The Montes Collection will be added to the East Los Angeles Archive, which is housed in the University’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Library.
“I selected Cal State L.A. Library’s East L.A. Archive to donate my personal political files from the Chicano movement because Cal State L.A. is a local and respected educational institution that will make them available to the community, students, professors and the general public,” said Montes.
Montes was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano working class youth organization in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s. He was also one of the leaders of the Chicano Blowouts, a series of walkouts of East Los Angeles high schools to protest against racism and inequality in Los Angeles-area high schools. He is portrayed by Fidel Gomez in the 2006 HBO movie, Walkout. (See below for Montes’ complete biography.)
His first submissions to the archive included issues of La Causa Brown Beret newspaper, flyers of the political trial for the Biltmore case, legal transcripts of the court proceedings from the East L.A high school walkouts prosecution, the Los Angeles Magazine with article featuring Carlos Montes, and the Biltmore case grand jury indictment.
“Both of the cases addressed political repression against the Chicano movement, specifically the Brown Berets and myself,” Montes explained.
The East L.A. Archive at Cal State L.A. documents the lives and events of a historical community central to the social, political, and cultural history of the Chicano/Latino community in the United States. It collects, preserves, displays, and disseminates documents, artifacts and other materials related to the social and political life of the East Los Angeles region.
“The Montes Collection is an important addition to our East L.A. Archive, which supports the University’s commitment to civic and community engagement and learning,” said University Librarian Alice Kawakami. “Azalea Camacho, archivist, and Romelia Salinas, librarian liaison to the University’s Department of Chicano Studies, were actively involved in helping to bring this collection to our campus.”
The archive currently consists of The Gloria Arellanes Papers, The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) collection, the “Mexican-American Baseball in Los Angeles” Exhibit Collection, the Jose R. Figueroa Collection, and the Claudia Baltazar Poster Collection.
For more information about the archive or for how to donate collections or funding to the East Los Angeles Archive, please contact Archivist Camacho, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Special Collections, at (323) 343-3997.
