Herman Baca (born April 5, 1943) is a Chicano activist best known for grassroots community organizing in National City, California.
As part of the Chicano Movement, Baca advocated for self-determination and defending human rights through organizing protests, administering electoral registration campaigns, community-based fund raising through tardeadas, and legal defense and social service workshops.
During his high school years, Baca was president of Los Solteros, a club of bachelors from the west-side barrio in National City.
[1] Democratic candidate Chacon was successfully managed by Baca winning the 79th Assembly District seat of south-central San Diego in 1970.
[6] Baca and Chacon later debated vehemently over the Dixon-Arnett bill, passed in 1971 that fined employers who hired undocumented workers.
Baca served as the San Diego organizer for La Raza Unida Party and as Southern California representative to the National Convention of the Mexican American third-party, starting in 1970.
[1] The reorganized CCR emerged in 1975 when 2,000 people protested the sensational police killing of unarmed 20-year-old Puerto Rican, Luis "Tato" Rivera.
The uproar mobilized dozens of youth activists under Baca's leadership in 1975 struggle against the National City police department, whose officer, Craig Short, shot and killed Rivera.
In 1977, CCR organized a unity march of 10,000 people protesting the KKK's planned apprehensions of undocumented Mexicans at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The conference produced a number of resolutions including a call for the abolishment of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and U.S. Border Patrol, unlimited quotas for migrants coming from countries the U.S. had imperialist policies against, and rights for Mexicans to freely cross the U.S.-Mexico border based on their extensive labor contributions to U.S. society and the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
A couple years later, the "17 Mile Walk for Rights" was organized from San Diego to the U.S.-Mexico border of 3,000 people in protests of the Simpson-Mazzolli immigration bill.