Character: Brown Berets de Aztlan

The Brown Berets de Aztlan is an organization that was first founded on December 3, 1967 in East Los Angeles. The organization was for the Latino community that was in  Los Angeles, they were sick and tired of the treatment they were getting from the nation just because of their skin color. They would be socially segregated in work or in school, the organization wanted to make a difference so it could be better for future generations. However, the organization did not want to stop there they wanted the entire nation to get involved because that is when there will be a social change among the individuals that inhabit America “the land of the free”. One of the first events that the Brown Berets de Aztlan had engendered was the first demonstrations against police brutality in East Los Angeles on January 1968.

There are five components that the Brown Berets de Aztlan want to change which are educational, social, spiritual, economic, and social. They want to alter education by changing the educational system that does not lead Lation children into failure, but teaches our Latinos honor, self-respect, respectable vocations, Chicano studies, and challenges our children to reach their full educational potential. The change social would be to have equality for the “Raza” and acceptance of the Latino culture. The spiritual change would be to obtain the freedom to worship God in spirit and in truth. the economic change would be to acquire the economic freedom and prosperity of our people; and lasty they political change would be to obtain a political system free from corruption. It would improve not only the Latino community/race but all other ethnicities that are under the shadow of the white Americans.

During the Vietnam War there was copious amounts of individuals dying yet the only ones that seemed to be getting honored was the white American soldiers. Thus on, December 14, 1969 the Brown Berets organized the Chicano Moratorium Committee and the first rally in East Los Angeles to protest against racial discrimination and the disproportionate number of Chicanos getting killed in the Vietnam War. They would protest about the issues of the war because they felt that that is the most effective way in getting anything accomplished. They did not agree with the war that was being fought and wanted it to end like all the others throughout the nation, their boys were risking their lives for fighting the war. Some problems with this group would be that they did not not involve all other ethnicity only focused on the Latino community.