The History of San Diego’s Brown Berets

By John Yarkoni  / Exclusive to OB Rag

Some of you may have heard that name before, The Brown Berets. You might’ve heard about the 1970 Moratorium that happened up in LA, or the March Through Aztlán that happened the year after. Or maybe, you’ve heard stories of riots and cop killers.

If that’s your perspective, then you haven’t heard the whole story. The history of the Brown Berets, especially the often overlooked San Diego Berets, is less one of blood in the streets and more one of grassroots community organization.

The story of the San Diego Brown Berets begins a couple hours north of there, in Eastern Los Angeles. The year is 1967 and a church group called the Young Chicanos for Community Action (YCCA) has opened the La Piranha Coffeehouse.

In this era of immigrant panics, anti civil rights backlash, and “tough on crime” political candidates, the situation in Chicano communities worsens. The mechanisms of oppression start coming down even harder on the community and the police come out in droves. And when the system doubles down on crushing communities, activists have to step up to lift the boot off their neighbors’ backs.

So the YCCA starts organizing activist work out of La Piranha, picketing police stations after a Chicano man was found dead in one. The Young Chicanos for Community Action soon became the Brown Berets (Montes et al. 13-14). According Carlos Montes, a founding member, there wasn’t some climactic moment when the YCCA became the Brown Berets. Someone just showed up to a meeting with a stack of berets one time and in his words.

“We passed them out, started wearing the brown berets, and people started calling us the Brown Berets.” (Montes et al. 15).

Three years later they’d spearhead a protest that would carve their names into civil rights history, the 1970 Chicano Moratorium. But in the crowds of the moratorium march, it wasn’t just Angelos wearing those berets. Standing with the Los Angeles Brown Berets were members of Beret chapters from all over, including San Diego, (Baca). So what’s the story with these San Diego Berets?

San Diego Brown Berets formed not too long after the LA chapter, formed by San Diego Chicano activist Arturo Serrano. His wife, Gloria Serrano Medina, published his story in the Union Tribune a few years ago. So here’s story of the founding as she tells it herself.

“In 1968, my soon-to-be husband Arturo Serrano was organizing the youth in our community. He heard of a group that was very involved in the Chicano movement in Los Angeles. So he went to Los Angeles and met with leaders and founders of the Brown Berets. He felt it was a good effort to bring to San Diego. He came back and founded a chapter of the Brown Berets in San Diego. One of the people who was with him from the beginning was Geronimo Blanco from San Ysidro. He stayed firm with the Brown Berets for years.” (Medina).

The thing is, I’ve spoken to the Berets and this story needs to be qualified a bit. Firstly the Beret chapter founded by Serrano did not last. It fizzled shortly after founding, with the San Diego Brown Berets de Aztlan, the ones this story is really about, being founded a bit later in 1970. Thing is, someone named Arturo was present at the beginnings of this chapter as well, though not as a founder and I couldn’t confirm if it was the same guy.

There’s also the matter of one Geronimo Blanco, someone by the name of Geronimo also seems to have been present at the beginning. Again though, I couldn’t confirm the two are one and the same. Blanco is going to be a bit of a recurring character though, the part about him staying firm with the Berets also needs to be qualified, but we’ll get to that as it appears in this history.

Shortly after the 1970 founding of the Brown Berets de Aztlan, they would announce their purpose to the world. When asked by local journalists why they had organized, the Berets gave the following statements.

“The Brown Berets were organized to help clean up the problems of our Barrios – which only exist to keep our people shackled to the white man’s, the gringo’s, economic system.” (“Brown Berets San Diego” 1).

They would expand on this statement, laying out the issues facing the Barrios, their root causes, and how they can be solved. The economic system, which traps Chicanos in dead end jobs that kept them poor and desperate. The education system, which fails to grant Chicanos the same opportunities it grants their white counterparts. The police, who target Chicanos to prevent as many of them as possible from escaping the systemic cage they’ve been placed in. And the political system, which has never represented them.

In response to each of these, the Berets offered a solution.

First, they would sidestep the economic system, creating networks of mutual aid to see that what could be given made its way to those that needed it. Second, they would both work to educate their community members themselves, and push the establishment to reform its own systems. Third, they would defend their community from oppressors, matching oppression with resistance. And lastly, they would work to ensure Chicano control over their communities. Because if the establishment wasn’t going to look out for their interests, they’d have to do it themselves.

