OAH Conference Presentation, Philadelphia
Thursday, April 16, 2026, 12:45 pm -2:15 pm, 414/415.
Repeated at CSUCI April 30, 2026

“Jess Gutierrez: A Chicano Organic Intellectual, 1970-1981”

Introduction

Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, an ethnic Mexican adolescent observed Chicanos at a family gathering sporting brown berets, black Ray-Ban sunglasses, and beatnik-styled goatees. On another occasion, this Chicanito, on un mandado issued by his mother to purchase una libra de carne molida at the local mom-and-pop market on Wooley Road in Oxnard, crossed a United Farm Workers picket line. As he wearily approached the demonstrators to fulfill his mother’s command, he spied familiar, multi-shaded brown countenances like those of his tios, tias, and grandparents. In middle school, a Chicano activist spoke to his class about barrio realities and warned him and his peers never to get ensnared with the police because once they had your name, they had your number; it would be put on a list with those of other brown youth. When a crime could not be solved, the fuzz, placas, jura, perhaps, a “pig,” if you will, went to that file to draw the name of one of the usual suspects to pin it on him or her. That’s what the guest speaker said.

In the late 1970s, this ethnic Mexican youth became a fence-walking, would be, wannabe cholo, vato loco, homeboy with a wardrobe of razor-sharp creased khaki pants, Levis corduroys, Bell-bottomed jeans, white t-shirts, and Pendleton flannels matched with spit-shined black Florsheim’s or suede Hushpuppies. Every so often, he was harassed, ganged up on by rival Colonia boys, who were mirror images of himself. This Southside, Escalon, homeboy read reports in the local newspapers, the Oxnard Press-Courier and Ventura County Star-Free Press, on drive-by shootings and stabbings. He also took notice of the material disparity between predominantly Anglo, white-collar neighborhoods, and his largely blue-collar Brown and Black community. Both sides of town had their token counterparts. When this Chicano crossed into the northern, more affluent, whiter section of the City of Oxnard, he became vexed and always on guard as folk on the northside had nicer homes, newer, more expensive cars, and, seemed, happier.

The experiences of the mad Mexican described above was me: Frank P. Barajas. I have written two books, Curious Unions (2012) and Mexican Americans with Moxie (2021), that narrate the frustrations and resistance of ethnic Mexicans in Ventura County, northwest of the metropolis that is Los Angeles by sixty miles. A goal of my work has been to bring my community out of the shadows of events of el movimiento Chicana/o in places such as LA, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. I have sought to demonstrate that Chicanos in my tierra natal of Oxnard and other ethnic Mexican communities in Ventura County such as Moorpark, Santa Paula, Saticoy, and Ventura struggled to preserve and advance their dignity and material well-being, too, with the hope that this history will inspire and guide present and future generations to do the same.

My current project argues that el movimiento continued and transformed after 1975. The Chicano Movement did not flame out after the end of the Vietnam War. Not all ethnic Mexicans became Hispanic, vendidos, or as Culture Clash parodied in the 1990s, “Beaners with Beamers,” during the Reagan era of the 1980s. Although some did sellout. Chicana/o activists of distinctive generations shifted their advocacy, not all, from street protests to classrooms and boardrooms as educators, social workers, peace officers, entrepreneurs in the non-profit world, and other professions—legal and health, to name two—as they were now armed with higher education degrees.

Consequently, this paper examines the work of a person who survived a tour of combat in Vietnam and witnessed the first phase of the Chicano Movement, between 1965 and 1975, with a curious and righteous indignation about the life chances of the Mexican American—the native born and naturalized, as well as the North American migrant, not immigrant, as they lived in the conquered territory of Aztlán.

His name is Jess Gutierez, an organic intellectual of Chiques, aka Oxnard, in the sense of Antonio Gramsci and Paolo Freire writings, respectively Prison Notes and Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), who utilized his talents as a grass roots writer and graphic artist to represent and empower a diverse population of ethnic Mexicans in Ventura County. I claim that Jess, as a freelance writer for the Ventura County Star-Free Press from the 1970s to the 1980s, and a graphic artist and photographer, represented how el movimiento Chicana/o transformed itself; or as one informant, Jess Ornelas of Santa Paula, asserted, became “more sophisticated.” Jess “Tamba” Gutierrez, through his regular commentary in the Ventura County Star-Free Press’ Minority View column, was the Ruben Salazar of this sub-region of Southern California. But where Salazar became a martyr by way of his assassination by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on August 29, 1970, Jess was a critical agent who paid forward the cause of el movimiento Chicano since 1975 as he detailed the triumphs, challenges, and the contradictions of the struggles of the ethnic Mexican community in Ventura County.

