Hunger Strikes, Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity
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STARVING FOR JUSTICE RALPH ARMBRUSTER-SANDOVAL STARVING FOR JUSTICE Hunger Strikes, Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity TUCSON The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2017 by The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3258-2 (cloth) Cover design by Lori Lieber Cover photograph: El Congreso de UCSB 1994 hunger strike, Naomi García and Edwin López repre- senting all hunger strikers collectively and their immediate demands for justice to a packed audience of children, parents, community members, media, allies, and onlookers from near and far, Campbell Hall, UC Santa Barbara, May 1994. Photo by Lisa Valencia Sherratt, El Congreso de UCSB alumnus and former historian. Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [to come] This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Por El Congreso de UCSB y toda gente que está trabajando por un mundo justo, un mundo sin dolor, hambre, y pobreza. To El Congreso de UCSB and all people working for a more just world, a world without pain, hunger, and poverty. x CONTENTS List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi 1 Starving for Justice: Hunger Strikes, Spectacular Speech, and the Struggle for Dignity 3 2 “Speak About Destruction”: Coloniality, Humiliation, and Self-Sacrifice 36 3 UCLA: “Hungry for Justice” 53 4 UC Santa Barbara: “We Offer Our Lives as a Moral Protest” 103 5 Stanford: “Things Aren’t Right Here” 157 6 “Two, Three, or Many Hunger Strikes”: Screaming and Dreaming for a New World 207 Notes 215 Works Cited 253 Index 295 ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Torturing Women in Prison: Vote Against the Government 13 2. The Cat and Mouse Act 14 3. Robert F. Kennedy breaking fast with César Chávez, Helen Chávez, and Juana Chávez 55 4. The Old Spanish and Mexican Ranchos of Los Angeles County 62 5. Michelle Téllez, center with baseball hat backward, UCLA Faculty Center 84 6. First-year UCLA student Cindy Montañez outside tents 89 7. Rosa and Jorge Mancillas, UCLA 94 8. Naomi García and Edwin López outside Cheadle Hall, facing Campbell Hall 104 9. Rudy Acuña speaking with reporter outside El Centro; women students making posters 134 10. Parents supporting hunger strikers 138 11. Hunger strikers breaking fast 143 12. Cecilia Burciaga outside the quad during the hunger strike 158 13. Chicana hunger strikers Elvira Prieto, Eva Silva, Tamara Alvarado, and Julia González Luna 159 14. Students supporting hunger strikers 185 15. Hunger strike signing ceremony, Martha (“Gabi”) Cervantes and Condoleezza Rice 196 16. Hilda and Tamara Alvarado 196 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS OMETIMES THINGS TAKE LONGER THAN EXPECTED. Several months before I started working in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Depart- Sment at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), some Chicana/o, Latina/o students asked me about the 1994 hunger strike on that campus. The interview took place inside El Centro Arnulfo Casillas, a his- toric “counter-space” that once housed the Chicano Studies Department, the Center for Chicano Studies, El Congreso, the Chicano Educational Oppor- tunity Program (EOP), and the Colección Tloque Nahuaque. I remembered saying rather sheepishly that I didn’t know too much about it. It was 1998 and I had spent the past five years exploring sweatshops and transnational labor- organizing campaigns that involved Central American and U.S. unions and nongovernment organizations. Despite my scholar-activist credentials, I felt embarrassed because the UCSB hunger strike—along with hunger strikes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); Stanford; UC Irvine; and the University of Boulder, Colorado—shattered the prevailing “post-racial” discourse that emerged after the social movements of the 1960s. In 1994, Rage Against the Machine released a powerful song called “Year of the Boomer- ang,” based partially on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (1961), a book that foresaw imperialism sowing the seeds of its own destruction. With Reagan and Bush pushing reactionary policies that undermined gains that people of color, women, queer people, and workers made in the 1960s and 1970s, a XII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Fanonian popular uprising emerged both here and abroad as the Zapatista National Liberation Army came out into the open on January 1, 1994, the very same day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. This was the same year that Democratic president Bill Clin- ton introduced the draconian Operation Gatekeeper and California Republi- can governor Pete Wilson embraced what was initially called the Save Our State (SOS) ballot measure, which later became known as Proposition 187. The 1980s and 1990s were not pleasant. In 1984, Time Zone, a short-lived musical group that paired hip-hop artist Afrika Bambaataa and punk rock star John Lydon (from the Sex Pistols), released