By: Trevor Loudon
KeyWikiBlog

As a leader of the Communist Party USA’s Mexican American Equality Commission, Los Angeles based activist Rosalio Munoz enjoys a level of political influence that would be envied by most U.S. Congressmen or Senators – if they had the slightest inkling of its extent.

Rosalio Munoz

Munoz’s primary job is to ensure that as many Mexican Americans as possible vote Democrat – to ensure that the Republican Party and conservative values in general, are consigned to the “dustbin of history.” It is up to Munoz and his comrades to tilt the balance of power, in the border states particularly, to the point the Republicans become a permanent minority.

Rosalio Muñoz has a long activist history. He was the co-chair of the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War, a Los Angeles protest march of 20,000 Mexican Americans on August 29, 1970. One year before that, Rosalio Munoz decided that if drafted he would refuse to go fight in Vietnam. When he received his draft notice in the mail, Munoz, who had been UCLA’s first Chicano Student Body President, started organizing in the Chicano community.

His induction date coincidentally fell on Mexican Independence Day, September 16, 1969. He showed up at the draft board with around 100 activists and supporters. The draft board postponed his induction for a few months and Munoz continued to fight at every point in the induction process. He refused to cooperate with the board, insisting on speaking in Spanish instead of English and eventually undertook a hunger strike. He did not go to Vietnam.

In recent years, Munoz has opposed the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through his leadership of Latinos for Peace, an affiliate of the communist dominated United for Peace and Justice.

But it is through organizing voters that Munoz has made his biggest impact.

Rosalio Munoz and his comrade, Arizona based Lorenzo Torrez, were entrusted by the Communist Party USA with swinging the Mexican American vote in the Southern States behind the Democratic Party. From the Peoples Weekly World of March 6, 2004:

TUCSON, Ariz. – Communist Party leaders and activists met here to discuss plans to bring out the broadest possible Mexican American and Latino vote to defeat the ultra-right in the November elections and to strengthen the CPUSA’s work among this section of the population. The participants at the meeting, held in the Salt of the Earth Labor College on May 15-16, came chiefly from the Southwest and the West Coast.

Lorenzo Torrez, chair of the Party’s Mexican American Equality Commission, reviewed the Commission’s work in the recent period. He proposed the organizing of a left-center Latino coalition to mobilize the progressive sentiments of U.S. Latinos. Rosalío Muñoz, CPUSA organizer in Southern California, reported on Latinos and the elections. He noted that the presidential race will be decided in key “battleground states.” A number of these, such as Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, are states where Mexican Americans are concentrated, he said.

Muñoz proposed that the CPUSA put out literature in both Spanish and English explaining what is at stake for Latinos in the upcoming elections.

The 2007 Latino Congreso was designed partly to influence the 2008 election cycle.

Rosalio Munoz and Joelle Fishman of the Communist Party USA Political Action Commission, were two of many communists involved in the Congreso.

In an article written for Communidad by Munoz and Fishman, the comrades quote Congreso opening speaker Antonio Gonzalez, President of the Southwest Voter Registration Project. Gonzales coincidentally serves on the advisory council of the the Los Angeles based organization Cesar E. Chavez National Holiday, which is led by Communist Party USA Mexican American Equality Commission member, Evelina Alarcon:

Some 2000 Latino leaders and activists from throughout the United States came together in Los Angeles October 5-9 to iron out a plan of action and a social justice program of issues for the 2008 elections with the goal of bringing out 10 million Latino voters that can play a decisive role in the presidential and congressional elections.

Latinos can be decisive in determining the presidential electoral in the key battle ground states of “Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada … and congressional elections in twenty states” that can change the political direction of the country said Antonio Gonzalez President of the Southwest Voter Registration project, in opening up the 2nd National Latino Congreso convened by 10 national Latino organizations and hundreds of state and local groups from 22 states.

“We are going to mobilize massively to reach record levels of Latino vote” on the key issues of immigration reform, the war, greening cities, health care and climate change declared Gonzalez. While recognizing that “today we don’t have a critical mass to affect that change,” Gonzalez said this can be achieved with “conscious thinking, planning and organizing” leading up to the 2008 elections.” “We have big issues not only as Latinos, but as citizens of the world,” he concluded.

In 2008, the Communist Party USA, including Rosalio Munoz, campaigned hard for their “friend” Barack Obama.

In February 2008, Rosalio Munoz wrote on the Communist Party USA PA Editors Blog:

I’m active in East LA Obama activities, outreach to the neighborhoods by phone and shoe leather is mushrooming Obama support, manana is here its time to get out the vote all day Super Tuesday.

Why bother with risky guns and bombs when you can manipulate millions of voters into progressing your Marxist-Leninist agenda?

By: Trevor Loudon
KeyWikiBlog

The Communist Party USA maintains a Mexican American Equality Commission.

