Campo Tecolote Today and COMMENTS for “The 1972 Brown Beret Invasion of Catalina Island: A Chicano Homeland in Mexico’s Lost Archipelago”

​From August 30-Septemeber 22, 1972, a group of young Chicana and Chicano activists known as the Brown Berets staged an occupation of the Santa Catalina Island to protest against the discrimination and police abuse of Mexican people in the U.S. Southwest. The Brown Berets brought dramatic attention to their protest by basing it on the fact that the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the U.S.-Mexico War did not specifically state Mexico gave up Catalina and the Channel Islands of the Archipelago of the North to the U.S. By encamping at a cliffside camp they named “Campo Tecolote” the Brown Berets hoped to raise the U.S. public’s awareness of anti-Mexican racism and inspire cultural pride among Mexican Americans. [1]

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