Rodolfo Gonzales

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales (June 18, 1928 – April 12, 2005) was a Mexican-American boxer, poet, political organizer, and activist. He was one of many leaders for the Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. The Crusade for Justice was an urban rights and Chicano cultural urban movement during the 1960s focusing on social, political, and economic justice for Chicanos. Gonzales convened the first-ever Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in 1968, which was poorly attended due to timing and weather conditions. He tried again in March 1969, and established what is commonly known as the First Chicano Youth Liberation Conference. It also birthed the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a pro-indigenist manifesto advocating revolutionary Chicano nationalism and self-determination for all Chicanos. Through the Crusade for Justice, Gonzales organized the Mexican American people of Denver to fight for their cultural, political, and economic rights, leaving his mark on history. He was honored with a Google Doodle in continued celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States on October 1, 2021.

Early life Rodolfo Gonzales was born the youngest of Federico and Indalesia Gonzales's eight children in Denver, Colorado in 1928. His siblings were raised in Denver's tough "Eastside Barrio", where the Great Depression took an even heavier toll on Mexican Americans. However, according to Gonzales, "though the Depression was devastating to so many, we, as children, were so poor that it was hardly noticed". The Gonzaleses were a very poor family. Gonzales, along with his mother and siblings worked in the fields, and his father worked hard in the coal mines to provide for the family throughout Gonzales's life.

In February 1949, at the age of 21, Gonzales married Geraldine Romero, aged 17/18. They had eight children, who eventually took on their father's legacy of the Crusade for Justice. Gonzales found the sport empowering, saying, "I bleed as the vicious gloves of hunger cut my face and eyes, as I fight my way from stinking barrios to the glamour of the ring and the lights of fame or mutilated sorrow." His success in boxing lent him a prominence that he would later capitalize upon during his political career. He was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1988. When Gonzales turned to politics, he was ranked the 5th best boxer in the world. Gonzales concluded that the two-party system offered little benefit. Believing Chicanos could not rely on the "gringo establishment" to provide education, economic stability, or social acceptance, he sought alternatives.

The Crusade for Justice was an idea born from the Fisherman's meetings. These meetings were the original organization of Chicanos discussing issues surrounding Chicano rights and culture. The Fisherman meetings started out small, without the structure the Crusade for Justice developed later. The goal was to gain a following, and to spread education on the injustices Chicanos were experiencing. Gonzales explained. Gonzales took the ideas developed through the Crusade and implemented them at a personal level, making it into the political force it became. He had the courage, confidence, and ability to inspire greatness within the entire Chicano community.

Gonzales’ found a private school in 1971 as a solution to the issues within the public education system. The school would focus on building students' self-esteem through culturally-relevant curricula. It was named after Tlatelolco, a square in Mexico City. During the conquest, it was the site of the last stand of the Aztecs, witnessing the massacre of thousands. In post-Revolutionary Mexico, Tlatelolco became home to the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, which celebrated Mexico's dual cultural heritage, seen as vindication of indigenous Mexico. It was also home to a community of scholars. In 1968, Tlatelolco became the staging ground for massive student protests, and saw yet another massacre, this time by Mexican forces. As such, the school's name evokes the history of duality, reconciliation, and hope for indigenous and Mestizo people. The Tlatelolco massacres were in response to the Olympics, where thousands of people were being displaced for an Olympic event.

Yo Soy Joaquín - Poem With his poem Yo soy Joaquín, known in English as I Am Joaquin, Gonzales shared his new cosmological vision of the "Chicano", who was neither Indian nor European, neither Mexican nor American, but a combination of all the conflicting identities. This new "raza", or "race" found its roots in the Pre-Columbian civilizations, which he believed gave it rights to inhabit the ancestral land of Aztlán. It was strengthened by conceptions such as those of José Vasconcelos, Mexico's Secretary of Education under the Revolutionary Álvaro Obregón, who proclaimed that the hope of humanity lay in the mixed "Raza Cósmica" of Latin America. But perhaps more than anywhere else, Joaquín, the archetypical Chicano, found hope for his future in his own personal and spiritual awakening, a realization forced upon him by his status as an oppressed minority in the United States.

Some scholars have credited Gonzales with authoring this historicized, politicized definition of what it is to be a "Chicano". The far-reaching effect of the poem is summed up by UC Riverside professor Juan Felipe Herrera: "Here, finally, was our collective song, and it arrived like thunder crashing down from the heavens. Every little barrio newspaper from Albuquerque to Berkeley published it. People slapped mimeographed copies up on walls and telephone poles." It was so influential that it was turned into a play by Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino that toured nationally. It is seen as a foundational work of the burgeoning Chicano Art Movement that accompanied, complimented, and enhanced the Chicano Movement, and, as the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán exhorted those talented members of the community to use their abilities to advance la Causa ("the Cause"), Yo soy Joaquín provided a strong example.

A feminist analysis of Gonzales's poem reveals that women are submissive, and extensions of the men to which they are related in communal and familial ways. Chicanas are depicted as faithful, long-suffering religious figures or family matriarchs who exist to support Chicano males. Women are only discussed in relation to the suffering of Chicano males, and to serve as a support as for the epic heroes referenced in the body of the poem.

