The Chicano movement was born in the civil unrest of the 1960s, and Colorado was a focal point of the movement. Dr. David Conde was one of the founders who shaped and directed the movement. In this interview he recounts the early days, and changes that have come after forty years.

Cafe Mundo: So, what was it like here in the 1960s?

Dr. Conde: Well, there were so many things going on.... As you know the Vietnam War was on and much of the opposition to the Vietnam War was growing across the country.

CM: Yes, that was when we had SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and other student radical groups forming.

Dr. Conde: Yes. There was a lot of petitioning and a lot of demonstrations. Some were more violent than others. You had everything from people demonstrating to people actually doing violence against institutions. At the same time you had the African Americans doing their thing, which had been going on for about ten years.

The Chicano movement really took off in 1965 with the coalition of urban Latinos coming together to begin a movement for justice. It coalesced around several leaders, and the local leader was, of course, Corky Gonzales, who moved out of the shadow of institutional work to take a leadership role in the movement.

CM: It kind of surprises me that Denver seems to have been a focal point of the Chicano movement. When I was reading Message to Aztlán, there were speeches Gonzales gave in Colorado Springs and Denver. Other than being the geographical center of the country, I never thought of Denver as the center of any kind of movement, but it looks as if it may have been at least one important center of the Chicano movement.

Dr. Conde: Well, remember this pre-dates the prominence of the immigrant community. There were just American-born Latinos at the floor, OK? That’s very important because it brings Denver into the foreground, as opposed to LA, which did become very important in the Chicano movement. It did not reflect some of the basic principles that made the movement itself imperative: namely the loss of language and the loss of history....

In Denver we have a slightly different situation. We do have a perfect case of folks who had loss of language as a result of living in this country and living under the rules that discouraged the use of Spanish - to the point where they were punished for speaking Spanish.

CM: In the classroom?

Dr. Conde: In the classroom; outside the classroom. I remember kids being taken out of the classroom and taken to the bathroom to be punished, and... they would spank them. In our case, we would always have out ears attuned to a Spanish hunt. The word would come out that somebody was coming – that someone found out we were speaking Spanish – and you better run. We were pretty good at having folks come and tell us when a teacher was coming by, and we would go and hide. Then we would kind of materialize out of nowhere to come back to class after recess.

The other part, which is important, is the loss of heritage – the loss of history. It was very much a stepchild to Mexican history and colonial Spanish history, with perhaps the exception of New Mexico. That is why the coalescence of ingredients that created the explosive sixties in Denver came because of the right mix of missing things that people were looking for. They were looking for their missing language. They were looking for their missing heritage. That was one side. That was internal to the population. On the other side was the fight for social justice. So the Chicano movement had two pieces to it. One was the piece associated with advocacy, with petitioning, with the free speech movement, as guaranteed by the Constitution. The other part that very few people saw except Latinos was the effort to try to bring back language, and the effort to bring back our history and heritage. That’s why programs like Chicano Studies came into being.

Probably one of the best examples of this national movement was the federal Title VII program, which brought bi-lingual education. The design of the program was to teach English to Spanish speaking people, and also American heritage to folks to acculturate them to this country. When this legislation came out (as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society) they had Chicanos in Washington in the Office of Education, running Title VII. And of course, if you look at the application of Title VII vis a vis the law you will see exactly what I am talking about. The application of Title VII to the school districts, in the Southwest particularly, was basically to teach Spanish to folks who had lost their language, and to teach the history of the Southwest to folks that had lost their sense of history.

The Title VII way of doing things continued until the immigrant community became very big in the 1990s and especially in the twenty-first century. Because of this, the infrastructure that was set up to deal with the culturally and linguistically distinct had to be put aside in favor of an English-learning system. And that is what we have today – a system that is very much focused on the immigrant community, who do in fact need to learn English.

CM:I think it is interesting because the way you describe bi-lingual education as a tool to re-discover a language has a different meaning than bi-lingual education today, which is a tool to integrate Spanish-speaking kids into a predominantly English-speaking system.

