YOUNG LORDS: GUNS?
On Thursday, 23 July, Holland Cotter published a piece in the Times about three museum exhibitions on the Young Lords Party. Props to Johanna Fernandez and her team for planning and rolling out the concepts. And to the Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, and the Loisada Cultural Center for hosting.
Props also to Holland Cotter, for understanding that so much of what the Young Lords did came from a cultural thrust. We intended to stand out not only by our ideas. But how we carried ourselves. How we related to one another. The visual ways we spread our story. What we elevated in a neglected Puerto Rican culture.
What it really meant, from every dimension, to be an AWARE Latina/o, inside the United States. A country that, in 1969, still had categories where we were officially “other.”
I say “we” because I was a founding member of the Young Lords. And I zero in on our cultural impact because I was the Minister of Information (when I went to China for three months at the end of 1971, while on bail pending a trial for Vietnam War resistance, diplomats from other countries asked this 21 year old if I was a “Minister without Portfolio” for our government-in-exile. Uh…).
[Yours truly on the left. October 1971]
I checked off on all our outreach: to friendly artists in graphics, photography and music, including Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri, whose compositions often were inspired by what we did in the streets; Tito Puente, who played at 110th Street at our first legal aid fundraiser; launched and edited our paper, Palante; helped produce the documentary Palante that Newsreel shot; decided what forums we’d be on, and when to turn off the media spigot; critiqued what we said and what we wore on television; produced and hosted our weekly radio show on WBAI; was part of the unofficial edit of the interviews photojournalist Michael Abramson did for the book Palante (man, we could take a name and brand); wrote and got the leaflets and posters printed that blanketed El Barrio overnight, and had folks thinking there were dozens of us. When in the beginning I was working with about five. And we didn’t even have an office yet.
I list these things because those of us in Information were quite aware of what we were doing. The breaking of new media/cultural ground. While broadcasting some Truth. It was no accident. Or some kind of “savant” thing that was stumbled upon. Sometimes for folks looking in from the outside, you have to break it down so people see the parts.
That Holland Cotter was able to touch on this cultural aspect of what is usually written about as this or that demonstration, is because of how well those involved with the exhibitions set them up. But when Cotter says
“A 1970 video of the poet Pedro Pietri reciting his chantlike “Puerto Rican Obituary” feels like a lament for the end of a certain type of activism. The Young Lords Party was already beginning to narrow along hard ideological lines and splinter into competitive factions. It had bought into American gun culture, becoming its own enemy in the process. The group had lost its connection to the grass-roots communities it was meant to serve.”
Homeboy is off.
First, Pedro’s epic poem (“Puerto Rican Obituary”) was shot on film in 1969, inside the church we had taken over. The Young Lords were still on the rise. The “(narrowing) along hard ideological lines and…competitive factions” was still some years away. And the fact is that the hard-liners who gained the upper hand later were a minority. They were what remained of the organization. The people who tried keeping the organization with the people increasingly left. They — we — were the majority.
“Bought into the gun culture?” “Becoming our own enemy in the process?” Bullshit. The Lords in New York only displayed weapons once. When Julio Roldan was found dead in jail. At a time when a movement was building against other Black and Brown suspicious deaths in jail. Were we a militant organization? Did we fight back if pushed by the police? Yes. And we encouraged folks in the community to follow that example. Frankly, some times, we had to reign them in. Were we the Panther offshoot, the Black Liberation Army? Hell no. Did we take issue with some tactics of the FALN? Like a booby trap in a Barrio building that took the eye of the first responding officer? Not coincidentally, a Puerto Rican cop? Yes, and we got word back to such groups that terror tactics scared OUR people. And organized no one. And we publicly questioned whether the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation was at work among well-meaning activists. Cotter says Los Macheteros were an offshoot of the Young Lords. I think they, and we, might disagree.
The NYPD among others sent undercovers and informants to “find the guns.” Some of those detectives have told me their bosses had it all wrong. As did former Commissioner Ray Kelly, who told me, “You weren’t about guns. You were trying to improve your community. The bosses then only saw a threat.” In 1969, when we took over the church for the first time, Ray Kelly was a Sgt. “freezing outside that church.”
It is a shame that Cotter tries to “balance” an otherwise insightful piece with such wrongheadedness about guns. And factions. But that happened about three and a half years after the Pietri piece Cotter describes. The same poison we had seen in left-wing groups splitting hairs about “theory.” And doing little real work. Do most of us think FBI types were sowing the discord? Yes. But we could have fought a lot better, within, to stop it. After a high-water period in 1972–73, it came apart by late 1974. Finally dissolving in early 1975.
But as these exhibits show, what Ray Kelly jokingly calls “that little social club,” influenced thousands. At our peak there were chapters in Philly, Boston, Newark, Hoboken, and Bridgeport. Affinity groups on college campuses. Even a base of support in the military.
We built support among our parents and grandparents. Which was our first goal. A younger generation today is doing mucho research on how we raised awareness. And kicked ass. How we made it hip to be Latino. And proud. As Herman Badillo, not exactly a cult follower said, “The Young Lords were the best organization Puerto Ricans had.”
And by the way, Mr. Cotter. About Miguel Luciano’s hepped-up Machetero Nikes:
When I held a gun in this photo. We chose this take. Not the typical “militant” ones. Because, we did laugh. At taking ourselves TOO seriously. At the absurdity of it all: having to defend yourself. Against your own police. Mocking lovers of guns. Standing proudly before a Puerto Rican flag. It’s all there.
You know. Layers of meaning. Like all good art.
To understand Latino cultural guerillas. Whether Frida Kahlo or Guillermo del Toro. One has to understand our love of Theatre of the Absurd. El Gufeo. Loving “Latin-ness.” In the middle of this Mad-ness.
THAT is where the culture comes from.
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Abramson, Palante
REFERENCE: “When The Young Lords Were Outlaws In New York,” Holland Cotter, NY Times July 23 2015
