Ed. Note: Guest Columnist Elias Serna eulogizes Rudy Acuña. By coincidence, this student-to-teacher tribute publishes on el cinco de mayo 2026. Rodofo F. Acuña. Presente!
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Rudy Acuña, the Chicano Bible & the True Believers
Elias Serna
“And Jose Dolores says, it is better to know where to go and not know how, than to know how to go and not know where.” -the rebel Guarina in Gio Pontecorvo’s “Burn!”
“No we are not equals. I am a man of knowledge… and you are a pimp, doing the work of others” – Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan
When I was a kid my older brother attended Santa Monica College, where a Chicano counselor Nati Vasquez mentored him and introduced him to MEChA and Chicano Studies. My brother brought the first Chicano books to our home. In ensuing years, I tagged along with my brother and sisters to MEChA conferences, UCLA’s La Gente office, Chicano Moratoriums, Central American Solidarity gatherings and other Chicano events. I often say the Central American civil wars politicized me, but it was through Chicano Studies and the student movement that I became “awakened.”
To be more clear, my world awareness and political consciousness were developed when the injustices and horrors of the near and far were “called into question” – through a Chicana/o point of view. I entered college eager to be politically active. My freshman year I enthusiastically enrolled in a Chicano History class taught by Alex Saragoza. He assigned several chapters from the freshly published 2nd edition of Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (Acuña had just discarded the internal colony theory after pressure from the Berkeley Marxists). I read the entire book.
At an event at Casa Joaquin Murrieta student co-op, some of my brother’s friends from Davis showed up. They were the first to tell me I was reading “the Chicano bible,” a common phrase of the 80’s and 90’s. Those of us “in the movement” were often called the “true believers,” fanatics, so having a Chicano bible was perhaps fitting. When I visited my brother at UC Davis, I learned of the RCAF, the “Royal Chicano Air Force” artist collective, veteranas/os who were said to hold certain books in high esteem: El Plan de Santa Barbara, El Plan de Aztlan and Occupied America. Perhaps because I attended Catholic School and was raised a “stone Catholic,” I was in awe that Chicanos could possess our own “holy books.” These texts, often collectively authored, had mobilized the movement, but they also held principals of liberation, tenets of our identity, which continue to guide or influence Chicanx organizers, educators, student activists and some academic departments today.
Occupied America gave my life clarity, focus and direction. I reckon it was playfully but endearingly named the “Chicano bible” because in a way it is the Chicano Creation Story. Carey McWilliams had written the excellent “North from Mexico,” but here was our official history, finally documented and vigorously researched by a Chicano historian. It is Acuña’s magnum opus, a tremendous feat of scholarship in 9 editions, a monumental research task, eloquently articulated, polemical at moments. Its versatility satisfied academic standards and was readable by students, non-students or a prisoner. It gave enormous infallible credence and a solid historical foundation to our newfound identity – as well as laying the cornerstone to the field of Chicano Studies! It highlighted major themes and motifs of Chicano and Third World liberation movements: an unapologetic counter-story to white supremacy and Mexican mediocrity, a history of consistent community militancy and resistance to colonialism and racism in the Southwest, self determination (in action and style), the significance of the marginalized to history (the indigenous, peasants, miners, farmworkers, students, etc.). It was scholarship to be proud of and to hold up as our own.
Quoting Franz Fanon and Paulo Freire in the first edition, the polemical third world liberation style of Occupied America was criticized by academics almost as often as it was quoted by activists. The UCSB lawyers highlighted his rhetorical style to validate their rejection of his application for a faculty position in the 1990’s, claiming his book was not “serious scholarship” but propaganda. They also claimed his version of the Mexican American War - that the U.S. invaded Mexico - was incorrect, while the majority of the world’s historians agreed with Acuña. Ultimately, he sued and won a precedent discrimination case against UC Santa Barbara. Instead of splurging the money on himself he established a legal fund to support faculty discriminated in higher education.
Acuña’s text was called the Chicano Bible not just because it was an academic text. It also served as a moral compass. The misinterpretation of the polemical style was that it was attempting to rally people for a particular cause or set of causes. At closer investigation one has to recognize that interpretation is the fabric of epistemology. The writing down of Chicano history necessarily established Chicanos as a people. Critical race theory author and law professor Ian Haney Lopez explains in Racism on Trial that the Mexican American race needed to be identified, defined and invented in the courts; and the infamous Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta performed a similar monumental task in proving for the first time that Chicanos existed as a people in a court of law. Prior to the Chicano Movement cases (the Biltmore 6, the East LA Walkout conspirators, and Catolicos Por La Raza defendants) Mexican Americans were not recognized as a protected class like African Americans or women. In 1969 and 1970, Acosta argued in court that Chicanos were a distinct people with a documented history of discrimination and racial oppression. A chapter in his novel Revolt of the CockroachPeople illustrates this history, albeit in dramatic, imagistic hyperbole beginning with the hispanic invasion of Tenochtitlan.
