Wendy Rodriguez, a ninth-grader at Southwest Early College, went to the third annual Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales Symposium on Friday thinking she would learn what made the late Chicano activist famous.
But she came away from the day-long event on the Auraria campus with a new understanding about herself.
“We should be proud of our race,” she said. “It makes us unique.”
She was one of about 700 teens, most from area middle and high schools, who participated in a day of speeches, “learning circles” and hip- hop and Aztec celebration.
The event was designed to help promote community unity, cultural pride and education.
“We’re here to teach, to keep teaching,” said Gonzales’ widow, Geraldine. “That’s what Corky believed in — that everyone, no matter who they are, deserves an education. We’re making sure these kids understand they have a lot to be proud of.”
Lincoln High student Manuel Aguayo, who attended a session titled Barrio Youth: Reclaiming Our Communities, got the message. “We should help each other instead of hurting each other,” he said.
The free event was funded by Metropolitan State College, Regis University and the Escuela Tlatelolco, the school founded by Gonzales.
Keynote speaker Olga Talamante, executive director of the California- based Chicana/Latina Foundation, told students how she was arrested and tortured for her work with a poverty-relief agency in Argentina in 1974.
She attributed a grass-roots effort here in the United States with winning her freedom 16 months later.
She wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to the women she’d come to call friends in captivity. But they could see her through windows before she was released.
“They started singing to me — a song I had taught them and taught them the meaning of,” she said. “The song rang through the prison walls.”
The song was “De Colores (All the Colors),” a Spanish folk song adopted by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers that conveys the idea that all people live under the same sun and deserve the same dignity.
“We were united in struggle, and they were wishing me well,” Talamante said. “That same spirit lives on today.”
Rowena Alegría is editor of Viva Colorado, the Post’s Spanish-language newspaper.
