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   Vol.65/No.33            August 27, 2001 
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
August 27, 1976
SAN ANTONIO--With the arrest of longtime Chicano activist Ignacio "Nacho" Pérez, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has aimed a blow at the Chicano movement in San Antonio.

At 6:00 a.m., July 23, INS agents arrested Pérez on the charge of "harboring an illegal alien." On the strength of this vague charge, Pérez sat in jail for four days until community groups succeeded in raising the exorbitant $25,000 cash bail.

In a press statement issued on his release, Pérez blasted the arrest as a "clear-cut case of official harassment and an attempt to intimidate the Chicano community into non action...."

The charges against Pérez stem from a June 18 INS raid on Mario's Restaurant, where he was having lunch.

INS agents arrested a number of undocumented workers at the restaurant and charged its owner, Mario Cantú, with "harboring an illegal alien."

Cantú is also a well-known figure in the Chicano movement.

As Pérez was leaving the restaurant, a man who had asked Pérez for a ride was pulled away by the INS agents. Pérez points out that the charges against him are that "I refused to act as an immigration officer by demanding citizenship papers from a man that needed a ride home."

This crude attack is the product of a calculated campaign against those like Pérez who exercise their legal right to support their Mexican brothers and sisters.

La migra's attack extends beyond the undocumented Mexican workers. All Chicanos are also affected.  
 
August 27, 1951
Behind the widely known news about the earthquakes, floods and famine in India is the lesser known, but even more important news that the mass of Indian peasants are seething with anger and revolt. Rural India has become a volcano whose eruption may not long be postponed.

On June 3 the mass ferment among India's peasants, workers and other poor took the form of a huge demonstration at Delhi, under the auspices of the Indian Socialist Party, the Hind Kisan Panchyat, a peasant organization affiliated to the SP and the Hind Mazdoor Sabha.

50,000 peasants, workers and students, wearing red caps, marched in a ten-mile-long procession from the banks of the Jumna River to the Imperial Secretariat at Delhi to formally make their demands upon the government and to present a "Peoples Charter," calling for bread, clothes and shelter to the hungry and the naked of India. Hundreds of thousands watched and cheered the demonstrators who shouted such slogans as: "Hungry and Naked India Demands Bread, Clothes and Shelter!"

The demonstrators had gathered from every part of the country. From Punjab came Sikh peasants who marched shoulder to shoulder with Muslim workers from the United Provinces. Peasant men and women came by the thousand from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, East Punjab and other provinces; many women walked on foot from areas as far as 150 miles from Delhi.

Strong contingents of workers from Delhi unions brought up the rear of this dramatic march.  
 
 
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