The Legacy of Bert Corona.

• Author: Ortega, Carlos F.
• Position: Political activist

On January 15, Bert Corona died. You may not have heard of him. But you should have. He was a great Chicano activist, who fought throughout his eighty-two years for the rights of Mexican Americans, immigrants, and workers.

I first met Corona in the early 1970s when I was doing organizing for the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project, a group whose mission was to take working people, train them as organizers, and have them tackle issues in black and Chicano neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area.

Invited to speak at one of our training sessions, Corona arrived at the main offices in his usual casual clothes, silver hair with his ever-present sideburns, and a confidence that conveyed an attitude of respect for other people, as well as for himself.

After his presentation, he took me aside. "An organizer," he said, "demonstrates compassion to those he organizes. The organizer works with, not for, the working class. He builds an organization and develops leadership so that one day he can move on to the next fight."

Corona was not one to back down. At an immigrants' rights meeting in Los Angeles in 1972, he made a dramatic speech. "We have gone before the courts, we have set up picket lines, and last night we marched right down Broadway from Olympic to the Federal Building [in downtown Los Angeles] passing out leaflets," he said, as quoted in Somos Chicanos (Beacon, 1975). "The people are catching on to the idea of mobilizing themselves, of not being paralyzed with fear.... And one of these days, you are going to see a demonstration down Broadway of 100,000 of us. Then who are they going to deport?"

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. From his mother and grandmother, Corona acquired a love of reading and a commitment to social justice. "They deplored any form of exploitation and believed that people should instead conduct themselves in a humane, honest, and responsible manner," he said, according to Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona (University of California, 1994).

In 1937, Corona began working with labor leaders such as Josefina Fierro, Lloyd Seeliger, Harry 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...