Who Is Jess “Tamba” Gutierrez?

Jess was born in El Paso, Texas in 1946, in the El Segundo barrio, more specifically, the Chamizal area transferred to Mexico in 1964. He is the ninth of 11 siblings. When Jess was an adolescent, his parents moved the family to East Los Angeles. As he approached the age of sixteen, the Gutierrez familia relocated to the City of Oxnard to live in the barrio community of La Colonia. As Omar Valerio-Jiménez contends in Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship (2024) about the recollections of ethnic Mexicans in other places of the Southwest, Jess’s father, Jesus Sr., admonished his son that the Southwest was once part of Mexico until the conclusion of the US war against Mexico with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. A war of conquest and land theft.

Young Jess’s indignation, grounded in history, was elevated in high school when a US immigration officer confiscated his father’s passport at the Tijuana border preventing him reentry to the US. Emotionally and economically devastated, the Gutierrez family struggled to survive sans their paterfamilias. Jess contemplated dropping out of school to help sustain the household economically, but a high school counselor, Mr. Appenzeller, aided the Gutierrez family to receive government assistance. A year later, Jesus Sr. rejoined his family after the INS returned his passport without explanation.

Two years after graduating from high school, Jess was drafted into the US Army in 1967. As a soldado razo, an infantryman, he temporarily served time away from the front lines of combat in a Supply unit. But when Jess refused to traffic Vietnamese girls for the sexual abuse of his commanding officer, he found himself assigned to a grunt platoon as punishment. On one patrol, Jess tripped a mine. Although seriously wounded, miraculously he survived, not losing his legs and feet. But a fellow GI was not so lucky as he laid dead next to him. In addition to witnessing the absurdities of warfare, Jess also experienced first-hand the racist nature of US imperialism against an indigenous populations in Vietnam, and Japan while convalescing in an army hospital.

As a Purple Heart veteran and car salesman when he returned home with a growing family, Jess took note how white-dominated systems exploited people of color. He followed and avidly read news reports on Chicana/o protests and urban-styled insurgencies in La Colonia and Santa Paula against police brutality, as well as the moratorium marches in East Los Angeles, and in Oxnard three weeks after the LAPD and LA County Sheriff Department officers stomped the Chicano community at Laguna Park where Ruben Salazar, Lyn Ward, and Angel Gilberto Diaz were killed by these white supremacist law enforcement agencies.

Jess did not participate in these protests, but as an observer the pronouncements of Oxnard Brown Beret leaders and anti-war activists such as Roberto Flores, Richard Carmona, and Rosalio Muñoz resonated with him. He became politicized, mad, indignatn with each injustice inflicted upon his community. His social consciousness was advanced as he attended Moorpark [community] College where he joined and led the student club El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (aka MEChA). Although an insensitive, unsupportive white, high school teacher crushed his self-confidence to write, at Moorpark College he found more supportive liberal faculty who encouraged him to develop his expressive talents. So much so, that he wrote regularly for the student newspaper The Raider Reporter.

Here, Jess found his voice.

From Moorpark College, he transferred to the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he earned a degree in Sociology. After his graduation, he worked as a director for La Colonia Youth Services. As a student of Chicano Studies literature, he shared his knowledge with readers of the “Voice of the People: Letters” section of the Oxnard Press-Courier. One of his first public writings outside college addressed the 1971 conviction of Army Lt. William Calley for the massacre at My Lai in March of 1968. In this submission, Jess denounced Cally’s sentence. For him, Calley served as a scapegoat of a system of empire that trained and ordered young, naïve men still in their teens to commit atrocities, then punished them when their inhumane, treacherous policies were exposed. War was an absurd tragedy perpetuated by an imperial regime. My Lai concurrently bared the corruption of the military’s administration of justice, according to Jess, who once served in Calley’s Army division. Hence, Calley’s conviction was not only a national betrayal of a person but also all young men in the US military.

In a May 1972 submission to the Ventura County Star-Free Press, titled by the editor “Racist System,” Jess articulated his indignation, and that of other ethnic Mexicans and Blacks, for the City of Oxnard’s lack of representations in its workforce, especially in higher status and better paying jobs. Utilizing data from an investigation by the California Fair Employment Practices Commission, Jess charged that not only did Whites hold most municipal jobs, but the 130 Chicanas and Chicanos that were employed by the city, seventy-seven percent worked at the lowest, and least remunerative, classifications—clerical, sanitation, and maintenance. From this systemic racism, Jess declared, “Oxnard citizens then should not be shocked when they hear minorities yelling Chicano Power, Black Power, racists; they are only expressing feelings of anger and disenchantment against a community that is composed and supported by all yet unquestioningly discriminated against those that are not Anglo – American.”