Electoral politics Three of the "Big Four" of the Chicano movement at the Raza Unida Party's 1972 convention: Reies Lopez Tijerina, New Mexico (second from left), Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, Colorado (center), and José Ángel Gutiérrez, Texas (far right). Cesar Chavez, California, did not attend. Gonzales made several unsuccessful runs for public office. His first and closest to victory was in 1955, when he ran for Denver City Council against incumbent Elvin R. Caldwell Sr., coming in second place with 20% of the vote. Gonzales then ran for a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives in 1962; although he narrowly secured a spot on the Democratic Party's slate of 17 nominees in Denver County, he came in last place in the general election. He later ran for mayor of Denver in 1967, coming in fourth place with 3% of the vote.

His granddaughter is Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, a member of the Colorado House of Representatives.

The Crusade for Justice Gonzales and other Chicano activists had developed the image of the Crusade for Justice as ‘the vanguard’ of the rapidly growing Chicano Power Movement. “The Crusade, originally a multi-issue, broad-based civil rights organization oriented toward nonviolence, came to symbolize Chicano self-determination and espoused a strong nationalist ideology that militant youth found extremely attractive. [….]”

The Crusade for Justice was born out of the growing awareness of the inequality Mexican-Americans were experiencing in their daily lives within the United States. It became obvious through high school graduation statistics that "school systems have failed the Mexican-American people." More than any other demographic, Chicano students were ending up in labor jobs and prisons, dropping out, and not being given the same opportunities by their faculty/advisors as were white students.

Due to the growing awareness within the Chicano community of the injustices they experienced within all layers of society, many gatherings, organizations and outreach programs participated in the development of the Crusade. The Viva Kennedy Committee was created by John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in the early 1960s, with goals to increase voter turnout in the Hispanic community for the election in 1960 against Nixon.

This helped to politically activate many Chicanos, but the goal of the Viva Kennedy Campaign was to strengthen John F. Kennedy’s electoral support. The goal was not directly focused on Chicano power, pride, or justice. Gonzales recognized that if the goals of the Chicano movement were to be met, activism within the Chicano community needed to be led by those who were impacted by the injustices experienced, and so action towards creating a movement from within the Chicano community started to take form. The Viva Kennedy Campaign helped to spark the beginning of the Crusade, but that was exactly what it was, the beginning.

Before Chicanos started protesting as a collective group, most of the United States was unaware of the unjust treatment of Mexican-American people. At the time this movement started the American Southwest had a population of over 5 million Mexican-Americans. People started taking action, hiking hundreds of miles to state capitals to bring awareness to their cause. In the spring of 1966 there was a march from Delano, California, to Sacramento, a distance of 300 miles. That same summer farm workers hiked again in Texas to protest low wages from San Juan to Austin. Mexican-American leaders attended federally sponsored conferences and meetings, and walked out because their needs were not being accurately met or represented. stated in his Viva la Causa article that “Mexican-Americans have drawn from the dramatic struggle of the Negro people. But they have added artistry of their own”.

The second Chicano Youth Liberation Conference (CYLC) in 1970 (March 25) represented a further refinement in Gonzáles’s efforts toward Chicano self-determination, the formation of the Colorado Raza Unida Party. The Currigan Exhibition Hall was offered as a place for the conference to be held, placed adjacently to the Denver PD. Gonzales refused the offer, stating “they wanted to seal us in and keep an eye on us”. Instead the conference was held at the Stockyard Stadium on 46th Avenue and Interstate 70. The conference events included political, educational, Aid Farmworkers workshops, and cultural performances where big figures in the movement like Gonzales, Manuel Lopez, and the Latin Defense Organization spoke. Other workshops included women’s workshops that focused on family and equality for women. “If we had liberated mothers, we would be free too. My question is now, when?” 3,000 to 5,000 youth were expected to attend the conference. People travelled from all over the country to attend the conference. The Model Cities, a coalition geared towards improving the lives of youth in different areas donated 1,000 dollars in a food fund to the Chicano Youth Conference. Conference facilitators also provided food and housing for the visiting youth.

“El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” is an indigenous irredentist claim to Aztlán. This involves creating power in the Chicano community through community lead and serving organizations. It demonstrates that Chicanos are the only ones that truly have rights to the land. “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, which sought to organize the Chicano people around a nationalist program. Also what came out of this conference was this statement by the Revolutionary Caucus, which sought a politics beyond narrow nationalism, toward more class analysis and internationalism”. This was a beginning point of a more internationalist outlook for certain sections of the Chicano Movement.

The plan called for the mass mobilization of Chicanos under the same identity, the Mestizo Nation. The new identity of Chicanos described them as a free community with their own culture. The Mestizo Nation also stated that Chicano community was free economically and that were together under the political beliefs. This idea was basically the starting point for the creation of a third political party in favor of the Chicano community. In 1969 the “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” was implemented and developed designed to bring political, economic, social power of Chicano people. One idea from the plan was to create community controlled institutions like schools, law enforcement, production of resources, development of cultural values, etc. that resemble the Chicano people.