Dr. Conde: And ironically you find people criticizing Title VII as having done no good, as not being successful because it did not do what the legislation said. That’s why we have new programs such as ESL – teaching English through immersion programs for immigrants- because those other programs were unsuccessful. Well, the reason (Title VII programs) were unsuccessful was because they were never designed in practice to be successful doing that. They were designed for something different. They were very successful, by the way, in teaching Spanish and in teaching... Southwest and Colonial Spanish history, not only in K – 12, but in the college and university.

CM: I know you were involved in the movement because you were quoted in Message to Aztlán. You wrote a critique of Yo Soy Joaquín, and there is a piece in here where you talk about it as “a work of art.” You describe it as a literary effort (that has)... “epic qualities,” and “depicts a dual journey into the post-classic world of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica as well as into the contradictions of the Chicano heritage.”

I want to ask you about the contradictions of the Chicano heritage, because I saw some when reading Message to Aztlán.

Dr. Conde: And those contradictions are a reflection of the Chicano being, or even of Latinos today... We are very much a bundle of contradictions that tend to create problems for us in terms of identity issues; in terms of an inability to find place; and this in turn distracts this community. This is a community that has been in this country for a long time. It distracts them from the opportunities that they need to take advantage of in order to be successful citizens of this country....

The issue of contradictions also goes back to history. Yo Soy Joaquín is probably the only poem that really takes a view of the complete cycle of the existence of a people – from the time before they became mestizos to our time. And that journey – the journey typified by Joaquín – is a dual journey. It’s the same journey I mentioned in the beginning – the journey through your history and your language....

As an historical situation, you are looking at the issue of identity going back to the Aztec period. That’s why I call it post-Classic. Ironically, the best that Mesoamerica had to offer, speaking of the time before Columbus – the time before Spain, of the great societies of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, was not really the Aztecs. The best of that world was the Classic civilizations of Teotihuacán; of Monte Albán; the Zapotecs; the great Mayan empire, which gave so much to the world. (The Mayans) had one of six distinct original writing methodologies of the world. That’s wonderful, yet for some reason both the Mexicans, and later the Chicanos, took the last period in their pre-Columbian existence as the model for their own view of themselves. For better or worse, that is what colors Mexican identity and what colors Chicano identity.

On the other side is the journey that takes us from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to today. It is also a psychological journey that takes us into the interior makeup of who we are. By going horizontally over land and at the same time going internally into our selves the journey attempts to resolve some of those contradictions. Because the contradictions of history are complicated. We have the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican world. We have a Europeanized world after that, which are contradictions to each other. You have an English-speaking world vis a vis a Spanish-speaking world, and there is a contradiction in that. You have people that are both European and Indian in the mestizo – another contradiction.

There are also the historical contradictions we have. Land that used to belong to one people now belongs to another, and yet you are part of both and yet you are not. You don’t belong to either. So all those historical contradictions are also reflected in the soul of the Chicano, and that is what Yo Soy Joaquín attempts to address in order to resolve the contradiction of our identity, of who we are. Who are we?

That is what makes it so profound: the notion that telling the story of our history and organizing it is one thing, but to actually use that as the vehicle to resolve some issues that continue to torment us because of our history in this country I think is very profound.

CM: How were you involved in the movement. I remember talking to you once about Cinco de Mayo, and it occurred to me that Cinco de Mayo is a Chicano holiday, and not a Mexican holiday. You said something like, “Oh yeah, we did that on purpose.”

Dr. Conde: Well, Cinco de Mayo is probably the most important holiday that symbolizes the Chicano state of being. I wrote a piece recently in Latino Suave – a magazine that is in their second edition, on Cinco de Mayo. One of the things I am careful to point out is that it was a celebration of a battle against the French, who had come to collect the debts after President Juarez declared a moratorium on the external debt.

The British found out that the Spanish had found out that these guys (French) were after more – they wanted to build another empire.

