Brown Berets

Beginnings

The Brown Berets were formed just prior to the 1968 East Los Angeles student walkouts (blowouts) led by Carlos Montes and others involved in the Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA), later changed to Young Chicanos for Community Action. The name of the organization originated from the beret and brown uniforms worn by both men and women soldiers and veterans. The Berets published a newspaper called La Causa and started their work supporting the anti–Vietnam War movement, challenging police brutality and educational inequality, and opening a free health clinic and offering free breakfasts. They opened a coffee house, the Piranya, in East Los Angeles, where they met and sponsored cultural programs.

They evolved ideologically from working civically, a strategy used by older-generation Mexican American organizations like the American GI Forum, to focusing on Chicana/o self-determination and nationalism, to international solidarity with global movements based in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, unlike other student movements founded at that time, like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), the paramilitary structure of the Berets made it unique. It has an elaborate hierarchy of officers, code of conduct, and disciplinary procedures. Marching, drills, salutes, and the manifestation of Chicana/o Power are part of the exercise of discipline and earning the trust of the community, as is respecting and caring for the uniform and those who wear it.

1970 Paramilitary Power and Disbandment

Like other Chicano movement organizations that rejected women or limited their participation, the Brown Berets—while rhetorically stressing the importance of gender equity as equally important to that of race or class—failed in practice to live up to its own rhetoric. Women Berets continually challenged their male colleagues, but faced unique challenges due to the structure of the organization and respect for the chain of command and senior officers.

In 1970, they assisted those in the Barrio Logan neighborhood of San Diego in seizing and occupying a piece of land beneath the Coronado Bridge that eventually became Chicano Park. In 1972, they planted a Mexican flag on Santa Catalina, claiming the island for all Chicanos and asserting a violation of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. By 1972, succumbing to heavy infiltration by the Los Angeles Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Brown Berets disbanded.

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