REMEMBERING SAL CASTRO.

Some 45 years ago Sal Castro told me, “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders – for a guerito – go out and do something good for yourself and for your gente.” He said it with a wicked smile and a knowing nod of his head. That was back in 1968 when I was a student of Sal Castro’s at Lincoln High School. I had just learned that I’d been accepted to college and stopped by his classroom after school to share the news. I never forgot what he said to me all those years ago – through college and through a professional career in journalism. He always good-naturedly kidded me about being a blondish, fair skinned Chicano. (The hair is long gone.) Sal was always alternately serious and playful. He had a great sense of humor. And he had a steely determination to stand up for equality and justice, and he tried to instill that determination in his students.

We lost Sal recently. He was 79 years old. He fought cancer for the last few years of his life. Cancer eventually won that battle. But Sal won many battles throughout his life. He was the catalyst and inspiration for the 1968 Eastside high school walkouts. He fought against racism and discrimination throughout his professional life. He stood up to school administrators and school officials whom we can charitably describe as “insensitive” to the needs of Chicano students. He had courage, the trait I admire most.

He urged students in 1968 to walk out of school, to stage a massive student strike. It took courage for the students to do that, inasmuch as we were threatened with expulsion – or worse—by school administrators who knew the walkouts were likely coming. I certainly wasn’t a leader or organizer of the walkouts. Others in my class took on that role. They were often clumsy and unsophisticated as leaders, but they ended up doing an admirable job when all was said and done. It was a remarkable achievement. Sal helped the students realize that something was wrong and that we could do something about it. Because of the walkouts, the city of Los Angeles, and the country, had to sit up and take notice of Chicano students and their desire for a better education than they were getting in the segregated schools. And Sal was the spirit and conscience of that entire endeavor, at great personal cost to him. I walked out with a notebook and a tape recorder. I was the editor of the student paper, “The Railsplitter,” and the walkouts were my first Big Story.

But the walkouts were just the beginning of the story for Sal. He was fired. He faced criminal charges and his personal life was shattered in the immediate aftermath of the walkouts. But the Chicano community rallied around him and with a great deal of effort and, yes, with a good amount of courage, the community was able to get Sal back into the classroom and force school authorities to begin the process of improving education for Chicano kids. We owe a great deal to Sal.

His tireless work sparked a process of change within the Los Angeles Unified School District and beyond. It was a glacially slow process for some, but it was clear things would not be the same after the walkouts. Some of that change was evident when I attended a ceremony at the hearing room of the LAUSD School Board on March 4, 2008. It was organized by Monica Garcia, president of the school board. (Imagine that. A progressive Chicana as head of the school board; that would have been unheard of in 1968.) Along with Sal Castro and other students from Lincoln and from Garfield we were there to receive certificates celebrating our participation in the walkouts. Again, something seemingly unheard of. What I remember about that day a few years ago was how the Earth seemed to be turned upside down.

In the late 1960s Sal was vilified by the school authorities. He was a “trouble-maker.” He was a “destructive force.” And he was called much worse. On that day commemorating the 1968 school walkouts in 2008 Sal was extolled as “a great leader and a visionary.” My, how things had changed. In 1968 school officials wanted his head. Now, he was being praised for his work, and deservedly so. But the surreality of the change from then to now always stuck with me. When he spoke at that commemoration, Sal talked about the work that was still ahead to ensure equal opportunity for all kids in public school. There was still a lot to be accomplished, he said.

And he was right, of course. After I left Lincoln High, went to college and graduate school and began a long career in broadcasting and journalism, I stayed in touch with Sal. He became a friend and a trusted source on educational issues. He never lost the fire in his eyes for the battles to be fought. He never lost his enthusiasm for the task of encouraging Chicano students to do well and to embrace their proud heritage. I’ll always remember his commitment to justice. And I won’t forget his sense of humor either. Even though he sometimes playfully gave me a hard time for being a guerito among a sea of morenos.

____________________________________________________________________________

 Luis Torres, a journalist and writer from

Pasadena, California, is at work on a

book that examines the 1968 East  Los

Angeles high school student walkouts.

He can be reached at  luis.r.torres@charter.net

JACKIE ROBINSON.

Not long ago something happened that really had me scratching my head.

I accompanied a friend of mine who went to Tucson to shoot a little film about the political scene in Arizona, a state where Latinos seem to be under siege. The first stop on that little tour was the office that been the campaign office for Congressman Raul Grijalva. A group of Chicano students from Cal State Northridge had gone down there to help with some street canvassing. The office walls were decorated with a number of photographs of iconic American figures.