When the French came and were met at the Battle of Puebla by a very inferior force of militia – in the neighborhood of 2,000 to 2,500 faced by a French force of 6,000 – the battle was unequal, yet the Mexicans won. They won the battle. The French general was forced to withdraw and get reinforcements, and then came back and took Mexico City by a different route and installed Maximilian on the throne. That was the following year, in 1863.

Nine days after the Battle of Puebla, Benito Juarez declared Cinco de Mayo a holiday... but it didn’t take! OK? We go through history; Cinco de Mayo becomes a holiday for Pueblans because it happened in the valley of Puebla; also Cinco de Mayo becomes a holiday for the military, as it was a military victory. For the next 100 or more years Cinco de Mayo is a military parade – in a base. They don’t even go outside. It’s inside the base. It’s a military parade and a fiesta in Puebla.

Cinco de Mayo came to the United States via the fraternities associated with the general in charge of the troops who defeated the French - general Zaragoza. By the way, he was born in Corpus Christi, so he would have been American today – born in Texas. There were a lot of fraternities dedicated to him and every Cinco de Mayo they would have a party. They would get inside the hall and say, “Viva Mexico” and “Viva Zaragoza,” and they would do all the things associated with paying homage to somebody important. It was through these Mexican fraternities made up of immigrant Mexican people that belonged to the Zaragoza Halls that Cinco de Mayo came to the United States.

And that’s the way it was up until 1969 or 1970 when I came to Pueblo, Colorado, which I believe is where the modern Cinco de Mayo really took off. There was a Zaragoza Hall there, and I went to a function. The function was for the great hero of a battle. The same people would take a mariachi and go to a park on a Sunday, or whatever. Well, somebody in the group decided this was important. It was not so much Cinco de Mayo, but the dynamics of Cinco de Mayo that attracted Chicanos. The fact that a major issue associated with the Chicano Movement was the struggle against European Americans made Cinco de Mayo so apropos. Mexicans fighting the European French created a lot of compatibility with the notion that you were fighting a usurper that had come and done in your land in the Southwest. Therefore the holiday had a lot of meaning in that sense.

Of course it was a time when everybody was demonstrating. Things were very loud, and things were very much radicalized. There was a lot of venom being thrown around – a lot of hatred, a lot of challenging remarks. The issue of Aztlán had come to the foreground. So all those things combined to bring this new sense of place, of importance of Cinco de Mayo. So Cinco de Mayo begins its journey to become an important holiday in the 1970,s. And I remember in 1971 we had a week-long Cinco de Mayo event with about 5,000 people. Every day there was something going on. And I remember at Colorado State University at Pueblo where I was at the time, I organized a play. It was a play that was basically thematic to what we were trying to do. And I remember using the play from Central America dealing with prejudice – in Spanish. And the play would be presented by Spanish students, and of course everybody would come and see it. It was presented in the evening and again in the morning, so we could get everybody from the university to come, and also people from the community. We also had a parade. Everything started with a pancake breakfast on a Sunday morning. We closed off downtown Pueblo. We got together with the U.S. Army in Fort Carson and they supplied the kitchens! And the water trucks, to help us do it in a safe manner.

We brought in the Brown Berets into the mix to provide security. Instead of being out there as “shock troops,” threatening and challenging police, now they were protecting the crowd, which is a different kind of role. We made agreements with the police that they would stay in the fringes – they would stay a little farther away, and if we had a problem then they would come in. But they stayed out of the gathering place.

Things were so successful that by 1972 we had 25,000 people at Zapata Park in Pueblo. It became something that just exploded on the scene. You could tell that it had captured the imagination of more than just Chicanos, because now they had Cinco de Mayo sales. They had the stores open for a Cinco de Mayo sale, you know?

CM: That’s funny! All 25,000 people come in to Pueblo and its a shopping holiday.

Dr. Conde: Oh yeah, they were shopping downtown. Commercial establishments were open for a Cinco de Mayo sale. And you could tell Cinco de Mayo had arrived because the commercial folks had taken it over, so... Cinco de Mayo went all over. It became strong in California – LA, San Francisco, San Diego especially. But Colorado has retained the leadership of Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo was transferred to Denver in terms of critical mass and I think Cinco de Mayo attendance last year was estimated at between 400,000 to 500,000 people. (Talking about) the one here by the Pepsi Center and Civic Park. It had started on Santa Fe Avenue, but just outgrew the narrow streets and came over here. Now it’s a gigantic celebration.