It was this strong focus on improving and uplifting their communities that led the Brown Berets de Aztlan to undertake action that would put San Diego Chicano activism on the map – the Chicano Park protests.

In the 70’s, as it is today, Barrio Logan was a majority Latino neighborhood, and like many minority communities, its people and land have long been abused for the benefit of the much whiter and wealthier groups that have long controlled city. Once a thriving middle class neighborhood, Logan has been a victim of wartime industry and post-war expansion.

During World War II, San Diego’s rich and powerful leased their beaches to the navy shipyards, tanking Logan’s property values. Then, during the post war boom, the Barrio was torn apart by the construction of I-5 – all while funding for transit, housing, and recreation was cut. San Diego’s boot weighs heavy on the back of Barrio Logan.

After being denied this basic public amenity for decades, the people had enough. They banded together, and demanded the city set aside land for a park. Eventually, they won out. Their reward? An insultingly small parcel of land under an overpass. Seeing this for the fake concession it was, the community got to work petitioning for a larger allotment, (Gormlie).

On April 22, 1970, while the residents of Barrio Logan waited patiently for a response, bulldozers moved onto their allotted land – not to build the park that was promised, but a new highway patrol station (Gormlie). A Brown Beret named Mario Solis was the first to do something about it. After hearing about the bulldozing, he got together everyone he could. He went door to door, and when he got everyone he could from that, he called on his classmates at City College and every other Brown Beret he could get there.

Acting as major players and organizers, the Berets led a massive rush to the construction site before joining together with the other protestors into a massive human chain, blocking the bulldozers and seizing the land. By the end of the day, the Chicano flag flew over the soon to be park. Jess Santos’ “The History of Chicano Park” describes the following days.

During the next few days an unprecedented number of students, community activists and raza’s from Barrios throughout San Diego and other parts of Aztlan united to protect their Tierra. The protesters began to work the land, planting trees and flowers. They withstood several standoffs with the police. After 12 days city officials agreed to sit down and negotiate. The people of Barrio Logan finally got the green light to build their park, Chicano Park.

The people of the Barrio began celebrating Chicano Park Day the next year, a celebration of the takeover and the Chicano identity, Chicanismo, as a whole.

The Berets didn’t leave Chicano Park behind though. They went on to join with several other organizations to found the Chicano Park Steering Committee, of which the Berets are the only of the original organizations still involved. The steering committee has administered and organized events and public services at the park from then to this day.

Chicano Park may have put the Brown Berets on the map, but they weren’t content to rest on their laurels.

Less than a year later, the Berets would undertake another major action, occupying the Neighborhood House. The Neighborhood House, also known as Big Neighbor, was a social services center at 1809 National Avenue in Logan Heights. It provided services like food, educational services, and medical care. (Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center). These services were, for a lot of the people in Logan, all they could get. If the Neighborhood House didn’t offer healthcare, a lot of people just wouldn’t be getting any (Garcia).

Once Nixon’s war on poverty began in 1969 though, (Fremstad), the people of Logan Heights noticed something off about Big Neighbor’s services, (Garcia). The money was rolling in from all these grants, but services stayed the same or got worse. Rumors started going around about the funds being embezzled and other corruption in the administration. People petitioned Big Neighbor demanding change. The administration ignored them (Garcia).

On October 4th, 1970, a meeting was held at Lowell School to discuss the community’s grievances with Big Neighbor. No one from the administration attended. After the meeting’s conclusion, the attendees went down to Big Neighbor to get an idea of how things were going. Not even an iota of progress. So Laura Rodriguez, a prominent activist and one of the meeting’s organizers, chained herself to the front door. This kicked off a massive protest in front of the Neighborhood House, (Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center).

The next day, on October 5th, MEChA students and the Brown Berets occupied Big Neighbor. The Brown Berets involved in the occupation were David Rico, Jose Gomez, Rico Bueno, Manuel Savin, and Joe “Kiki” Ortega (Garcia). These men and the MEChA students presented the following demands: fire the current board of directors, form a new board made up of Logan residents, immediate implementation of childcare and food distribution programs as well English classes, release of all accounting records and full financial transparency.

While occupying the Neighborhood House, the Brown Berets got access to its facilities, including food and accounting documents. Then David Rico used the food to found the Logan Heights Breakfast Program, the first real free breakfast program in Logan Heights. While this was going on, the Berets were threatening to leak the accounting documents to keep the board from calling in the police (Garcia). They’d eventually leak them anyway though.

