King of the Chicanos
by Manuel Ramos
978-0-916727-64-2 Cost: $16.95
Paperback , 192 pages
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Both heroic and tragic, King of the Chicanos, captures the spirit, energy, and imagination of the 1960s' Chicano movement -- a massive and intense struggle across a broad spectrum of political and cultural issues -- through the passionate story of the "King of the Chicanos," Ramón Hidalgo. From his very humble beginnings through the tumultuous decades of being a migrant farm worker, door-to-door salesman,prison inmate, political hack, and radical activist, the novel relates Hidalgo's personal failures and self-destructive personality amid the political turmoil of the times. With a gradual acceptance of his destiny as a leader and hero of the people, this impassioned novel relates the maturation of one man while encapsulating the fever of the Chicano movement.
Critical Praise for King of the Chicanos
- King of the Chicanos reveals the l960s Chicano Movement as few other novels have done to date. An inspiring and realistic telling of the Mexican American's community struggle for equal rights. This novel is destined to become an important part of our history, and only Manuel Ramos could write it.
— Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima and many other award-winning works
- Fine, hard-hitting, and on target, Ramos's prose sings and zings with no quarter for anyone. Tough and uncompromising, the novel presents Ramón Hidalgo, warts and all, along with a cast of memorable characters. The engaged reader will profit from the reading.
— Rolando Hinojosa, author of the Klail City Death Trip Series (15 novels)
- Deftly written, King of the Chicanos follows the story of Chicano leader Ramón Hidalgo, El Rey, before, during and after the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Hidalgo is a man as much defined by his flaws and errors of conscience as by his convictions and his willingness to fight for what is right for La Raza. But the novel encompasses much more than one man's story. Manuel Ramos has also captured the aspirations, political triumphs and defeats, and the inspiring lives of those Chicanos and Chicanas who, just forty-some years ago, fought for the rights and opportunities now enjoyed by Latinos and Chicanos alike. King of the Chicanos is living history and a corrido to the resilience of the Chicano spirit! ¡Ajúa!
— Lucha Corpi, author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel and Death at Solstice
Reviews
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Crime writer takes new direction in new novel about El Movimiento
El Paso TimesMay 2, 2010
Reviewed by Daniel A. Olivas
In his newest novel, King of the Chicanos, Manuel Ramos paints a gritty and convincing portrait of Ramón Hidalgo, a fictional leader of the Chicano Movement who struggles against oppression as well as his own personal demons.
That's a surprise, because Ramos is best known for his six crime novels, most of which feature the fictional detective Luis Móntez. Despite winning critical and popular recognition for these works of fiction, he moved in a decidedly different direction with the creation of civil-rights activist Hidalgo.
"The idea for 'King of the Chicanos' has been with me for years," Ramos told me. "Just the fact that it took me 10 years to write attests to the difficulty I had putting the story together."
He added: "I believe that writers and artists are historians that we are the preservers of a history that otherwise will be lost. I urge old friends and younger students to tell the stories that they know their communities, their families, their own lives."
In the novel, Ramos weaves in the names of actual writers, including Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi and Alfredo Véa. He includes a character, Roberto Urban, who is befriended by Hidalgo and who eventually becomes a writer himself.
"The times I write about in the book were an era of political and social unrest, but they were also periods of Chicano cultural renaissance and rebirth," Ramos said in explaining why he included writers in his narrative. "Everything from music to art to poetry to fiction writing underwent massive change, and Chicanos were in the forefront of redefining American culture. I happen to believe that writers played an integral role in the changes and reformation of society, and so they are included in a book that attempts to talk about some of those changes."
Hidalgo is such a perfectly drawn character a man simultaneously damaged and noble that readers could be forgiven for believing that Ramos based him on a real person.
"He is a total figment of my writing," Ramos said. "As they say, any similarities to actual persons are coincidences. If readers think Hidalgo is based on a 'real' person, I take that as a compliment. I want him to be as real to readers as he is to me, his creator."
The novel does raise many questions, including: Is the Chicano Movement dead?
"The movement is not dead, absolutely not," he said. It "may not be called the Chicano Movement, and I think that term has come to mean the politics and agitation of a set period in history, but there are wonderful and exciting things happening every day that call on the stamina and courage of Chicanos and Chicanas, just like in the days of El Movimiento."