And it’s all part of the Chicano movement and its heritage. It makes a political statement.But now everybody does not think much about the political statement. Now everybody just loves the fiesta part. But it does have a political message, and a political message that continues to be important today.

CM: That’s a good segue way into something else I wanted to ask you. Reading Corky Gonzales made me... angry. I felt that I was being accused of something I didn’t do. It’s a very confrontational book, especially El Plan del Barrio. It could have been a pronunciamiento in pre-revolutionary Mexico. So as I was reading it, I was aware that you have this message that is confrontational and political, and I can see it in the context of the 60’s, but is there a mismatch today between the message and the audience?

Dr. Conde: Well, yes. What has happened is that basically the Latino community as it grew in stature and wealth and in participation in mainstream America, became more associated with other issues The issue of creating wealth is very important. And that’s why you have everybody you can think of going into business and taking business classes in the 80’s. The movement itself begins to slow down after 1976. By the 80’s you have a different situation. You have people who are interested in MBA degrees... that kind of thing.

Also the 80’s is a time that the Chicana – the women – the Latino women’s movement takes root in this country. The Chicanas become very important contributors to Chicano thinking. They are the ones writing the novels. They are the ones producing the works of art. Very few males are contributing during this time. Rudy Anaya, who writes Bless Me, Ultima and Heart of Aztlán continues to write, but even his writings are becoming less poetic, less literature and more realism... like detective novels and that kind of stuff. So Rudy’s changing too.

The women like Ana Castillo and Mary Helen Ponce are the ones that are really coming out with the fervor of identity issues to write. In fact it caused the Chicano Studies department at Metro State to change its style. Now it’s Chicano/Chicana Studies.

All those things combined with a third situation: the immigrant community. We are experiencing the largest immigration wave in the history of the world. And it is basically a Latino immigration. What has happened is, with the influence of the Latino immigrant from Mexico, Central America, and Latin America, we also have diversified our political philosophy and thought. In the Chicano movement and its aftermath much of the world view expressed is somewhat radicalized, somewhat leftist in a sense, somewhat liberal perhaps. Many would use those terms. I don’t know that I would agree, but I am just trying to relate to them on a scale.

The immigrant community that comes to this country to seek the American dream is heavy into hard work – very hard work – heavy into trying to create wealth for family... get a house and those kinds of things. They are the same kinds of things you saw a lot of from vets that came back after World War II. You almost have this copy of the American Dream being exercised by the Latino immigrant.

Also the Latino immigrant brought with him and her a more conservative philosophy to the point where that community and its allies have helped the Republican Party win presidential elections.

CM:That’s a really interesting angle because as I was reading Corky Gonzales’s statements about capitalism, which he calls “a rotten, corrupted system,” and the things he said about the Democratic Party before he split from the Democratic Party were very radical – very confrontational. I know a lot of Chicanos and Mexicans living in the United States now, including immigrants, and I’m thinking to myself, “Would they identify with this message?” And I think the answer is, “No, they wouldn’t.”

I had the sense when I came in here to do the interview that I didn’t know if the message of the Chicano movement had changed, but I felt that message as it was communicated in Message to Aztlán probably wouldn’t resonate with Chicanos today.

Dr. Conde: Well, yes and no. It would resonate in the same sense that those opposed to the Iraqi War borrow tactics and philosophy from those who opposed the Vietnam War. It’s a different population, not like the youth in the 1960s....

CM: It could be some of the same people.

Dr. Conde: Yes, it could be some of the same people – the boomers that are out there demonstrating, because they had the anti-Vietnam War experience and are trying to re-create that with Iraq.

