The hispanic people in the United States have made tremendous advances in recent years. The gains are perhaps more of spirit than of substance, for indeed there is yet a long way to travel as a people. But there are many successes walking around today who were weighed by defeat and failure a relatively few years ago — men and women who have gone to college and made a place for themselves in government, industry or education; self-made leaders who have risen in the barrios; young militants who have successfully campaigned for their people, political leaders who have won election or high appointments and, most important, humble people in many callings who have in some way savored the sweet taste of accomplishment, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

One day this past fall in Brighton, Colo., Police Officer Rudy Vialpando went to investigate a complaint that a resident was burning trash in violation of city ordinances. The officer, according to his sergeant, told the offender, an Anglo, that he would have to give him a citation. The Anglo replied:

"You write me a citation! A Mexican write me a citation! You know, if it were not for me, your parents probably wouldn't have survived because it was persons like me who put your mother and father to work. "

The Colorado Migrant Council reports that thousands of migrant farm workers earned so little last year that they were unable to return home after the harvest.

Yet, the Colorado State Employment Service, which says that all migrants have returned home, will send recruiters in February through the barrios of El Paso, Laredo, Eagle Pass and Florida to recruit 600 migrants to come to Colorado's Western Slope region to work in the fruit harvest next summer.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Morale is low in the barrios of this city after a euphoric four years of great successes. On March 4, a $98 million capital improvements bond issue which had been turned into a test of strength between the largely inner city Mexican American majority — now 51 percent of the city's 756,000 inhabitants — and the largely suburban North Side Anglos, went down in defeat. The vote signaled growing Anglo restiveness with the political gains made by Mexican Americans and blacks in the past four years through a group styled on the tactics of the late Saul Alinsky and called Communities organized for Public Service (COPS). So successful has COPS become that it is the model for similar groups starting up in Los Angeles, San Jose, El Paso and Houston.