His conclusion: "I do believe that the legacy of El Movimiento has not been forgotten and that the spirit of those times continues in a myriad of ways."
Ramos certainly demonstrates through this remarkable and vital novel that the Chicano Movement is alive and well.
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Daniel A. Olivas is the author of five books including, most recently, Anywhere But L.A.: Stories (Bilingual Press). He shares blogging duties on La Bloga (http://labloga.blogspot.com) which is dedicated to all aspects of Chicano literature. His Web site is www.danielolivas.com and he may be reached at olivasdan@aol.com.
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May 24, 2010
An excerpt from Sergio Troncoso's Chicolingo blog:
Today I finished reading a wonderful novel, King of the Chicanos, by Manuel Ramos, which was published a few weeks ago. Ramos has written several crime fiction novels, and so the prose is tight and clean and the plot moves quickly. But the importance of the novel is its focus, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the questions which arise about whether the movement continues today, in other forms, in other venues.
. . .
Yes, there are important lessons learned in King of the Chicanos. This work should be read by many young, and not-so-young, activists who are tired of being stomped on by the likes of Jan Brewer and Rush Limbaugh. We need more than raw passion this time. We need to be focused, and we need to be bigger than ourselves, and we need to be a political force that can translate our power to the ballot box, to legislatures, to the courts, and eventually to mainstream American culture.
I also want to point out, in my literary realm, how our struggle continues. We need more books by and about Chicanos, and not just the version of "Mexican-Americans" assumed in New York or Austin. But to have that, to have more quality books published by small and large publishers about Chicanos, we need to buy more of our books, we need to educate our community about our stories, and we need to keep telling our stories, in every corner, in every town, until we are heard. But first we need to listen to each other. Only then will others turn around, and pay attention to the literary commotion and debate that is ours.
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La Causa Goes Askew
San Antonio Express-NewsJune 13, 2010
[San Antonio Express-News Review]
Civic activism has long been a noble calling for Hispanics in the United States, especially among those who have sought to champion social justice for a once-disenfranchised population that is rapidly becoming the face of a nation.
Manuel Ramos, an attorney and author of crime fiction novels that have received critical recognition from the Colorado Book Awards, the Chicano/Latino Literary Awards, as well as an Edgar nomination from the Mystery Writers of America, now sets his sights on capturing the essence of the Hispanic Civil Rights Movement in his brutally compelling, yet passionately touching new novel, "King of the Chicanos."
The book centers on Ramon Hidalgo, who is blessed with charisma and the sincerity to do well for the people of Escobar, a fictional metropolis in an unnamed Southwestern state.
Beginning at an early age, Ramon worked hard for every cent and every person he met. His first job as a migrant worker was as a box worker when he was 10, where he would drag wooden crates and fetch boxes for the pickers. Picking, he discovered, was back-breaking work, but one vital to sustain life in the transient community he lived in.
It was around this time that Ramon heard the word "Chicano" for the first time. Although the word was new, its meaning was clear and the slang term for Mexicans in the United States made immediate sense to him.
Ramon began his political venture into grass-roots organizing by campaigning for Philip Robinson in his quest to become a city councilman. While Robinson isn't the "great White hope" Ramon was hoping for, he was better than the opposition during the campaign.
Unfortunately, Robinson is also the sort of politician who was always campaigning for the next higher office by making promises he knew he wouldn't keep and focusing on the money changers instead on his constituents.
Contention between the politician and the kingmaker comes to a head at a community gathering at an American Legion Hall when the community questions Robinson face-to-face about a housing deal that didn't quite live up to the campaign promises. Ramon rallies the audience to demand justice and a community activist is born.
Ramon surrounds himself with supporters his wife and close friends who believe in the cause, but the cause needs a name, something that reflects the Chicano culture and its politics. After several rounds of discussion, his wife suggests the moniker La Fuerza de la Raza, the Strength of the People.
The movement starts with high hopes for equality and a passion to help those who had been punished, beaten, arrested or killed for the perceived sin of simply being a Mexican. It engages in nonstop activity of demonstrations, marches, forums and campus teach-ins, notching little victories that bring temporary relief but no long-term solutions.