In December of 1972, Jess publicly marked his opposition to the Vietnam War. The bombing of civilians particularly appalled him. A genocide like those committed against Native Americans and Jews in Nazi Germany. A defining characteristic of Jess’s prose was his deft use of statistics to ground his perspective. For example, in this letter, titled “All for the sake of democracy?” by the editor of the Ventura County Star-Free Press, Jess pointed out that US aerial bombings of Vietnam surpassed the tonnage unleashed during WWII by three fold, two tons every sixty seconds, two-thirds of this number dropped in South Vietnam, “the country that we were supposed to defend not attack.” He continued by detailing that the devastation of Vietnam’s flora and fauna, as the US sprayed defoliant over six million acres, in the process destroying crops that caused widespread famine. In addition, there were 5,500,000 casualties—4.5 million civilian men, women, and children. US casualties made up less than one percent of this number, the rest were Vietnamese. All at a cost of $150 billion, “enough to give every man, woman, and child in Vietnam, $3,400.”

Although the data may vary today, the point is that Jess utilized his sociological imagination, the connection of his personal experiences with larger forces, as proposed by sociologist C. Wright Mills, to frame his point of view. This quantitative approach influenced him to examine problems from a perspective of systems—imperial, educational, legal, and the political—at play. Jess’s civic engagement as a candidate for the local high school board and serving on a number of civic commissions and organizations advanced his Weltanschauung as a public, organic, intellectual. Jess also edited a Spanish-language newspaper in which the Star-Free Press ran some of his commentaries in English. This and his periodic, yet regular, submissions to local newspapers garnered the attention of Chuck Thomas, editor of the Ventura County Star-Free Press’s op-ed page.

In early 1975, Thomas invited Jess to be a regular contributor to his newspaper’s Sunday A Minority View column. William “Bill” Thrasher, an Oxnard High School civics educator, first wrote essays for this column on a variety of topics. But the condition of the Black community was his focus. The Ventura County Star-Free Press consequently sought a contributor who would bring the perspective of the Mexican American. Jess’s background and talents fit the bill. The Star-Free Press offered him a modest stipend for each essay. Jess accepted the invitation.

During and after his tenure as a Minority View contributor for the Ventura County Star-Free Press from 1975 to the late 1980s, Jess wrote on a variety of topics related the Chicana/o community, e.g., voting, consumerism, immigration, youth violence, ethnic identity, culture, profiles on residents, US interventionism, and education. Jess quantitative and qualitative evidence in his essays during a time when there were no internet search engines or online databases. With feet and legs still embedded with shrapnel, Jess walked the aisles and stacks of the Oxnard Public Library regularly to obtain the hard facts needed to ground his boldly measured writings.

As an organic intellectual, Jess often wrote his stories in the first person. This was because his experiences were not uncommon to the people in Ventura County’s Chicana/o communities. Therefore, as hoped by Chuck Thomas, Jess attempted to create, with moxie and an unapologetic flare, a bridge of understanding between ethnic Mexicans and the dominant population of Whites.

Jess’s November 16, 1975, Minority view essay was titled “The reasons for writing (and reading) this column.” He expressed that he felt compelled to write because there were so few ethnic Mexican, Chicano journalists that reported on issues that impacted his community: racism, discrimination, education, youth violence, and unemployment “which continue to destroy many of our people.” Anglo decisions and policies that killed, maimed, and debilitated raza. Consequently, his point of view was an endeavor to address and redress matters of life and death. And as a Chicano who came of age in the barrios of Southern California, Jess contended that he was the most qualified not only to tell the stories of his community but from their perspective. For example, in regard to the matter of immigration, Jess viewed this problem grounded in the “(known facts)” of the corruption of officials in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Services and the “(known facts)” that ethnic Mexican immigrants were considered “aliens” in their own land as Mexicans did not cross the border, the border crossed them. Furthermore, he underscored how county agencies discriminated against racial minorities at a time when they held the highest unemployment rates. Like muckraker journalists of the early twentieth century, Jess believed that by exposing the challenges that ethnic Mexicans faced, positive change could be achieved. But not without collective struggle by a community with varying talents and temperaments. His aptitud was that of a writer and graphic artist not afraid to offend and alienate. As a Chicano, he was obligated to take expected hits for los de abajo.

At 32-years of age, Jess interrogated his identity, to the point of crisis: Mexican, Chicano, pocho. In a Minority view essay published on Sunday, September 17, 1978, the day after the celebration of Mexican Independence when Chicano’s enjoyed the consumption of Mexican antojitos (food prepared by street vendors), music, and “colorful folklorico dancers,” Jess asked, “‘But what about after the fiesta’ What happens to our Mexicaness?’”

