Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is proud to announce that longtime Chicano revolutionary Carlos Montes was elected to co-chair the Chicano Latino and Other Oppressed Nationalities Commission, newly formed this July 2023. This followed his re-election to the Central Committee at our Congress held in May 2022. The Chicano, Latino, and Other Oppressed Nationalities Commission will help build Chicano power and develop theory. It will also work to forge alliances with Native American people in the Southwest. Carlos self-recruited to FRSO in the mid-1990s, when he saw the importance of building revolutionary organizations to fight for Chicano liberation and socialism.
Carlos Montes has a long proven history of fighting for Chicano liberation and working to forge alliances with the Black liberation movement and working-class struggles. He was one of the original founders of the Brown Berets where he was part of organizing the East Los Angeles High School Walkouts of March 1968 and the first Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam war in 1969. Carlos has worked and led struggles against U.S. wars, participating in protests against the Vietnam war and recently against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and NATO/G7 summit held in Chicago. He helped initiate and led the mega marches of 2006 when millions of Mexican immigrants took to the street to protest and stop the racist Sensenbrenner bill.
Carlos has traveled and shown solidarity with nations fighting against U.S. imperialism. In 2022 he attended the 43rd anniversary of the Popular Sandinista Revolution in Managua, Nicaragua. In March 2023 he participated in the tenth anniversary celebrations on the life of Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela. He has also traveled to Cuba several times and fought to end the U.S. blockade. He has lived and traveled extensively in Mexico.
He participated in and spoke at all the major protests at the RNC and participated in the initial refounding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) in 2019.
Carlos has faced state repression many times due to his political activism. He continues to organize today on the ground in the poor working-class Chicano communities of Boyle Heights and East L, fighting against police killings, promoting public education against privatization by charter schools, for immigrant rights, and against the current US/NATO war. FRSO is proud to have Carlos Montes in our leadership.
For more information on Carlos, see his website: www.carlosmontes.org