Rosalio Munoz

Los Angeles based activist Rosalio Munoz is a leader of that Commission.

The Commission’s job is to coordinate Mexican American opposition to immigration laws and for immigration amnesty, promote Latino seperatism and radicalism, exploit and exacerbate Latino grievances, build mass Latino organizations and labor unions, agitate for bi-lingualism and to build the Mexican American community into a “progressive” power bloc loyal to the Democratic Party.

From a paper entitled “Special Convention Discussion: Mexican American Equality” submitted by Rosalio Munoz, for discussion before the May 21-23 Communist Party USA National Convention in New York:

The pre-convention call for our 29th convention gives the right lead for our party, class and people and the Mexican American people and their struggles for equality and justice. It stresses:

• The key is broad united action, overcoming all obstacles that hold the movement back, getting a massive vote against the ultra-right in the primaries and in the midterm general election Nov. 2.
• The election of President Barack Obama and ending Republican majority rule in the House and Senate has opened many padlocked doors.
• The challenge now is to consolidate, widen and deepen that victory which can help open an era of progressive change.
• The ultra-right, bankrolled by Wall Street and the big corporations, will stop at nothing to filibuster meaningful change. We are confident that the democratic, progressive majority can win the day.

Munoz calls for a recognition of the potential influence of the Mexican American “bloc” and the necessity of harnessing its power for “progressive” change.

Mexican Americans are a necessary force in the struggle to break through the right-wing obstructionism and counteroffensive and win progressive changes in health care, jobs and income, immigration, civil rights, labor rights and a more reasonable foreign policy in ongoing electoral struggles and the coming elections.

Mexican Americans make up over 25% of the population in nearly 80 Congressional districts. They are core constituencies for progressive Latino, African American, white and Asian Pacific American representatives and the key oppositional forces to the right-wing.

They are vital in many vulnerable Democratic districts, and in areas of smaller population, a strong united anti-right vote can make a difference in close races. Mexican Americans are strong supporters of the Obama administration’s efforts to move away from the right-wing policies of the past and to move for progressive reform as evidenced by the 76% approval rating of California Latinos for Obama, in the January 2010 poll by the California Public Policy Institute.

These developments are reflected in the strong races of Rudy Lozano for Illinois legislature, Rick Nagin for the Cleveland City Council and the big victory of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia as Cook County Commissioner in Illinois and Ana Rizo as Mayor of Maywood, one of the cities of greatest immigrant concentration in Los Angeles County…

While concentrated in the Southwest, Mexican Americans, after African Americans, are the largest racially oppressed group outside of the Southwest and becoming among the largest of newcomers in most areas including much of the Northeast.

The precise numbers in these statistics are not so important. What is important is the direction the proportion of racially and nationally oppressed in the class and people that has more than doubled and is growing geometrically. The struggle for equality is doubly important and more and many times more complex. Mexican Americans, immigrants and native born, are the largest part of that change.

The Communist Party has made historic contributions to the Mexican American people and to their struggles for social justice. It was the first and most persistent and helpful in seeing and working on integrating Mexican Americans into all aspects of US society and in particular class and democratic struggles. It has been foremost in seeing the need for recognizing the plight and need for special steps to be taken in the struggles for equality for Mexican Americans. The more that it has contributed to, and participated, the more the Party has grown among Mexican Americans.

We have to grow the Party among Mexican Americans workers and community, especially the youth, in the work places, communities and campuses around the major issues of jobs, peace, immigration, civil and labor rights. We have to project a real vision of a better future with strategy and tactics that make the difference. We also need to recognize and prioritize the importance of building the Party in Texas with the comrades there.

We need to study and write more on the struggle for equality of the racially and nationally oppressed as a whole, the growth of its importance as one of and part of all the core forces, its dialectics. While recognizing and building on commonalities distinctive features are key. There are qualitative changes in the movement for Mexican American equality and contributions to the working class, labor movement struggles of other racially oppressed and other groups. The overall qualitative nature makes the party’s approach of linking the struggle against racism with working class unity more relevant than ever. We need to work for affirmative action in the mass democratic movements.

We need to have forums to discuss the work nationally, as well as in districts, cities and neighborhoods. We cannot take the issue of Mexican American equality and writings and concerted action on Mexican American equality for granted. We cannot leave it for the last minute and not follow up.

The new opportunities presented by the growing sector of Mexican Americans in the working class and the election of Barack Obama offer new challenges to our Party. Our convention can put us in place to break yet new ground in the struggles for unity, equality and against racism that are necessary for the country to move forward.

The upsurge of Mexican American activism and growing pressure for immigration “reform”/amnesty is no accident. It can largely be attributed to the hard work of the Communist Party USA and its allies over several decades.