To ballast his identity, Jess declared that he is a US citizen born along the US-Mexico border in the city of El Paso’s El Segundo barrio. His family of thirteen (parents and 10 siblings resided at a site of “dilapidated precidios (worse than projects).” His “home” had two bedrooms and no indoor bathroom. Penury shaped his identity from a young age. But his parents, Jesus Sr. and Juana, never failed the family with shelter, food, a sense of security, and love. Yet Jess was unsure of who he was, particularly as the family migrated to Juarez, Mexico in 1954, when he was eight. Here Jess was not Mexican; he was a pocho—a diluted, adulterated, weak Mexican even though Spanish was his first and only language at the time. In the classic quandary of a Chicano’s quest for his identity, Jess was ni de aquí, ni de allá, neither Mexican nor American. Added to the no man’s land of self, Jess experienced the trauma of paste being inserted into his mouth by one teacher and taped shut by another for speaking Spanish at El Segundo’s Alamo elementary.

Jess grasped that the personal was political in the sense that peers of his, near and far in other barrios, struggled with similar issues of identity of not only being an ethnic Mexican but “shuffling” back and forth from viewing themselves as “Brown/white/brown/white….” And, in concert, wanting to be Brown and not wanting to be brown, wanting to be White, and not wanting to be White. And knowing the mentalité of both the Brown and White—a Chicano version of W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness. For some, this psychological catastrophe resulted in doom. Jess posited that “For the less fortunate, to be pocho means a nightmare of alienation, poverty, drugs, mental illness, and dehumanizing lives in the barrio. Here lies the answer for many of our incarcerated brothers, riots in our own barrio and community suicide.”

On the legacy of the Chicano movement, two weeks before the celebration of el diez y seis de septiembre in 1978, Jess critically intimated that Chicanos, as a community, lacked the courage and spirit of self-sacrifice of the Independence leaders of 1821 and of el movimiento. Jess averred, “Today, many of us are saddened by what we see; the opposite of what Hidalgo died for. We no longer see the brotherhood and commitment of the La Raza that we saw during the 1960s and early 1970s.” He then went to recite a wistful poem titled “What happened to the movement?” A sonnet that lamented the passing of Chicanas and Chicanos in struggle for self-determination and noble causes: bilingual education, the end to racism everywhere. “It was born in the 1960s,” Jess declared. “MECHAS asking for ‘higher’ education and EOP. And now it’s Chicanos ‘high’ on PCP.” Self-determination achieved by Chicanos was the problem. La Raza Cosmica had turned to La Raza Comica. The poem expressed a contradiction in consciousness as Jess recognized achievements in the creation of community institutions clinicas, teatros, and campaigns of resistance against Coors, Bakke, and Proposition 13. But this was undermined by political disunity, as if there ever was unity, in the form of youth violence and prison gang wars of self-determination. Attributes of el movimiento continued to exist but so were the problems that ignited them. The Vietnam war ended, but barrio warfare replaced it. Unity existed but it was fragmented: barrios united against barrios. “Tony, Johnny, Flaco, all gone…. Not killed in Vietnam but by a clica.”

Two years later, Jess evaluated the legacy of el movimiento positively. His message was directed, specifically, toward Whites who continued to view ethnic Mexicans as a problem, a Mexican Problem. Gueros enjoyed Mexican culture but disdained them as a people. In the process, Jess re-considered the legacy of el movimiento as it continued but under a different guise. “Contrary to popular belief, Chicanos have been and continue to be active 365 days out of the year and not just on Cinco de Mayo. As I told my friend, what has happened over the years is that the tactics and styles of activism have changed dramatically.” Chicana/o unity existed in specific campaigns that ranged from the cultural to the political. He pointed to the work of Barrios Unidos whose members, spearheaded by Xavier Flores, the younger brother of Oxnard Brown Beret co-founder Roberto Flores, who visited schools and organized a regional conference of over three thousand attendees from throughout the state that year to address the locura of youth violence. Chicanos of Ventura County continued the struggle for self-determination in winning electoral campaigns in Santa Paula and the City of Fillmore. Chicana/o collectives for different causes met regularly at 6:30 am on Wednesdays at El Concilio headquarters in Oxnard to coordinate their advocacy resisting police brutality and advancing cultural productions such as the first annual Noche de Cultura led by MACA, the Mexican American Correctional Association. Whether groups of educators, peace officers, or healthcare professionals their missions overlapped so that ethnic Mexican communities of Ventura County lived lives with dignity. They did not always win but when they did, as Jess stated, the victories did not happen by accident. With a spirit of righteous indignation, or being mad as hell, “They were the result of many hours of hard work by people who had hope and won.”

