The 1968 walkout didn’t matter

The fantasies of Luis Torres 40 years ago that propelled him and others to empty classrooms and hit the streets have changed not one wit.

They romanticized that day by swelling their numbers and their affect on Los Angeles and Mexican America, of which the San Diego-Orange County-Los Angeles axis is the capital. They still do, hitting the streets the other day with what The Times estimated at 2,500 people.

That axis of Mexican Americans was unimpressed by these kids 40 years ago. They did nothing except anger the establishment, an establishment that turned on the original people of Los Angeles and Southern California and elected Mayor Tom Bradley in the aftermath of the Watts riots, in an attempt to calm the black community so it wouldn’t continue rioting, burning and destroying Los Angeles.

The same, by the way, was done in New York City when the Irish rioted in 1863 (prodded by Confederate agitators) and killed hundreds of blacks and burned much of the city. The establishment gave the police and fire departments to the Irish, and they still control those departments today, 145 years later.

Nothing was done for Mexican Americans by this establishment until one was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and a couple to the Los Angeles City Council. Huge dropout rates continue at East Los Angeles high schools.

When Garfield High was single-handedly raised head and shoulders above other high schools by an immigrant Bolivian, Jaime Escalante, establishment union teachers isolated him and his kids and eventually drove him out of Los Angeles. So much for Torres and his fellow walkouts and their effect on education in Los Angeles. They couldn’t even convince dinosaur Mexican American teachers in East L.A.

Escalante believed all kids could learn calculus and trigonometry and do well in college. Most Mexican Americans didn’t agree with him so they let their kids drop out of school. Union teachers did nothing to stop them. They still do little.

What is it about Los Angeles that throttles Mexican American educational progress? Is it leftover bile from that small demonstration 40 years ago? Some people have long memories.

The effect Torres and his fellow students had on the Vietnam War never occurred; it continued for five more years. Interestingly, that war did more to advance education among Mexican Americans than the small demonstration.

Thousands of young Mexican American men, rejecting the “Chicano” label, returned from that war with heroes to look up to, with Medals of Honor around their necks -- including two born in Mexico, one of whom was an illegal alien. With government checks paying tuition, many of them entered college. They owed their new position and the lessened discrimination that came with it not to Torres and his high school demonstrators but to military training and service. That included their grunt work as soldiers, sailors and United States Marines in Southeast Asia, the very war Torres and his fellow travelers didn’t understand on that cloudy, cool day in 1968 but demonstrated against nonetheless.

Torres still thinks like he did in 1968. He writes: “The 1968 Chicano student walkouts took a stand against discrimination against Mexican Americans. They gave a community hope for promised change -- change that, regrettably, hasn’t fully come about.” Fully?

My perspective from 125 miles away is that the small demonstration did nothing for Mexican Americans, and it didn’t influence the war. Richard Nixon, who did end the war, was elected that year with no thanks to Torres and his friends.

I keep referring to the 1968 demonstration as small. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans around the country, 50,000 in San Diego alone, hit the streets two years ago to protest an anti-Mexican and immigrant law offered up by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) that would have created millions of instant felons among many in our community. That bill failed. The national protest was one of the largest in American history. Torres and his group likely were outnumbered by demonstrating 10-year-olds alone.

As to failure, Torres himself sees it: “The dropout rate at my alma mater, Lincoln High School, and the other Eastside high schools is still about 45%.”

The sons and daughters and grandchildren of those 1968 protesters apparently haven’t received the memo that the best antidote to discrimination and poverty is education.

The sons and daughters of the Mexican American Vietnam veterans who came back not to “demonstrate” but to educate themselves did receive it, and they are attending UCLA, Cal State Los Angeles, Cal State Long Beach, San Diego State and dozens of other universities in record numbers.

Demonstrations have their place, as was proven two years ago, but unfortunately for Torres and his fellow travelers, theirs proved nothing those distant 40 years ago. It is forgotten.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is a San Diego TV commentator, columnist and author.