Book Review: Quixote’s Soldiers And The Chicano Movement

By Vincent Bosquez

Call it cosmic faith, or a poignant buena suerte, but a few hours before I learned of San Antonio icon Carlos Guerra’s death last week, I had started reading “Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981” by David Montejano, in which Guerra gets well-earned recognition for his work as a civil rights activist.

Montejano, a native San Antonian and an associate professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California – Berkeley, has painstakingly chronicled the white political vortex that laid siege to the Alamo City in the 1960s, and the rise of Chicano activism that Guerra was a part of in this well-researched work.

“Quixote’s Soldiers” is a deft documentary on a period of time that proved to be crucial to the rise of Hispanic influence not only in South Texas, but nationwide. While San Antonio was heavily Mexican-American in its heart and soul in the  1960s, it was governed with an iron hand by elite Anglos who did little to respond to the needs of the populace living in the west and south sides of town where grossly inferior city-provided infrastructures existed in virtually every neighborhood.

The book’s narrative is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the years 1966-1971 and college student activists. Part 2 covers 1971-1975 and the evolution of the Chicano movement, while Part 3 spans 1974-1981, and addresses the larger picture of political change in San Antonio.

Voices from the past come back to life as Montejano resurrects the passion Guerra and others like Rosie Castro, Willie Velasquez, Albert Peña, Joe Bernal, Henry B. Gonzales, and Henry Cisneros — along with a host of others — had for bringing justice and equality for Hispanics during that socially turbulent era.

While the book goes back 45 years to a different time and place, Montejano notes that the seeds activists sowed then are still bearing fruit today. One of Castro’s sons currently serves as the alcalde of San Antonio and the other in the state legislature, for example. And the continued success of second-generation organizations that emerged from the Chicano movement during the Vietnam era impact national politics today.

Montejano has written an engaging and concise work that defines social reform during a chaotic generation. It’s a must-read not only for Chicanos in San Antonio, but for people everywhere.

Vincent Bosquez is coordinator of Veterans Affairs for Palo Alto College in San Antonio, Texas and writes book reviews for NewsTaco.