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Shot in various Los Angeles locations, WALKOUT is based on the true-life
experiences of executive producer Moctesuma Esparza. Twenty years in the making,
this project has been a labor of love for Esparza, who played an active role in the student
youth movement.
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Executive Producer Moctesuma Esparza.
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HBO:
There's probably no one better to tell the
story behind the story than you because you
were there, so tell us a little bit about
Walkout the film.
Moctesuma Esparza:
Walkout the film is about a moment where
Chicanos in the city, in the urban centers
awoke to their own power, awoke to... a new
possibility of who they could be and what
they could achieve and what their lives
could be like. And where they freed
themselves of the ideas that their teachers,
their community, history books, that society
had put into their heads about who they
were and what they could be and what they
could do, which limited all of us and put us
into this little box if you were a Chicano. If
you were a Mexican American in 1967, '68,
when this story starts, the likelihood is that
you were going to be a blue collar worker or
you were going to be a housewife or a
secretary or a homemaker, and that you
shouldn't have any dreams or aspirations to
be a doctor or a lawyer, or to be a physicist
or a professor, or go to college. Or to
participate in the world, freely.
It's a moment in which a people took back
their own power, in which there was a lot of
pain, a lot of emotion, and a lot of joy. And it
was profoundly affecting to all of us back
then because the people that we had to
break free from were our teachers, our
counselors, the people that you ordinarily
believe are there for you, who are there to
help you achieve whatever you could achieve
in life. That are there to open your mind
and let your mind soar and be whoever you
can be. And in fact it was those folks who
were mostly unconsciously, that is without
ill intent, they didn't really mean to harm
us, but they were fulfilling the societal
mission of keeping us in a mental prison, a
psychological prison that prevented us from
being whatever our human potential was.
HBO:
This story begins in '68, you were just into
college at UCLA.
Moctesuma Esparza:
In the fall of '67 and '68, I was a freshman at
UCLA. I just graduated from Lincoln High
School in January of '67.
HBO:
So now, Lincoln High School. Tell us some
of the things that happened to you there.
Moctesuma Esparza:
When I started at Lincoln High School in the
seventh grade, there was a class of about
three hundred of us. And but in the ninth
grade there were another hundred students
that came in from the local junior high. And
by the time I was a senior, only a hundred
and fifty of us graduated and only four went
on to a four year college. So it was really
strange, there was only a handful of us in
Lincoln High which was a good ninety-five
percent Chicano. That anyone even said,
you know, well maybe you can go to college.
And I was the valedictorian, I was a cadet
lieutenant colonel, I was president of every
single club that was on the campus. I was
about as nerdy as you could get. And I got
counseled to go to a community college.
And I remember my counselors telling me
that I shouldn't complain and I should be
happy that I went to Lincoln and not some
other school where they make you work.
And they said, hey man you had it easy
here, what are you complaining about? I
knew that I had been short changed,
because there was one teacher who I will
always be grateful to, who introduced me to
learning and to reading and to literature.
And unfortunately he died when I was in the
eleventh grade. So I only had him as a
teacher for three years, ninth grade through
the eleventh grade. But he changed my life.
And the thing that was so amazing is that
the rest of the teachers resented him. They
didn't like him at all because he made
everybody else look bad.
Every year, he sent one kid from Lincoln
High School to the Ivy League, which was
unheard of. But he could get kids to
perform and to really study and reach their
potential. It made all the teachers look bad
and so they didn't like him. Now there were
obviously other well-meaning teachers who
really loved their craft. And many of them
were young and just starting off. But the
whole environment of the school was that
they would pick a couple of kids and say
okay we're going to invest in these kids and
we're going to do the best for them and even
that was nowhere near the standard of other
schools. And the rest of them well they're
going to get the education that's best for
them which is let's send them to shop.
They can study drafting, they can study
printing, they can study woodworking, they
can study auto shop, you know, auto
painting. They can study homemaking.
And that was everybody else. And I grew up
that with this hyperawareness that they
would look at me like I was different but I
knew that I was just like everybody else in
my neighborhood and I felt this... pain. This
pain of being Mexican. There was a deep
shame that I had acquired because I was
Mexican in heritage. And I wanted so deeply
to just be seen as American. I was born in
this country, but my ancestry goes back
hundreds of years on both sides of the
border. I had a relative that died in the
Alamo. His name's up there with the
defenders of the Alamo.
