Bert Corona

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Bert Corona (1918- 2001), was an icon of the California and Chicano left.

Early life

Bert Corona was born in 1918 in El Paso, Texas, at the height of the Mexican Revolution. His father was a member of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, an anarcho-syndicalist group. He was murdered when Bert was five.

ILWU and Harry Bridges

In the 1930s Corona was close to International Longshore and Warehouse Union leader and secret communist Harry Bridges.

According to Communist Party USA member David Bacon^[1];

Corona came to Los Angeles to study at USC, where he went to work and was caught up in the labor ferment of the late 1930s. He became president of Local 26 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and a political ally of Harry Bridges, one of U.S. labor's most progressive and democratic leaders.

After Corona was fired from ILWU position union over an internal dispute, Harry Bridges, also a major figure within the communist dominated Congress of industrial Organisations (CIO) offered Corona a job as a CIO organizer.

Activism

In 1937, Corona began working with labor leaders such as Josefina Fierro, Lloyd Seeliger and Bridges, and many others who provided a political education. He organized with the Longshoremen's Union in Los Angeles. With labor organizer Luisa Moreno, he helped shape the National Congress of Spanish Speaking People. In the 1940s, he was elected President of Local 26 of the Longshoremen's Union. Later, he joined La Asociacion Nacional Mexico-Americana (ANMA), which was one of the few organizations protesting the "McCarthy hysteria of the early 1950s".^[2]

Communist Party member

During the 1940's, Corona was an organizer for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and was identified in Congressional testimony as a Communist Party USA member inside that union.

On February 8 and 9, 1975, the Second National Conference in Solidarity with Chile was held at Concordia Teachers College in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. Known Communist Party USA members sponsoring the event included Bert Corona ^[3]

Ed Roybal

Corona helped elect the first Los Angeles Chicano city councilman, Ed Roybal.^[4]

Working with Cesar Chavez

Corona helped establish chapters of Saul Alinsky's Community Service Organization, and in doing so, he met a young organizer named Cesar Chavez.

In 1964, Chicano civil rights movement activists like Bert Corona, Ernesto Galarza, Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta forced Congress to end the guest worker "bracero" program. The next year, Mexicans and Filipinos went out on strike in Coachella and Delano, and the United Farm Workers was born.

That year, in 1965, they went back to Congress. Give us a law, they said, that doesn’t make workers into braceros or criminals behind barbed wire, into slaves for the growers.^[5]

MAPA

In 1959 Ed Roybal, Communist Party USA member Bert Corona and Eduardo Quevedo met in Fresno to form the Mexican American Political Association.^[6]

Infiltrating the Democratic Party

Corona was one of the founders of the Mexican American Political Association in 1960, an organization whose mission was the support and promotion of Mexican American candidates within the Democratic Party. The young organization helped set up the Viva Kennedy clubs that, for the first time, brought large numbers of Mexican Americans into a Presidential campaign.

In the 1960s Corona served as co-chair for both Lyndon Johnson's and Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaigns in California.^[7]

National Committee Against Repressive Legislation

Corona was listed as a Vice-Chairperson of the Committee of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, circa 1965.^[8] NCARL has now merged into Defending Dissent.

La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional

Corona was most closely identified with the work of La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, or the National Mexican Brotherhood. Founded in 1951 in San Diego by brothers Phil Usquiano and Albert Usquiano, the organization provided services to immigrants. Over the years, La Hermandad established chapters throughout the country and at one point boasted a membership of 30,000. The focus was organizing trade unions, defending undocumented workers, and providing social services to the undocumented. Corona quickly recognized the urgency of this group's efforts, and he helped establish its Los Angeles chapter. For the next four decades, he devoted much of his time to La Hermandad. He was the group's executive director when he died.

Defending the "undocumented"

In Spring 1974 , La Hermandad held a conference at Northridge, and representatives from ten states met to discuss problems confronting Mexicans in the United States who had no visas or citizenship documents. The first day, participants discussed how to defend persons detained by immigration authorities and how to help immigrants acquire disability and unemployment insurance and welfare.

Over the course of the day, Corona seemed to be everywhere. If not speaking at one of the workshops, he was bustling around making sure everything was running like clockwork.

The next day, participants discussed resolutions from the workshops. Corona stressed the need to establish a legislative program to campaign against bills that would crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants and to fight for humane immigration policies and practices.

According to participant Carlos Ortega;

This conference helped us organize at our campus and in the local community. At the same time, La Hermandad was also going through some changes. There had been an influx of student activists, professionals, and community organizers. The ideological nature of these groups brought a strong Marxist appeal, which changed the focus of the organization as Corona knew it. The newer activists wanted to deemphasize the service aspect of the organization and focus on larger ideological issues. At Northridge, there was some support from students who wanted to push a more revolutionary agenda, but many of us were not convinced how this agenda--which had its merits--would bring immediate results for the undocumented and the poor. I threw my support to Corona and to the idea that organizing could not be accomplished by polishing leftist vocabulary but rather by working hard, speaking to one person at a time, and building an organization.

By 1975, Corona had moved his operation to the San Fernando Valley, where Cal State Northridge was located, so he could continue to work with the undocumented. A group of students including Carlos Ortega brought Corona back on campus for a conference to clarify how students should organize and mobilize against deportation raids and repression in general.

"Present-day immigration policies and practices of the government are fundamental characteristics of the capitalist system," he said, "and the only possible way to confront those oppressing us is to organize as one, the alliance of students, workers, and the community." He added: "The student movement only has validity if directly linked with the workers' movement and the movement of people."

Corona, "more than any other person, furthered the ideological struggle against the nativists," according to Rodolfo Acuna, professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge.

Corona made the issue of immigration and undocumented workers, in particular, a civil and human rights concern.^[9]

Anti Klan

Chicano leaders like Chole Alatorre, Roberto Martinez, Bert Corona and others were active in the Hermandad Mexicana Nacional during the 1980s to protect minorities from Klan abuses.^[10]

Communist endorsed demonstration

Salvemos Nuestra Ciudad!! Salvemos Nuestros Ninos!! was the rallying call of a large leftist demonstration held in Los Angeles, May 16, 1992.

Most of the events endorsers were known members, or affiliates of, the Communist Party USA.

They included Bert Corona and Soledad Alatorre, Company Directors, Hermandad Mexicana National.

Chicano movement

The 40th Anniversary Commemoration Committee of the Chicano Moratoriums was formed in the summer 2009 by the Chair of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee of August 29, 1970 along with two independent Chicano Movement historians whom although not of the baby boomer generation, have become inspired by the Movimiento.

The organization posted a list of significant “Chicano movement” activists on its website which included Bert Corona, of MAPA.^[11]

External links

• Defending Dissent website

References