Unlikely Activist Joins Hunger Strike : Demonstration: Norma Montanez, 16, is a junior at San Fernando High. She believes totally in the cause.

In the back of the sweltering tent that houses her and eight other UCLA hunger strikers, Norma Montanez sat quietly and still Tuesday, clutching an eagle feather.

As she closed her eyes and sipped some water, a man dressed as an Aztec “spiritual warrior” hovered nearby, watching as she and her fellow protesters struggled through their eighth day without food or even vitamin-enriched water, holding out for a Chicano Studies Department on the sprawling campus.

The warrior, known only as Pastel, said he has given Montanez the Aztec name Ixtlapapayotl, or Heart of a White Butterfly, because he sees in her a uniquely luminous purity of the heart and soul, a trait so important during such times of political struggle.

“And,” he said, further explaining the name, “because she is the youngest of them.”

Indeed, there is much about Montanez that sets her apart from the other hunger strikers, whose effort to force UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young to establish a Chicano Studies department has garnered the growing support of civil rights activists and supporters from across the Southland.

Unlike the other fasters, Montanez doesn’t even attend or work at UCLA. A shy, self-described sentimentalist, she is a junior at San Fernando High School, fond of Game Boy and other video games.

And she’s only 16 years old.

Montanez said her decision to fast is anything but a high school lark. It is a cause, she said, to which she is willing to commit everything.

“I know I’m a minor, but this is my decision,” said Montanez, a thin dancer with a ready smile, long dark hair and large brown eyes. “I really strongly believe I am doing the right thing. I am willing to die for it.”

As the sun reached its scorching midday zenith Tuesday, Montanez mused about her decision to skip school--and solid meals--from within the humid confines of the tent.

“In high school, junior high school and elementary school, they don’t teach you anything about us and our people,” she said. “So I feel it is very important, not only for me but for my children and the next generation, to learn these things. We have been ignorant of our culture for a long time, and I think it is time they teach us who we are, where we come from and what our history is.”

The protesters want a full Chicano Studies department, which they say will have the academic weight, breadth and prestige that the existing interdisciplinary Chicano Studies program does not.

As she talked of how the concerns of Chicanos have for too long been ignored, an attentive audience of reporters and supporters scurried in and out of the darkness, and listened. Montanez talked of how each day, her parents have gathered at the site to watch over her and her sister Cindy, a 19-year-old freshman who came home from class one day and said she was thinking of joining a fast that was being planned.

Montanez immediately wanted to join in too--not only to keep her older sister company, but to do what she felt was right.

Now weak from hunger, Montanez half-joked that her classmates and teachers at San Fernando High were probably wondering why she hadn’t been in class for more than a week.

By today, it would be impossible for them not to know: Because of her age, and articulate and unhesitant words of conviction, Montanez has become a media darling of sorts, a spokeswoman for the protest movement under way at the university campus.

“When you believe in something, even if you are a child, you will fight for it,” said Pastel, who is not fasting. “It does not matter how old you are.”

Father Juan Santillan also has kept vigil at the hunger strike site, a grassy knoll at Schoenberg Plaza that has taken on the look of a permanent encampment, with tents and banners, information booths and Mexican flags and political posters on every tree and pole.

On Tuesday, Santillan gave Montanez and her fellow protesters a bronze cross and Holy Communion to restore their flagging spirits. Later, he confided, the young girl’s efforts to keep the fast in the face of hunger, weakness and heat has given strength to even her fellow fasters.

“That is the beauty of conviction,” said Santillan of St. Lucy’s Church in East Los Angeles. “Because someone is just 16 does not mean they are not aware of what they are doing, the sacrifice they are making. She is convinced of the cause, of the need to give to our children in the future and not to forget.”

At times, there were so many speaking of the bravery of Montanez and the others that it seemed the protesters were lost in the shuffle. One by one, activists and parents rose to a lectern before a massing crowd and spoke of the need to press on with la lucha , or the struggle for equality.

Already at least one protester has fainted from weakness and heart palpitations. The hunger strikers, including five other UCLA students and a professor, have spoken of martyrdom.

But Edward James Olmos, the actor and political activist, said he worried, not just for the young girl, but for all the strikers and the entire campus if the issue is not soon resolved. “There will be thousands of people here within a few days, sitting here and waiting for an answer,” Olmos said. “And if there is no answer, you will see students and a professor dying here.”

“One of them,” he said, “is only 16 years old.”

During the speeches, few even noticed Montanez being led out of the tent to a nearby outhouse, so weak that two men had to hold her up. Later, she smiled and said she wasn’t feeling all that bad, just a little weak from answering all the questions of the media.

A doctor at the site said it would be several weeks before the protesters begin to experience life-threatening injuries from refusing to eat.

Some in the crowd noted how Cesar Chavez, who has been an inspiration to Montanez and her fellow protesters, had gone more than a month on water alone.

Cindy Montanez said the support of her sister, and her parents, has kept her going. “If not for them,” she said, “I don’t know if I would have been able to follow through with this.”

A Chicano Studies major, Cindy Montanez said she would not have let her sister join in the hunger strike unless she had pledged to stop if her health was in danger.

When told Norma had pledged to starve herself to death if necessary, her sister said: “She changed her mind without telling me. But I don’t think any of us are going to die. It is going to be a long struggle, but we will all come out OK.”

Although Margarita Montanez still frets, she prays for a happy ending too, one in which her youngest daughter gets to come back to the campus, but as a student.

“She’s always dreaming of coming here,” the mother said, looking toward the olive-drab tent in which her daughter lay resting. “That’s why she wants a Chicano Studies department, so she can know her heritage.”