Government Surveillance of Chicano Activism
Romeo Rodriguez discusses his work with the Chicano Legal Defense Fund and their efforts to uncover the extent of the government surveillance and harassment of the Chicano Movement. Rodriguez explains that several Chicano leaders, including Jose Angel Gutierrez, created the fund in 1977 in an effort to determine whether intelligence agencies had violated the rights of Chicano activists, to publicize those abuses, and to file a lawsuit against the intelligence community. While the government has spied on dissenters since the early 1800s, Rodriguez says that their activities became more well known in the aftermath of Watergate. The Church Committee uncovered documents that revealed the FBI had deliberately engaged in activities designed to neutralize or destroy leftist organizations, including the Black Panther Party.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the fund was able to obtain over four thousand pages of documents that reveal a massive program directed against the Chicano movement and its leaders. Rodriguez believes the investigation started around 1968, involved many Chicano organizations and continued despite the agencies’ own admission that they had not found links to communists or evidence of violent activities. The documents also reveal that the agencies planted informers who spied on the movement and tried to sow dissension at their meetings. Rodriguez believes some of these informers may have burglarized or bombed several Chicano movement headquarters. The Fund plans to initiate a lawsuit to obtain more documents.
KEYWORDS
Agent ProvocateurAlien and Sedition Act
Bishop Patrick Flores
Black Panther Party
Central Intelligence Agency
Chicago
Chicano activism
Chicano activists
Chicano Legal Defense Fund
Chicano Movement
Chicano Political Leaders
CIA
COINTELPRO
Corky Gonzalez
Cuba
Domestic spying
Ethnic Slurs
Faculty
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Fire bombings
FOIA
Frank Martinez
Fred Hampton
Freedom of Information Act
Government Intelligence
Henry B. Gonzalez
Houston, Texas
Informants
Internal Revenue Service
IRS
J. Edgar Hoover
Jose Angel Gutierrez
Jose Montoya
La Raza Unida Party
Lawsuits
Marxist
Mexican American Youth Organization
Northside People’s Center
Operation CHAOS
Pachuco House
Pepper belly
Police Brutality
Political repression
Reies Lopez Tijerina
Richard Nixon
Romeo Rodriguez
San Antonio
Socialist Worker’s Party
The Church Committee
University of Texas at Austin