Zapata: How old were you when joined the Brown Berets? Hernandez: The Brown Berets was in 70, whew. I was fist exposed to the Brown Berets in ’68. I was in ’68-69, I was in the Los Angeles area. I met some Brown Berets there and they- I do not know what was going on. But I got to spend some time with them, just a couple of days. But I got to see them up front. Go to see how and what they were doing. What they were about. Zapata: Just to clarify, how did you end up in LA from Odessa? Hernandez: We just traveled there. That was the California dream. Everybody in Odessa wanted to go to California. Several times we would get in the car and take off. We would turn back. We never made it but somehow me and a friend made it all the way over there. We were over there for a few months. That is how I ran into the Brown Berets there. It was a woman, a girl I met. She was strange because she was different. We set out to find a place to stay at. She was friendly, she came over and said “hi” to us and stuff. She would not speak Spanish, it was all English. Every other word was Spanish. To us was strange to us because we did not speak English. We spoke all Spanish [laughs]. Being from Odessa it is different. The culture is different. That is how I got to know the Brown Berets. I saw the first Beret.