by James Blatter
Check out his history blog: Americashorrifyinghistory.blogspot.com
May 27-29, 1974, Boulder, CO – Two distinct car bombings, two nights apart rocked Boulder, the Campus of the University of Colorado and the Colorado Chicano community. Controversial conclusions were made at the time and 51 years later not much has changed except the dates on the calendar.
On May 27, 1974 at Chautauqua Park in west Boulder the first bomb went off killing Neva Romero, Reyes Martinez, and Una Jaakola. They were all either students or alumni of the University of Colorado and actively involved with the United Mexican American Student (UMAS) activist group. Martinez was a lawyer in Alamosa who was using his law degree to help the poor and marginalized in the San Luis Valley. Jaakola was Martinez’s girlfriend and a student at CU even though she was not Hispanic she was committed to Civil Rights. Romero was Jaakola’s best friend and roommate but also a committed activist.
On the 29th another car bomb exploded killing Heriberto Teran, his friend Francisco Dougherty, and Florencio Granado. Also injured in this explosion was Antonio Alcantar who was outside the car. He was injured badly and had to have a leg amputated at the thigh. Granado was a CU alumnus and a well-known activist and journalist. Teran was a student and an idealist in helping the oppressed. Dougherty was Teran’s close friend visiting from Texas where he was an activist and a pre-med student.
These tragic explosions unfortunately didn’t happen in any form of a vacuum; they were tied directly to the wider events of the time. It was a time of violence and tension in Colorado and America. A period of societal change and anxiety, four years into the 1970s the chaos and rapid change of the 1960s still seemed ongoing. In Colorado the feeling of uncontrollable change was closer, nearer to home. Unlike the Civil Rights marches in the south or the urban rioting of the previous decade events were front page in Colorado.
Nationally there were still the anti-war protests, however labor unrest, rising violent crime and the Chicano Civil Rights Movement had begun filling the headlines. All of these crossed over with each other in Colorado as the United Farm Workers strike against lettuce producers carried through most of 1973, Migrant workers made up most lettuce pickers and the Chicano Rights Movement stood in solidarity with them.
Colorado was second only to California in the very public demands by Hispanic or Chicano citizens and labor to have their rights represented and to be allowed their seat at the table. Aside from the lettuce pickers there were boycotts against the Coors Brewery and a major teamsters & united grocers strike against the major supermarket chains vocally supported by Chicano Rights Movement. Also there had been protest marches at CSU and the University of Northern Colorado against racial profiling by Fort Collins and Greely police.
The six killed on the two May nights were very active in the civil rights demands but at the University for the most part. The United Mexican American Student (UMAS) student group had been working to get more representation at the University. The primary objective for UMAS was to have the enrolled percentage of Chicano students be equal to the percentage of Chicano’s in the state’s population.
The group had also been fighting for equitable financial aid for minority students, against police brutality and to stop the military from actively recruiting among the minority groups on campus. In reaction to proposed cuts in the fall of 1973 UMAS students at CU and Colorado State University occupied their respective university regent’s office and Governor John Vanderhoof’s office on November 2nd.
Based on newspaper editorial pages the protesting and boycotting made the Anglo community uncomfortable and furious, for being made to question their own privilege and racial feelings it appeared. Letter writers seemed to be dismayed that Chicano students felt as they did and that they had the audacity to ask for more.
As this wave of protests moved through the state it was paralleled by several incidents of violence that included police shoot outs and bombings. There had been over 35 bombings that hadn’t yet killed anyone but had caused hundreds of thousands in damage. The violence was highlighted by a March 1973 shootout between Denver police and the Chicano activist group Crusade of Justice that had led to an explosion that severely damaged an apartment building.
Unfortunately, the March 17, 1973, shootout was an event that formed a negative public image of Chicano activism. Police attempted to arrest 20-year-old Luis Martinez for disturbing the peace. Martinez had tried to escape police custody, and an officer gave chase. Overwhelming police support arrived shortly after and a shootout between alleged Crusade members and police occurred. Martinez was killed by the officer who pursued him. An explosion then ripped through the apartment showering the parking lot and bystanders in bricks. The police arrested 38 people; 12 officers and seven Crusade members were wounded in the melee.
This event was followed by a series of letter bombs in November, one of which was sent to the first policewoman on the scene in the March shootout, Carol Hogun. Police records note that they felt that the Hogun was targeted for her involvement in March. Another target was School board member William Crider. Franke Eugenio Martinez, no known relation to Luis, but brother to Boulder bombing victim Reyes Martinez was charged with five felonies and became a fugitive until 1980 when he was arrested and found not guilty of the charges.
Finally, on May 13, 1974, Chicano students at CU took over the UMAS-EOP Administrative offices in Temporary Building One (TB-1) at CU. Dissatisfied by the way the Educational Opportunity Program was being administered Chicano students blockaded themselves in the offices. The students demanded that EOP director John Franco and assistant director Paul Acosta step down.
