IB History Non-violent and Violent Methods Notes

Non-violent Methods: Strikes, Boycotts, and Walkouts

1. The dominant strand of the Chicano/Latino movement was non-violent.
   1. César Chávez studied Gandhi and King and made nonviolence a condition of participation in UFW strikes and marches.
2. The primary non-violent tools were the strike, the consumer boycott, the march, and the fast.
3. The Delano grape strike began on September 8, 1965, when Filipino American workers in the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by Larry Itliong, walked out of Delano's vineyards.
   1. Chávez's National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) joined eight days later.
   2. Workers who struck lost their housing in labour camps and faced blacklisting.
4. The strike lasted five years.
5. The consumer grape boycott transformed a local labour dispute into a national campaign.
   1. UFW organisers set up picket lines outside Safeway and other grocery chains, asking consumers not to buy California table grapes.
6. By 1970, major growers had signed union contracts.
   1. The boycott worked because it linked farmworker poverty to a consumer choice that millions of Americans could make.
7. The 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento (March 17-April 10, 1966) drew national attention.
   1. Chávez framed it as a religious peregrinación (pilgrimage), appealing to devout Catholic farmworker communities.
   2. It arrived at the state capitol on Easter Sunday.
8. Chávez's first public fast in February-March 1968, lasting 25 days, drew Senator Robert Kennedy to Delano for its breaking, providing national visibility at a critical moment.
9. Student non-violent action took a different form.
   1. In March 1968, students at five East Los Angeles high schools walked out to protest inadequate facilities, corporal punishment for speaking Spanish, and the absence of Chicano history from the curriculum.
   2. Approximately 10,000 students participated over several days.
10. The walkouts, known as the East LA blowouts, were the largest student protest in US history to that point.
    1. They produced a new wave of student organising that spread to universities under the banner of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán).

Confrontational Methods: The Brown Berets and the Chicano Moratorium

1. A minority of the movement adopted confrontational tactics.
2. The Brown Berets, founded in East Los Angeles in 1967 by David Sánchez, wore military-style uniforms, ran community patrols against police brutality, and published the newspaper La Causa.
   1. They drew on the Black Panther model and attracted intense FBI and Los Angeles police surveillance and infiltration.
3. The Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970, was the movement's largest single demonstration: between 20,000 and 30,000 people marched through East Los Angeles to protest the disproportionate death rate of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam.
   1. Chicanos made up roughly 20% of US casualties from the Southwest despite being a smaller share of the population.
   2. The rally ended when the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department attacked the crowd, firing tear gas into Salazar's Bar on Whittier Boulevard.
4. Journalist Rubén Salazar, the most prominent Mexican American journalist in the country and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, was killed when a tear gas canister was fired into the bar at close range.
   1. No officer was prosecuted.
5. In New Mexico, Reies López Tijerina's Alianza Federal de Mercedes pursued the most explicitly militant tactic.
   1. On June 5, 1967, Tijerina led an armed raid on the Tierra Amarilla courthouse, attempting to arrest the district attorney who had been prosecuting Alianza members.
   2. Two officers were wounded.
   3. Tijerina was captured, tried, and eventually imprisoned.
6. The raid dramatised the land grant claims but isolated the land grant movement from the broader Chicano coalition.