Conclusion

The importance of Jess Gutierrez was, and is, being that he still lives, that he was a freelance writer and photo journalist who was of the Chicano community, who expressed stories from the perspective of raza, by la chicanada, and for el pueblo. His essays are a testament to el movimiento’s ideal of self-determination in that his writing articulated the struggles of Chicanas and Chicanos to define their own experiences and destinies, i.e., a community speaking for oneself, not spoken for, defining their own history and reality to advance el movimiento for community liberation. This inspiration, among many, is the reason I am a historian who came of age looking up to UFW picketers and Chicana and Chicano activists sporting berets and goatees.

Thank you.

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c/s

A Requiem for Rudy: A Ventura County Perspective

Frank P. Barajas
California State University Channel Islands
March 26, 2026

A Requiem for Rudy: A Ventura County Perspective

“Call Rudy. (123) 456-0911. Mary B.”

Circa 2003, I found this note in my campus mailbox at California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI). Mary B. was a family therapist, former Oxnard school board official, and an alumna, almost certainly in Chicano Studies, of San Fernando Valley State College (SFVSC) before it was renamed California State University at Northridge (CSUN).

The year before, Maria De La Luz, a colleague in the advising department at my campus, forwarded me and Lillian, a Chicana faculty camarada, a June 5, 2002, email from Dr. Rodolfo “Rudy” F. Acuña—with the subject heading California State University Channel Islands—originally sent to non-profit, private, and public Ventura County employees and managers in education, defense, healthcare, and law enforcement. Many people copied in the missive were Chicana/o Movement products of the 1960s and ’70s, a good number CSUN-Chicana/o Studies alumni like Mary B., for whom el movimiento never ended.

Rudy’s email expressed concern that CSUCI would not serve the needs of Latino students with Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) support and a representative contingent of tenure-track Chicana/o faculty to advocate on their behalf in the creation of the new campus. For this to happen, the startup university needed to be pressured as had been the case at CSU San Marcos. He admonished Chicana/o communities in Ventura County, especially his former students, to be vigilant as Luis Caldera, CSU Vice Chancellor for University Advancement, characterized them as complacent “Hispanics.” Ouch!

For many of his adherents, the email was like a fire bell in the night. An Educational Opportunity Program and Services coordinator at Oxnard College, expressed to me that the dispatch was a swiping to the faces of Rudy’s former students and friends to wake up and pay attention to what was happening in their community.

Rudy, with his close colleague, comrade in arms, and friend, Jorge, spoke at a downtown Oxnard venue named after him by Armando, a SFVSC-Chicana/o Studies loyalist: the Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña Art Gallery and Cultura Center, Café on A. Topics of discussion were CSUCI, students in its service area, and the university’s political-economic significance in relation to the Chicana/o community. Groups from the cities of Ventura, Simi Valley, Santa Paula, Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Port Hueneme, and other places in the county kept a close watch on CSUCI’s trajectory. Organizations included but were not limited to the: Latino Town Hall of Santa Paula, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Ventura County, El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, Future Leaders of America (FLA), Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), and the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation (CEDC). The provenance of these orgs and the people who founded them stemmed from el movimiento and ties to the Chicana/o Studies department at CSUN, especially Rudy. After I received Mary B.’s note, I called Rudy. He was gracious. We talked over the phone several times as he helped me in my transition from teaching at a community college to a university. He knew both systems as his first tenure-track gig in academe was at Los Angeles Pierce College before his full-time appointment at SFVSC in1969, one year after ethnic Mexican high school and middle school students walked out of East LA campuses in their demand of a culturally relevant education, college opportunities, culturally competent teachers that would serve them, and to be treated with dignity—no more punishments of humiliation (wearing dunce hats in classroom corners and mouths filled with soap and paste for speaking Spanish). Rudy often expressed in his writings that it was students who presented him with the opportunity to be a university professor. Consequently, his allegiance was to them.

Since my return to Ventura County in 2001, I’ve come to befriend Rudy’s disciples. For them, he was much more than their profe; he was their mentor, advocate, defender, loco parentis. Rudy took his students to conferences and demonstrations. He taught them to be activists and championed their interests and pursuits. Like so many Chicana/o faculty, his office was a sanctuary for students to visit and just be. In the early years of el movimiento, a place to hang out with elders of your tribe was vital, as only a handful of ethnic Mexicans attended universities. From his conversations with them, Rudy acquired intel on how his university served not only Chicana and Chicanos but all students, particularly first gens.