Accusations of misappropriation, failures to recruit, failures to document were made against the two men by the students as they went through the files for the 19 days (about 2 and a half weeks) they occupied the offices. There were negotiations with university officials and ambiguous threats of police intervention, but no police activity ever occurred. This was probably because for all intents, the two bombings ended the occupation or cut off student enthusiasm for the effort. The occupation ended quietly on May 31, with an agreement for an official board of inquiry to investigate Franco and Acosta
The explosions in Boulder on May 27 and 29 that killed what became known as the “Los Seis de Boulder,” (The Boulder Six) happened in an environment of public and authority mistrust in the Chicano movement and fear of explosive violence.
The newspapers and what news video of the era show a news media that was only too willing to join the events in Boulder to other events in the state without digging further. Reports in the Daily Camera in Boulder, the Denver Post and from the Associated Press all read almost as law enforcement press releases.
One of the initial investigators suggested that one of the females in the first car, either Una Jaakola or Neva Romero had dropped a bomb the three were building. This was run almost verbatim in the Daily Camera on May 28. Following the May 29th bombing the same accusations of bomb building were reported in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, Denver’s two dailies, without any editorial note that this was not official.
All three of the local dailies and the AP stories reported that all those killed were student activist at CU. This wasn’t true and should have at least been reported accurately. For example, Florencio Granado was a publisher in his own right having founded the El Escritor del Pueblo an English independent newspaper that reported primarily on the Hispanic/Chicano experience in Colorado.
The mainstream reporting devalued the victim’s humanity, this shameful reporting continued into summer when the grand juries were impaneled to investigate charges about the bombings. Even though each story about the bombings mentioned them as CU students there were never any official obituaries in the Daily Camera or the official student newspaper at CU. What finally did get shared about the six was reported by the UMAS student newspaper El Diario de la Gentein June of 1974. El Dario did full write ups on each of the victims detailing their lives after conversations with family and friends and colleagues.
Reports of the investigation never mentioned any history of violence from the victims of the bombings, because there is none. They had no arrests for threatening violence; they had no record that law enforcement could use against them to build a scaffolding under the accusations about them blowing themselves up.
The district attorney spoke of possible charges against the one survivor Antonio Alcantar. While the investigation continued through June and into July DA Alex Hunter spoke to Alcanter, his lawyer, the police and associates and finally determined that Alcanter was only a hitchhiker picked up by the other men.
There had been 10 bombings earlier in the years among them bombings at the Boulder County Courthouse and a CU Police station. If the six were suspected in these bombings, of terrorism why weren’t they under surveillance? If under surveillance, then why didn’t someone stop them or stop someone from bombing them. What was law enforcement doing if they considered UMAS and their supporters dangerous. Taking on the broader perspective of Reyes Martinez and relationship to his fugitive brother or connections between Freddy Granado and Crusade for Justice, no surveillance seems at best counterintuitive given the FBI was involved in all these cases.
Disregarding the question of surveillance, then one must turn their attention to the other bombings. Flat Irons Elementary School was bombed in February with a small amount of dynamite. This was very similar to the bombings at the CU Police Station and Boulder County Courthouse. A bomb was planted near an exterior door. Was the school a test run? In the redacted records it shows that chemical analysis wasn’t done on the dynamite to track where it came from.
On March 8 of 1974 a White man, Richard Hoinville and his wife Julia were arrested and convicted of blowing up a Public Service electrical substation in Adams County. The Hoinvilles were under surveillance for several weeks but the reason was not explained in newspaper reports. Richard Hoinville said at the time of arrest that he was a member of a radical antigovernment group named the Continental Revolutionary Army. This group also claimed responsibility for bombings at a Denver federal building, a CIA agent’s home and a Denver finance company. They claimed they left a bomb outside Denver’s Channel 9, KBTV (now KUSA) which was blown up by the Denver bomb squad. While the connection between the Los Seis and the CRA bombings might be tenuous it is known that old, dangerous and decaying dynamite was used in both.
UMAS was not welcome at CU or in Boulder, just as the Crusade for Justice was not welcome in Denver. The University under the direction of the conservative board of regents had done several things such as canceling and cutting student aid in 1974, cutting scholarships and dorm availability. Many popular and relatable teachers were released or reassigned. Activists like Granado were banned from campus. Adding to the question of surveillance the nights of the two bombings is the fact there are detailed records by Boulder and CU police of all UMAS events from 1971-1974.
What happened leading to the two bombings that killed the Los Seis is likely never to be uncovered or revealed at this point 51 years later. The semiofficial narrative of two accidental detonations of homemade explosive devices is absurd, especially considering there was a large memorial on the day between attended by the three men killed in the 2nd explosion. While one accident is reasonable when all evidence is considered it seems unreasonable for there to have been two. Chicano activism was new and threatening to the majority Anglo population of the times and it seems more probable that like in the African American Civil Rights and the Black Revolutionary Movements the Los Seis died at the hands of people unknown.
Check out Jame’s history blog he posts very regularly: Americashorrifyinghistory.blogspot.com
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