Further evidence: tactics worked when matched to targets and institutions

1. Farmworker strikes targeted production directly. Withholding labour during harvest placed pressure on growers when crops and contracts were time-sensitive.
2. The Delano strike began through Filipino leadership. Larry Itliong and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee walked out in September 1965 before Chávez's organization joined.
3. Cross-ethnic cooperation prevented replacement. Mexican and Filipino workers built common demands despite different histories, languages, and organizational traditions.
4. The 1966 march to Sacramento created public legitimacy. Pilgrimage, religious symbolism, speeches, and community hospitality connected a local strike with statewide politics.
5. Boycotts moved struggle beyond the fields. Consumers in distant cities could refuse grapes or lettuce and make retail chains pressure growers.
6. Boycott committees built national networks. Students, churches, unions, civil-rights groups, and volunteers organized pickets, leaflets, fundraising, and household persuasion.
7. Fasting gave moral drama to labour conflict. Chávez used personal sacrifice to recommit the movement to nonviolence and attract religious and media attention.
8. Nonviolence reduced but did not remove risk. Strikers faced eviction, arrest, surveillance, threats, physical attack, and economic hardship.
9. Union elections converted protest into bargaining. The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 created a formal process for worker choice and contracts.
10. Institutionalization generated new conflict. Legal elections and contract administration required resources and could shift power from local workers toward union leadership.
11. Student walkouts disrupted schools. East Los Angeles students in 1968 left classes to demand better teaching, facilities, counselling, bilingual support, and Mexican American history.
12. Walkouts made young people political actors. Students planned demands, communications, and alliances despite disciplinary threats and police intervention.
13. The Chicano Moratorium used mass peaceful assembly. Its August 1970 march linked opposition to Vietnam with disproportionate casualties, education, policing, and inequality.
14. Police action transformed the Moratorium. Law-enforcement intervention produced violence, arrests, and deaths, including journalist Rubén Salazar.
15. Electoral action challenged party dependence. La Raza Unida ran candidates and won selected local offices, showing that cultural nationalism could become institutional power.
16. Independent parties faced structural barriers. Ballot rules, limited finance, internal division, and winner-take-all elections restricted expansion beyond strong local bases.
17. Legal action remained a movement method. Cases over schools, juries, voting, housing, and employment used constitutional institutions alongside street mobilization.
18. LULAC and MALDEF pursued complementary litigation. Their strategies challenged discrimination through courts, administrative complaints, and policy advocacy.
19. Reies López Tijerina used land-rights confrontation. The Alianza Federal de Mercedes argued that older communal grants had been taken illegally and demanded restoration.
20. The Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid escalated conflict. In 1967, armed participants attempted a citizen's arrest after earlier repression, prompting a major police search and national attention.
21. The Brown Berets practised community defence. They monitored police, protected demonstrations, and used militant appearance to challenge state intimidation.
22. Community programmes combined service and politics. Clinics, breakfast programmes, newspapers, and education addressed immediate needs while building independent institutions.
23. Armed imagery communicated strength and created vulnerability. It attracted frustrated youth and deterred some threats but enabled authorities and media to portray activism as criminal danger.
24. Underground militancy remained limited and fragmented. Some activists considered sabotage or armed struggle, but mass Chicano organizing relied more on labour, education, elections, culture, and protest.
25. State repression shaped tactical outcomes. Police surveillance, infiltration, prosecutions, school discipline, employer retaliation, and violence raised the cost of every method.
26. Method effectiveness depended on target and organization. Boycotts worked against consumer brands, walkouts exposed schools, elections built local control, and confrontation highlighted policing or land claims.

Evidence and analytical judgement

1. Filipino workers led by Larry Itliong began the Delano grape strike in September 1965.
2. The National Farm Workers Association joined the strike and built cooperation between Filipino and Mexican American workers.
3. A national consumer boycott moved the dispute from California fields into shops and households across the United States.
4. The 1966 march from Delano to Sacramento connected labour demands with religious symbolism and public visibility.
5. César Chávez's 1968 fast defended nonviolence and strengthened national attention to the farmworker campaign.
6. Dolores Huerta directed boycott networks, negotiated contracts, lobbied legislators, and trained organizers.
7. El Teatro Campesino used short performances to explain exploitation and strengthen solidarity among farmworkers.
8. East Los Angeles students organized walkouts in 1968 to demand better schools and culturally relevant education.
9. The Brown Berets used community patrols, clinics, demonstrations, and a more confrontational style of activism.
10. The Chicano Moratorium in 1970 connected opposition to the Vietnam War with racial inequality at home.
11. La Raza Unida Party sought independent electoral power and won control in several South Texas communities.
    1. This establishes the legal baseline for the article's judgement.
12. MALDEF used litigation to challenge discrimination in voting, education, and employment.
    1. The evidence links local pressure to a broader institutional response.
13. Reies López Tijerina used legal claims, marches, and the 1967 Tierra Amarilla courthouse raid in the land-grant struggle.
    1. Its significance lies in the gap between formal change and implementation.
14. Rodolfo Corky Gonzales built the Crusade for Justice and promoted youth organization and cultural nationalism.
    1. This example shows how organization converted grievance into public leverage.
15. MEChA linked campus activism with community demands through student chapters.
    1. The result reveals both an achievement and a limit of the movement.
16. Movement newspapers and radio spread information, reported police violence, and connected local campaigns.
    1. The case connects leadership choices with structural conditions.
17. Murals, posters, poetry, and theatre turned cultural production into a method of political education.
    1. This development changed the available methods of political action.
18. Community Service Organization campaigns used door-to-door organizing and voter registration.
    1. The evidence helps separate immediate impact from long-term transformation.
19. Coalitions with unions, churches, students, and consumers expanded movement resources beyond Mexican American communities.
    1. Its effects differed by class, gender, location, and access to institutions.
20. Women organizers sustained offices, boycotts, welfare services, negotiations, and feminist challenges within movement organizations.
    1. The example tests whether national reform altered everyday experience.