About five years ago, in the year 2021, the former president of CSUN visited my campus in her mentorship of a new dean while I was chair of the History department and Chicana/o Studies. Jolene had climbed the ranks of faculty and administrators of her campus; she also served as interim chancellor of the CSU system. As we talked, I mentioned my connection to CSUN’s Chicana/o Studies department and Rudy. She then warmly recounted how she witnessed Rudy’s fierce commitment to students. When students required support, he was there for them. She reminisced how Rudy opened his family’s home to a student in distress and requiring shelter. She also spoke of his monetary generosity for students and their causes.

Rudy was tough but also a softy, especially for his students.

At Chicana/o Studies conferences, symposia, and community events, I met people over time who knew or were students of Rudy. One person’s father knew him as a fellow academic on the rise during the heat of el movimiento. Ron recalled the lively parties of gente in the San Fernando Valley. One student shared how Rudy paid particular attention to him as a highly-at-risk youth. Rudy mentored Roberto and picked him up at his home to go to conferences and events. For Roberto, now a community college professor, Chicana/o Studies and Rudy saved his life. This is why Rudy was a champion of Chicana/o Studies; this area of study not only had the power to transform people to be agents of their own destiny, but it also saved lives, just as sports and the arts positively impacted others. Chicana/o Studies made people feel proud of themselves and their community. And when this happened, they had the chance to become the doctors, lawyers, civil servants, educators, and scientists that many became. For Rudy and his students, like Diana from Santa Paula, and who is a member of SFVSC’s first class of Chicana/o Studies graduates, there were no throwaways.

Rudy’s commitment went beyond the San Fernando Valley, as many of his students commuted from Ventura County communities. These Chicana and Chicano students were of a different sort, however, as they came from cities, towns, barrios, campos, and mixed environs that were simultaneously rural and urban, rurban, if you will. Fillmore was much different from Oxnard, and Oxnard existed in stark contrast to Thousand Oaks. With the City of Ventura, perhaps, interstice. In 1970, the Chicana/o community of Oxnard sued in federal court the Oxnard Elementary School District (OESD) for the unconstitutional racial segregation of Black and Brown students. In 1971, Judge Harry Pregerson found the OESD in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and issued a summary judgement ordering the district to desegregate via cross-town busing, diversify its staff, and deliver a culturally relevant education to its students. This entailed the integration of an ethnic studies curriculum so that students saw themselves and their community in the subjects they studied. To adhere to the court order, OESD administrators, at the behest of Rachel Murguia Wong, a newly elected school board member, reached out to Rudy to provide in-service training to district employees. Although she was married with children, lived in north Oxnard, and already had a UCLA degree, Rachel enrolled at SFVSC to earn a Chicano Studies degree. It was at CSUN that she came to know Rudy and benefit from his mentorship.

As the district balked that it could not locate qualified ethnic Mexican teachers, Rachel, Rudy, and Jorge devised and implemented a program to home grow the needed educators for the OESD and other districts in Los Angeles County. It was called OPERATION CHICANO TEACHER (OCT). The program screened and trained SFVSC students to teach with pay as they earned their credentials. For working-class students this was huge. A critical mass of SFVSC Chicana and Chicano students were pipelined into the OESD. Many ultimately became school principals, district administrators, and professors of education. After their retirement, some created non-profit cultural centers in the barrios of Ventura County, the Inlakech Cultural Center, founded by Javier (aka Mr. G) an OCT product of the early 1970s, being one of them. Today, almost at every cultural celebration, UFW march, or protest you will find Inlakech’s youth Mariachi group performing with pride as they re-instilled this emotion to its audiences.

When there was a labor strike in the citrus orchards and strawberry fields of Ventura County during the1970s, Rudy organized SFVSC students to join the picket lines as Chicana/o Studies was not just an academic endeavor. It was a praxis grounded in community. He was also at the Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970, when Los Angeles County sheriff deputies and police stormed peaceful participants—mothers and fathers, children, and the elderly—wantonly swinging batons and firing tear gas. As Rudy attempted to deescalate a situation between his students and law enforcement, he found himself assaulted by the police and forced into the SFVSC bus with his colleagues and undergraduates while the police ignited a tear gas cannister in the vehicle and barricaded its door. The police also harassed Rudy and his students on their way to a meeting by pulling them over, searching them, and detaining them for hours. This treatment by law enforcement brought to life what they had studied in the classroom about the Texas Rangers, LAPD violence, and data presented in the Armando Morales’ 1972 classic Ando Sangrando/I Am Bleeding: A Study in Mexican American-Police Conflict.

