Guest Column

The passing of a legend:  Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales

By Jorge Mariscal
 
When in the summer of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General stood up before an audience of Chicano, African American, Puerto Rican, American Indian, and poor white activists, he had no idea he was about to receive a knockout punch delivered by a former Mexican American flyweight contender.  When the stocky man with a moustache rose to ask his question, Attorney General Ramsey Clark dismissed him by saying he would not take questions until after his statement.  Refusing to be silenced, the man stood again and forced Clark to listen to what he had to say. 

That man was Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales.  He had come to Washington, D.C. as part of the Southwest delegation of the Poor People's Campaign, the project planned by Martin Luther King, Jr. to force the issues of poverty and economic injustice on to the national agenda. Gonzales did not mince words, telling Clark that if he would not admit that there was racial discrimination in housing he was either naïve or blind. Although this was the first time the national media had seen Gonzales, in the Southwestern states especially among young Chicanos he was already a legend.

Corky Gonzales was born in Denver in 1928, the son of farm workers. His family continued to move constantly in order to follow the crops and yet miraculously Gonzales graduated high school at age sixteen.  His boxing career included Golden Glove championships and an impressive professional record as a bantamweight.  In 1988 he was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.

Throughout the 1950s, Gonzales owned a popular eatery and a bail bond company in Denver. His real passion, however, was community activism and he participated in numerous grass-roots organizations and electoral politics, directing the Colorado Democratic Party's "Viva Kennedy" campaign in 1960.  By the mid 1960s, however, his confidence that Democrats had a better understanding of the plight of working people of Mexican descent was shaken.  Police brutality, institutional racism, and an escalating war in Southeast Asia moved Gonzales towards a new identity and a new vision.  "Chicanas" and "Chicanos" were being born across the Southwest-Mexican Americans with an attitude, no fear, and a hunger for social justice.  Corky Gonzales would become one of their most courageous leaders.

According to historian Ernesto Vigil, a founding member of Gonzales' Crusade for Justice organization, the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was the historical figure Gonzales admired most.  Like Zapata before him, Gonzales would help to transform a community that had been exploited and treated as inferior for over a century into a proud and spirited people who demanded their rights as U.S. citizens and citizens of the world.  In his influential poem "I am Joaquin," Gonzales wrote: "Clamoring voices / Mariachi strains / Fiery tequila explosions / The smell of chile verde and / Soft brown eyes of expectation for a Better life."

In 1966, a full year before Dr. King made public his position against the U.S. war in Vietnam, Gonzales offered his own analysis. "Would it not be more noble," he asked, "to portray our great country as a humanitarian nation with the honest intentions of aiding and advising the weak rather than to be recognized as a military power and hostile enforcer of our political aims?" If we who are privileged to live in the United States enjoy a prosperity built on the backs of poor nations, he asked, are we not living the good life "at the expense of the blood and bones of our fellow human beings?"

When Corky Gonzales passed away on April 12, the world in which his heroic acts took place seemed far away.  Images of mass movements seeking to end unjust wars, police brutality, racism, militarism, and economic inequality are hazy and out of focus. Revisionists would like to dismiss the entire Vietnam war period-the Sixties-- as a time of chaos and mayhem.

But the deeds of Corky Gonzales can never be dismissed or erased and his spirit will live on in young people who are selflessly working for a more just society and a world governed by international cooperation. And in Spanish-speaking homes across the nation, Chicano parents will teach their children that they owe a great debt of gratitude to Corky Gonzales, for he was a man who taught us to be proud of who we are and to demand the equality our families have earned.

____________________________________________

Contact Jorge Mariscal at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu

I AM JOAQUIN
By Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
1928 - 2005
I am Joaquin,
Lost in a world of confusion,
Caught up in a whirl of a
gringo society,

Confused by the rules,
Scorned by attitudes,
Suppressed by manipulations,
And destroyed by modern society.

My fathers
have lost the economic battle
and won
the struggle of cultural survival.

And now!
I must choose
Between
the paradox of
Victory of the spirit,
despite physical hunger

Or
to exist in the grasp
of American social neurosis,
sterilization of the soul
and a full stomach.

