The FBI, Chicanos, and the Band Redbone

 

                                                                                 

The Dream Catcher

      I was recently thinking about the time a kid named David bellowed, “No way, man! An FBI agent can’t be a Chicano.”

     I was in my 30s, working at UCLA, coordinating an early outreach program for “minority” students throughout L.A. high schools. I’d trained a team of UCLA undergrads, interns, mostly Chicanos and African American juniors and seniors who offered workshops to high school kids during a weekend program we called, Saturday Scholars. In 1980, the interns had a keen sense of ethnic awareness and were proponents of affirmative action programs, which led to many engaging discussions.

     It had been in one training session when I told them I was reading a book, a memoir, by a Chicano FBI agent. That was what led to David’s outburst, that an FBI agent couldn’t be Chicano. I countered that Chicano/Chicana was not only an ethnicity but a state of mind. David said it was so much more than that. It meant, to him, a Chicano or Chicana had to be politically aware and act against injustices done to the Mexican community.

     David was born and raised Mexican American in Chicago, He was a senior and had travelled west to attend UCLA. A political science major, and astute, as were most of the interns, unless his emotions got the better of him, he argued the FBI was antithetical to everything Chicano. “Man, J. Edgar Hoover was a racist. He was out to destroy the Chicano and black movements. The FBI’s job was to stop civil rights, like sabotaging striking farmworkers or infiltrating student clubs. A cop can’t be a Chicano.”

     I got David’s point, but I’d never heard identifying as a Chicano or Chicana meant one had to hold a certain political position. David and many university activists were arguing Chicanismo was more than ethnicity and culture. It was a movement whose members ascribed to a particular socio-political belief, but the specifics of the belief, no one could answer, unless he meant the Plan de Santa Barbara, which was somewhat out of date by this time. Many Mexican university students knew nothing about it and had moved on, except for the more politically minded student, like David.

     My father, born in 1923 and raised in Los Angeles, was a registered Democrat, voted in elections, and belonged to a labor union, but he wasn’t politically active in any way. He’d refer to his friends, sometimes, as Chicanos, even some who claimed to be Spanish or Indian. "Ah, Pete's a Chicano like the rest of us," he'd say. My mother didn't call herself Chicana but, as part of the WWII zoot suit generation, identified with the term. Like my dad, she wasn't active in Chicano politically issues; though, she supported the farmworkers movement and was sympathetic to new immigrants. 

     Were my parents wrong? Whose job was it to tell them, that according to David, they were "Chicanos and Chicanas falsas” (writer Michele Serros’ term). They couldn’t pass as Chicanos and Chicanas?

     By early 1980s, because of immigration from Mexico and Central America, the U.S. media, especially in Los Angeles, began limiting its use of the words "Mexican American" or "Chicano" and began pelting readers with the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino," which added confusion to the debate. No one knew, exactly, what those words meant, except, maybe, a fancy word for "Mexican." 

     So, what were we? Some Chicanos began mining their roots for a better understanding, even turning to their indigenous roots, which were, mostly, south of the border, and vague. We couldn't all be Aztecs.

     The direct English translation of “Latino” is Latin, which to me indicates a descendent of the Romans, as in Italians. That doesn’t really fit the Spanish-speaking people of America Latina. Still, it’s a term some Latinos use, maybe for linguistic convenience, like Colombian American John Leguizamo, who seems to prefer “Latin” to other ethnic terms. He uses it quite often.

     So, is the concept of "identity" fact, fiction, or myth? If it’s fact, I suppose the definition can be found in a dictionary or a history book. If it’s fiction or myth, you can say it’s a “state of being,” open to interpretation. Can we be whatever we choose? In the dictionary, “Latin means: of or relating to Latium, its people or its culture, or relating to ancient Rome, or relating to places and peoples using Romance languages.” Are we wayward Romans?

     Hmm, French is a romance language. I don’t recall anyone calling a French person Latin or Latino. In the dictionary, “Latino” is defined as, “A person of Latin American origin, male.” I have heard rumors my paternal grandfather had some French in him, probably going back to Napoleon's invasion of Mexico. Or figure it this way, if a Chicano has green or hazel eyes, he's got to have French in him, another illusion.

     "Latin" is different from, say, “Hispanic,” which means, according to Webster's: “of or relating to the language, culture, and people of Spain, or Spanish speaking countries, especially Latin America.” Some argue the word “Hispanic,” is a literary term, which refers to a language and not to a people. Wasn’t Cuba once called Hispanola, and it was settled by the Taino people, first, then by Africans and Spaniards? I think "Hispanic" was adopted by the media for no other reason than it was easier on the monolingual Yankee tongue.

     Ethnic studies professors might argue a Latino is a person of Spanish descent, a Latin American mestizo, both Spanish and Indian, but what if one is from Mexico or Latin America and has no hint of indigenous blood, like Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Fidel Castro, or even Che. Are they Latinos? Afterall, some New Mexican Chicanos still claim themselves to be, “puro hispano.”