When the MEChAs of Moorpark College and Ventura College reached out to Rudy to be a speaker for Cinco de May, Mexican Independence Day, or on a topic of controversy of the day, he was there. Rudy even participated in campus sit-ins with students and got arrested with them. In his eighties, he spoke at CSU Channel Islands in 2015 when MEChA de CI invited him to speak on his latest book at the time The Making of Chicano Studies: In the Trenches of Academe (2011). A room with sixty seats was jammed pack with people standing and sitting on the floor. A librarian mentioned the fire marshal as the room was filled beyond capacity. Half of the people in attendance were former students and friends of Rudy. The audience hung on his every word, especially those who listened to the Chicano Studies legend for the first time.

In the sense of Antonio Gramsci, Rudy was an organic intellectual of los de abajo, born and raised in a much more multicultural East Los Angeles, than today, with a mix of ethnic Mexicans, Blacks, Jews, and Asian residents. His parents were immigrants from Sonora and Jalisco. Consequently, he was a Mexican, an American—a Chicano all at once. As a US Army veteran, he experienced the virulence of US racism. NO DOGS NEGROES MEXICANS. The nation’s white supremacy informed his expertise as a teacher and academic. No matter the venue, he did not freight his messages with academic speak. Students related to his lectures because they held similar stories of their own or had listened to the oral testimonials of their families. In many ways, ethnic Mexicans who lived in the communities of Sunland, Sun Valley, Oxnard, Pacoima, Moorpark, etc., experienced the racial subordination portrayed in the 1956 movie GIANT. Maria T., a SFVSC Chicana/o Studies alumna of the early 1970s, and a retired public health administrator in Ventura County, who grew up in the City of Sunland stated to me that “Racism…It was blatant, and in your face” back then. Chicana/o Studies, Rudy, and his faculty colleagues taught her and her peers to be proud of being Mexican and to fight back, que no se dejen.

He was also a role model. Cognizant of his own myth, Rudy exemplified an impudently defiant resistance to a society that loved Mexican food but hated the Mexican. He calculated when to be a Chicano Studies Malcom X professor that complemented more amenable Mexican Americans with a politics of respectability mien when they jointly engaged the racist white power structure. Rudy knew that students needed to see Chicanas and Chicanos tell “The Man” where to go so they would be empowered to do the same when they left the cloistered halls of academe. Liars, especially administrators, must be called out as liars publicly when they told mentiras. Rudy made speaking truth to power with moxie a learning objective.

At CSUCI, Rudy’s legacy lives in its Chicana/o Studies department. He and his colleague, Jorge, shared course outlines and syllabi for me to consider in the creation of Chicana/o Studies courses at my campus. He, his CSUN ChS colleagues, and students, Jose and Louie M., collectively trekked to Camarillo for a meeting to imagine a CSUCI Chicana/o Studies degree program. Their presence was both practical and a political movida. When the university decided to replace the B.A. in Chicana/o Studies on its Academic Master Plan with a milquetoast Multicultural degree, Chicana/o Studies alumni and supporters rallied and successfully demanded its reinstatement. Jose M., one of Rudy’s protégé students, collected hundreds of signatures from around the country in a petition and presented it to the CSUCI leadership at an academic senate meeting. If it were not for Rudy’s influence in Ventura County by way of his extensive network of students and fans, there would not be a Chicana/o Studies program today at CSUCI. And there would not be a: ¡Si Se Pudo! commencement, Raza College Day, the Michele Serros Learning Community, Latina/o Santa Rosa Island Retreats, and other Chicana/o related programming.

Up to the point when he still could, Rudy wrote and wrote. He conveyed to his readers and students the imperative that Chicanas/os write their own stories. Narratives are algorithms that empower people to achieve their liberation and self-determine their own destiny. If we did not write our own stories, others would and control us.

¡Dr. Rodolfo “Rudy” F. Acuña presente! Rest in power. B. May 18, 1932-D. March 23, 2026

C/S fpb

Any Sunday, a la e-mountain biking, pt I

Any Sunday, a la e-mountain biking, pt I

Well, it’s been a while since I posted on social media my last e-mountain bike adventure of Sunday, December 7, 2025--#19. Number 20 was a solo ride on Thursday, December 18, through Sycamore Canyon to the Guadalasca Trail and downward to Backbone; during unaccompanied rides, I’m alone with my reflections and relationship to Mother Earth. That Sunday, December 21, Dan, Javier, Ralph (The San Fernando High Tigers alums), Joe, and I rode the Bulldog Trail for e-mountain bike adventure #21 that starts on Mulholland Drive in Calabasas and passes through the defunct MASH filming site; a short hike from there will get you to the helicopter landing that is part of the series’ opening credits. While walking across a waste-deep creek over an unsteady plank, one of us fell into the water. Luckily, the e-mountain bike was kept on the board. It being submerged would have been bad news for the bike’s electric motor. For a few miles, the wind made the ride chilly. On the way back to Dan’s truck, parked on the side of the road of Mulholland, we must be vigilant crossing the road as high-performance motorcyclists and big-bucks sports cars (Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, McLarens, and others) noisily race by. There is a good chance of being hit by one of these crazies if you’re not trucha.

