The Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education 
Oral History Project
Name of Interviewee: Juan Manuel Carrillo Guerrero
Name of Interviewer: Angélica Flores
Date of Interview: May 31, 2014

Name of Transcriber: Lupita García
Date of Transcription: December 11, 2020
1	BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION
2	[0:00:04]
3	Angélica: I would like to, first of all, thank you for allowing me to interview you.
4	Juan: Great, it’s an honor. Thank you.
5	Angelica: I’m excited to know more about you. Please provide your first name.
6	Juan: It is Juan Manuel Carrillo Guerrero.
7	Angelica: Okay, and please provide your birthday.
8	Juan: July 1, 1941
9	Angelica: And what is your marital status?
10	Juan: I am married.
11	Angelica: And do you have any children?
12 	Juan: Yes. I have four sons. Do you want to know who they are?
13	Angélica: What ages?
14	Juan: Oh, ages. Well, the oldest is fifty. His name is John, John Michael. Then Miguel  
15	Antonio who is mid-forties. I have to calculate, he was born ‘69 so he will be forty-five. And 	16	then there’s Diego Ignacio, he is thirty-three. And Evan Manuel who is twenty-eight. 
17	Angélica: And-
18	Juan: I won’t forget my other son who died, Adan Andres. Gotta throw him in there.
19	Angelica: And where were you born and raised?
20	Juan: Well, I like to point out that I was conceived in San Francisco. I was born in 
21	Tamazula de Gordiano in Jalisco. I returned to the United States, my family did, 1944 
22	when I was three and a half and I was raised in San Francisco.
23	Angélica: And what did your parents do for a living?
24	Juan: Well, I think like lots of our parents, they did a lot of things. My father came here 
25	when he was 16 years old to San Francisco with his father, from Jalisco.
26	[0:02:04] 
27	And at age 17, less than a year later, my grandfather died of a heart attack and so my father
28	started working in the shipyards first when he was 16 and he went to the American Can
29	Company when he was 17. And then little by little, he sent money to Mexico to bring his mother 
30	and siblings. So he worked as a warehouseman as well. My mother worked in a variety of jobs, 31	office jobs, cannery work. But she ended up in her last bunch of years at PG&E working in a 
32	office. And my father is a warehouseman. 
33	Angélica: And how many brothers and sisters did you have?
34	Juan: There were five of us. I have three sisters, two older and a younger sister, and the 
35	youngest is my brother.
36	Angélica: And please describe your experiences as a child and youth and your family as  
37	immigrants? 
38 	Juan: Hijole [Yikes], this is going--this can take a long time. Well, let’s see, you know 
39	my memory of Mexico is very very slight, very thin. I do remember a little of growing up in 
40	 Tamazula. I now know how poor we were. I didn’t, you know, kids don’t know that growing up. 
41	So that’s where I learned to walk and talk and I think I felt pretty secure in those early years. I do 
42	recall a little about the travel to the United States, very little.
43	[0:04:03]
44	Juan: But my growing up years in San Francisco from kindergarten--first childcare, 
45	kindergarten then beginning Catholic school. I was in Catholic school through high school. I was 
46	a good kid, I think I can say that. We were raised to represent our family, it was real important 
47	that our behavior represented what our parents wanted us to be. We were taught manners, I was a 
48	religious kid, I was an altar boy. I even thought of becoming a priest, I went to the seminary in 49	the seventh grade to take a look at the Franciscan training center in Santa Barbara with a bunch 
50	of other boys. So all those years I was a good kid, I developed a side that was a clown. I was 
51	joking, it was real important to me. I was smart, but I was called lazy by people. So I didn’t fully 
52	achieve all that I could have, I suppose. I was very interested in drawing, I used to draw on my 
53	books, which was against the rules. I remember being commissioned into doing a big black 
54	board thing in fourth--fifth grade, but cartooning is what interested me. I drew a lot of cartoon 
55	characters like a lot of kids, a lot of artists who start out with cartoons. Went to high school and 
56	that's where things fell apart. I spent my final year in high school, I got kicked out of my high 
57	school for trumped-up charges.
58	[0:06:10]
59	Juan: Do we have a sense of humor here? 
60	Angélica: [giggles]
61	Juan: Anyways, I was kicked out for very little cause, I believed. That started my slide. It 
62	took me 3 years to get out of my senior year. I spent 6 semesters as a senior, it was pretty 
63	frustrating. I finally graduated from Mission Adult School. I then went on to work--during that 
64	time I got married. I had my first son and then said “what am I going to do with my life?” But I 
65	think most of those years I was a pretty decent guy, you know. School was a problem but I 
66	wasn't a problem maker. Does that answer enough about growing up?
