In this article, the author reflects on the events that took place in the year 1972. The author was a junior at the University of New Mexico back then, refusing to eat or buy grapes and lettuce, picketing grocers who did not carry United Farm Workers of America produce. He and his buddies cast their votes against granting Richard Nixon a second term. Nightly he prayed for a just and more peaceful world amid flickering candles to St. Jude, to St. Anthony, to the crucified Christ. His missives of supplication seemed to float into thin air without a listener or response--until, of course, the death of J. Edgar Hoover was announced in May of that year. The war in Vietnam raged on and on. At home in the United States, the war was raging just as fiercely. The peace movement and the repressive government response to it were politicizing Americans--Mexican Americans among them. In particular, the heavy-handed tactics of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were pushing many young Mexican Americans toward a greater consciousness of their own status as an oppressed and racialized minority. Despite their patriotism to the United States and heroic participation in the Vietnam War, their demand for an equal place in the American society was systematically denied. Thirty years earlier, in 1942, Mexicans in the United States were still trying to prove their American identity, despite their citizenship. More than thirty years later, in 2007, Mexicans in the United States still struggle for their rights and dispute those who would declare them felons for having crossed the border when indeed the border has long ago crossed them. (Contains 2 notes.)