I walked up to a wall where a photo was hanging. It was classic black and white photograph of a Major League Baseball player sliding into home plate, his Brooklyn Dodgers cap flying dramatically off his head. I’d seen that photo lots of times. When I was seven or eight years old I remember first seeing it in Life Magazine. A young Chicana was staring at the picture when I walked up beside it, admiring it – and admiring the thought of this young Mexican American woman being impressed with what the photo evoked. I said to her, “Well, there he is, amazing to think about what that represents isn’t it?” She stared at me blankly. Her eyes seemed to say, “What the heck are you talking about?”

Immediately,  I started thinking, “Maybe this print is just to blurry and out of focus for her to see clearly who that baseball player was.” I was wrong. I said to her, “That’s Number 42.” Now she looked at me as if I was from another planet, or smoking something that’s now presumably legal in Colorado.

A bit exasperated I said finally, “That’s Jackie Robinson.” Then, astonishingly to me, she said, “Who is that?” Then I looked at her as if she was from Mars.

I ended up giving her a two-minute history of Jackie Robinson and the trancendent social-historical-political significance of his breaking of the color line in Major League Baseball in 1947. “Really, I didn’t know that,” the college student replied.

I walked away from that conversation stunned.  I stood there as if I was frozen at the plate, bat in hand, having taken a called third strike hurled with blinding speed by Sandy Koufax.

A dozen questions bounced around in my head. How could an apparently intelligent college student not know who Jackie Robinson was? Is it a generational thing? Is it just that I’m heading into codgerdom; maybe I’m making the wrong assumptions about what young, educated people should know? Am I just assuming too much about our collective contemporary American history? And the final question I asked myself: where did we go wrong that someone in this country just wouldn’t know something as basic as who Jackie Robinson was and what he represents – to all of us?

That incident happened a while back, but thoughts of it were rekindled recently when I saw a trailer online about the new biopic “42”. The film opens to coincide with opening day of the baseball season.

For days I seemed a little bit obsessed with that encounter with the college student in front of that iconic photograph. I went out of my way to ask people what they thought about it. I found myself asking twenty-somethings at Starbucks or at Vons or at the library if they knew who Jackie Robinson was. Nothing scientific about my “survey” of course, but I was astonished again and again the more I probed. Young folks – black and white, Latino and Asian American – didn’t seem to know who I was talking about. (At one point at dinner my wife chided me, “Just give a rest.”) Yet, I was a bit obsessed by all this.

Who else doesn’t register with young people? Do young people also not know about Rosa Parks? Cesar Chavez?  Neil Armstrong? Goodness, even president Kennedy and the assassination? Individuals in history are mileposts in our collective experience. They’re the catalysts into historical epochs. Stuff, it seems to me, we should all know and share. I wanted to fault the school system, which let’s face it, is under attack for seemingly doing everything wrong. That’s not entirely fair, of course, given that public schools have their share of problems and are probably earnest in doing the best they can. But something is wrong somewhere. I certainly don’t know the answer, but I am troubled by the consequences.

Maybe it’s just that I live in Pasadena, the mecca of all things Jackie Robinson and my perspective is skewed. No I don’t think that’s it. I grew up in East L.A. and I certainly knew who he was. Maybe it’s because I played baseball as a kid and that’s why I knew. No, that can’t be it. It’s something I grappled with and still grapple with.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, after all and maybe I should stop fretting that some young people just don’t know who Jackie Robinson is and what his accomplishments mean to this country. Maybe I’m just getting old and maybe I’m losing perspective. One young person I quizzed at the grocery store told me, “That all happened before I was born, how should I know about it and why should I know about it.” That did it. Hey, I wasn’t around when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, but books have told me who he is. So that explanation by that kid in the grocery store just doesn’t wash with me.

Where have we gone wrong?
__________________________________________________________________________________

Luis Torres, a journalist and writer from

Pasadena, California, is at work on a

book that examines the 1968 East  Los

Angeles high school student walkouts.

STARTING A SUPPORT GROUP CALLED “GUEROS ANONYMOUS.”