But it’s there. That philosophy is still there in the Chicano community, but it’s there in a pedestal. It was a very necessary part for Latinos to have a base from which to start their life in this country. Previous to the Chicano movement, Chicanos did not see themselves, and were not seen by other folks, as citizens of this country. As a matter of fact, they were not allowed into labor unions until the cannery workers organized themselves in 1936, until the CIO came into existence. But the AFL, under Samuel Gompers, refused Latinos even though they taught them how to organize. Once they taught them how to organize in Arizona, they were not allowed to join the unions they had helped organize. So they were not Americans.

Also at the time, whenever they had a dispute, they would go to the Mexican consulate to try to solve problems because they were living on their own side of town and kind of away from everybody else. So they did not see themselves as Americans, and they were not seen by other folks as Americans.

The Chicano movement, which had its roots in the pachuco, the Mexican youth who dared to leave their colonia – his side of town – and go to Main Street and suffer all the humiliation that goes with being out of place. I remember when I was very little we were in Corpus Christi one day and we were going to go to the picture show. I remember very clearly a little pachuquito with his ducktail hair, his pink shirt with black threads in it, and black pants with pink sewing on the sides. The pants came to a tight fit at the ankle. He had on wedge shoes black and shiny, very nice looking. I say him being put up against the wall by a policeman. And the policeman, after he had him up against the wall calmly takes out a knife out of his pocket and cuts his pants on both sides and then tells the young man, “Now go home and dress properly.”

It was that character that came into downtown from the colonia and in a “dandy” sort of way... copied the New York style of dress, but not Manhattan like everybody else, but Harlem. You know, the zoot suite. It is that person who dared to leave to be ridiculed and to make his intra-group fights public fights in the main square that begins the notion of trying to find place in America. And that is followed later on by the World War II veterans who said, “Hey wait a minute. You can’t treat us this way. We should eat in a restaurant along with everybody else.” They founded societies such as the American GI Forum to try to enforce the view that they were as much citizens as anybody else. And that was followed by the 60’s and the Chicano movement.

The Chicano movement faced the establishment and told them, “Main Street belongs to all of us, and also should be colored by all of us. It should have our ingredients in there. It should have a Latino flavor to it. It should have a Latino color to it. It should have a Latino language to it. If it is not so, then it is not American....”

That was the basis for settling the playing field for the entry of the Latino community into mainstream America.

CM: And that’s why it was successful.

Dr. Conde: That’s why it was successful.

CM:Reading between the lines of Message to Aztlán, it’s separatist. It wants to separate Chicano identity from American identity and implies that there is this mythical place to go called Aztlán, where Chicanos can find a home. But they didn’t do that. That’s not what happened. In fact, the exact opposite happened, as you described, they integrated and became part of the culture, and I think maybe that explains the success of the movement.

Dr. Conde: Well, remember, the concept of Aztlán was important, very important, not so much as a pragmatic reality but as a symbol – a mythic symbol about an aspiration. One of the problem, remember, with Chicano stuff is that it’s full of contradictions. OK?

If you think about the reality of the situation, how can Latinos or Chicanos hate Anglos, so to speak, since they are half Anglo? OK? I mean, it’s like hating yourself. One half hates the other half. I think it was a necessary trial they had to go through in order to achieve some kind of accommodation.

CM: So I wonder, fourteen years after Corky Gonzales gave his bicentennial speech, how has the audience changed? How has the Chicano community changed during that period?

Dr. Conde: Well, number one, it stopped calling itself “Chicano,” if you have noticed. It’s more, “Latino.” It’s more open. And Chicano has become a term for intellectuals. In some ways, it is an elitist term today, because it denotes a very special kind of person who in the beginning was willing to put his or her life on the line for an idea. That’s something many folks don’t necessarily do, and they only do it under very special circumstances, and I think our country has had those defining moments at different times in our history. So if nothing else, there is a sense of reverence for that.... that stamps you in a different way.

