![]() Williams, who oversaw the day-to-day operation of the Program, termed it, “nothing short of slavery … a way for big corporate farms to get a cheap labor supply from Mexico under government sponsorship.”Īt the time of his death on January 15, 2001, Corona was Director of the Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a group originally founded by labor leader Felipe Usguiano to represent braceros in San Diego in 1951. From 1942 to 1964 the federal government’s Bracero Program authorized Mexican nationals to perform farm labor as “guest workers” throughout the States. The Committee won freedom for twelve Los Angeles Chicanos vilified in the media as a Zoot Suit gang and wrongfully convicted of murder in 1942.Īfter service in US Army, Corona became active in the Asociación Nacional México-Americana whose primary goal was to unionize Mexican workers including Braceros. He helped Josefina Fierro of the Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española in her initial stages of organizing the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee. A union organizer, he was elected President of Los Angeles’ International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union Local 26 in 1941. ![]() In 1937 he traveled to USC on a basketball scholarship and became active with the Mexican American Movement of Los Angeles-area college students. His father had been a commander in Francisco Villa’s revolutionary army his mother a schoolteacher. Humberto Noé “Bert” Corona arrived on the border on born to Mexican immigrants in El Paso, Texas. He considers Corona to be the father of the immigrant rights movement. Corona declared that, “No human being is illegal.” Baca listened and became the first Chicano activist in San Diego to incorporate immigrant rights into all his organizing efforts.įrom the 1930s to his death in 2001, “Corona, while unknown to many in the US, struggled … to raise the issue of the undocumented worker to the forefront of US public policy discussion” Baca remembers. Herman Baca of the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR) feels the Chicana/o community has no voice in the debate because it has forgotten the lessons of Bert Corona who introduced the foundational ideas and approaches to establishing immigrant labor rights in this country.īaca remembers being astonished when in 1972 Corona told him that the Chicana/o community must address the issue of immigration because it would affect our people far into the future. This week the bipartisan group of Senators known as the “Gang of Eight” put their plan for “comprehensive immigration reform” before the USAmerican public, and once again served the Chicana/o community a Mexican Combo Platter steaming with piles of beefed-up border security smothered in drones, refried Bracero guest worker programs, and microwaved workplace enforcement.Ĭitizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country without legally adjusted status, (“amnesty” to conservatives) went sour when gang member Marco Rubio told Fox News “it will be cheaper, faster and easier for people to go back home and wait 10 years than it will be to go through this process that I’ve outlined.” ![]() Assistance from Salvador Barajas, Jr., Rayban Urbina, and Hector Villegas.īy David Avalos / La Prensa San Diego / April 19, 2013 ‘Historical Mural’: Original 1973 artists who repainted the mural in 2012: Guillermo “Yermo” Aranda, Salvador Barajas (Lead Artist), Armando Nuñez, Victor Ochoa, and Guillermo Rosette.
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