Yes,
I have come a long way to nowhere,
Unwillingly dragged by that
monstrous, technical
industrial giant called
Progress
and Anglo success…

I look at myself.
I watch my brothers.
I shed tears of sorrow.
I sow seeds of hate.
I withdraw to the safety within the
Circle of life . . .
MY OWN PEOPLE

I am Cuauhtemoc,
Proud and Noble
Leader of men,
King of an empire,
civilized beyond the dreams
of the Gachupin Cortez,
Who also is the blood,
the image of myself.

I am the Maya Prince.
I am Netzahualcoyotl,
Great leader of the Chichimecas.
I am the sword and flame of Cortez
the despot.

And
I am the Eagle and Serpent of
the Aztec civilization.

I owned the land as far as the eye
could see under the crown of Spain,
and I toiled on my earth and gave my Indian sweat and blood for the
Spanish master,

Who ruled with tyranny over man and
beast and all that he could trample
But . . .
THE GROUND WAS MINE.

I was both tyrant and slave.
As Christian church took its place
in God's good name,
to take and use my Virgin strength and
Trusting faith,
The priests
both good and bad,
took
But
gave a lasting truth that
Spaniard,
Indian,
Mestizo
Were all God's children

And
from these words grew men
who prayed and fought
for their own worth as human beings,
for
that
GOLDEN MOMENT
Of
FREEDOM.

I was part in blood and spirit
of that
courageous village priest
Hidalgo
in the year eighteen hundred and ten
who rang the bell of independence
and gave out that lasting cry:

"El Grito de Dolores, Que mueran
los Gachupines y que viva
la Virgin de Guadalupe"

I sentenced him who was me.
I excommunicated him my blood.
I drove him from the Pulpit to lead a bloody revolution for him and me I
killed him.

His head, which is mine and all of those who have come this way,
I placed on that fortress wall to wall for Independence.

Morelos!
Matamoros!
Guerrero!
All Compañeros in the act,
STOOD AGAINST THAT WALL OF INFAMY
to feel the hot gouge of lead which my hands made.

I died with them . . .
I lived with them
I lived to see our country free.
Free from Spanish rule in eighteen -hundred- twenty-one.
Mexico was Free
The crown was gone but
all his parasites remained
and ruled and taught
with gun and flame and mystic power.

I worked,
I sweated,
I bled,
I prayed
and
waited silently for life to again commence.
I fought and died for
Don Benito Juarez
Guardian of the Constitution.
I was him on dusty roads on barren land
as he protected his archives as Moses did his sacraments.
He held his Mexico
in his hand
on
the most desolate
and remote ground
which was his country
And this Giant
Little Zapotec
gave
not one palm's breadth
of his country's land to
Kings or Monarchs or Presidents
of foreign powers.

I am Joaquin. I rode with Pancho Villa, crude and warm. A tornado at
full strength, nourished and inspired
by the passion and the fire of all his earth, people. I am Emillano
Zapata.
"This Land
This Earth
Is
OURS"
The Villages
The Mountains
The Streams
belong to Zapatistas.

Our life
Or yours
is the only trade for soft brown earth
and maize.
All of which is our reward,
A creed that formed a constitution for all who dare live free!

"This land is ours . . . Father, I give it back to you.
Mexico must be free . . .'

I ride with Revolutionists
against myself.
I am Rural
Course and brutal,
I am the mountain Indian, superior over all.
The thundering hoof beats are my horses.
The chattering of machine guns'
are death to all of me:
Yaqui
Tarahumara
Chamula
Zapotec
Mestizo
Español

I have been the Bloody Revolution,
The Victor,
The Vanquished,
I have killed
and been killed.
I am despots Diaz
and Huerta
and the apostle of democracy
Francisco Madero.
I am the black shawled
faithful women
who die with me
or live depending on the time and place.

I am
faithful,
humble,
Juan Diego,
the Virgen de Guadalupe,
Tonantzin, Aztec Goddess too.

I rode the mountains of San Joaquin. I rode as far East and North as the
Rocky Mountains
and
all men feared the guns of
Joaquin Murrieta.
I killed those men who dared
to steal my mine,
who raped and Killed
my Love
my Wife
Then
I Killed to stay alive.

I was Elfego Baca,
living my nine lives fully.
I was the Espinoza brothers
of the Valle de San Luis.
All
were added to the number of heads
that
in the name of civilization
were placed on the wall of independence. Heads of brave men
who died for cause or principle.
Good or Bad.