I went to a conference of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education in San Antonio last week. And one of the keynote speakers was Henry Cisneros, the ex-mayor of San Antonio and also the Secretary of HUD in the Clinton administration. He gave a powerful speech, talking about the need for a Latino middle class, and that this need for a Latino middle class was no longer just a Latino issue. It is an American issue. He was saying that by 2026 – in twenty years – the country will grow from 280 million to 410 million, which is 130 million in population growth. Sixty million out of that 130 million – almost half – will be Latino. Put that together with the 45 or 50 million we have now, and we have a major, major presence in this country.

He says that that lends to the urgency of Latinos to get into the middle class because it is the middle class that has historically been the pillar of our democracy and of our country. It has been the middle class that has kept our country going in the direction (that is) dynamically powerful, and in the direction of freedom and democracy. He said there are three things required to achieve that:

Number one is education. Number two: housing, because for most Americans your house is your savings plan. And number three is disposable income. The idea of being able to generate enough income to do the things we need to do and also to give – the idea of giving to causes and scholarships and things like that.

He says the urgency is not necessarily for the benefit of the Latino community only. If Latinos fail in achieving the middle class the whole country will fail. It has come to that. And therefore it is no longer only about Latinos.

CM: That implies a bifurcated society.

Dr. Conde: Yeah, and also one where we will pull the rest of society down. We will not be able to keep the dynamic will of capitalism and a market economy and an educated class and all those things that are so important to democracy. We need educated folks to be able to handle our democracy. Our system of government is a thinking person’s system of government.

That means we are all in the same boat. We’ve got to get these folks educated. You know? These folks have to be able to get a house. These folks have to be able to contribute. Also, as we retire, the Latino population is the youngest of the three major groups. That means this is the population retirees will depend upon for their social security.

CM: (Laughing) It’s the generation that’s going to get screwed by the debt that we’re handing down to them.

Dr. Conde: Exactly. So, how more mainstream can they be... where they have become an important priority not only to themselves but to the rest of the country. And that’s profound. Now we’re talking about not only arriving, but also having to undertake our responsibility. Are we ready? Are we ready to take on the burden of leadership in this country? Those are major questions – questions the Chicano movement would never dream of.... What they were doing was trying to “pooh-pooh” the establishment. What they were doing was trying to undermine it in a way because they were not part of it.... (We are at the point) today where the establishment has to work. Otherwise, Latinos will not be able to progress.

...

There is a feeling on the part of the power structure, and among white Americans specifically that they are being undermined – they feel they are losing their identity as Americans. Look at what’s happening: they talk Black. Most people talk jive. Young people talk jive; they don’t talk regular English. What do they dance to? Hip hop. It’s not White America it’s Black America. OK? What do they eat? Mexican and Italian food....

Where do we spend our leisure? Where do we go to get out of our stressful world? We go to Cancun. We go to Puerto Vallarta. We go to Acapulco, and somehow we bring all of that back. And in some ways America is going through a process of trying to redefine what America is. When we talk about “I’m proud to be an American,” it’s got to be more than a label. It’s got to be something that’s tangible and intimate to who you are as a people....

Those things had to happen for the Latino community. We had to have a Chicano Movement. Without a Chicano Movement we could not have addressed the issues of identity that allowed us a comfort level to now be full partners in mainstream America....

CM: So they would actually had been more isolated had they not become part of the Chicano Movement.

Dr. Conde: We went through a period of slavery in this country for, what, the first 150 years or so. It basically destroyed the integrity of a whole population, and they haven’t recovered from that. It’s very devastating. I dare say that without a Chicano Movement Latinos would be in some part of the same situation – fragmented...

CM: Radicalized?

Dr. Conde: Permanently radicalized and also wards of the government. And if you noticed, Latinos are not that. They are the hardest working people in this country. They’re the proudest. They’re the first to die in war. They do all the things you would think a patriotic American is supposed to be about. So we are, by our deeds, adjusting the concept of what it is to be an American. And to me that is probably the most important point. *

The thing that I worry about is whether we have enough time to move enough of the Latino community into the middle class so they can take on the burden that destiny requires of us.

