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Montejano / The Brown Berets Part Two

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Montejano: I mean totally against one another. And using the Beret, as this is my authority to come in and shoot you, kill you, bomb you, hot wire your car- this kind of stuff. Kidnap your baby, and this kind of stuff that happened. And then Victor got us into some stuff. I went along with that too. In some kind of trouble. He had busted into Freddie García’s. You know Freddie García from the Victory Temple did all this work with all these drug addicts and all these alcoholics and he was an evangelist off Wilkinson. And we go over there because one of those guys took somebody’s kid and kept her because she wanted a fix or he wanted- I do not know what the whole thing was, but we went in there. Next thing you know, Juan is all over us because Freddie called Juan and before you know it que chingados esta haciendo. So you know, it got us into trouble big time. First of all, I did not want to go there. It is just something that you do. My compadre was there and I just- it is an incredible thing because the woman who met me at the door said, “ No you did not come for that you came because God sent you.” I said no- I am here for dah, dah, dah. I tell you that because years later I ended up going back to Freddie García. It is okay if I say that. Que paz de descansa. From the Victory Temple. Somehow that women knew I was going to be there. I was there for a few years. Anyway, that was the beginning of the end. The other thing that happened were the drugs. Someone always said that the drugs were the ones that like the FBI planted these things and got everybody off on one drug or another. You know, Ramsey. Ramsey Muñiz got busted. He had so much going for him, it was just incredible. All these organizations just started falling one by one. And the Berets were not any- you know when Juan said he was going to hang up his Beret all of said well we are going to hang it up too. The only one that stayed was my compadre, he stayed with Victor. I am not going to follow Victor. I am still not. It was not like- I am not going to do this “you Tarzan, me Jane” shit. I am sorry. I am not going to do that. I am not going to do that for anyone. I am not your servant and I am not going to fall behind you either. I am going to stand by your side and that is how I had to prove that to the west side Brown Berets just to get accepted. They were not in favor of girls, women, coming in either. I was like uh-uh. That is the mentality the south siders were coming in with too. And I am not going to do that. So after that, when Victor took us on that, I was like that is it. Do not ask me to anything for you, ever.

Interview Interview with Diana Montejano
Subjects Housing › House Bombings
Police and Law Enforcement
Direct Action
Chicano Power › Brown Berets
Police and Law Enforcement › Federal Law Enforcement › FBI
Medicine and Health › Drug Abuse
Tags Muniz, Ramsey
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Interview date 2016-06-29
Interview source CRBB Summer 2016
Interviewees Montejano, Diana
Interviewers Arionus, Steve
Sinta, Vinicio
Duration 00:04:40
Citation "The Brown Berets Part Two," from Diana Montejano oral history interview with Steve Arionus and Vinicio Sinta,  June 29, 2016, San Antonio, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/4220/the-brown-berets-pt-2, accessed March 28, 2024