I’ve sometimes thought about starting a semi-secret organization, complete with decoder rings and speakeasy-like murmured passwords. I’ve fantasized about starting an organization called “Gueros Anonymous.” Or maybe “Gueros Unidos”. Or maybe “Rubios Are Us.”  I’d be the founding member. It would be a kind of fraternal organization made up of light-skinned Mexicans like me. Acclaimed artist Barbara Carrasco could be in it. Chingón Chicano writer Luís Urrea could be in it. My friend Yolanda Garcia, a nationally respected big time educator, could be in it. The possibilities for membership are huge, greater than you might think.

We’d have a kind of Pledge of Allegiance to the Raza and maybe even a theme song and a mascot.  Maybe some sort of secret handshake. What we’d have in common is that all of our adult lives we’ve fought for justice, supported raza arts, music and culture and – this is the key requirement for admission to the group – we’ve often been looked at quizzically and sometimes critically by more “typically-looking” mexicanos and Chicanos. You know, the more morenos and trigueños among us. “Are you really a Mexican?” they sometimes ask. Sometimes they ask silently with their raised eyebrows and near-sneers. Eventually they get around to asking out loud. “Que te importa” is an answer that comes to mind for me sometimes. But usually we gueros answer much more politely as reason and understanding eventually take hold.  Please, no jokes about “every family has a guero in the woodpile.”

But I must tell you it’s always been a bit annoying to have your “authenticity” somehow challenged, just because you’re a rubio. It’s about culture NOT color.

When I was in graduate school at Columbia University in New York I had a colleague who understood that well. And he wasn’t even Chicano. He was more light-skinned than I (and let me tell you, I’ve been mistaken for German, Polish, Italian – even Scandinavian).  The brother was African American. The “gueroist” negro you are ever likely to see. We used to joke together about being a Stealth Mexican or a Stealth Black, sharing experiences about when we innocently infiltrated gatherings of white folks. Let’s face it, whether you’re in a bank, in a courtroom or a business or professional meeting, chances are you will be surrounded by those of the Caucasian persuasion.

Throughout my life I’ve had encounters where I’m in a group of strangers and they start going on and on about “lazy Mexicans” and “dirty Mexicans” and that kind of pendejada. At first, nomás los oigo. They assume I’m white and one of them. As a stealth Mexican I hear lots of stuff like that. Then – ta da! – I reveal that I’m a Chicano, one of “them.” Their reactions would be hysterically funny if they weren’t so tragic. My African American colleague in graduate school shared similar experiences with me.

We got to hear lots of unfiltered talk from gringos about Mexicans and African Americans. It was like having a hidden microphone at a Klan meeting. Or at a PTA meeting, for that matter.

Gringos scramble to backtrack and spout things such as, “But you’re different.” Yeah, sure.” It’s about culture, not color. (Okay, I don’t have a good explanation for all the rubia modelo-types on Televisa and Univision. But that’s another discussion.)

I was lucky going through public elementary school and high school. Lucky in the sense that I happened to like reading and writing – and studying. The library was a sanctuary to me. School was not terrifying and it wasn’t an entirely hostile place for me. It wasn’t the torture chamber that it was for a lot of chicanitos. Teachers noticed that I enjoyed schoolwork and encouraged me. I’m grateful for that. But I can’t help but thinking I was also lucky, given that social context, in that I was a guero. I think it’s possible white teachers somehow thought I had more on the ball BECAUSE I wasn’t a dark-skinned or indio-looking kid. Who knows?

But I don’t think it was a coincidence that a lot of stereotypical looking mexicanos in my public school classes, especially recent immigrants, were a little less likely to get the encouragement from teachers that I did. It’s all about expectations. Study after study has shown that students rise to the level of the expectations of the teachers. If teachers don’t assume you have potential, for whatever reason including appearance, they won’t work very diligently to help students develop that potential. It all becomes a kind of perverse self-fulfilling prophecy.

I once wrote an op-ed essay for the L.A. Times about the stupidity of identifying criminal suspects in the news media as “Hispanic.” What the hell does that tell you about the appearance of a guy out on the street who the cops are looking for? A “Hispanic” can be as blond as Christina Aguilera, as indio as Danny Trejo, as African tinged as wild-and-crazy former Dodger Manny Ramirez. The word “Hispanic” doesn’t tell you a darn thing, when it comes to appearance. It’s meaningless. We are a double-helix arco iris when it comes to appearance.My family is half moreno and half guero, for example. It’s about culture and frame of reference, not color nor physical appearance.