CM: That’s interesting. I understand the concerns and the reaction of White America as they see the Mexicanization of America happening around them, and they feel that it’s foreign and it’s strange. I’m about as Anglo as you can get. I’m very comfortable with it. I married a Mexican woman. I’m comfortable being bilingual. I’m comfortable with these other elements of Hispanic culture becoming integrated with American culture, and to me it’s just part of the process of change. My kids will be mestizo. That doesn’t bother me.

But I can understand why there would be a reaction among people who are fearful of that, and I guess it concerns me because those kinds of reactions are usually self-protective, and they usually go the wrong way.

Dr. Conde: Well, there’s a big reaction, for example, to multiculturalism because it allows the importance of other, non-American concepts, ideologies and characteristics.: They accuse the idea of having more than one language as being Balkanizing – as an element that could Balkanize America. In a sense, what folks are saying is true. It’s true within their concept of American life, which is very narrow. If you are talking about the immigrant history of European Americans is a lot different than the immigrant history of continental Americans. The immigrant history of European Americans calls for them to give up their Old World, knowing full well that they would never come back to it. Whatever they took with them other than their habits and their traditions, would not help them in the New World. Consequently, once they made that commitment and boarded that ship, and crossed the ocean, they knew they were committed to undergoing the very traumatic transformation, not only for themselves but also for their children to become Americans.

The continental Americans were here before the European Americans arrived. And consequently we are having a reverse kind of situation: we have Manifest Destiny in reverse.

CM: (laughing) I’ve never heard that before!

Dr. Conde: It’s the ebb and flow. Just as America was growing from East to West, the Americans who traveled from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean felt that there was a magical and universal mandate called Manifest Destiny that justified everything, including all the illegalities. It’s kind of ironic: people are not against immigrants; they are only against illegal immigrants, which is a label. They really are against immigrants. There are just too many people here they say.

CM: I might disagree with you on that, but go ahead.

Dr. Conde: OK, in a historical movement like Manifest Destiny, those are the least things you think about. Legality and the borders of another country do not mean anything. It’s the movement of history and people – the covered wagon moving over land, you know, taking over Indian territories.

CM: Now it’s coming from South to North.

Dr. Conde:Yeah. It comes from South to North, and it’s the movement of history. It’s happening. Laws will come later, after the new historical realities are in place.

CM: I don’t agree with that mentality. I do agree that it’s happening around us.

Dr. Conde: Well, then you wouldn’t agree with Manifest Destiny, yet that's what made our country great.

CM: Well, I think you may be telling the truth: that that’s the mentality of the Latinos, that they have a destiny to come here and do this. And if it parallels the movement of Anglos from East to West across the continent, then you’re right: borders are meaningless. We were answering a higher calling.

Dr. Conde: Right. Exactly. America’s greatness comes, if you think about it, from that movement. I don’t think that an America that would stop at the edge of a river would have been the America that...

CM: No, you’re right.

Dr. Conde: As a matter of fact, the West continues to be the magical Shangri-La of America in many ways. It is the breadbasket. It is the place you go to to get away from things. It is the other face of America. It is the optimistic side of America because it’s facing the new world – the evolving world of Asia, which will be the power structure of the future. So it’s extremely important. America will be part of that because of its Pacific Rim. It will be part of the greatness of the next generation of great powers in this world, which are China and India.

CM: You know who I heard say something just like this, just last night? Carlos Mencia, on “The Mind of Mencia.” He said, “I’m an American. I’m aware of the things we’ve done in our past. I’m not going to apologize for it.” It’s an in-your-face attitude, and I’m listening to him, and I find myself laughing and nodding, and, you know, he talks about the quarrels we have among Americans – among Blacks and Whites and Hispanics. He says, “We do that when we don’t have anything else to do.” But now that we face an external enemy, we come together, in his words, like the Power Rangers. And I find myself laughing and nodding again, and I find myself thinking that this guy speaks to me in a way that Corky Gonzalez never would.

Dr. Conde: Well, America prides itself on action – on doing something; being dynamic; bringing the new idea to fruition; on creativity; on a lot of energy. Because that’s what America is all about. That’s why America continues to be at the pinnacle of the world. Would you deny that to Latinos?

