Joining a New Battle : <i> La Causa </i> for Brown Berets Switches to the Home Front

The Brown Berets first donned their trademark headgear more than 25 years ago, protesting the high numbers of Latinos dying in the Vietnam War.

Now a new generation of Berets is drilling on the front steps of East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, driven by the gang war body count in their own neighborhoods.

Gilbert Aguilar is in the front ranks of the Berets renewing their battle cry for La Causa , the cause of equal rights.

The 22-year-old Alhambra High graduate has mourned the deaths of two friends in four years.

A high school buddy was shot in the back at an Alhambra burger stand. Another friend was shot outside a gang hangout in East Los Angeles. And Aguilar and his friend Happy narrowly missed being stabbed by gang members outside a Monterey Park 7-Eleven.

“If (gang-bangers are) into colors, like the red of the Bloods or the blue of the Crips, maybe they can see the brown of the Berets and identify with that,” said Aguilar, who studies theater at East Los Angeles College. “If we unite and have a voice, we can get changes done.”

Deaths of Latinos accounted for 1,089 of the 2,589 homicides recorded by the Los Angeles County coroner in 1992. Those numbers prompted Brown Beret founder and East Los Angeles College Prof. David Sanchez to revive the organization last October.

“Young people today feel powerless,” Sanchez said. “They have no organizations, no clubs. Killing someone gives them power; they feel as if they have a piece of the street.

“We’re here to show them that is wrong.”

He gets a number of recruits from his Chicano History lectures--Aguilar joined after taking Sanchez’s class. Sanchez guesses he has about 75 members in chapters in San Diego, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Indio and Phoenix, and hopes to build the organization back to its peak of 5,000 members in the 1970s.

Now 40, Sanchez admits the Berets’ new anti-violence crusade is a far cry from the militant days of 1972, when he was a 22-year-old radical who led 26 Brown Berets on an “invasion” of Catalina Island.

Announcing that the tourist spot had never been officially ceded to the United States after the Mexican-American War, the Berets occupied the island for about a month, then quietly left after they were told they were in violation of camping regulations. The group disbanded later that year.

“But I’m older now,” said Sanchez, smiling. “Look at history. Societal change never comes about unless government assists that change. . . . I believe in working with government now.”

The Berets walk door-to-door preaching their message--”Show the pictures of the dead people killed in the barrios when you go,” Sanchez advises--and will march in the celebration commemorating the renaming of Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez Avenue in November in Monterey Park.

They practice marching and go through uniform inspection every Sunday afternoon at East Los Angeles College. About 25 pairs of black shoes, from Reeboks to loafers to Doc Martens, toed a line in the concrete last Sunday as a Beret with a clipboard checked over the required khaki slacks and khaki shirts with the Mexican flag patch on the right sleeve.

The Berets see the uniforms, usually bought from Army surplus stores, and the berets, bought by Sanchez in Tijuana, as ways to inspire a sense of unity among Latinos.

“There’s a lot of racism among Latinos,” said Aguilar, shaking his head.

“I get jealous of African-Americans sometimes,” he said. “They see themselves as brothers and sisters, all from Africa. But with Latinos, there are a lot of prejudices, people find out you’re from Honduras or Guatemala and you’re no good.

“Besides, if people saw a bunch of Mexicans coming toward them without uniforms, they’d think we were a gang,” Aguilar said with a smile.

The Beret uniform runs in the family for Aguilar’s girlfriend, Gina Garcia, 22. Her parents marched with the Brown Berets in the 1970s.

“When I told my mom I was joining, she got all excited and started going over the songs and chants,” Garcia said. A former student at Pasadena City College, she transferred to East Los Angeles because of its Chicano Studies program.

After the uniform inspection, David Cid, a 21-year-old political science major at Cal State Los Angeles, briefed the 25 members on their mission for the day: handing out flyers at a car show at the L. A. Sports Arena to promote the Berets’ Dec. 11 “Barrio Peace Festival” at Roosevelt Park.

The 25 were nervous. For many this was their first foray into the real world in uniform. Cid, subbing as leader for an out-of-town Sanchez, rallied them with the Brown Berets battle cry.

“Who are we?” he prompted.

“The Brown Berets,” the 25 replied.

Unsatisfied, he screamed, “Who are we?”

“The Brown Berets!” they shouted back.

“Brown Berets?”

“All the way!”

A tough crowd waited at the Sports Arena. Some took the flyers and stashed them in back pockets or handbags, but others walked a few feet away and let them drop to the pavement.

“I think it’s great, they’re helping out the Chicano race so people will see we’re somebody too,” said David Pena, a 21-year-old student at Los Angeles Valley College, as he skimmed over the flyer. “But I know about them too. My aunt was a Brown Beret back in the ‘70s.”

Another Valley College student, Cesar Vega, 22, feared that people with no memory of the Berets would get confused about who they were. “They could think they were Boy Scouts or something,” he said.

Gang members were the toughest sell. A member of the Ghetto Boys gang who gave his name as “Jesse James” said he didn’t buy the Berets’ message because none of them were gangbangers.

“If gangbangers were joining, then I’d do it. But he’s never gangbanged,” said James, pointing at the Beret who gave him the flyer. “He doesn’t understand. The gang is like family.”

Overcoming that idea of a gang as a family will be the Berets’ hardest task, said Joe Castillo, 38, of East Los Angeles, back for his second hitch with the Berets after serving as a Junior Beret in his teens.

“I wasn’t too into it either when I was a kid,” he said.

“But now I’m really for it all the way. . . . These kids come from broken families, and they join the gangs because they want to feel part of a family,” Castillo said.

“But we need to give them the right choices. We need to get them into the good family of the Brown Berets.”