ARMANDO NAVARRO: PRESENTE
October 31, 1941 – March 25, 2022
By Herman Baca, President
Committee on Chicano Rights
April 23, 2022
The passing of Armando Navarro, Chicano activist, community organizer, author, historian, scholar, political scientist & professor of ethnic studies at the University of California-Riverside has left the Chicano/Mexicano/Latino people with an immense historical loss that will not soon be replaced.
As is the custom of our people, our deepest & most sincere condolences to Maria Ana Gonzales (his wife & compañera in struggle), La Familia Navarro & everyone that knew Armando. Personally speaking, Armando was a dear friend, compatriot & fellow Chicano activist. I first met Armando in 1970 when the both of us were with MAPA, i.e. Mexican American Political Association.
Armando was the chairperson of MAPA from the small, poor farmworker community of Cucamonga where he was raised & me the chairperson of MAPA from the poorest city in San Diego County, National City. After receiving the phone call that Armando had passed, I started to reminisce & remember telling Armando, “I think you’re the happiest when you’re playing your trumpet & confronting White Supremacists to kick their ass,” we both laughed.
Soon after, I began to think of the reality that with Armando’s passing, once again I remembered, “An era is slowly, but surely coming to an end.”
Meaning, the era for those of us who became involved in the Chicano Movement in the late 60’s & 1970’s to agitate for systemic social, economic & political change for La Raza. In my 50 plus years of political involvement, I got to know Armando both personally & politically.
Thinking back, I remember the numerous talks & experiences Armando & I shared. The recollection of what I write here come from my numerous talks & recollections in my memory that I remember having with Armando over a period of over 50 years, any errors noted are mine. Being informed of Armando’s passing, one thing that kept coming back to my mind was an old saying he always quoted that he stated came from his parents & religion, “Donde hay esperanza hay vida y donde hay vida hay esperanza,” i.e. “Where there’s hope, there’s life, and where there’s life there’s hope.”
That saying, I believe laid the foundation that guided Armando’s trajectory in both his personal & political life…the belief that himself & all of us could affect & better the human condition. When he told me that in his youth, he wanted to be a priest, I assumed it came from that old saying. I asked him once where he got his radicalization, political conciencia, he stated from his father, family & uncles, hearing them discuss politics at one of his uncle’s home in LA.
He told me, I started to ask questions at an maybe six years, why & how did Mexico lost the Southwest? At age ten, I could tell you who Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata & Venustiano Carranza were. In addition, at the age ten without me even know it, I became an entrepreneur when my uncle gave me two chickens and a rooster & in span of two years, I had seventy-five chickens.
At age twelve, I was a musician playing trumpet; my favorite trumpet player was Rafael Méndez, bugler of Pancho Villa. By 1961-62 I started playing professionally at community functions clubs & dances. My playing was bringing money in for my family & I was doing well. I joined the United States Army Reserve, six months active duty in 1960 earning the rank of first lieutenant & by 1968; I was going to be promoted captain.
However, by 1967-68; I begin to change politically due to the Vietnam War, the massive mobilizations & demonstrations, including the Afro-American civil rights movement-taking place in the U.S. I begin to question myself, “Why am I so ready and willing to fight and die for my country when, my God, our people are dying here in the streets!”
Therefore, in 1968 I informed my battalion commander, I was going to resign due to problems I was getting into due to my political activities in the community. The commander was outraged & angrily told me, “Navarro, how could you do this to us, I replied because of my opposition to the war in Vietnam, which made him angrier.”
I believe Armando like most of us began with the naive belief, due to the colonized & mis-education we received that the U.S. social, economic & political system could be reform thru electoral politics.
Like some of us, after a number of years, Armando arrived at the same conclusion that systemic change was not going happen without great sacrifice & struggle in our lifetime. The one thing, I can personally attest to is, Armando never changed his firm belief in community & the historical political principle of self-determination for Raza empowerment in the over 50 years that I knew him.
In 1968-70, he stated, I wanted to become a lawyer & decided to attend law school at UCLA. However, I did not like the attitude of the Chicanos attending law school because all they wanted to do was party. I was married, had been in the military & had been taught discipline, so my goal was defined & it did not include partying.
However, what I really disdained about the law student’s attending was their bourgeois elitist mentality that, “We’re going to be the Emilano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Ché Guevera and Fidel Castro of the movement.”
After a week or two, I had enough & left to attend the University of CA Riverside graduate program. At the time, I was in married & in college. It was in 1968, that a friend (Arturo Ayala) & I started talking about organizing Cucamonga. Arturo told me he knew a MAPA organizer, named Chris Carlos, (i.e. Chris Carlos & Raul Loya organized our National City MAPA Chapter) that we could talk to, so I asked Arturo to contact Chris Carlos.
