was glad about that lawyer, he pulled it off. And when the judge said it; ‘we can’t get you,’ I think there was a little attitude in his tone of voice, ‘you mother fucker.’ [laughter]

Any one of us can become prisoners at any time, we all know that. Death and prison is the only thing that the system has for us. I don’t give a damn if a compañero was involved in the movimiento for two weeks, if he died we’d say that brother was the baddest revolutionary that ever lived on the face of this earth, you should be just like him. [applause] We must highlight what this compañero did.

There’s a couple of people I would like to recognize, even though there are way to many to mention, but I would like to recognize one compañera, Patricia Marín, she’s gone now but she still lives. That’s just another example, I could give you a whole lot more. Too bad it’s to long of a list. But you know your going to die to, your not going to live forever. It really depends on how your going to live your life. We have to take that fear away, and say we’re not going to be afraid of what happens to everybody anyway.

The whole issue of prisoners is that they have a lot to offer us. The Brown Berets de Aztlán want to network with prisoners, maybe we can find out here how we can do that better than the way we’re doing that now. I don’t want to go a prisoner and say ‘hey, I’ll offer you this’, because we can’t offer them anything material but, they can offer us a lot. Some of the things they can offer is the skill to teach while they’re in there. If they have the consciousness when they’re in there, when they come out they can join us.

Another thing is to use the art work that comes out of that place. Have you seen that art work? If I had those skills I’d just do art, because it’s beautiful, and that’s worth money, money for the movimiento. We could use that art for a lot of the newspapers that we put out, not only that but there’s a lot of poets and writers.

Every prisoner has loved ones out there, that write to them and tell them to send them ten, fifteen, twenty dollars to put in their book or whatever, right, they all do that. Suppose that prisoner in there, that you loved, and he asked you to send him forty five dollars instead of fifty. Why? Because the rest of that money should be sent to the prison project. That will help them out in the long run and their people in general.If they had that attitude and we got five bucks from everyone we’d have enough to support the project.

The prison question is something that we have to face. In the early years the Brown Berets were one of the first organizations that said all prisoners are political prisoners, and all should be free, no matter what they did. I know that didn’t sit real good with some people because, maybe the prisoner did something that offended other Raza. But, we still have to say that, because it wasn’t our people who put them away. It was the system that put them away. If it was our system that we controlled and we send them away, then orale, because we’re the ones that put them away. But in this situation we’re not the ones doing it. In that sense all prisoners are political prisoners. Whether they’re involved in drugs- which has to do with the economy and because your poor- or stealing because your poor, we need money, so that’s where we go.

Another thing is you can’t get a job with a f*#@%n felony. You can’t be a doctor and s#*t. You have a felony you're bad, you can’t do that!!! So what are you going to do now. It’s an economic question. In addition to that it’s the rich gringo the one’s that control all the wealth. If you don’t think so who do you think manages all the money, the banks do. Billions and billions of dollars.

A lot of you already know these things I just wanted to make sure that you know the Brown Berets de Aztlán know these things to. We use this information as a way of creating strategies to build a movement.

Another way we can utilize the prisoners is to take care of one of the brothers, when one of us gets locked up maybe they can take care of us when we’re in there for what we’re trying to do. There’s a lot of racist m*&%$# f*#@rs in there that don’t like Mexicans so that has to be taken care of. If we have a righteous brother, we want to make sure he can survive it and maybe he can do some work on the inside. He can be a teacher if he’s got to stay there a long time. You have the teacher already for the one’s that are going to go in and out.
These are a lot of things that can be done, and in a lot of ways they’re already being done. Maybe what we’re talking about is trying to do the job one hundred times better.

The Brown Berets de Aztlán are trying to work around the three strikes law. We’re trying to go into the community and convince people that the ‘three strike law’ is bad for our people. A lot of our people think that this law is good. But it’s a trick and we need to let them know its a trick. If a person is that bad, in the first place- this is what’s on the mind of a lot of Raza- then how come they’re giving them two more chances? Well the two more chances are to make sure they lock up everyone because they violate them for cookies, a butter knife in the living room. I know of a guy that got violated for having a butter knife in the front room, and that’s what happens when you're on parole They put all these restrictions on you. These things are crazy, because most of the time your innocent in the first place, but the problem is you don’t have a good lawyer. So your found guilty and your going to prison for a long time. We have to convince our people- not the people in here because we already know what it is, but- the people in the community, and tell them how this law doesn’t stop any kind of crime. The only thing that will stop any kind of crime is by getting us out of the impoverished conditions that we live in.

We don’t even own the damn place we live in. We’re renters. In reality this is a gabacho barrio. If you don’t believe that look at the street, it’s called Logan. All the home boys love Logan, but if you think about the name Logan, this is not Martinez ese. It’s Logan, that’s some dude that was a rich dude, and didn't like Mexicans who owned this area, that’s who he is. So we don’t own our community. We have home boys claiming street numbers;. You know I’d rather be claiming Zapata than be from a number, or something like that. Some are even being named by markets and stores. If it was called refrigerator street you’d call yourself a refrigerator ese. [laughter]

[Interjection by Irene Mena]: David while your on the subject on the issue of ‘Three Strikes,’ if you don’t mind me interrupting?

[David]: I can’t stop you! Never could before!!

[Irene]: In the latest commercials of that Al Chechi man that’s running for governor, now he’s out there saying not ‘three strikes’ they want one strike.

[David]: It is like that anyway. It is one strike for us anyway.When we get out they just want to find anything to lock us back up for a long time. Even though half the times we’re innocent from the first time they lock us up.

Going back to what we said about some righteous revolutionary people getting locked up and we want Raza inside to take care of them. Well sometimes there’s also some not so righteous people that get locked up and we want those people to get taken care of to. [laughter and applause]

The Berets de Aztlán would like to let you guys know that we support the prison project all the way, and that we have some ideas of our own. We appreciate the opportunity for letting us speak and we’re glad to be here.

Thank you for listening. Remember that religion, the one for freedom.

¡Que Viva La Raza!
¡Chicano Power!