ustxtxb_obs_1980_12_12_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

Page 18

by

1607 San Jacinto Closed Sundays 477-4171 1608 Lavaca 478-3281 201 E. Riverside 441-5331 32nd & Guadalupe 452-5010 Austin, Texas and Associates 502 W. 15th Street Austin, Texas 78701 REALTOR Representing all types of properties in Austin and Central Texas Interesting & unusual property a specialty 477-3651 g innys ‘ COPYING SERVICE Copying Binding Printing Color Copying Graphics Word Processing Austin Lubbock San Marcos Good books in every field JENKINS PUBLISHING CO. The Pemberton Press John H. Jenkins, Publisher A Texas Tradition Since 1866 No games, no gimmicks, no loud music. Just good conversation with the most interesting people in Austin. And the best of downhome cooking. Simply the best record shop in the state of Texastry us first for hard-to-find, local and regional records, lowest prices 24th austin, texas 472-9459 portraits of Zapata and Villa. The board members noted the portraits of Juarez, Villa and Zapata and said the staff would do well lauding American heroes instead of Mexican ones. Bernal recalls his angry response to his board members on this point. He reminded some of them that they made plenty of money out of the West Side, and that was fine; but they did not, he told them, understand or respect “the background and the culture of this community. Our historical background did not come in with the Mayflower. We came in from the South. Our origins were from the South, mostly Indian and much less European. If schools could be named for Winston Churchill and Edgar Allen Poe, they could also be named for Juarez, Zapata, and Hidalgo. “The point,” Bernal says, “was that symbolically we could live with heroes of both cultures.” After that fine speech, Bernal recalls with a laugh, he lost six board members. Gonzalez, Bernal has noticed, “constantly refers to himself as an American of Mexican descent,” not as a Chicano. “To me, Bernal concludes, “Henry represents in the cultural sense the universal man rather than the nationalistic Chicano,” and in Gonzalez’ mind “all of those revolutionaries who threw my parents out of Mexico belong to PRI. And the PRI connects with the Chicano movement in this country they’re the same.” Gonzalez, told the salient features of Bernal’s theory about him, circles it, appearing not to give it credence. “The English were pragmatic and phlegmatic, the French were so intellectual, the Greeks were so intelligent they could advance an intellectual point at the same time they were contradicting it,” he says. “Joe is just too convoluted and too abstruse. It’s like these poor guys trying to evoke the battle cry of Zapata, ‘Tierra, Pan,’ or Castro’s slogans for Cuba in West Texas. It just isn’t realistic, it isn’t true to life. I’m too simplistic in that philosophical realm. It seems to me it’s far-fetched. “I don’t think there’s a Chicano alive, born here and second and third generation, that can even truly be said to have Spanish as his primary language any more. Spanish is a secondary language among Chicanos. “Secondly, I don’t think that materially, consciously, or philosophically, he looks upon himself as Spanish, Indian, Latin, unless it’s something that has been inculcated . . . It isn’t there predominantly or naturally. 1 think Joe overlooks the pluralism of the group.” THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19