And it isn’t just gringos who make assumptions about you and tailor their behavior toward you based on those assumptions. Back in the Pleistocene in undergraduate school Chicano “student leaders” with Zapata mustaches and fortified with viva la raza steroids would look askance at Chicano students who fell into the guero category. That nonsense would melt away after our “authenticity” was proven. But those first impressions were always very interesting, and telling, to me. It’s not about color it’s about culture. And experience and frame of reference.

By the way, most of those with Zapata mustaches were men.

I was born and raised on L.A.’s eastside. My parents came from pueblitos in the state of Chihuahua. I learned to speak Spanish and English simultaneously because I had older brothers and sisters who had survived the trauma of only speaking Spanish in Kindergarten – and being punished for it. And language has become a kind of litmus test for some, especially during the heady days of the Chicano Movement. Some poor Chicanos couldn’t speak Spanish very well, and they were snubbed by Chicano student “leaders” whose Spanish was solid. Tonterias. But somehow most of us reconciled these issues long ago.

Unfortunately, the “you can’t be Mexican because you’re so fair-skinned” mythology still persists to a degree. On the part of gringos and Chicanos. Somehow gueros are seen as individuals who “can’t be Mexican enough.” Tonterias. Hey, tell that to beautiful fair-skinned redheaded Mexican Rita Hayworth, whose actual name was Margarita Carmen Cancino. I would offer her a posthumous honored membership in this new organization I’m thinking of starting called Gueros Anonymous or Gueros Unidos or maybe …Wanna be a member?

Copyright 2013 by Luis R. Torres

THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR NAMES AND OUR STORIES.

In 1974 a teenager named Jaime Ramirez made his way from a tiny town in Mexico to the city of Pasadena, California. He got a job as a dishwasher. It was a move little noticed by anyone.  In the big historical picture, it was a moment of quiet anonymity. But that day when he arrived served to eventually connect him to an event once steeped in anonymity but decidedly worth noting, for it crystalizes issues of immigration, of repatriation, of deportation and of identity. That event – and its long aftermath – resonates with meaning about who we are, as mexicanos, as Latinos.

In 1948 a plane took off from an Oakland airport, headed to the Mexican border. It was carrying 28 Mexicans. Some were braceros being returned to Mexico after their “guest worker” contract ran out. Others were undocumented immigrants who were rounded up and were being deported. As iconic folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote in his song “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos”:  “The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon, a fireball of lightning that shook all our hills, who are all those friends all scattered like dry leaves?” There were no survivors. The newspapers and the radio mentioned the names of the white crewmembers on board the plane, but did not mention the names of the Mexicans. In the words of Woody Guthrie’s song: “The radio says they are just deportees.” Nameless. Faceless.

To the gringo world, we Latinos are often nameless and faceless.  We are almost invisible to them. It has been a struggle. The U.S. government’s official Repatriation Program of the 1930s saw thousands of Mexicans rounded up and put into boxcars, like cattle, and shipped “back” to Mexico. Many were U.S. citizens or legal residents. It didn’t matter. We were scapegoats for the economic downturn. Sound familiar?

Deportations of undocumented workers continue today. Latinos have long struggled to “prove” we are “good Americans,” often in the face of prejudice and discrimination. We have endured. And our names and faces are acknowledged.

For 65 years the names of those Mexicans who perished in the plane crash were unknown. Forgotten. But research by writer Tim Hernández and others recently helped change that. The names of the 28 Mexicans were discovered in the archives of a Roman Catholic cemetery. Interestingly, researchers who had been trying for years to discover the names were thwarted because of confusion over the name of a community. Most people who heard the Woody Guthrie song assumed the plane had crashed over the town of Los Gatos, near San Jose. That was incorrect.

The “Los Gatos Canyon” mentioned in the song was actually an out of the way spot near the city of Fresno, where the Roman Catholic cemetery is. Finally a mystery had been solved. Those 28 Mexicans were buried in a mass grave without their names. On Labor Day of this year a plaque was placed at the site – a plaque which included the names of all of those mexicanos who died in the plane crash over Los Gatos Canyon.

They were anonymous no more.

Jaime Ramirez, now lives in Salinas where he owns a small restaurant. He discovered recently that among those “deportees” on that ill-fated plane was his abuelito, Ramon Paredes Gonzales. It has brought solace to him to know that his grandfather’s name has been acknowledged. Anonymous no more.

In the historical Big Picture of things, perhaps it’s a small matter. But it’s a significant one, an important one.  As Latinos in the United States we continue to fight to have our achievements, our contributions, acknowledged. We are not nameless. We are not faceless.
_________________________________________________

Latinopia contributor Luís Torres is the author of the just-published book “Doña Julia: The Life and Legacy of Educational Reformer Vahac Mardirosian.”

