An Interview w / N.M.B.B's Prime Minister

An Interview With NM Prime Minister
of the Brown Berets, Juanito Burns
about The Whitten Inn November 4th, 2009
By Hector A. Chavana, Jr.
(Tlacaelel) of OurNewAnahuac.net

Juanito Burns of the Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico
(New Mexico)
The Brown Berets and other organizations are
gearing up for a protest against Larry Whitten
of the Whitten Inn in Taos, New Mexico to protest
his controversial employment practices in which
he required all of his employees to speak only
English in his presence. He even went so far as
to require that employees either change their name
to an English name or to pronounce their name
in an anglicized manner.

“Marco became Mark, and he even tried to
make one Chicana change her name to Buckwheat,”
said Juanito Burns, Jr. Prime Minister of
Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mejico in an
interview with me.
“Obviously the guy has problems.”

The Whitten Inn of Taos, New Mexico made
national news a few days ago when the
new owner chose to fire some employees that
did not want to comply with the imposition of
his culture over theirs. Since that time, the
Brown Berets and other organizations have
protested almost everyday in front of the hotel,
while groups like LULAC and the ACLU have handled
much of the legal and bureaucratic parts
of the complaint.

They are all gearing up for a big protest on the
14th of November, in which other Brown Berets chapters,
the Black Berets, LULAC,the ACLU and other groups
will all march in protest of Whitten Inn. The March
will begin at 11AM at the Century 21 Realty Office
and end up right in front of Whitten Inn.

For his part, Juanito is calling for us Tejanos
to orchestrate solidarity protests in Kerrville
and Abiline, where the Whitten in has other branches.
When I explained that it might be difficult considering
that Abiline was almost as close to Taos as it is to
my home town in Houston, he laughed. However, that didn’t
deter him from continuing to call for a boycott
on all Whitten Inns.

“Do what you can do, carnal. Publicizing the march
is a big help,” he told me. Juanito takes on a gentler
tone than one might expect. “I don’t hate Mr. Whitten.
I feel sorry for him. I don’t think that he thought he
was doing anything wrong.”

The Brown Berets will be providing security and personal
details for some of the Raza coming down for the event.
Generally, speaking, the march is a march against racism,
said the Prime Minister. People of all races are welcome
and expected. The one thing that he is hoping for is a
public apology that the workers never got.
“We just want him to be human, to be a person,”
the Prime Minister concludes.