their most popular single, titled “World Destruction.” With Bambaataa repeatedly saying “speak about de- struction” and Lydon sneering “the rich get richer, the poor are getting poorer,” Time Zone clearly outlined neoliberalism’s bankrupt promises. The military- industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, racial and class polarization, and environmental degradation all presaged the band’s apocalyptic message. Because the “end times” were quite near, Bambaataa and Lydon urged and begged their listeners to “speak about destruction.” In Chiapas, the “wretched of the earth” fought back with guns, while those on university campuses fought back with their bodies. In both cases, people spoke about destruction in the most spectacular fashion possible, making the invisible (injustice) visible. Through self-sacrifice and starvation, Chicana/o and Latina/o students par- tially transformed people’s “hearts of stone” into “hearts of flesh,” prompting them to support their demands for social change. While they didn’t fully achieve all their demands, they did create long-lasting reforms, making their campuses more dignified and just. The Chicana/o and Latina/o students that interviewed me back in 1998 were proudly affiliated with El Congreso, a militant social justice organization that emerged in the mid-1970s. Many Chicana/o and Latina/o students joined in the early 1990s because they were morally outraged about budget cuts, fee increases, exorbitant salaries for top UCSB officials, anti-immigrant politics, toxic pesticides that poisoned farm workers, deportations, a fragmented and weak Chicano Studies Department, and much, much more. Having exhausted all other options, they stopped eating for nine days. When the strike ended, UCSB’s administrative leaders buckled, backing demands for more Chicano studies faculty. Had these students not taken such significant risks, I simply would not have been hired. Seen from this perspective, I felt obligated and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII com pelled to document the 1994 UCSB hunger strike and other similar ac- tions at UCLA and Stanford University. This book is the first one that has ever been published on these three strikes, but it certainly won’t be the last. Future scholars will most certainly explore these actions from unique theoretical ap- proaches and develop rapport with different participants. While I spoke with many people on all three campuses, some politely declined to be interviewed for this study. Thankfully, most students and faculty were eager to share their stories and experiences. Naomi García and Edwin López, for example, spent countless hours with me, talking not only about the 1994 UCSB hunger strike but also the context and climate that sparked that action. Rodolfo Acuña, Salvador Barajas, J. Manuel Casas, Gladys de Necochea, Dick Flacks, Alma Flores, Marío T. García, Geoff Green, Abel Gutiérrez, Gabriel Gutiérrez, Tino Gutiérrez, Francisco Lomelí, Marisela Márquez, Mike Muñoz, Denise Segura, Benjamin Torres, Lisa Valencia Sherratt, André Vásquez, Michael Young, and Don Zimmerman also spoke with me about the UCSB hunger strike. Alma Flores, Naomi García, and Edwin López, moreover, shared with me their per- sonal archives, which contained invaluable memos, newspaper articles, flyers, and other crucial materials. Lisa Valencia Sherratt also generously shared with me her collection of hunger strike photos. The pictures of second-year student and El Congreso member during the hunger strike, Valencia Sherratt, particu- larly the one on this book’s front cover of Naomi García and Edwin López in wheelchairs, captured the spirit and sacrifices of all the students who were in- volved in the nine-day action. Lisa kindly donated these photos to the Califor- nia Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, which is housed in the UCSB Library’s Special Collections Department. Many thanks to long-time CEMA Direc- tor Salvador Guereña and CEMA Archival Processing Specialist Mari Khas- manyan for digitizing and scanning the pictures on the UCSB hunger strike for publication. I would especially like to thank Harold Salas-Kennedy, Pete Villareal, Ozzie Espinoza, Yolanda García, Lupe Navarro-García, and Yolanda Márquez for their tremendous assistance on this project. I have relied heavily on them over the years for insights about Chicano EOP and the wider Santa Barbara community. Like Naomi García and Edwin López, Milo Alvarez was an absolutely critical voice for understanding the 1993 UCLA hunger strike. Alvarez spoke with me for hours, patiently answering multiple questions for clarification and XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS expansion over email. He provided a substantive, clear-cut historical analysis of the unique moment that existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped spark the UCLA hunger strike. Alvarez helped me see that the hunger strike was really the culmination of a three-year battle to create an independent Chi- cano Studies Department that really began in the late 1960s.