Over time, the movement becomes embroiled in arrests and lawsuits, causing a financial drain on an organization with virtually no funding source outside its most loyal supporters.
Eventually Ramon and the leadership lose focus concerning their central cause due to real and perceived threats of informants, undercover agents, provocateurs and counter-revolutionary elements. They reinforced their paranoia and became more preoccupied with things other than working for the people.
"King of the Chicanos" is an eloquent novel that is destined to be an evocative addition to the growing literature on Hispanics and their struggle for justice in America. It's a definite must-read for anyone seeking a fictionalized account of the personal, political and civic pressures of a grassroots movement in the Latino community.
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Vincent Bosquez is president of the Society of Latino and Hispanic Writers of San Antonio and director of public relations at Palo Alto College.
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Novela ilustra el desarrollo del movimiento chicano
EFE (Spanish News Service)June 9, 2010
Review by Lydia Gil
La novela "King of the Chicanos" de Manuel Ramos explora el nacimiento y caída del movimiento activista chicano de los años 60 y 70 en EEUU a través de la vida de Ramón Hidalgo, el carismático líder del movimiento.
En manos menos diestras, el tema hubiese representado un reto insuperable, pero Ramos logra transmitir la energía de la época, la solidaridad de la lucha por los derechos civiles y los altibajos del movimiento en un relato lleno de acción, intriga e incluso reflexión.
Es evidente que su experiencia literaria, al igual que como abogado de Servicios Legales en Colorado, le sirvió de mucho al construir esta novela.
Mejor conocido por sus novelas de crimen como "The Ballad of Pocky Ruiz" (1993) y "The Ballad of Gato Guerrero" (1994) entre otras, Ramos maneja hábilmente la intriga, lo cual libra la lectura de didactismo o hagiografía.
Sin embargo, el autor confiesa que decidió abandonar las convenciones del género detectivesco, ya que la historia que quería contar le exigía un formato diferente.
"La historia de Hidalgo no cabía dentro de la ficción de crimen", dijo a Efe.
Ramos asegura que los personajes de la novela lo persiguieron durante diez años, durante los cuales trabajó en otros libros, pero siempre llevando en mente a Hidalgo, Tino, Catarina, Pancho y Soledad.
"En realidad no le presté atención al género de la novela hasta que ya había escrito bastante de la misma", afirmó.
"Después de todo, la historia es lo que importa; no cómo se le clasifique en las librerías", añadió.
A pesar de su ambigua clasificación, la novela figura entre los éxitos de librería en Colorado, lo cual puede atribuirse a que narra una historia específica al movimiento chicano que, a su vez, resulta universal.
La novela comienza con el funeral de Hidalgo, y aunque no sabemos nada del personaje, de inmediato nos damos cuenta de que se trata de alguien importante.
De ahí damos marcha atrás a la humilde infancia y juventud del personaje, y lo vemos convertirse de obrero agrícola, a vendedor ambulante, a organizador y líder político.
Con el tiempo, Hidalgo asciende rápida pero accidentadamente la escala política hasta convertirse en el líder incuestionable de un movimiento que desde hacía mucho latía bajo tierra.
Como muchos líderes carismáticos, Hidalgo confía demasiado en su elocuencia y poder, lo cual eventualmente le conducen a la pérdida. Aquí la pérdida es trágica, aunque no sin recompensas.
La vida de Hidalgo, después de su caída, es un círculo perfecto, completando en sentido contrario todas las etapas ya vividas, hasta morir cultivando la tierra.
Sin embargo, algo fundamental ha cambiado: al final la tierra que cultiva es suya.
En la última sección de la novela se revelan dos acciones simultáneas: la caída del movimiento político y el firme establecimiento de la literatura chicana.
Los nombres de escritores como Rudolfo Anaya, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Sandra Cisneros y Lucha Corpi se citan con entusiasmo y esperanza sobre lo que significa su presencia en la literatura estadounidense, algo que quizás no hubiese sido posible sin el movimiento chicano, con todos sus defectos y virtudes.
Ramos insiste en que el movimiento tuvo un impacto directo en el desarrollo cultural de la comunidad chicana.
"Los chicanos y chicanas son, por autodefinición, seres políticos con una conciencia que exige justicia y cambio progresista", explica.