L-F: Javier, Dan (aka Dan the Man that Can), Joe, and Ralph

The following Sunday, on December 28, for e-mountain bike adventure #22, we—Dan, Javier, Ralph, and I—beat just barely the forecasted atmospheric river while riding the Los Robles Trail in Thousand Oaks. We caught light rain later in the ride as we slipped and slid when our tires lost traction. Then, the Wednesday before the New Year, Wednesday, December 31st, Dan, Javier, and I (btw, for me, being retired is nice), we rode the Albertson Motorway/Fire Road to the Norwegian Trail for e-mountain bike adventure #23. The prior storm felled good-sized tree limbs onto the trails, forcing us to maneuver through them. This trail also has two huge boulders that make us tip-toe our bikes between then to avoid damaging our handlebars.

Javier and Dan

No ride occurred on the Sunday after New Year's. But Dan, Javier, and I returned to the Albertson Motorway/Fire Road to the Norwegian Trail for e-mountain bike adventure #24 this past Sunday, January 11. This time, we were more prepared as Dan (aka Dan the Man That Can) carried within his bike-rider's backpack filled with tools and first-aid items, a Stihl PS 10 folding saw. So, when our path was blocked at the same place as last time with more fallen branches, we took turns sawing our way through. While dumping a large bough over an embankment, I fell backward just as Dan said, “Watch your step. Don’t fall.” As I lay on my espalda, I worried about my right knee ligaments as my lower leg got trapped underneath my hamstring. With my leg straightened out and facing downward, brothers Dan and Javier pulled me out after they lifted the branch off. Thanks, guys.

Dan supervising my sawing a branch

I enjoy our e-mountain bike adventures as I’m physically and mentally challenged by them. As a former athlete, I love pushing myself cardio vascularly up to my lungs burning and feeling nauseated after stopping. Maybe I’m subconsciously attempting to experience a runner's high that I enjoyed once in a blue moon when I ran as part of my folk-style wrestling training days at Oxnard High, Moorpark College, and Fresno State. Kinda weird and not so smart, especially now that I’m over sixty. The mental component involves quick thinking when facing terrain obstacles (rocks of all sizes, deep ruts, tight switchbacks with immediate climbs), coordination, and keen judgement in relation to breaking the front and rear tire just right to avoid flipping over, repositioning my seating going up and down narrow and rocky inclines, and shifting gears while manipulating the electric-motor assist.

Some of you may think, as I first did: “E-bikes do the work for you. So, how is it exercise?” E-mountain bikes are designed only to assist you on your ride, not a full load of energy to move forward. Studies have found that e-mountain bikers get from 90-92% of the workout that a person on an analog/regular/non-assist mountain bike. The assist is particularly helpful when facing sharp, prolonged slopes like the ones on Albertsons to avoid looking like Jesus bearing the cross. During a ninety-minute ride, I have burned close to nine hundred calories. This kind of exercise, regular walking, and at least one weekly visit to the gym keeps my blood pressure in the normal range with a resting heart rate at 55...and med-free. Trying to eat right (no easy feat as I love sweets) and cutting way back on my alcohol consumption helps a bunch, too.

Not bad for a sixty-two-year-old. Knock on wood. I need to cherish and take advantage of this level of physicality as long as I can. Because once it's gone, it's gone. And it will disappear be one day.

In closing, my favorite prima, Armida, among a great bunch of cousins, has been reading my my e-mountain bike adventure social media posts. Hence, she thoughtfully gifted me this Christmas an awesome water-resistant mountain bike backpack. It has nifty components and compartments: a water bladder, pockets for snacks, and accessories for electronic gear. If I ever get lost on a solo ride, I will be prepared. Thank you, Armida!

Me sporting my new mountain bike back pack

Final point: Notice in the accompanying pics my Chicano-styled riding shirts. I’ve had these camisas in my closet for years, largely unused. Now I wear one for each ride to let brother and sister gueros know—-and they are 99% gringos on the trails—-that Chicanos and other ethnic Mexicans can enjoy the great outdoors, too!

C/S
fpb