To express that same sense of energy, power, the can-do attitude to overcome whatever, legal or illegal is to operate in the tradition of being an American. That is going to get us to the next level. You want people who are tough; that are forward-moving; that when they fall down will get up again and fight some more, and who are willing to shed their blood – to do what is necessary to move the country forward. And that is in our best tradition. If we want an acquiescent population, we’re in trouble. We’re in real trouble.

I think the Chicano movement showed us that we can be powerful. You know. that in the world of ideas we can be powerful – that we don’t have to be an agreeable tail to an ugly dog, you know? We can actually help beautify that dog.

CM: Well, now that the Latino population has integrated so well with ours, I can see Latinos around me who are being successful. I can see Carlos Mencia on television with this in-your-face attitude. And I do feel like they’re my neighbors. I don’t feel threatened by it. I hope that attitude becomes more....

Dr. Conde: Yeah, and the thing is that we’re looking for the same thing. I went to visit a house over by the old airport.... There’s a neighborhood there that has been there for a lot of years, but it’s being renovated and it has some very expensive homes in it. I went over there... and I found a bunch of Latino immigrant families living in these mansions. “How did they get this big house?” Well, they got together, and each of the families pitched in and they all got themselves an expensive home.....

CM: Well, and I wonder if there is a set of – I’ll use the word conservative – values operating there in the sense that you take work seriously; that you’re pragmatic. I see my own families’ Protestant values of hard work and sober living and trying to become more comfortable socially reflected in the Catholic immigrant communities, and I think, “Well, there is a similarity.”

Dr. Conde: And it rubs off, by the way. It does rub off. I remember when immigrant communities were beginning to make their presence felt in the United States, and in Denver, more specifically, there were so many schoolground fights between immigrants. There still are, you know... these animosities: the Norteños and the Sureños; the Spanish speakers and those who speak English. We have those divisions. That in itself – that there are divisions within the same civilization – indicates the complexity of the culture. Yet the same Latino English-only speakers that may not like their Spanish-speaking counterparts will go and dance at the (clubs). We will go and eat their food, because we can’t help it.

In some ways the Chicano movement took that concept of the ugliness we see in others which is ourselves and actually expressed it in different ways – took it as an energy source to project a radical ideology. African Americans took the color itself and made it beautiful, because the color itself was never seen as the color of beauty. And society has developed, for better or worse, a sense of values that range from opposite to opposite. And unfortunately our sociological condition is revealed in those opposite constructs. What is the opposite of white? Black.

CM: Well, people tend to think that way. They think in terms of extremes.

Dr. Conde: It’s unfortunate, but that’s the only way we can build a civilization. What we do is break the world into two parts, take half of ourselves and put it one corner; take the other half and put it in the other corner, and then call them opposites and begin to live a life, to create an awareness of the civilization. And being a civilized being is to be half a being. One exists as your good side, and the other just sits there, so you can throw rocks at it.

CM: So conflict is part of growth.

Dr. Conde: Conflict is part of growth. And in some ways America as a democratic country probably... well, it is true that we are one of the more violent nations, but the violence is not necessarily military. Our violence is our dynamism, you know? We are a very dynamic people. I think people miss the point sometimes when they talk about America being a violent country. Well, it is but it’s creativity and the dynamics of our movement – the fact that we don’t sit still, that we are always doing; always creating; always fighting the next frontier. And if we fight a war here and there, well that’s just part of it, but the real gist of who we are.... is this evolving and dynamic people.

CM: I think we really do drive them crazy.

Dr. Conde: Well, I think part of the problem we’re having – part of the misunderstanding with the Islamic world is exactly that. They have had such a violent history that there is a need for some stability. They value stability above democracy.

The Chicano movement, and the Afro-American movement and the youth movement of the sixties is probably the closest America has ever come, even with the Civil War to losing itself, because if you really think about it the youth had left America. And, boy, that was serious. At least in the Civil War we had opposite sides and everybody was involved. Here a whole segment – the most important segment of our population – turned its back, and that was a very, very difficult time.

March 13, 2006