67	Angélica: [I think so?]
68	Juan: Okay.
69	Angélica: Were you a fellow Felito during the Mexican American Education Project?
70	Juan: I was a fellow, 1969 to 1970.
71	Angélica: How did your participation in the Mexican American Education Project influence 
72	your thinking and involvement in…?
73	Juan: Oh God. It gave my future professional life, as an administrator, as a school teacher, 
74	a great deal of ammunition for the battles that had to be fought.
75	[0:07:57]
76	Juan: I have to go back. I don’t know whether your questions go back to my college 
77	years. Does it? Let me just back a little bit to give some grounding. I got into Berkeley, leaping 
78	from getting kicked out, continuation high school, adult school all that sort of business. I ended 
79	up in Berkeley as a junior, I was married, I had a child. So in ‘66 I went to Berkley and it 
80	followed very major issue of the free speech movement in Berkley which sparked so much 
81	across this country. It also paralleled very huge civil rights movement, anti-racist movement in 
82	this country. So here I was a young guy, I didn’t have much education, I had my high school 
83	degree, growing up and at the time when there was a great movement. A real heavy duty 
84	people’s movement in this country about our rights, whether it was civil rights or speech rights 
85	and so I grew up observing this, not participating. I found myself slowly disagreeing with my 
86	friends who thought that Martin Luther King and civil rights people, who were in San Francisco 
87	they were picketing the car sales or something called Auto Row in San Francisco, Van Ness. 
89	It's a big street, used to have all kinds of car, new car buildings. 
90	[9:58]
91	Juan: Their hiring practices were looked at and a lot of people began to picket them. San
92	Francisco was also the site of the House on American Activities Committee hearings, in which 
93	people’s loyalty were being questioned, whether or not they were communist or left-wingers. 
94	People really protested that. To the point where I saw the police and the fire department just 
95	hosing people down the stairs and people being arrested in huge numbers. And then there was 
96	 the free speech movement. I had just started City College, San Francisco, and this woman 
97	came to speak on the campus and I just happened to go. I was interested in these things, but I 
98	hadn't really participated and just then it was the beginnings of the United Farmworkers 
99	Movement. So being a city guy, I didn't really know much but that began to appear in the news. 
100	This women came to speak and I went to hear her, she, in one hour, gave me and everyone in 
101	that auditorium a lesson in American history, in American economics, American politics that 
102	went so deep into my core of understanding the world in which I lived, transformed me. So I’m 
103	now filled with all this stuff, and these little debates I had with people, disagreements with them. 
105	I end up at Berkeley and I'm there less than a month and the students kick out the navy recruiters 
106	from the student union and this big thing breaks and the students call for a strike. Well in my 
107	growing politicization, I said, you know, I agree with that position. 
108	[0:12:02]
109	Juan: If students who, we funded the building of this student center, it was our student 
110	center and the student council of the university voted to remove the navy recruiters it was sort of 
111	their statement about war and our country’s militarization and other arguments began to reveal 
112	itself to me about the use of military around the world, the education of people getting them 
113	ready for a military-industrial complex. All that was going on. Anyways, I said “I'm going to join 
114	the strike.” Here I am just a few weeks into college in Berkeley and I’m on strike and I’m 
115	holding a picket sign. I don't even understand what I'm doing, I’m so fresh, so naive. And
116	even a little intimidated by just having students walk by me and me trying to tell them not to go 
117	to class. Everyone is ignoring you, I don't think one person stopped and changed their mind 
118	because I was standing there, but I believed in the cause. That was my first engagement, this a 119	long answer to your question about the fellowship but it's connected. The next, 1966, ‘67, ‘68, 
120	‘69 I left Berkeley. During that time, there was besides the echoes of free speech, the recruiters 
121	then there was the people's park issue. Which became a campus issue because that was campus 
122	property. Do you know anything about that? The university had ideas of building a space, and it 
123	was empty, they demolished the buildings.