Hidalgo! Zapata!
Murrieta! Espinozas!
are but a few. They dared to face The force of
tyranny of men who rule
By farce and hypocrisy

I stand here looking back, and now I see the present
and still
I arn the campesino
I am the fat political coyote
I, of the same name,
Joaquin.

In a country that has wiped out all my history, stiffled all my pride.
In a country that has placed a different weight of indignity upon my age
old
burdened back.
Inferiority
is the new load . . .

The Indian has endured and still
emerged the winner,
The Mestizo must yet overcome,
And the Gachupin will just ignore.

I look at myself
and see part of me
who rejects my father and my mother
and dissolves into the melting pot
to disappear in shame.
I sometimes
sell my brother out
and reclaim him
for my own when society, gives me
token leadership
in society's own name.

I am Joaquin, who bleeds in many ways. The altars of Moctezuma
I stained a bloody red.
My back of Indian Slavery
was stripped crimson from the whips of masters who would lose their
blood so pure when
Revolution made them pay.

Standing against the walls of Retribution,
Blood . . .
Has flowed from
me on every battlefield
between Campesino, Hacendado Slave and Master and
Revolution.
I jumped from the tower of Chapultepec into the sea of fame;
My country's flag my burial shroud;
With Los Niños, whose pride and courage
could not surrender with indignity their country's flag . . . in
their land.

To strangers
Now
I bleed in some smelly cell
from club.
or gun.
or tyranny.
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 lights of fame
or mutilated sorrow.

My blood runs pure on the ice caked
hills of the Alaskan Isles,
on the corpse strewn beach of Normandy,
the foreign land of Korea
and now
Viet Nam.

Here I stand
before the Court of justice Guilty for all the glory of my Raza to be
sentenced to despair.

Here I stand Poor in money Arrogant with pride Bold with Machismo
Rich in courage and
Wealthy in spirit and faith
My knees are caked with mud. My hands calloused from the hoe. I have
made the Anglo rich yet
Equality is but a word, the Treaty of Hidalgo has been broken
and is but another treacherous promise.

My land is lost
and stolen,
My culture has been raped,
lengthen
the line at the welfare door and fill the jails with crime.

These then are the rewards this society has For sons of Chiefs
and Kings and bloody Revolutionists.
Who gave a foreign people all their skills and ingenuity to pave the way
with Brains and Blood
for
those hordes of Gold starved
Strangers
Who changed our language and plagiarized our deeds
as feats of valor of their own. They frowned upon our way of life and
took what they could use.

Our Art
Our Literature
Our music, they ignored so they left the real things of value and
grabbed at their own destruction by their Greed and Avarice
They overlooked that cleansing fountain of nature and brotherhood
Which is Joaquin.

The art of our great señors
Diego Rivera
Siqueiros
Orozco is but
another act of revolution for the Salvation of mankind. Mariachi music,
the heart and soul of the people of the earth, the life of child, and
the happiness of love
The Corridos tell the tales of life and death, of tradition, Legends old
and new, of Joy of passion and sorrow of the people: who I am.

I am in the eyes of woman, sheltered beneath
her shawl of black, deep and sorrowful eyes,
That bear the pain of sons long buried or dying,

Dead
on the battlefield or on the barbwire of social strife. Her rosary she
prays and fingers
endlessly like the family working down a row of beets to turn around and
work and work There is no end. Her eyes a mirror of all the warmth and
all the love for me, And I am her And she is me. We face life together
in sorrow. anger, joy faith and wishful thoughts.

I shed tears of anguish as I see my children disappear behind the shroud
of mediocrity never to look back to remember me. I am Joaquin.

I must fight And win this struggle for my sons, and they must know from
me Who I am. Part of the blood that runs deep in me Could not be
vanquished by the Moors I defeated them after five hundred years, and I
endured. The part of blood that is mine has labored endlessly five-
hundred years under the heel of lustful Europeans
I am still here!

I have endured in the rugged mountains
of our country
I have survived the toils and slavery,
of the fields.
I have existed
in the barrios of the city,
in the suburbs of bigotry,
in the mines of social snobbery,
in the prisons of dejection,
in the muck of exploitation
and
in the fierce heat of racial hatred.