     All this got me to thinking about music and my favorite bands, who used their ethnicity to take on various identities to advance their careers. Take Texan Domingo Zamudio, with his turban and trademark Egyptian wear, the lead Pharaoh in Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, or Rudy Martinez, the "Question Mark" for the band out of Saginaw, Michigan Question Mark and the Mysterians, who created an illusion of themselves on stage. Nobody knew Vickie Carr was Mexican until she began cutting records in Spanish. Freddie Fender couldn't hide behind that last name. He was pretty upfront about his Tex-Mex identity.

     Recently, there has been a lot of posting about Candido Abelardo Vasquez and his brother Patrick Vasquez, two Chicanos from farmworker families in Fresno and Salinas, California. The brothers, superb musicians in high school, left the cotton fields and peach orchards of the San Joaquin Valley and hit the Sunset Strip in the early 1960s. 

     Quickly becoming a hot musical commodity, they were in demand at all the major clubs on the Strip, as well as studio musicians working with some of the biggest names in music, but to advance their careers, it was recommended they lose the name Vasquez. So, like Ritchie Valens who dropped his real name Valenzuela, the Vasquez brothers became Pat and Lolly Vegas, a suave rock infused blues-jazz band, their ethnicity ambiguous. 

     That's why I was confused in 1970, when they resurrected as Redbone, a long-hair, bare-chested native American rock band, complete with loin clothes, head dresses, feathers and skins, no sign of Mexican, Hispanic or Latino. Yet, it was interesting they chose Redbone as a name. In U.S. lore, especially in Cajun country, "redbone" means "a multi-racial individual or culture."

     It turned out the Vasquez brother carried hints of Shoshone and Yaqui blood on their father’s side. How much, nobody knew for sure. One woman, Beatrice Bonilla and her son, in a Youtube video, who appeared to have known the Pat and Lolly back in Fresno, proudly pointed at the interior of a Redbone album, an 1800s photo of plains Indians on horseback, and her son said, "Those are real Indians," laughter, then Beatrice answered, "No, they weren't....  Well, the dad had a little Indian."  

     Years later, in an interview, Redbone drummer, Cheyenne, Peter Depoe, cousin of Leonard Peltier, who is still in jail, and unjustly convicted, for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation, said he was the only Indian in the band, the other three were Mexican American, with traces of Yaqui blood. From what I knew, only plains Indians wore war bonnets and colorfully beaded chest decorations, not Yaqui. 

     Depoe also said Redbone brought much needed pride to native American people, who accepted them as Indians, especially during the turbulent 1970s, when the government used the FBI to infiltrate reservations and cause havoc within Indian groups, as documented in Peter Matthiessen's book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. It was dangerous time to be Indian, even if only a rock and roll band.

     However, back in the day, when they were still Pat and Lolly Vegas, East L.A. claimed them as Mexican American musicians. I had two older friends who played at Gazzarri's and other clubs on the Sunset Strip in the 1960s. They told me they only knew of one other Mexican act playing the Strip, Pat and Lolly Vegas. So, I always considered the Vasquez-Vegas brothers Chicanos. They always claimed their Mexican-ness, but it was their indigenous side, no matter how slight, they embraced. Redbone blew up the music world with their monster hit, “Come and Get Your Love,” which young people are still singing today.

     Does this mean that ethnic identity is more complex than wrapping up one’s identity in a single word? Can we decide who or whom we want to be? My guess is that, even though they were raised Mexican, among many other Mexicans in San Joaquin’s central valley where the picked cotton and peaches, Pat and Abelardo Vasquez decided to explore a part of their indigenous heritage through their music, giving rise to a more complex identity.

    As I researched their lives, I found little evidence that they ever lived on a reservation or among indigenous people. Lolly graduated from Salinas High School, where he and his brother were already gathering fame for their music and their musicianship, performing with other Mexican kids in the region. It seems they were more intent on honing their musical skills than on worrying about their identity, as it should be. Had it not been for their superb musicianship and advice from the great Jimi Hendrix, who, it is rumored, told them to embrace their indigenous roots, they might not have succeeded in the cut-throat world of entertainment. Tapping their native American roots, at just the time when many of us were tapping into our own roots, gave them the vehicle necessary to carry them to stardom. To my ear, Redbone always sounded more like the traditional rhythm and blues band of Pat and Lolly Vegas than, say, the deeply spiritually inspired indigenous music of John Trudell.

     Ironically, it was this same identification, which some say, was Redbone's downfall. Their song about Wounded Knee was banned in the U.S. It was during the time two FBI agents had been killed on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation, and neither the U.S. nor law enforcement, including the FBI, took kindly to an Indian rock band influencing millions of fans around the world. Ethnic pride might just have caused them their musical careers. 

     So, maybe David had a point and an FBI agent identifying as Chicano, was "suspect."