124	[0:14:05]
125	Juan: And people turned that into gardens and began to grow food, so there was free 
126	food. And the whole argument about feeding the society and the cost of food and what goes into 
127	making food, the corporate structure of food making, all that began to filter through and now that 
128	became a cause. So the university erected a fence. Then students tore down the fence, they 
129	erected the fence again, put police around there and people fought the police. It just kept 
130	growing and growing into a larger issue of what is the university’s responsibility in the society. 
131	Once again I went on strike to try to lend one little guy's body to this larger movement of getting 
132	the university to address the regents, the university to put themselves in a better spot. Then in 
133	1967, I'm walking across the campus feeling pretty much alone, I was married, I lived in student 
134	housing and had a son. With all kinds of tables, that’s the way universities are, you know, people 
135	trying to get you to join their club and all that sort of business. And somebody hands me this 
136	little yellow flyer and I grab the flyer as I'm walking. It's a rental sheet, you can rent Mexicans. 
137	As I'm reading this sheet and walking and I don't know anybody, I don't even know who I got it 
138	from, someone just said “here you want it.?” I'm walking and reading and it starts out with prices 
139	that go from lowest to highest.
140	[0:16:01]
141	The lowest rental is a Mexican who is well dressed, wears a suit, has his haircut very nicely, is a 
142	graduate of the university, is carrying a briefcase, can speak English, can only speak English but 
143	can speak it very well. And each Mexican as you go down becomes closer and closer to the final 
144	stereotype of a Mexican, just like you’ve seen in so many cartoons and drawings, a little short 
145	guy with a big bigote [mustache] wearing a big sombrero, carrying a guitar can’t speak English 
146	but can sing songs. He was the most expensive. By the time I get to the end, I'm really angry. 
147	Partially because I’m Mexican, I was born in Mexico. I didn't become a citizen of the United 
148	States ‘til I went to Berkeley. I was in my mid-twenties before I became a U.S. citizen ‘cause I 
149	always said “I'm loyal to Mexico, I'm a Mexican.” Becoming a citizen seemed like a traitorous 
150	act to me, but at a certain point I realized my work was going to be limited if I wasn’t a citizen, I 
151	had experienced that. I was probably going to live in the United States the rest my life, I’m 
152	married and very rooted. I became a citizen just as I entered Berkeley. In fact, I registered at the 
153	international house. I'm just a kid from the Mission District, you know, and I'm in line with 
154	people wearing turbans, no one speaking English in line. I'm just a Mission District kid, saying 
155	what am I doing here, it was for that reason. 
156 	[0:18:04]
157	So I get this thing and I said to myself do I go back and give them a piece of my mind or do I just 158	roll this thing up and throw it away and stay angry? And said “I'm going back.” So I go back to 
159	the table, it’s two guys sitting at the table, and I said, trying to sound really pissed off, “what the 
169	hell is this about?” And they said “We’re glad you stopped. We’re Mexican American students 
161	here on the campus and we’re trying to recruit people. Other Mexican Americans to start a club 
162	here. To establish a Mexican American club. We took a survey last year and there were 69 
163	Mexican Americans at UC Berkeley out of 30,000 students and we want to do something about 
164	changing that.” So now my anger is, no I’m real confused. Okay I was angry, but I am interested 
165	in this, it sounds like the right thing. And they said “we’re having a meeting tonight, would you 
166	be interested in coming?” I said I don’t know. I wasn’t a joiner, I didn’t know anybody. But I 
167	went home and told my wife “I'm going to this meeting.” So I go and in the room, it's an office 
168	off campus of a professor, there's about 5-6 students and a professor in the room. They’re all 
169	Chicanos and it turned out they were the most articulate, I mean their education was deep. By 
170	comparison I felt like “WOW these guys are really way ahead of me and many were graduate 
171	students.” That was the beginning of our discussions of establishing a journal called El Grito.
172	[0:19:59]
173	Juan: El Grito was a journal that came out of this, I’ll call it a club, this organization. The 
174	organization was Quinto Sol. It preceded things like MECHA, MAYA, or MAYO. San Jose had 
175	Student Initiative, SI. We were the first organization of Chicanos at Berkeley, Quinto Sol. We 
176	were so small we knew we couldn’t have any kind of an impact of numbers of people. We 
177	decided ideas is what is going to be our job, that's how we are going to affect the world. This 
178	journal published: writings, surveys, bibliographies, poems, art, all these issues we had to deal 
179	with, history. Every quarter we put out this journal. That grounded me much more into the 
180	intellectual side of the movement, the ideas. I eventually--Oh sorry this is taking so long. The 
181	final thing was the very first Third World Strike, the very first Ethnic Studies battle in this 
182	country took place at San Francisco State in 1968. All these other battles I had been involved in 
183	and now the organization and we were organizing student-centered operations. We brought 
184	students from all the high schools to Berkeley for a conference. We started a counseling program 
185	for students in the East Bay, an organization called La Causa.