Acuña importantly framed Chican@ history as an indigenous people’s history struggling to liberate itself from Euro-American (a term he helped popularize) occupation, colonization and racism. To label his text as polemical is to belittle his research and to overlook the deep effects on collective consciousness. As W.E.B. Dubois did with A Black Reconstruction, Acuña’s task also went against the grain of so-called objectivity; a so-called domain of the Anglo Ivory Tower. The Chicano bible gave Chicano students a mission to continue the resistance, to “return to the varrio” as professionals, and be of service to the people. It was okay to better our station and get good jobs, but without a moral compass we were doing “the work of others” - as the Castaneda and Pontecorvo epigraphs warn.
In the 90’s I believe my generation impacted Rudy’s narrative and historical frame. The 1992 quincentennial of Columbus radicalized us and reminded us of our colonization and our deep and tangled indigenous roots. It awakened a quincentennial consciousness. We read about our hemispheric roots, a Mexico Profundo, re-shaped our name to Xicana/o or Xican@, set off for Aztlan, ran in the hemispheric indigenous Peace and Dignity Runs, and crawled into the sweat lodge. Acuña re-wrote the Xican@ origins, moving from 1848 to millenia, and surveyed the world systems of indigenous America – also known as Anahuac, Turtle Island or Abya Yala. A true Xican@ decolonization could not overlook our deep indigenous roots in the hemisphere and how the hispanic invasion of Taino lands, of Tenochtitlan and of the Americas impacted if not created our cultural dna.
The internal colony theory came subtly back to life.
The first time I met Rudy was at Berkeley on the roof conference hall in Barrows Hall. The Chicano Marxists scholars stood in the back of a packed hall. Afterward, I went to meet him on the outdoor balcony to thank him for writing the book I’d read. He asked me for a cigarette and I gave him one of my camels. Historian Jose Moreno says that’s the same way he met Rudy. I met him again at the Justice for Janitors protest, days after police beat Raza union organizers in the street; Yaotl from Aztlan Underground was his “body guard.” I would see him speak over the years sporadically.
In the 2000’s, after being fired twice from Samohi for being a political teacher, I was hired at CSUN’s Chicana/o Studies Department where I worked for 7 years. It was one of the best and busiest times in my life. Rudy was “my colleague” and we shared many memorable interactions; he even included a joke I pulled on him in his 7th edition preface. I was teaching Occupied American for a class and looked up earlier editions in the library, where I found a very thin pamphlet, the spine titled “Occupied America.” It was a program for a conference on his book in Texas. At a department meeting, I held it up and chastised him in front of our colleagues for editing down his latest edition into a “Chicano history for Dummies.”
Around 2008, Rudy and a few mentors gave me the blessing to pursue a Ph.D., so off I went to UC Riverside to study English literature, rhetoric and Chican@ Studies’ epistemology. During this time, I attended the summer conferences of the Mexican American Studies Department at Tucson, an exceptional high school program that had not only “closed” the perennial academic achievement gap (the gap in grades/scores between minority and Euro-American students) but inverted it. The Tucson teachers were a dynamic group of wonderful educators and true believers, some pursuing PhDs at the U. of A. Arizona politicians attacked it, leading to widespread protests, lawsuits and full-on pleito. California and Texas educators joined the struggle with groups forming like Librotraficante, Raza Studies Now and the Xican@ Pop-Up Book. Rudy had roots in Tucson and we found ourselves shoulder to shoulder. The writings of Rudy, Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez and the multi-modal A.B. Morales (Three Sonorans) were instrumental in getting the word out to Californians and the nation.
In 2011 the Arizona governor signed MAS’s death warrant and the classes were shut down in 2012. A lawsuit by teachers over the state’s racism kept the fight going, as an Ethnic Studies movement spread nationally, and was victorious in 2017 (the year I completed my doctorate).
