Ernesto Vigil - Uncovering the FBI’s war on Xicano/Indigenous movements through FOIA

In  the episode of The Reality Dysfunction Dr. Ernesto Mireles and Alex Yanish speak with famed organizer/author Ernesto Vigil of Denver, Colorado. Vigil was a leader in the Denver based Crusade for Justice and worked closely with Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez during the heyday of the organization. In his early 20's Vigil was the first Xicano draft resister in the Southwest and has spent the last 51 years pursuing justice for Xicanos in the United States. In this episode Ernesto Vigil will be talking about his forthcoming book titled Decades of Deception: the American Indian Movement, the FBI and the death of Anna Mae Aquash. Don't miss this riveting first hand account fully documented by one of the foremost scholars on the FBI's campaign against Xicano/Indigenous movements in the United States.

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Vigil is also the author of The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent first published in 1999. Below is a description of the book:

This definitive account of the Chicano movement in 1960's Denver reveals the intolerance and brutality that inspired the turbulent rise of the urban Chicano organization known as the Crusade for Justice. Ernesto Vigil, an expert in the discourse of radical movements of this time, joined the Crusade as a young draft resister where he met Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales, the founder of the CFJ. Vigil follows the movement chronologically from Gonzales's early attempts to fight discrimination as a participant in local Democratic politics to his radical stance as an organizer outside mainstream politics.

Drawing extensively upon FBI documentation that has become available under the Freedom of Information Act, Vigil exposes massive surveillance of the Crusade for Justice by federal agents and local police and the damaging effects of such methods on ethnic liberation movements. Vigil complements these documents and the story of Gonzales's development as a radical with the story of his personal involvement in the movement. The Crusade for Justice describes one of the most important organizations fighting for Chicano rights.

www.waroftheflea.org