Sal Castro speaks to CSUSB
By Robert Rogers
Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO -- When Sal Castro looks back on the 40 years since he led historic walkouts with Chicano students in Los Angeles, he sees a mixed bag.
On the one hand, more Mexican-Americans are graduating college, earning better wages and attaining democratic power.
On the other hand, Chicano culture and history remain underplayed in media and educational texts, he said.
And war still sends men and women home in flag-draped coffins.
"Many of our kids from the barrio were coming home in flag-draped coffins (during Vietnam)" Castro told a rapt crowd of mostly students. "Sad to say, many are coming home the same way from Iraq 40 years later."
Below is a picture of Castro chatting with students after his speech Tuesday
photo by r. rogers
Castro, a former East Los Angeles teacher who was arrested and later exonerated for his role in spearheading a series of student protests known as the "Chicano Blowouts" in 1968, headlined a symposium-style event Tuesday at Cal State San Bernardino.
Titled "Brown and Proud: 40 years of Chicano activism," the afternoon event drew a student-dominated, multiethnic crowd of nearly 400 with Castro as the headline speaker. The event was put together by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in part to raise the relatively low profile of the school's ethnic studies program.
Castro, a retired Los Angeles teacher and U.S. military veteran, drove dual themes, one focused on the Mexican-American contribution to United States history and another focused on multiethnic togetherness.
Below, Castro is pictured on stage
photo by r. rogers
Soldiers of Mexican heritage helped Gen. George Washington in his guerrila-style assaults on Imperial Britain, Castro said, and "Mexican blood" is in the ground of every U.S. war cemetery.
But Castro occasionally went beyond ethnic identities, telling the crowd that Mexican-Americans came from an Asian racial stock, and were mixed with Anglo-Saxon, African and Arab blood as well.
"We are one beautiful people," Castro said. "Who can we be racist against?"
Castro, 74, took questions from a handful of students. Toward the end of his roughly one-hour on stage at the Santos Manuel Student Union Events Center, Castro emphasized educational attainment as the great ethnic equalizer.
One student asked Castro whether he felt Latinos were a "sleeping giant" that has been awakened.
"Look around you," Castro said, gesturing with his hands at the crowd. "Here's the protest ... any kid with a book under his arm ... that's the only way we can move forward, through education."
During the question and answer session, Castro also espoused non-ethnic centered left-leaning policies, calling for living wage laws and public financing of presidential elections.
He said lucrative CEO salaries were unjustified and symptomatic of the widening chasm between rich and poor.
But his ethnic-centered comments drew the strongest applause. He said the drug trade was financed and fueled by the "white people who have the money." He said Mexican-Americans needed to further their educations in part to fight for the rights of "our undocumented bretheren."
He added that the U.S. "loves cheap labor," yet is looking to enforce "stupid" border policies.
The crowd thinned to about half its initial size after Castro's remarks. Later programs included a discussion of ethnic stereotypes in the media led by Cal State San Bernardino sociology professor Elsa Valdez and a panel discussion focused on Latinos in the educational system.
Students seemed nearly universally impressed with the aging, but still fiery, civil rights leader.
"I liked best when he focused on all human beings coming together as one community, one human race looking to work together," said Wendy Perez, a junior majoring in social sciences.
He's claims not to a racist, yet he blames "White people with money" for creating the drug problem? Mr. Castro, you are indeed a racist!