Remember at the time, I was still in the National Guard, an officer & was getting ready to be promoted to captain. So at our first meeting, I naively asked Chris Carlos something that ironically, I would be accused of numerous times in my life years later as a Chicano activist. I asked Chris Carlos, “If MAPA was a front for the Communist Party because I had heard allegations that MAPA was infested with communists & its leaders, Bert Corona & Enrique “Hank” Quevedo were communist.
We both laughed & I told him, we only know, what we had been taught. So with Chris Carlos assistance, we organized our MAPA Chapter & by 1970 we were perhaps the largest MAPA chapter in California. We had over a hundred paid members & a nucleus of twenty-five hardcore working people. It was at that time, I first remember meeting Bert Corona in Maravilla, Los Angeles we talked, but what I remember about Bert he was always on the phone. Bert impressed me & I think he was the person that really inspired me & that I looked up to as a role model.
I was impressed with Bert because of his “gift of gab,” in both English & Spanish. Bert to me was a very impressive person; just looking at him one saw he was impressive. I remember asking Armando, besides Bert Corona what other role models inspired you? Armando stated, Francisco Madero, Emiliano Zapata, Francisco Villa, people like Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro. He continued, I’m a practical person & borrow from whomever I can use, in whatever work I am doing.
According to Armando, his view of creating power to implement community control involved mainly politics, but also included economics & working with other social institutions that our people historical partook in, such as the churches.
The Cucamonga School District became MAPA’s first target however, before we took on the issue of the school district, those of us involved knew we had to first get the community on our side. Arturo & I both had agreed that Cucamonga & other outlying cities had no curbs, gutters, sidewalks, rampant police brutality, inferior education, our youth were in gangs, houses were falling apart & people were killing each other.
So we started a program called “Barrio Beautification,” we asked people to come out & help, contractors to loan tractors, trucks to clean up & then we set up a process where the kids became involved, we got people to sponsor the kids & contribute money, then we turned around and used the money to set up recreation programs for the kids.
The kids would work, there would be excitement, tractors & trucks moving in & out, kids knocking trees down, picking up bottles, cleaning up the lots & the community started to witness what we were doing. After that we had access to families that started to attend community meetings & from a nucleus of seven, nine people, large numbers of people begin to join MAPA.
Addressing economic issues, we created an investment group called El Barrio Investment Group in 1971 to build homes & formed the People’s Corporation, Corporación Económica para el Desarrollo de Aztlán, stock was issued & I was elected president. The idea was to create social, economic & political development in all aspects of our communities. The Cucamonga School District was MAPA’s first target, we called for massive school walkouts, the first in California, one thousand students from five high schools walked out.
Barrios Schools were set up in Cucamonga, Ontario & Upland. With the support of the community, parents & students the walkouts were successful & resulted in the hiring of Chicano personnel—teachers, superintendent, cultural, student centers & tutorial services. In fact, we were so effective every demand MAPA placed before the Chaffey Unified School District was approved.
In essences, what we accomplished in Cucamonga, California in 1969 was before La Raza Unida Party, led by Jose Angel Gutiérrez did in Crystal City Texas in 1970. By 1970 we were in the process of leaving MAPA & trying to figure what to create. The concept of Chicano empowerment, community control, especially of the educational institutions was not an innovative idea to us because we had done it. However, the concept of Chicanos developing a political party, La Raza Unida Party to challenge the two-party system was. In my mind I said to myself, why create another new organization? We don’t suffer from lack of organization; in fact we suffered from a proliferation of organizations, so we moved to organize La Raza Unida Party.
In California in 1971 at Chaffey College we organized the first La Raza Unida Party conference with José Angel Gutiérrez as the keynote speaker. By 1972, we were the only La Raza Unida Party Chapter in California to display political power by electing a Chicano to the city council in Ontario, the only La Raza Unida Party candidate to be elected in California.
In 1972, the National La Raza Unida Party convention was held in El Paso, Texas with over 3,000 delegates attending from thru-out the U.S. However, I begin to see that the Partido was not going to succeed, due to the infighting between José Angel Gutiérrez & Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales followers.
So I decided to do research & went to Crystal City, Texas where I lived with the people for four months. In 1974 I decide to go to the University of Utah, telling myself, “I need a breather to get away from local politics” I was starting to see the Chicano movement unravel with all of its contradictions & by 1976 as I had ascertained the National La Raza Unida Party was basically politically dead.
I went thru a process of trying to ascertain what the status of the Chicano movement was by organizing the National Chicano Forum at the University of Utah in 1976. The Salt Lake City police department, politicians, business leaders were bellowing, my God five to six hundred Chicanos were coming from all parts of the Southwest to Utah, claiming they were being invaded by communists, radicals, and activists.
Yet, the three-day political conference was held, attended by people from all over the U.S. & was a success. Main issue for the conference was the contradictions & status of the Chicano Movement. After discussion, the conference took the position that the Chicano movement in 1976 was changing & something had to be done.
Reies Lopez Tejerina had been neutralized, César Chávez put on the defensive, José Angel Gutiérrez was fast becoming history, Corky González was under a state of siege & MECHA groups were becoming social clubs.