186	[0:22:06]
187	Juan: I got involved in the very first Chicano art movement efforts in the Bay area. Through
188	that I met Esteban Villa, Rene Yañez. I met a whole bunch of artists, on the phone 
189	I talked to José Montoya and asked him for his writings, for El Grito. We used Esteban Villas art
190	at the time. So now my compadre [close friend], Bill Vega, who was on the editorial 
191	board at Berkeley as well, he and I would go over to San Francisco State and participate in the 
192	demonstrations to establish Ethnic Studies. And from that came the Berkeley fight for Ethnic 
193	Studies. I was at the time a teaching assistant, I'm now in graduate school. I became a teaching 
194	assistant for the first Chicano studies class at Berkeley. It wasn't called that, it was called the 
195	Mexican-American-- it was an anthropology course. Octavio Romano who was our group 
196	leader, faculty leader, in El Grito in Quinto Sol, this was his course. So I'm teaching that I’m 
197	also doing student teaching in Oakland High School because I got teaching credential out of 
198	Berkeley, and the strike is called for to establish Third World Studies at Berkeley. It was a scary 
199	thing because we weren’t just fighting the administrations, the campus police, the sheriff’s 
200	department came. 
201	[0:24:12]
202	They were mean, mean guys, big guys. But as a result of that Ronald Reagan just felt this was 
203	such a threat, such a left-wing threat, and it got in the ways of his plans to, now we see, to turn 
204	Berkeley from a free public education institution, one of the best in this country one of the best 
205	oldest, into more like a private university with now tuitions and fees. It got in the way of that, 
206	and the result was we went on strike. The strike grew, all kinds of people got involved from the 
207	community, the unions got involved. It was a huge, huge strike, Bay area strike, to the point 
208	where the national guard was called. They had in the evening curfew, you couldn’t walk or drive 
209	down the streets of Berkeley after 10 pm. They had barricades all around Berkeley, you had to 
210	go through barricades to go into Berkeley, of course, it was national news. At this time, also, are 
211	strikes across the country at universities. At this time there are strikes in Mexico City, in Japan, 
212	in Paris. I mean huge strikes, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more 
213	people involved in some of these strikes in these other countries and across this country. 
214	[0:26:02]
215	These huge anti-war, anti-Vietnam things going on. There’s a strong feminist movement that is 
216	starting. There is the farmworkers movement in the countryside and the cities. This country is 
217	going through incredible turmoil in the surroundings, this need for studying our history, you 
218	know.
219	Angélica: You mentioned all these things, and you also mentioned cultural anthropology?
220	Juan: Yes
221	Angélica: Okay, how did that influence your involvement and participation?
222	Juan: Well, cultural anthropology helped me to understand culture. I came to school 
223	here, through the fellowship, to understand the culture of education. That’s why cultural 
224	anthropology was part of what was offered to us, we took education and, anthropology, cultural 
225	anthropology. Understanding education and how institutions worked, how people get caught up 
226	in the culture of an institution, like schools. Understanding our own culture, and how culture 
227	works, was layered on top of all that criticism of anthropology that I got at Berkeley by Chicano 
228	students and that faculty member. There was so much criticism of the past and how 
229	anthropologists viewed us as the people and widened my thinking of who we were, it just 
230	widened deepened, and I began clearly to see that going through a Chicano studies door, going 
231	through education in Mexican history, Chicano history, whatever, was an opening into the 
232	universe.
233	[0:28:03]
234	Juan: Behind that door was the universe and the people who fought us felt establishing a door
235	of Chicano studies, or whatever, limited our thinking, our world. To this day they still don't
236	understand that, you know what's the saying, “cada cabeza es un mundo”? [every head is
237	its own world?] or something like that. Each door is the universe you don't stop just ‘cause you 
238	go through a door called Chicano Studies and your thinking becomes limited just blows 
239	everything, it's the Big Bang in your head. There was this connection what we learned here to 
240	what I brought with me as an experience which we find my arguments, which I used so much 
241	later when I became a teacher, which was the plan of this program. To go into an institution and 
242	make the changes and understand where you’re heading. In the arts which was my long 
243	profession is working for the State Arts Council, the California Arts Council, is making 
244	arguments of the value of art and culture in society and so the program, my experiences here 
245	and in Berkeley and in the streets and growing up and being a foreigner, an alien, gave me 
246	everything I needed for the rest of my life's work.
