In the 1960s and '70s, Latino activists were fighting for equal rights, education and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. Documents newly released by the CIA confirm long-held suspicions that the federal government was monitoring their activities — sometimes even disrupting them.
Their surveillance included an agreement with the University of Arizona to monitor students who were making demands for classes on Mexican American studies. They even had undercover agents infiltrate student groups.
Russell Contreras, a justice and race reporter at Axios, has been covering it and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Russell.
RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Good morning.
GILGER: Tell us first where these documents came from, like, why is the CIA releasing them now?
CONTRERAS: Well, the document released came at the request of Representatives Joaquin Castro out of Texas and Jimmy Gomez out of California. They asked the CIA and the FBI a few weeks ago to release his documents related to any monitoring or dissemination of information or disruption of activities of Latino civil rights groups in the 1960s and 1970s, and Congressman Castro in particular has been very vocal about why this needs to be released.
His mother, Rosie Castro, was an activist in the 1960s and 1970s and files showed that the FBI was monitoring her, so he has a very deep interest in wanting to do that, and he felt that if these in this information was released, it would tell a very different story about the what the federal government did to try to disrupt Latino civil rights.
GILGER: That's so interesting. Tell us more about what the documents reveal like how expansive was this surveillance by the CIA of these groups? It was called Operation Chaos?
CONTRERAS: That's right, Operation Chaos. So the CIA released these documents in late December, deep into the website, and it appears that the CIA was monitoring Mexican-American and Puerto Rican civil rights activists across the country, more particularly in Arizona, Colorado and California, according to the first document dumped that we have.
They were monitoring farm worker leader Cesar Chavez and Corky Gonzales, the Denver-based activists. In the case of Cesar Chavez, they were monitoring him just to see if he was gonna go to an event honoring the late Martin Luther King Jr. There was an event in New York on the 3rd year anniversary of his assassination. For whatever reason, they were monitoring to see if he would go.
In the case of Corky Gonzales, they were monitoring him because he was being very vocal about Chicano nationalism and fighting police brutality. Whatever the reason was, they were monitoring him because they felt that he was a particular threat in organizing Mexican Americans.
GILGER: Remind us a little bit about the history here, like what kinds of things these activists were doing at the time. I think we know a lot about Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights movement, but maybe less about something like the Chicano movement.
CONTRERAS: That's right. The Chicano movement came right after the Black Civil Rights Movement, and the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement with that generation was fighting within the system. The Chicano movement was like the Black Power movement. They wanted to fight outside the system. They were invested in nationalism, pride, even the formation of wanting a particular set of land.
They were making radical demands and the fighting against the Vietnam War, for example. They were coming across a lot of things and for whatever reason, the CIA saw that as a threat. They thought that that was just too disruptive, that they were going even further than the civil rights goals like the Black Power movement, the Chicano Movement was invested in a lot of indigenous pride that was very threatening to those in power at the time.
GILGER: Very interesting. What else do we know about the monitoring of students at the University of Arizona from these documents?
CONTRERAS: Well, the documents show that the CIA and the University of Arizona had some sort of agreement, it's unclear what kind of agreement. But the CIA's cables report that look, the University of Arizona is conservative and its administration is promising that they will keep monitoring students making demands of what they call Latin American studies although it appears that the students wanted more Mexican American studies classes.
The CIA says in this cable that the University of Arizona is promising not to further research into Latin American studies, so there was some sort of pushback. This, I don't think is widely known that the CIA and the university were working in cahoots so deeply like this. So if you were going to school in the University of Arizona in the 1970s, more than likely you were getting spied on and monitored to see what kind, what your activities were doing. For whatever reason they were monitoring these students and members of the Brown Beret. They were a radical group at the time.
GILGER: Did the U of A have any comment on this today on the release of these documents exposing this?
CONTRERAS: Well, I did ask the University of Arizona spokesperson. They did say, look, we, we confirmed that you, we got your email, and if we have a comment, we'll let you know. So far we haven't heard anything.
GILGER: And the representatives who got these documents released have also sought records from the FBI. Those records have yet to be released, is that right?
CONTRERAS: That's right. Congressman Castro, I talked to his office. They said, look, the FBI has not released the documents. They suspect that there's a trove of information. We know that the FBI has worked, we're monitoring like the works of our earlier civil rights leaders like Hector P. Gonzalez, or Hector P. Garcia, the Puerto Rican Young Lords Party, and, you know, later members of the Chicano movement. They were monitoring Jose Angel Gutierrez and Dolores Huerta.
They always saw these people as threats because they were fighting not just economic justice but discrimination, and for whatever reason, if J. Edward Hoover thought any sort of fight against discrimination, any kind of attempts to upheave the white supremacy or Jim Crow, in this case, Jim Crow with the sombrero was a threat to the United States and could be communist inspired. We know that's not true, but for whatever reason, the FBI believed that.