And now the trumpet sounds,
The music of the people stirs the
Revolution,
Like a sleeping giant it slowly rears its head to the sound of
Tramping feet
Clamouring voices
Marlachi strains
Fiery tequila explosions
The smell of chile verde and
Soft brown eyes of expectation for a
better life

And in all the fertile farm lands,
the barren plains,
the mountain villages,
smoke smeared cities
We start to MOVE.
La Raza! Mejicano!
Español!
Latino!
Hispano!
Chicano!
or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
and
Sing the same

I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.

I am Joaquin
The odds are great but my spirit is strong
My faith unbreakable
My blood is pure
I am Aztec Prince and Christian Christ
I SHALL ENDURE!
I WILL ENDURE!

_____________________

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 (AP)
Boxer turned civil rights activist Gonzales dies at 76

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, a boxer turned civil rights activist and a
leader in the Chicano movement in the Southwest, died Tuesday. He was
76.

Gonzales died at his home weeks after being diagnosed with congestive
heart failure and renal disease, his daughter, Nita Gonzales, told the
Denver Post.

A professional boxer in the 1940s and '50s, Gonzales won the National
Amateur Athletic Union bantamweight title in 1946.
In the 1950s he became the first Mexican-American district captain for
the Democratic Party in Denver, later becoming disenchanted with the
party, which he said wanted Chicano votes but not Chicano candidates.

Gonzales set forth the struggles of many Mexican-Americans with his 1965
poem titled, "I Am Joaquin," in which the poem's character struggles
with his embracing his cultural identity or forgetting his culture to
achieve economic stability in the United States.

In 1966, he founded the Crusade for Justice, a cultural center that
attempted to get the city to eradicate poverty and deal with racial
injustice.

He also founded Escuela Tlatelolco Centro de Estudios in 1970, a
nonprofit
school and health care center that Nita Gonzales operates

RODOLFO CORKY GONZALES 1928 - 2005

On April 12, 2005 at 7:42 p.m., and more importantly on the last incandescent rays of the setting Sun in his beloved Colorado, Rodolfo Corky Gonzales began his journey to his relatives and ancestors.

With his loved ones at his bedside, this splendid and gilded Husband, Father, Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, Uncle, Warrior, and Chief embraced death with all the love and passion in which he danced with life. His historic effort will never be forgotten.



For more information: (303) 964-8993
http://escuelatlatelolco.org/corky_bio.html

RODOLFO CORKY GONZALES. . . PRESENTE!

CBS4 Denver | news4colorado.com, April 13, 2005
Civil Rights Icon 'Corky' Gonzales Dies At 76

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, a boxer turned civil rights activist and a leader in the Chicano movement in the Southwest, died Tuesday. He was 76.

Gonzales died at his home weeks after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and renal disease, his son, Rudy Gonzales said. He checked himself out of a hospital last month, telling doctors he preferred to die at home.

"In the last days many people called him, e-mailed and came to see him to tell him how his activism changed their lives and made them better people," Gonzales said. "They told him how he made them aware and concerned of the issues."

Gonzales won the National Amateur Athletic Union bantamweight title in 1946 and turned pro in 1949, compiling a 65-9-1 record as a featherweight before retiring from boxing in 1955, Rudy Gonzales said.

In the late 1950s he became the first Mexican-American district captain for the Democratic Party in Denver, later becoming disenchanted with the party, which he said wanted Chicano votes but not Chicano candidates.

"The legacy of my father was leadership, he taught us to struggle to realize our goals and our dreams in our country," Rudy Gonzales said.

Gonzales' 1965 poem titled, "I Am Joaquin," resonated with many Mexican-Americans as the poem's character struggled with forgetting his or her culture to achieve economic stability in the United States.

In 1966 he founded the Crusade for Justice, a cultural center that attempted to get the city to eradicate poverty and deal with racial injustice. During his work Gonzales marched with Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers, and met with Martin Luther King Jr.

He also founded Escuela Tlatelolco Centro de Estudios in 1970, a nonprofit school and health care center that operates today under the leadership of Nita Gonzales, one of his six daughters.

Besides his daughters, Gonzales is survived by his wife, Geraldine, two sons, 22 grand children and 8 great-grandchildren.


The Greeley Tribune (Greeley, CO), April 13, 2005
Corky Gonzales, leader in Chicano movement, dies