247	Angélica: Now that you have this change in ideology, right?
248	Juan: Yes
249	Angélica: They opened eyes. What were events that attracted you to the Chicano Movement? 
250	Like specific events besides the pamphlet?
251	[0:30:04]
252	Juan: Well, the pamphlet was really important, wasn’t it because that was like one of 
253	those doors I was telling you about. Well, you know, coming here and meeting my compañeros, 
254	compañeras [classmates] in Sacramento, this was the first community that I had following being 
255	a high school kid in San Francisco in the Mission District. There I had a sense of community, I 
256	had friends, I had a circle. After high school all that breaks up and slowly your communities, you 
257	know, who you can keep as friends and your family is always there. I came here and had no 
258	family here, except the family I brought with me, my second son was born during the fellowship 
259	program. Then I began to meet all these people and then we were taking out into the 
260	neighborhood and introduced to people. So working with this growing community of activists of 
261	dedicated people coming from so many places. So many of my friends here were farmworker 
262	family members they came from doing--they were all Valley people. I’ll put it that way. People 
263	would make fun of me because I was not a Valley person. I used to tell them “no we have the 
264	Visitation Valley, we have the Noe Valley. I'm a Valley guy,” but it was meant to be funny. I had 
265	all of that and then what people did not know is my family background, when I go and when I 
266	went back to Mexico for the first time in 1968 from 1944.
267	[0:032:07]
268	Juan: 24 years it took me to get back to Mexico, back to my hometown and I saw where 
269	my parents, at least my father's side. Well my mother's side too because I went to Sinaloa and 
270	visited family there and saw that my family is rural. I'm the generation that became--my mother 
271	and father of course grew up in San Francisco but they came with small-town values and those 
272	agricultural roots. When I went back as a city boy [emphasized in interview] back to my 
273	hometown, both my mother’s and father's side, I saw that my roots were really, like so many 
274	mexicanos [Mexicans], we were rural people. What was the question? [laughs]
275	Angélica: Umm
276	Juan: Oh yeah, the community here, right? Anyways so this community of people here 
277	through the activities that occurred here, I went to their communities that they came from or 
278	similar communities. The program here required us to, for instance, one project that was hotly 
279	contested by some; we had to go back to a community and live like poor people. Live like others 
280	in the community and some people here in the program were all angry about that, you know, “I 
281	don't have to go back to that, da…da…da.” But for me it was really valuable, I went to Yuba 
282	City and I slept in a trailer and so I experienced how cold it gets in a trailer in the winter in Yuba 
283	City. Early in the morning going out to look for work to do pruning, you know, what experience 
284	did I have? I didn't even know that aguacates [avocados] grew on trees, that’s how city I was. 
285	They were there in the store right, but I didn’t know where they came from. Anyway, so the 
286	people I met--the community that was built here that grew that became an organic thing was 
287	something I really valued, something that taught me a lot going on down to Delano in vans. 
288	Bringing food or bringing clothes or taking our support to that. It was a real education, expansion 
289	of my knowledge, you know. It's funny how you get to a point as an intellectual and you think: 
290	there’s Algeria and they fought the French for their independence you know, and there’s 
291	Bolivian and there’s Che and there’s Cuba and there’s Castro, there’s all these places and yet 
292	right here in your own front yard there’s very similar battles that need to happen and to go on 
293	and so you get grounded in a different reality.
294	Angélica: You mentioned Delano, so my question is what did you personally initiate or help 
295	initiate in the Movement? Were you part of the--
296	Juan: Well what the what happened here on the campus was a coalescing of all of our 
297	lives, there were about 20 of us in the program, we coalesced into a real group. 