On December 6th, 1970, (Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center), the police used a break-in at a nearby restaurant to get probable cause and storm the Neighborhood House, arresting the Berets inside (Garcia). The Berets were jailed and had trial dates set for them. The people of Logan were furious about this, picketing the jail for a week straight until the district attorney refused to prosecute them.

In the end, the Brown Berets that occupied the Neighborhood House spent a week in jail (Garcia). This was a trade they were probably happy to make since the Neighborhood House administration wound up caving to their demands, agreeing to all of them as well as establishing the first of a network of free clinics in San Diego (Garcia).

Dramatic confrontations with authorities grabbed headlines. But most of the Beret’s work was less visible — at least to outsiders. They were often the first to defend their community from racist and xenophobic action – which was on the rise as a kind of backlash to the social progress of the 60s.

A prime example is the case of Jesse Rimirez. Ramirez, who headed negotiations for MEChA and the Berets while they occupied the Neighborhood House (Garcia), was leading protests against police brutality in National City. The protests kicked off after a young Chicano was shot in the back and killed by the police, and this didn’t sit well with the overtly racist organizations that still existed in the city. This painted a target on Ramirez’s back and soon after, the Ku Klux Klan started placing armed men across the street from Ramirez’s house.

The Brown Berets responded to this by giving Ramirez and his family a protection detail until the Klan got tired of intimidating Ramirez and left him alone (Garcia). There was also the Chicano Moratorium I mentioned a bit ago. The San Diego Berets were there with almost every active chapter to support the LA Berets’ march against the disproportionate drafting of Chicanos to fight in Vietnam, (Baca).

Like all fights for liberation, the Brown Berets faced their fair share of opposition, mostly from the police and white militia groups. The SDPD would go so far as to single out the Brown Berets as targets for persecution by their Investigative Support Unit, better known as the “Red Squad” (Davis et al. 233). Dr. Ortiz described the Red Squad as a unit modeled after the federal CoIntelPro program. Their standard methods were to infiltrate organizations, spy on them, and then use the infiltrators to divide the organization and ruin its reputation.

Dr. Peter Bohmer of Evergreen State College, who lived in San Diego while the Berets were at their height and worked with them, suggested that things went even further than that. In addition to spying, he made claims about targeted police harassment through methods like going through the mail of individual members, calling their landlords and bosses to get them evicted and fired, placing their bank accounts under surveillance, constantly auditing them for no reason, and even arresting members randomly and making up charges to get them jailed.

But sometimes, that wouldn’t be enough, and authorities would use proxy groups like the Secret Army Organization (an FBI backed white militia) white militias to violently attack activists, (Bohmer). This is the point where Dr. Bohmer and Dr. Ortiz disagree a bit. Bohmer believes that these militias were directed by the feds while Ortiz points to them as an example of the Chicano community’s ongoing struggle with white vigilantes. Directed by the feds or just inspired by them, the MO of the white militias is clear. Things usually started with death threats and slashed tires; then violence in the form of firebombings and drive-by shootings, (Bohmer).

But in 1972, having enough of the police and FBI constantly messing with them, Brown Berets Prime Minister called for the Brown Berets to disband. Almost all of them did, with the exception of the San Diego chapter. For twenty years, the Berets would be gone and the San Diego Berets remained active but underground. That was until 1993, (Dunn), when San Diego’s very own Geronimo Blanco, and former Beret Prime Minister David Sanchez, revived the Brown Berets as a national organization. Their stated mission was community outreach to fight gang violence in the Barrios of California (Ramos).

With the resurgence of the national organization, a new chapter was founded under the leadership of Blanco. This meant there were now two entirely separate Brown Beret chapters in the city: the newer and more moderate group (dubbed The Brown Berets National Organization) and the older, more revolutionary Brown Berets de Aztlan. Neither side really liked the other, with Blanco’s BBNO actually suing the Berets de Aztlan to try to get them to abandon the Brown Beret name.

The Rag’s own Frank Gormlie was involved in this case as a lawyer for the Berets de Aztlan. Though the suit was settled out of court since the BBNO didn’t really have a case. Since then the two Beret chapters have mostly steered clear of each other, though there still isn’t any love lost between the two.

These days, the Brown Berets — who use Chicano Park for their headquarters — are working towards most of the same goals that they did back in their heyday. A group of Berets described their goals in a 2016 interview. They want young Chicanos to learn their history, feel proud of who they are, fight their internalized racism, have spaces where they can safely be themselves, and fight gentrification in their neighborhoods (Camacho et al.).