There was another relative who was a sheriff
in Tuscon in the 1880s, and was a gun
slinger. And I'd heard stories from my dad
about our family having gone up and down
the border between and the United States.
Because Texas and California and Utah and
Arizona, New Mexico, had all been part of
Mexico. Half of Mexico was captured by the
United States in an act of war and
aggression. And so there was a time period
in which all of this land was historically my
ancestors' homeland. And yet I felt like I
was a foreigner. And there's a lot of pain in
that.
In the sixties, if someone called you a
Mexican, it was almost like they slapped you
in the face. So I remember if you were a
little bit more light-skinned, if you were
performing well in society, you might want
to pretend you're Spanish, and forget about
who you are. And the more successful you
were, the whiter you got. I remember when
we were in college, some friends making
jokes about that. Some guy would say, hey
based on projected earnings, I think I'm
going to be white next year. So that kind of
joke comes out of a lot of pain.
The walk outs were our liberation where you
hear in the movie a lot of chanting, you
know where kids were just putting their
hearts into chanting "Chicano power." And
it's not about having power over the other
people. It's not about separating yourselves.
It was about reclaiming our own human
dignity, reclaiming our own human power.
And there had been so much that we had
given up or lost or been taken away that we
had to go to that extreme to recapture it, to
recapture of our own sense of human
potential, that we could do anything we
wanted to do. It has nothing to do with
limiting other people or having power over
other people. It was really about freeing
ourselves of the limitations that we had
accepted and internalized; the psychological
prison that the teachers thought about us,
and we thought about ourselves; what the
society thought about us, and we thought
about ourselves, because it had been
drummed into us for so long just growing
up.
You know to have witnessed the police
bludgeoning kids who were saying I want an
education. And then having seen the
response of the elected officials which was to
organize a grand jury and have a secret
indictment of the adult leadership who were
protecting and guiding these high school
kids. I was eighteen years old, and I got
indicted. And the other kids that got
indicted, our average age had to be nineteen.
Except for Sal Castro the teacher and one
parent, we were all freshmen or sophomores
in college.
It was painful. It was painful that the
people in power wanted to suppress us. We
felt like they wanted to just destroy us, have
us go away, throw away the key and not
have to deal with the reality of what they
were doing.
And the ironic thing is that it had exactly
the opposite effect. That attempt in
suppressing us caused the community
which had been divided, Latinos, Mexicanos,
Chicanos, are very conservative socially.
We're raised to respect authority, to respect
our elders; elders are held in a high position
in our culture. Two families that is, mother
and father families living together are a
norm in our community to this day. And
grandparents and aunts and uncles living
together is very common. And I was raised
to respect authority, to respect teachers. It
was so shocking to have this happen that
our parents and the many community
leaders who were adults did not approve of
what we were doing. And when they saw the
reaction of the police and the indictments,
they all came together.
And the whole community came together in
force to support and demand that there be
changes and reforms. So instead of the
district attorney succeeding in stopping us,
he had an entire community that rose up in
arms, figuratively, to defend us and to
continue the struggle for educational justice.
I remember being inside of the City Jail with
seven others of the East LA thirteen, we'd
been arrested on a Friday night just before
the primary election where the district
attorney was running for re-election. And it
was also the primary for the presidential
election where Eugene McCarthy and Bobby
Kennedy were running. And then we were
in jail and I could hear thousands, and I
knew it had to be thousands, I couldn't see
them but I could hear inside the jail cell,
people chanting, "free the East LA Thirteen"
and "Chicano Power" through those jail
walls. That was amazing, it was truly
amazing. And that gave us tremendous
strength to know that the community had
come out and decided that, no they were not
going to have their children treated that way
and they were not going to have their
leadership destroyed.
And so to chant Chicano power was
liberating. It was saying I can do anything.
I have the possibility of achieving anything,
whatever my human potential is, that's my
birthright. And that's what the emotional
intent behind that chanting is.
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