298	[0:35:57]
299	Juan: We spent a lot of time in each other's lives and homes and something real special 
300	happened and that was the arrival of José Montoya and Esteban Villa to the same place. They 
301	were compadres, they went to school together, you'll hear from Esteban more about this when he 
302	presents his history. Those two artists, two artist masters in our community were able to 
303	coalesce, able to make happen, a group of artists and a group of activists. Jose Montoya became 
304	a voice, he became our voice and not only in this community but across the state and across this 
305	country and even outside of this country. When José spoke, he spoke of our values, of our 
306	history, of our dreams. He said it in poetic ways, his powerful voice. I don't know if you ever 
307	heard him, but he had this powerful voice rooted in truth, rooted in conviction. Between he and 
308	Esteban, these artists and these activists that became this circle here, it's hard to say who initiated 
309	what but I do give them credit for bringing a voice and coalescing at least the Chicano art 
310	movement and a lot of the activism here. I was now at Cosumnes River College, in the southern 
311	part of Sacramento, a brand new college. I initiated the MECHA program there. I mean I really 
312	tried to make an impact on my little campus with Chicano students. 
313	[0:37:58]
314	Juan: I taught Chicano studies, the history of Mexico, minorities in America, and U.S. 
315	History. Those were my assignments and in each coursework, I tried to bring, you know, the 
316	histories, the intelligence, the passion, the role of culture even though the course said nothing 
317	about culture I just felt that our culture had an impact and I used to have to do an annual battle on 
318	that campus to teach the way I wanted to teach and to carry out the programs in the way that I 
319	felt was important. Which meant bringing artists or bringing my students to see murals. Have 
320	you seen the murals in Mexico City or Guadalajara?
321	Angélica: Uh-uh
322	Juan: Oh, you stand in front of those things and you just, your jaw drops because it is a lesson. 
323	Artists here in Northern California, were teachers to their mural work and so it was important for 
324	me to take students out to see murals. Anyway, so outside of Quinto Sol, El Grito, MECHA I 
325	don't know whether or not I started anything, but I was there.
326	Angélica: [that's important?]
327	Juan: I was there at the beginning of many things.
328	Angélica: So you know, you have these changes in thinking. How did these changes impact 
329	personal relationships with family, peers, or significant others?
330	Juan: Wow, that’s a tough one. Let me back up to the change business. I'm sorry but I am 
331	ignoring my 27 years at the California Arts Council. Here, I became deputy director of the 
332	California Arts Council responsible for, well over my 27 years I once calculated, probably 
333	oversaw the distribution of about 200 million dollars to artists and arts organizations. 
334	[0:40:12]
335	Juan: When I first started at the Arts Council it really was a continuation of the presence, 
336	the domination of art organizations that were rooted in wealthy white communities. Real 
337	presence were the symphonies, the ballet, the Opera, the Museums of the state. I came to work 
338	for a whole group of artists who were placed there by then Jerry Brown, he was governor his first 
339	term he abolished the old Arts Council and established a new one. Luis Váldez was appointed to 
340	be on the Arts Council as well as a real mix working artists. One guy from Armenia from Fresno, 
341	he was the only donor, the only non-artist on the council. They redirected that agency like 
342	all hands on the wheel like a boat captain they redirected the direction of that state agency 
343	and within that direction I was given the opportunity to do something about new programs as 
344	deputy director and where money is distributed and so I had an impact on what became known as 
345	Multicultural Arts distribution of funds to support artists and arts organizations of color. I sat on 
346	17 or 19 National Endowment for the Arts panels.
347	[0:41:57]
348	Juan: I sat on the Western States Board of Trustees always the voice for the art of people of color
349	because there was no one else in the room sometimes who was a person of color.	Certainly there
350	were no other Latinos, they were blacks on occasion, you know. This pretty much became of
351	white-black conversation in America in all those years and a Latino voice wasn't there and 
352	Native American and Asian. Sometimes I had to speak for all Latinos, don't know if you’ve 
353	ever been involved in that kind of situation, you represent everybody for the moment, you know,  
354	but you have to do it. What I learned here about cultural anthropology and in all those years of 
355	Berkeley about anthropology, I put that to practice. My history, my anthropology in those policy 
356	discussions at the National Endowment for the Arts I had to squash some of the thinking that 
357	went on because it was old-time anthropology. I had to listen to some real BS about people of 
358	color and sometimes, you know, you just say I know I'm not going to win the vote here but 
359	somebody's got to say this. And that little boy that I told you I was, I was a good little kid, I was 
360	religious, I respected my elders, every once in a while that little boy still, “cause we are 
361	everything we've ever been.” That's the way I view life, I'm everything I ever was and once in a 
362	while the nice little religious boy says, “you shouldn't say anything you might offend 
363	somebody.” because that's the way I was raised and then this other voice says, “You know what I 
364	don't care” that other voice from another time--
365	[0:44:08]
366	Angélica: Now that you have that I don’t care voice, how did that voice affect your 
367	relationship with your family, your significant other, your wife?