The Berets haven’t slowed down in their pursuit of these goals either. According to Dr. Ortiz, you’ll find Berets de Aztlan providing security for events and protests like Chicano Park Day and MEChA conferences, (Ortiz). Berets de Aztlan have also been fighting ICE raids in National City and Logan Heights by keeping people informed and occupying homes to prevent raids. They frequently march at intersectional events, as well as counter-protesting events like the 2017 “Patriot Picnic” in Chicano Park. They’re also fighting the gentrification of Barrio Logan, primarily through the Save Our Barrios Coalition, an organization founded by three groups, one of which is the Brown Berets de Aztlan. The Coalition’s been working to strengthen community control over development for the last fifteen years. Their end goal is revitalization without, displacing longtime residents.

One could be tempted to see the Brown Berets as a relic of the distant past. But there is no doubt that their impact is strongly felt in the city’s present. The continued existence of Barrio Logan as a thriving, livable, Latino community clearly owes a great deal to the work of the Berets over the last five decades — from the park , to free breakfast programs, to affordable healthcare services. And in an age of political dysfunction, they provide a blueprint for what effective local political organization can look like.

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Citations and Source List:

Baca, Herman. “The 1970 Chicano Moratorium Against the War in Vietnam – 45 Years Later!” OB Rag, 27 August 2015, https://obrag.org/2015/08/the-1970-chicano-moratorium-against-the-war-in-vietnam-45-years-later/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Bartl, Eric. “Five white men walk into Chicano Park…” San Diego Reader, 19 November 2017, https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/nov/19/stringers-five-white-men-walk-chicano-park/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Bohmer, Peter. “Lessons from Cointelpro – Many Learned in OB and San Diego in the Seventies.” OB Rag, 13 October 2014, https://obrag.org/2014/10/lessons-from-cointelpro-many-learned-in-ob-and-san-diego-in-the-seventies/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Camacho, Roberto, et al. “’Warriors of Aztlán’: Step Off! Radio The National Brown Berets de Aztlán Episode.” Step Off! Magazine, 17 May 2019, https://stepoffmagazine.com/2019/05/17/warriors-of-aztlan-step-off-radio-the-national-brown-berets-de-aztlan-episode/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center. “Neighborhood House – Chicano Park Museum.” Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, 2015, https://chicanoparkmuseum.org/logan-heights-archival-project/neighborhood-house/. Accessed 12 December 2023.

Davis, Mike, et al. Under the perfect sun : the San Diego tourists never see. New Press, 2003.

Dunn, Ashley. “Brown Berets Regroup to Fight Gang Crisis.” Los Angeles Times, 30 August 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-30-me-29465-story.html. Accessed 1 March 2024.

Fremstad, Shawn. “The War on Poverty: Not just a liberal campaign.” PBS, 9 January 2014, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-war-on-poverty-not-just-a-liberal-campaign. Accessed 12 December 2023.

Garcia, Maria E. “The History of Neighborhood House in Logan Heights: The Occupation of Neighborhood House….” San Diego Free Press, 4 July 2015, https://sandiegofreepress.org/2015/07/the-history-of-neighborhood-house-in-logan-heights-the-occupation-of-neighborhood-house/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Garcia, Maria E. “Jesse Ramirez: The First Executive Director of the Chicano Federation.” San Diego Free Press, 21 November 2015, https://sandiegofreepress.org/2015/11/jesse-ramirez-the-first-executive-director-of-the-chicano-federation/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Gormlie, Frank. “Anniversary of the take-over of Chicano Park – April 22, 1970.” OB Rag, 22 April 2010, https://obrag.org/2010/04/anniversary-of-the-take-over-of-chicano-park-april-22-1970/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Medina, Gloria Serrano. “Serrano Medina: My husband founded a chapter of the Brown Berets in San Diego to seek unity. He succeeded.” San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 August 2020, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/story/2020-08-14/brown-berets-barrio-logan-san-ysidro-black-panthers. Accessed 1 February 2024.

Montes, Carlos, et al. Interview with Carlos Montes – Civil Rights History Project. 27 June 2016. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2016655430/. Transcript.

Ramos, George. “Brown Berets Are Back, With a New Mission for the ’90s.” Los Angeles Times [Los Angeles], 12 July 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-07-12-me-12525-story.html. Accessed 22 March 2024.