César Chávez, centers, walks with members of MEChA including Armando Vazquez, second from right. Contributed photo
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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
I walked, and march in the CSUN/Mecha student security detail that we hastily organized when it was announce that Cesar Chavez would be coming to San Fernando to support the community and the student in their local grape boycott of Safeway back in 1969(?). The exact date escapes me. I can confess to you that I was not a Chavez loyalist back then (but, he was one of our own, teniamos que cuidar nostro herman(a)os, no matter what our individual political mindset was!) in those glorious revolutionary days.
But non-violence, on our knees? Nunca-never; when they were sending (drafting us) us to killing all our brothers and sister in this country and in far off places like Viet Nam and Latin America. I was of the mindset that the blood of Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Ries Tejerina, Russell Means, Angela Davis, was the common blood of liberation or death for me and my people! No compromise was possible, and I came to believe, after getting my ass kicked over and over again by the ruling class that true liberation and power could only be achieved from the barrel of a gun. You snatch power, it is never ceded! Punto aparte!
They did not kill me nor did I destroy myself; then, mystically, very mysteriously love introduced it mysteries to me and enraptured me! This is what Cesar taught me! This is what I have learned from Chavez, King, Gandhi, Sisters Teresa Y Deborah, Mandela, what Malcolm came to understand and die for; non-violence is the symbiotic paradoxical twin that offers the question and the answer that occupies both our immediate(often insane) space and time simultaneously and muses the celestial prompt: love or hate?
Pero esta onda esta pero bien cabrona y gacha! To resist the primordial urge of revenge, the biblical sanctimonious madness of an eye for eye. Par un vato perdido y loco with the idea of liberation through rage somehow redeemed irrevocably through the power of non-violent love was absolute irreconcilable and impossibility; at the same identical time the notion of wholesale bloodletting no longer square with the love that was growing in my heart! So in the final analysis there is only one viable and true option for a slave like me, que no? The greatest chains were those chains that enslaved my soul and heart! So love called me, the seeds are celestially planted and through the course of both my good and bad karma years the roots of love become stronger and produced a true, pure and sweet fruit of unconditional love within my heart and soul that sing and meditates:
Unconditional love is not so much about how we tolerate and endure each other, but rather how we welcome and embrace each other, no matter the circumstances.
Unconditional love is about how we promise ourselves to never under any conditions stop bring the flawed and humble truth of who we are to each other.
Much is said about unconditional love today, in the noise of the egos it has been badly misconstrued as an extreme form of turning the other cheek; pathetic advise to anyone who has been abused or suffers in pain. This exaggerated passivity is quite different from the unimpeded flow of love that nurtures, strengthens and guides who we are, and more importantly who we can become.
In truth unconditional love does not require passive acceptance of whatever happens in the name of love. Rather in the real spaces of our daily relationships it means maintaining a commitment that no event, condition or circumstance will keeps us from bring all of who we are to each other with pure unadulterated honest love so that we have the courage to face the enemy and love the enemy and defeat the hatred with the power of non-violent unconditional love.
THE IS WHAT CESAR CHAVEZ TAUGHT ME! QUE VIVA CESAR! QUE VIVA LA CUASA!
One Love, One People, One Earth
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.
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