Según Ramos, la literatura de la época, al igual que la música y las artes visuales, reflejan las mismas exigencias de cambio que la facción activista del movimiento.
"Con más sutileza quizás, pero con igual legitimidad", finalizó el autor.
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a first important portrayal of a period of Chicanismo filled with uncertainty and turmoil yet so much promise ...
Somos en escritoJuly 22, 2010
Reviewed by Armando Rendón (author of The Chicano Manifesto in [Somos en escrito]
History being what it is, our past, we constantly look for ways to retrieve it. More than a century ago, H.G. Wells dreamed up a time machine, which has been re-invented over and over in the sci-fi idiom ever since. In King of the Chicanos, Manny Ramos dreams up a way to take us back to a momentous time for la raza, and the Nation. His fast-paced story-telling spins us back through time to the 1960s, a decade of unrest and change in America.
Ramos is persuasive about the attraction of that period: You had to be there. "There" being the Chicano Movement. The Chicano Movement being the clash and confluence in the Southwest of epic figures and explosive conflicts of ideas during the 1960s on into the early 1970s. For generations born since then, King of the Chicanos affords a glimpse of what it must have been like.
An appealing and fun mystery writer to read, Ramos attempts to encapsulate in King of the Chicanos what happened in that era and the people who made it happen, blending traits of the real activists who embodied the Chicano revolution into a single character. His book seeks to evoke what I think was the underlying impulse of the time, a revolution which in great respect was a revolt against ourselves, our culture, our traditions, even our language.
The people who for at least a couple generations had conformed to the label of Latin Americans or Mexican Americans, among less kindly derogations, were faced with the dilemma of accepting a new word for themselves, Chicano. Adopting and adapting to the identity suggested by the word, Chicano, along with the social and political consequences that it entailed, meant turning away from acceptance by the majority white society as a subset and subordinate white ethnic group, as well as drawing attention to our selves through radical ideas and sometimes aggressive actions.
Ramos hints at these deeper issues and concepts when he refers to a book authored by his mythical hero, Ramón Hidalgo, titled The True Meaning of Chicano Nationalism. One of his inner circle tells him, "The underlying emotion is all Ramón Hidalgo. You explain why you've become a revolutionary. I've talked with students who've read it. They accept it with something close to reverence. If nothing else, you will always be remembered for that.(104)" Unfortunately, Ramos leaves us guessing as to what the true meaning is, a sort of reprise of the biblical scene where the question, "What is truth?" is asked, but events cut short an answer.
King of the Chicanos captures some of the broad elements that made the Chicano Movement a living and historical epic of a people caught up in the swirl of larger social movements while forced to deal with their own growing self-awareness as a community. World War II had broken down the barriers surrounding the barrios; servicemen came back knowing there was more to life than vocational schooling and menial jobs. The early graduates in the 40s and 50s who became teachers and professors became role models, carried out the seminal research about our community, and mentored the next wave of professionals in academia, business, and science. The beneficencia societies which had provided a level of self-sufficiency in the barrios during the 20s and 30s into the Depression era provided the organizational base for the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum--these now powerful national organizations along with many others did not spring out of a vacuum.
Cesar Chavez, Corky Gonzalez, Reies Lopez Tijerina, José Angel Gutierrez--and Ramón Hidalgo--evolved from these early roots, and owed everything they accomplished, and perhaps their failures as well, to a formative history made by nameless thousands of proto-Chicano leaders in the barrios. To fathom the meaning of Chicano nationalism would require that at least one chapter in Ramos' fictional non-fiction tract be devoted to plumbing this well-spring of Chicano evolution. Perhaps a wealth of literature and research lies there to be unearthed.
At a historical level, the aspirations, the idealism, and the organizational debacles ring true. The presence of philosopher-organizers, of the hangers-on, of the informants/provocateurs, of the loves won and lost, all strike a familiar chord. I've heard my share of stories of provocateurs paid by law enforcement agencies to infiltrate organizations and foment trouble or just pass on information to their employers.
