Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales: A Legend Passed Away On April 12

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
April 15, 2005

Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
The Passing of a Legend
By JORGE MARISCAL

Corky Gonzales was born in Denver in 1928, the son of farm workers. His family continued to move constantly in order to follow the crops and yet miraculously Gonzales graduated high school at age sixteen. His boxing career included Golden Glove championships and an impressive professional record as a bantamweight. In 1988 he was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.

Throughout the 1950s, Gonzales owned a popular eatery and a bail bond company in Denver. His real passion, however, was community activism and he participated in numerous grass-roots organizations and electoral politics, directing the Colorado Democratic Party's "Viva Kennedy" campaign in 1960. By the mid 1960s, however, his confidence that Democrats had a better understanding of the plight of working people of Mexican descent was shaken. Police brutality, institutional racism, and an escalating war in Southeast Asia moved Gonzales towards a new identity and a new vision. "Chicanas" and "Chicanos" were being born across the Southwest-Mexican Americans with an attitude, no fear, and a hunger for social justice. Corky Gonzales would become one of their most courageous leaders.

When Corky Gonzales passed away on April 12, the world in which his heroic acts took place seemed far away. Images of mass movements seeking to end unjust wars, police brutality, racism, militarism, and economic inequality are hazy and out of focus. Revisionists would like to dismiss the entire Vietnam war period-the Sixties-- as a time of chaos and mayhem.

But the deeds of Corky Gonzales can never be dismissed or erased and his spirit will live on in young people who are selflessly working for a more just society and a world governed by international cooperation. And in Spanish-speaking homes across the nation, Chicano parents will teach their children that they owe a great debt of gratitude to Corky Gonzales, for he was a man who taught us to be proud of who we are and to demand the equality our families have earned.

Jorge Mariscal teaches Chicano Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mariscal04152005.html

[Cooley Hurd]

1. RIP Corky...