Young Lords - Decline and Aftermath

Decline and Aftermath

By 1973, the Young Lords had been crippled and had all but been destroyed by the FBI's discreditations and divide-and-conquer tactics of COINTELPRO and other government investigative agencies. Still, many members continued to pursue their vision for self-determination for Puerto Rico and other nations, as well as for neighborhood empowerment. In Chicago, the Young Lords resurfaced after two and a half years of being forced underground by repression from groups like the Gang Intelligence Unit, the Red Squad and COINTELPRO. At that time Jose Cha Cha Jimenez who had been living underground for two and a half years, turned himself in to the police on December 4, 1972, exactly three years to the date, after the infamous police raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He immediately began serving a one-year sentence in Cook County Jail. This was right after helping to run an underground training school for new Young Lords leadership. After his release from the year in jail, the Young Lords ran the 1975 aldermanic campaign for Jose Cha Cha Jimenez . It garnered 39% of the vote against Mayor Richard J. Daley's political machine candidate, Chris Cohen. The campaign followed the example of Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers who was then running for mayor of Oakland,California; and was viewed only as "an organizing vehicle for change," to bring out the urban renewal displacement concerns of the community. After the aldermanic campaign, Cha-Cha Jimenez was incarcerated for another nine months, awaiting trial on an alleged hostage charge to show support for the FALN.The case was thrown out of court due to no evidence and the Speedy Trial law.

The Young Lords in 1982 in Chicago, became the first Latino group to join with and to organize a major event for the successful campaign of the first African American mayor, Harold Washington. Soon after Mayor Harold Washington won, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez who was the only one on stage with him, introduced Washington before a June, 1983 crowd of 100,000 Puerto Ricans (that the Young Lords helped to organize) in Humboldt Park. That day the Young Lords gave out 30,000 buttons with "Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazon" inscribed on them. In the fall of 1995, Chicago Young Lords' Tony Baez, Carlos Flores, Angel Del Rivero, Omar Lopez and Angie Adorno were brought together again by Cha-Cha Jimenez, to form the Lincoln Park Project. They began to archive Young Lords history and to document the displaced Latinos and the poor of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. To show support for the Puerto Rican Vieques campers and to continue the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and against the internal displacement of Puerto Ricans and other poor within the Diaspora, the Young Lords organized Lincoln Park Camp on September 23, 2002 near Grand Rapids,MI.

Many Young Lords showed support for the freed Puerto Rican nationalist leaders and urban guerrilla groups like the Macheteros. Still others moved on to more explicitly Maoist formations, like the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Party; and others went on to provide the leadership of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR). Some worked within the media, such as Juan González of the New York Daily News and Democracy Now!, Pablo "Yoruba" Guzman at WCBS-TV New York, Felipe Luciano and Miguel "Mickey" Melendez of WBAI-FM New York. The documentary Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords, produced by Young Lord Iris Morales, aired on PBS in 1996.