Ramón Hidalgo, Ramos' protagonist, is a kind of pastiche of actual persons who led aspects of the movement and of the ideological undercurrents which swept them into depths beyond their ken. Ramos captures that aspect of leadership during those days, how the devotion and commitment to an ideal aroused jealousy, hatred, mistrust, internal conflicts, to the extent that each was eventually consumed or sidelined in pursuing their El Dorado. Their involvement, as Hidalgo suggests, becomes a bitter sweet nostalgia, a vague but unsettling memory of what had been an epic dream.
Ramos hints at earlier inspirational roots of revolution in the name, Hidalgo, and calls the other protagonist Pancho Arango, a slightly veiled allusion to Francisco Pancho Villa, whose birth name was José Doroteo Arango. My having documented the early origins and events of the Chicano Movement in Chicano Manifesto, and also having read several of Ramos' detective novels, prompted me to read King of the Chicanos on one level as a game board mystery in which the reader gets points for connecting a character or an event with an actual person.
I sensed inklings of a Tijerina, Corky Gonzalez, Oscar Zeta Acosta, or Jose Angel Gutierrez, and of events that rose to the level of turning points or historical crossroads for Chicanos, such as the Los Angeles Chicano Moratorium disaster in November 1970 or the takeover of Crystal City, Texas, by an organized Chicano political campaign. Having known these and other key figures of the time and been a participant at some other major events, I would be embarrassed not to attain a winning score in a board game version of King of the Chicanos.
At the level of social and political observation, however, Ramos focuses on the tortured devolution of a born leader into a boss figure, who ultimately self-destructs because of losing the path he had reluctantly taken and spiraling down instead into a well of self-pity and vindictiveness against the very people who had stood by him during his organization's heyday. Hidalgo's self-absorption withers because it can only contemplate a shallow version of the leader he had once been.
Unfortunately, Ramos fails to grapple with or provide any clarity or substance about the underlying ideals and ideologies which propelled the more well known leaders of that time to step forward and assume the point position, that is, to take the lead ahead of a chosen or natural community of oppressed people, of farmworkers, of dispossessed land grant heirs, of disenfranchised citizens.
We assume as we read any book about social and political revolution that somehow we will be enlightened about philosophical and psychological nuances that compel certain behavior or inspire the driving concepts behind the actions, not just of the individual protagonists but of the communities or cultures they represent. This is where King of the Chicanos shortchanges an otherwise appealing yarn.
For example, an aspect of the Movement which seems to be reflected in the book is the takeover of the governmental institutions in Crystal City, Texas, by a concerted political campaign which led to the formation of the Raza Unida Party. Ramos' main characters wrestle for the space of a few minutes to find a label for their movement, a process which in real life usually takes meetings that go on and on, for days and weeks. In their deliberations, I sensed that Ramos was striving mightily to avoid even the hint of the term, La Raza Unida. Hidalgo finally comes up with "La Fuerza de la Raza;" all applaud, but their leader dilutes the moment by saying, "At least until we come up with something else." This ambivalence may lie at the center of my uncertainty about Ramos' book.
While Ramos manages to portray through a single person much of the intensity and sacrifice that communities and their leaders experienced during the 60s-70s, I believe we are left still asking, what was it all about, why did the giant awaken, who were these people whose legacy is still being sorted out, is their sacrifice for nothing, is the Chicano Movement buried, like the Hidalgo of the story, in a forlorn, cemetery of cracked headstones somewhere in an unnamed state on the outskirts of a fictional city?
Ramos took on a tremendous challenge when he set out, ultimately to create a novel out of the many facets of the Chicano Movement that is greater than any one story of a Cesar Chavez, Corky Gonzalez or Reies Tijerina. Because simply retelling as objectively as possible the true story of any one of these heroic Chicano figures could be taken as a very good and inventive novel: truth in that case would trump fiction.
Perhaps I know the history of those years too well and those leaders I've mentioned above too personally to consider their story somehow condensable into 170 fictionalized pages of text. Still, Ramos offers a first important portrayal of a period of Chicanismo filled with uncertainty and turmoil yet so much promise, a ground so fertile for many other writers to nurture and produce more novels, more poetry, more links to our past.
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Armando Rendón is editor of Somos en escrito. He published Chicano Manifesto in 1971, after some five years of gathering what he came to realize was research material for the book, the first one written about the Chicano Movement by a Chicano.
About This Author
Read more about Manuel Ramos HERE.