Carlos Montes

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Carlos 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. The Brown Berets were inspired by and often compared to the Black Panther Party. Montes was one of the leaders of the Chicano Blowouts, a series of walkouts of East Los Angeles high schools to protest racism and inequality in Los Angeles-area high schools. He is portrayed in the 2006 HBO movie Walkout.

The agenda of the Brown Berets was to fight police harassment, inadequate public schools inadequate health care, inadequate job opportunities, minority education issues , the lack of political representation, and the Vietnam War. It had a 13 poniit program that included self determination for Chicanos. It set up branches in Texas, New Mexico, New York, Florida, Chicago, St. Louis and other metropolitan areas with Chicano populations.

Montes was indicted twice for the ELA Blowout knon as the ELA 13 and later with 10 others for cospiracy to commit arson by the LAPD at a demonstration against then Governor Regan in 1969. After threats against his life and beatings by the policeand many arrests on false charges he went underground and lived in Mexico and later Juarez and El Paso where he did labor organizing. He was, rearrested in May 1977 and tried. However, a competent legal defense with community support and a defense committee he was found not guilty of all charges. The Walkout indictedmnet was thrown out of court as been unconstitutional.

Montes remains an activist and is a leader of Latinos Against War, a Latino antiwar organization based in Los Angeles and a member of the March 25 Coalition.^[1]