◆ SpookStack

At long last a lerge section of the American people has begun to realize the extent and depth of the oppression of the Mexican Am~- erican people in the Southwest. This realization -- a very much belated one -- comes as a dir- ect result of the dramatic demonstrations in recent months by a large number among the S million persons of Mexican descent who live in the five south west states. It cam be Said that a sizeable section of the Mexican Americas: people are literally on the march, 3 In Defano, California end in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas *:> _Pickets prade along backwoods roads and on the US-Mexico border we the most widely supported agricultural labor strike in the history of our cowtry, Demonstrations around the anti-poverty program nave shaken Denver, Colorado, Los Angeles and the:San Francisco bay area,! And in March in Albuquerque, New Mexico the cramatic short walk by sone fifty prominent leaders of Mexican American organizations out of the conference called by the federal government to discuss equaly” oppétunities, has had its reverberations not only through- out the Mexican American communities, but also in the White House, From all indications these struggles represent the beginning of a new era in the life of the southwest. Stimulated by the civil rights struggle in the nation, inspired by the revolutionary tradi- tion of their homeland., Mexico, and witnessing and supporting in an unpredented manner the heroic strike of the most oppressed of all Mexican-Americans, the farm workers, a new mood of struggle appears. a to have taken hold. . ~~ In these states where one sixth of the nation lives, we find one out of every four poor persons in the United States according to Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas. The poor, almost all of them Mexican Americans, the cong:csrman said "live in en enormous belt of poverty beginning in east Texas, sweeping down through « South Texas and Rio Grande Valley, and stretching west into New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Southern Califofnia," Appropriately enough it has been described as "a'thousand miles of poverty." Struggle is no stranger to the Mexican American people of the—. Southwest. History is replete with numerous ; heroic, and all too a A