368	Juan: Do we have to go into this? Anyway, I lost that marriage. I was not alone, I mean, 
369	there’s probably some anthropology study of what the movement did to marriages. The 
370	engagement of people in the movement but a lot of marriages either revealed the fault, the 
371	problem and it exacerbated the problem or it created the problem, the division. A lot of people 
372	were able to overcome the divisions that happened because, you know, the spouse was not 
373	always your partner in the activities, that was my experience. My wife was not always present in 
374	those events, she had business to take care of, children to raise. So I'm off and then there's all the 
375	social activity that happens once you're there. Anyway, it did not have a good effect on my 
376	marriage, the marriage broke up and so some years passed. I was a single guy on the road. 
377	[laughs]
378	Angélica: May I ask how many years you were together [giggles]
379	Juan: Well, the first break-up, marriage break-up, was 1970 the first year I was teaching. 
380	It was on rocky grounds for about another five years. 1977 I left the house and nothing never 
381	happened again, filed for divorce in ‘78 completed, in ‘79. In that interim period of, you know, 
382	she moved away and I was with the kids, she moved back, I moved away and I came back and 
383	trying to make it work for about 5 years there was ‘74-‘75 to ‘79. Anyway, I met somebody. I 
384	met my current wife and it's a great marriage and we've had three children. We lost one at the 
385	age of one he died, but it's been good. So both things have come out of it. Something good and 
386	something not so good.
387	Angélica: Looking back at your experiences in the Movimiento Chicano are there any issues 
388	that were left unresolved?
389	Juan: That are left unresolved? Well one issue that I’m always talking about is when I was at 
390	Berkeley I wrote a very long paper for a speech class, I had to prepare a major speech and I 
391	chose to talk about because I was so engaged at the time at Berkeley in education issues, 
392	recruiting kids talking to them about Berkeley or college, establishing that counseling center. 
393	Anyway I wrote this long thing about research on education and I was, as a student, astounded at 
394	the history. I learned the history of education and the Mexican people in this country.
395	[0:48:00]
396	Juan: I was segregated. How we were treated in schools. I remember one story, it was 
397	Watsonville or the Central Valley where the queen was always white. What do you call that? 
398	When people return? 
	399	Angélica: homecoming
400	Juan: The homecoming queen was always white and the princess was always a Mexican, 
401	it's just the way it was. No one ever questioned it until someday somebody said “why can't a 
402	Mexican be queen” and the response was well you know we have to raise the, the… I think this 
403	how the story went, I might be wrong. We have to consider that whites will be running the town 
404	and Mexicans will be working for them. So we have to have always the kings and queens be 
405	white and you can't reverse it because of this. It was said so matter-of-factly like what happens. 
406	Anyways I was shocked that this kind of stuff was said so openly and it was a great number of 
407	cases of this stuff going on. Our dropout rate 1960 something was 50%, you know, 50% did not 
408	graduate from high school. Recently, 47 odd years later after, after the whole Chicano Movement 
409	after all of us going to college, after all of us going--blah blah blah-- I see our dropout rate was 
410	50%. I think, “Jesus!” How unresolved is this issue, the issue of education in our community. 
411	But I know it’s deeply rooted in the issue of the larger issue, of how America’s structured. 
412	[0:50:08]
413	Juan: How race is still carried out. I remember saying, at some point, it took us five 
414	hundred years to get here, from the time of Christopher Columbus 1492 and the establishment of 
415	the European racism in America, it may take us 500 years to get out of it. I mean ‘cause we've 
416	never been in that situation before, how long will it take? And so it becomes--we've all said it, all 
417	of us here in Sacramento, we’re long-distance runners we’re not sprinters and we're in it for life, 
418	we’re lifers.
419	Angélica: Does that mean that you see yourself staying involved, meaning like the challenges 
420	Chicanos face now--
421	Juan: I see myself disliking meetings more and more. I grew up hating meetings unless 
422	something real came from it unless it was really an action meeting. So any meetings are about 
423	regurgitating what we know. Maybe we're like so many people were waiting for that leader to 
424	rise up and really give a voice, powerful voice as his experience. We've had that experience from 
425	Mexican history and civil rights history--César, José who just--and other voices believe me there 
426	are other voices--who have no compunction of raising their voice and providing leadership and 
427	having following. 