The MAS department never came back to life, but Ethnic Studies campaigns and programs spread nationally and California passed Ethnic Studies requirements in state high schools and colleges – although currently governor Newsome and the pro-Israel Legislative Jewish Caucus have been blocking funding and attempting to censor our curriculum. Ethnic Studies Now rallied for a state high school requirement, and educators successfully passed a requirement in the CSU’s and community colleges around 2019; hundreds of Ethnic Studies teaching jobs sprouted. As we had proclaimed early in the movement, quoting Sandinista poet Ernesto Cardenal, “they thought they had buried us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”
Early on, at one of the first Raza Studies Conferences organized by the PYFC and held at Santa Monica College, educators convened from around LA county and the state, drawing up “El Plan de Los Angeles” which outlined principles and called for the building of Raza/Ethnic Studies programs in high schools and community colleges. Rudy came to help us inaugurate the movement. We held a panel on Chicana/o history, with 3 people who had read Occupied America; a professor, an artist and a homeboy from the neighborhood, Carlos, who had read Rudy’s book in prison. Afterwards, we introduced them to each other. Carlos explained, “you know, your book saved my life.” “I’m glad you found it useful –“ Rudy began. Carlos interrupted him “- no, you see, I was in a prison brawl, so I taped your book to my ribs for protection and it saved me.” One could say, the Chicano bible literally saves lives in more ways than one.
The academic job market was fierce and when Covid 19 hit in 2020 my one-year English Assistant Professor contract at University of Redlands ended and work dried up as the world came to a stand still. Capitalism was interrupted, wars ended. The Earth began healing. I was jobless. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Years later, I slowly began teaching again in person and online. After numerous rejections at full-time employment and personal setbacks, Rudy offered to write me a letter of recommendation and said, “before I die I want you to get a full time position.”
His letter helped me get teaching work at Cal State Channel Island, formerly the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. A close family member of mine had been captive there during my childhood. I felt in a way as if on a pilgrimage, returning to a chapter of a past life. In the library one day, I came upon a red and black pamphlet with radical Chicano imagery on the cover. Perusing it I realized it was the Memorial to Magdalena Mora, an energetic young Chicana organizer who had died young. Numerous labor leaders, scholars and figures had paid tribute; Corky Gonzalez sent a telegram. Rudy’s eulogy was the most eloquent. When Juan Gomez Quiñonez died, Rudy told me, “Juan really had a great command of the English language.” But I thought the maistro had a special way with words. Scattering jade, as the Ancients say. We are enriched by their words, the story-telling.
Between shelves in the upper story of the library, I read this passage: “When I first met Magdalena, I didn’t know how to take her. She was a student, about 18. She was criticizing things. But, I’d heard an awful lot of students who criticized things, and many times, maybe because you have the canas in your head, you see a lot of things, you start to become cynical. Then you start to listen to a person… you start to look at them in their point of struggle. And I looked at Magdalena, and I said, what a beautiful fanatic, because the fanatics make the movement. The people that have the clarity of vision make the movement. The agitators make the movement. The people that don’t compromise make the movement… She never compromised, and that’s her importance. She’s not an individual. She came out of a collective group. She came out of you. She is present in you. She’s present in me. She’s present in all of us… (criticizing artists paid by beer corporations) Magdalena never sold beer. She sold ideas. She sold a vision. She sold a way. And this is what we must do. We must learn to be fanatics.”
I guess reading this passage inside a former mental hospital where my relative stayed has its own kind of presence effects, but at the moment it was the Universe speaking very clearly to me, through Rudy. When I was doxed by the Canary Mission Project in 2024, Santa Monica College, after receiving over 12,000 emails claiming I was anti-Semitic, let me go. Rudy sympathized with my persecution and reached out to help. That is when he wrote me a letter and made that comment to me. Geez, I didn’t even want the job now. I wanted Rudy to live forever. But only the struggle outlives us, and the only thing that lasts forever is the Universe. A year later, I found plenty of work. Then I got the dream job. The Universe saved me, and Rudy was part of it.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Sometimes, I laugh and I cry, all at once. Like a fanatic. Blessed, enriched.
He was a Master Teacher. Rest in power Rudy Acuña.
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Elias Serna holds a PhD in English/rhetoric from UC Riverside.
He is a founding member of Chicano Secret Service teatro, Raza Studies Now and the Xican@ Pop-Up Book.
Serna has taught writing and Ethnic Studies at CSU Northridge, University of Redlands, SMC, San Jose State and CSU Channel Islands.
He is a parent and a Chican@ Studies professor.