The fervor, the action, the energy that was so much part of the Chicano movement was dissipated & my belief was we had to retool, without pushing any specific agendas. However, Armando told me, the historical issues affecting La Raza remained. In 1979, the treatment by the Catholic Church for La Raza had again become a paramount issue to the Chicano Movement.
It had always been my organizing position that the Catholic Church historically had been & remained a very powerful institution in the lives of La Raza. At that time, the Theology of Liberation Doctrine was being advocated by numerous groups within the Catholic Church. In 1969 Catolicos Por La Raza had publically taken the Catholic Church to task for their lack of historical concern for La Raza.
The same issue raised in 1969 resurfaced Armando stated, with the community accusing the Catholic Church of not making an earnest, concerted or moral effort to promote Chicanos to become bishops. In 1979 the Vatican had created a new diocese for the San Bernardino-Riverside counties and assigned Gilberto Chávez as Auxiliary Bishop for the diocese.
Even though the diocese was 60 percent Chicano, church administrators denied Auxiliary Gilberto Chavez the position of bishop, which the Chicano Community viewed as an insult & slap in the face. Complaints from the Chicano community & groups within the church were lodge with the Congreso para Pueblos Unidos, which I was President.
We organized a mobilization to protest the church’s decision; inviting César Chávez & numerous groups that included the CCR from San Diego. Over two thousand people marched in the streets in protest, which was covered on national television.
I had always understood Armando stated that the church was political, but what I never understood was why, was it always political with the wrong people? Another historical issue affecting the Chicano community were immigration raids, being carried out by the Gestapo U.S. Border Patrol. In 1977-1979 in the city of Ontario, the Border Patrol conducted raids by attempting to go into church property.
In Corona 1980 the Border Patrol begin staking out schools & picking up kids to extract information about their parents that resulted in a thirteen-year-old child being, covered extensively by the news media. These & other issues were confronted & with community support we stopped the Border Patrol’s actions.
Another issue, when I returned from Utah in 1977 that I became involved with, youth & “gang” problems in the inland area. Up to that date, no one in the two county areas had ever successfully attempted to organize “gangs” to stop warring on each other. To address the issue, we organized El Concilio de los Barrios Unido & held meetings with two, three hundred gang members from different cliques from Fontana, San Bernardino, Ontario.
Traditionally these groups had been enemies, archenemies, but over time we were able to get them together, put a stop to the warring & got them to work together. Other complaints we received were from Yucaipa, (by Riverside) where the local sheriff’s department in 1980 begin going door-to-door asking people for their immigration status, which we stopped.
In 1981, in coalition with Afro-Americans from the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), personally confronted the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) face to face, forcing the KKK to get out of the community; with their tail between their legs. Obviously, there is not enough space to cover Armando Navarro’s 80 years life & 50-year plus political trajectory, in my opinion the only idiom to define would be, “a man for all seasons.”
Beginning, with him wanted to be a priest in his childhood & toward the end of his life, labeled the fifth most dangerous academic in the U.S. In between his life, a child entrepreneur, professional trumpet musician, husband, father, grandfather, U.S. Army professional solider, college student, Chairman and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Organizer of numerous Chicano Movement organizations, trips to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela & a Central America (1985) Peace Delegation.
Organizing various community, state, national & international political, religious, immigration, presidential, corporate summits & convention, etc. Author of eight books published on the Chicano Movement, immigration & critique of global capitalism, defining the social and economic polarizing effects and implications for Mexican and Latin American politics in the 21st century.
Later in life, accused by right ring white supremacist, politicians & news media outlets of being an advocate for open borders, a supporter of illegal immigrants, a member of Mexico’s Socialist Party & leading a Reconquista Movement to reclaim the Southwest U.S. for Mexico, etc.
For me personally, I will remember Armando for the numerous issues, meetings, rallies, pickets, demonstrations, press conferences, summits we were involved together. Especially the La Raza Unida Conventions in 1972, 1977 March against the KKK at the U.S./Mexico Border, 2006 March in San Bernardino against the passage of the racist U.S. Senate Sensenbrenner bill that would have criminalized assistance to immigrants.
Armando’s courageous confrontation in 2005-2006 when few if anyone in our community would stand up, against armed white supremacist, anti-Mexican vigilantes terrorists patrolling, stopping & arresting Mexicans at gun point at the U.S./Mexico Border.
One thing, I will never forget that I eternally grateful to Armando was him being the keynote presenter at UCSD’s community dedication celebration for San Diego’s Chicano community, of the Herman Baca Archives in 2006.
In closing, present & future generations of La Raza owe Armando Navarro a great debt of gratitude for his historical contributions, which will only be repaid by continuing the struggle that he pursued for over 50 years of his life. Finally, to La Raza we must always.
“Remember & honor those who have struggled & sacrificed for La Raza, if we don’t who will?”
