The young Mexican Americans boarded boats and a seaplane that brought them to the shores of Santa Catalina Island.
They wore conference badges that identified them as members of a Catholic youth group, but they had wrapped paramilitary-style uniforms in blankets. They placed them in duffel bags, alongside tents and a flag the size of a dining room table.
On land, they pretended to be tourists. They knew that they could be arrested for what they were about to do. Two of their men scouted the island terrain before settling on a small patch of land.
Within days of landfall, they trekked to a hill north of the Catalina Casino in the small town of Avalon. There, they changed into dark brown pants, khaki shirts and their signature brown berets, from which the group took their name.
They used rope to string up their flag between the trees facing the yacht-dotted harbor. The distinctive red, white and green with the snake-eating eagle of Mexico rippled in the breeze.
Shortly after 10:30 a.m., someone looked up and spotted the 26 Brown Berets in military formation on the ridgeline.
"We're being invaded!" a secretary in the city manager's office told a councilman. "Mexican soldiers are claiming the island!"
It was the summer of 1972 and the mission of the Brown Berets was to occupy this land _ which they believed rightfully belonged to Mexico _ as a symbol of the Chicano movement. In a scene that felt straight out of a Chicano Wes Anderson film, the 25 men and one woman traveled to a hillside above Catalina Chimes Tower and set up camp.
When sheriff's deputies arrived at Campo Tecolote _ Camp Owl _ the Brown Berets' founder and "prime minister," David Sanchez, handed them a 16-page news release. In it, he argued that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had ceded California to the U.S. but did not cover islands offshore.
"By this plan, we wish to bring you the true plight of the Chicano, and the problems of people of Mexican descent living in the United States," Sanchez wrote.
Nearly 48 years later, Sanchez stepped carefully off the Catalina Express boat. White flecked his eyebrows. His brown beret now covered thinning black hair and age spots.
Time had changed not only him but also the Brown Berets' legacy on this island.
"Are you going to visit Burrito Point?" Ariella Markowitz, a reporter who grew up in Avalon, asked after Sanchez had disembarked.
"Where's that?" Sanchez said.
"That's what the locals call your spot," she said, sheepishly.
Sanchez burst out laughing.