428	[0:52:09]
429	Juan: A lot of people speak up and they don’t have anybody behind them, so it's like eh 
430	okay. Those are rare, those are rare people.
431	Angélica: I want to ask you, what role do you think that Chicanas played in the movimento 
432	[movement]?
433	Juan: Well I have to tell you this, I am working on an art edition, silk screen edition of about 
434	8 prints on the life of my mother. I am working also on her book, her story. My siblings and 
435	myself, we honor our mother in a way that is not necessarily uncommon, I mean, I think most of 
436	us think our mothers are saints and wonderful and always there for us. I will argue that my 
437	mother had, though, an extraordinary experience as a mujer mexicana. She did things, went to 
438	places, observed things and was a leader in San Francisco so I got to begin always with my 
439	mother and her shaping of me, my values, my manners. She's the one that really wanted to make 
440	sure that I brought that great credit to the family. She was someone who I always went to when I 
441	had to solve a problem because my mother always looked like she knew what she was doing--she 
442	could solve problems.
443	[0:54:04]
444	Juan: and then there are my sisters were quite gifted, but in the Chicano movement--I'll start with 
445	Berkeley--there were not very many women at Berkeley. There was one, Becky Morales who 
446	was on the original board. She was the only woman on the board, she was very artistic, she was a 
447	student of architecture. She went on to become vice-president at MIT. And I thought “wow 
448	Becky went all the way to the top man she's like she must have kicked some ass to get that far” 
449	‘cause you have to. Here in--well I mean you know you always had people like Dolores Huerta 
450	who was certainly, and still is an incredible voice just inner strength in you. It just comes so
451	easily to her I don't understand where it came from but--’cause I don't know her childhood life 
452	but Dolores was always there. I do know there was a lot of criticism of the guys in the 
453	movement, the artists. I'm really much more part of the artist Chicano art movement than other 
454	kinds of things but there had been criticism of Chicano artists in the movement for ignoring 
455	women artists and leadership roles where women often played supportive roles. But I think any 
456	intelligent look at the history--if you go to the sub-level--the comandante [commander] beyond 
457	the comandante level you really see the presence and the strength and the ability of women to 
458	make things happen.
459	[0:56:17]
460	Juan: I don’t know how far we are beyond that but it certainly is a great number of 
461	examples of strong dynamic leadership. There was a time, I think, when men said that “I'm not 
462	going to follow a woman,” it clearly that happened in the workspace when you have a woman 
463	who became a supervisor, a boss, you're working for a woman. I think those American cultures is 
464	evolving Mexican culture is evolving. Those are deep-rooted values, I’ll put that way, that 
465	really have to be addressed. Yanked out of the ground when you get a chance to do it and you 
466	have to demonstrate that you're quite willing to follow regardless of the person.
467	Angélica: Would you like to say last memories or?
468	Juan: Oh god, so many. I do--let me just say something for the present generation. I'm 
469	involved a bit with UC Davis Chicano Studies over there through their art workshop--their 
470	[inaudible] Workshop established by Malaquías Montoya and then run now by Carlos Jackson. 
471	Malaquías’s son is involved over there Maceo Montoya, who is a writer, muralist, and painter. 
472	[0:58:05]
473	Juan: My son went to UC Davis, my son became the first transfer student, he transferred 
474	from Consumnes. He became the first transfer student to become president of the campus in the 
475	hundred years history of UC Davis. The second Chicano ever to become the president of the 
476	campus. Through his experience, I met students who were politically active, the whole Dreamers 
477	movement--huge demonstrations across this country at a certain time and still very, very active. 
478	Today Santa Cecilia is performing free, you should go. Anyway, I only bring them up 
479	because they're young people and they're addressing undocumented, you know, the deportations 
480	and all of that. I'm so--it fills me with joy to see that when I see young people on national 
481	television sitting side by side with, you know, and this confidence it just comes across and I 
476	think YES we only need to expand the number of people. That's exactly why all of us got 
477	involved in this movement for, was to have a generation that follows--or two generations that 
478	follow of people, young people, like that. Take the responsibility, take the leadership then I think 
479	we feel we've done our work.
480	Angélica: Thank you for commitment.
481	Juan: And all that was just until I was 23.
482	Angélica: [laughs]
483	[0:60:01] END TRANSCRIPTION
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