POLITICAL ANNIVERSARIES WE COMMEMORATE AND WHY.

The observance of the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the annual observance of Labor Day (regrettably, a much muted holiday these days) are both a source of joy and a source of disquiet for me. The joy stems from the recognition of the inestimable value of the March on Washington as a catalyst for actions moving us closer to universal justice. The disappointment comes from the usual mistakes the mainstream mass media make in reporting and “analyzing” the issue of race relations and discrimination in the United States.

(“Mass media,” if you think about it in Spanglish, always reminds me of hosiery you put on before you go to misa on Sunday, but that’s another cosa.)

I was a reporter for CBS Radio for thirty years. I paid close attention to the accuracies and inaccuracies of reporters and editors and producers in the business, across the mainstream spectrum. I did what I could, as a small fish in a very large pool, to have us Latinos portrayed accurately and fairly. A Sisyphean task, I assure you.

Along with other Chicano reporters (the number of whom could fit inside a Volkswagen in the early days) we did our best to fight with editors and news directors about the use of phrases such as “illegal aliens” and “graffiti vandals” and “known gang members” (known by whom?). People in these stories had never been convicted of anything, for starters. Language and its subtleties are powerful tools. And, for years, I raged against mass media “reporting” on race relations and issues of discrimination. Why? Because these issues were always looked at as strictly “black and white” issues. Nonsense. It is not a black/white issue. What about Latinos? What about Asian Americans? What about indigenous Americans? (And slowly, but surely in our new circumstances, what about Middle Eastern Americans?)

This kind of reminds me of the tale that the often-brilliant comedian Paul Rodriguez would tell. He was born in the 1950s. He would tell this tale in the 1990s: “When I was a kid I turned on the TV and it was just black and white. Today we have color TV but when I turn on the TV now it’s still black and white – where are the brown faces?”

Racial and ethnic issues, clearly, are more complex than just “black and white.” The major networks and the major newspapers (what’s a newspaper, some chavalos are asking right now) still don’t seem to get it. Let’s keep ranting until we’re heard and understood. And this is not to minimize the Herculean efforts of those who created and drove the African American civil rights movement, which was crystalized by the 1963 March on Washington. Not at all.

Ranting and persisting are what got the issue of segregation and injustice center stage. The challenge to America’s version of apartheid is one of the noblest mass movements in the history of the United States. Led by blacks for blacks, for sure, but bolstered by whites, by Jews and – yes – by Latinos.

It was impressive and satisfying to see the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington the other day. Speeches by John Lewis, Bill Clinton and President Obama himself were on the money. As a nation we’ve come a long way in the past 50 years, but we still have a long way to go. The original March on Washington, of course, is engrained into our collective cultural consciousness because of the inimitable, iconic “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nothing comes close to equaling its eloquent resonance and spot-on analysis of the injustice of Jim Crowism and the steps needed to overcome bigotry and intolerance. But when I look at the events of that day, August 28, 1963, I don’t only think of King’s marvelous speech, but also at the little-remembered speech by A. Phillip Randolph.

Randolph, along with the much-maligned Bayard Rustin (he was a closeted gay black man; imagine how tough that must have been early in the 20th century), was the key tactical organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. An hour or so before Dr. King gave his rousing, galvanizing speech; Randolph took to the podium at the Lincoln Memorial to give his comparatively quiet, subdued speech.

And it is memorable for what was in it. Randolph presented a very broad view of the struggle for justice, emphasizing the need for economic justice. Beginning in the 1930s he worked to organize unions, including the Union of Sleeping Car Porters. Not an easy task. Throughout his life he emphasized that ending segregation would be only half a victory if blacks and others didn’t have good jobs that would help them become full participants in America. He emphasized the danger of corporate wealth and power, something which contributed to what we today call “income inequality.”

In his speech on that day Randolph said: “The sanctity of private property takes second place to the sanctity of the human personality. It falls to us to demand new forms of social planning, to create full employment, and to put automation at the service of human needs, not at the service of profits. (This was 1963; we can replace “automation” with “technology” and “outsourcing,” but the concept remains fundamentally sound.) A. Phillip Randolph also said:  “We are the advanced guard of a massive, moral revolution for jobs and freedom. This revolution reverberates throughout the land touching every city, every town, every village… But this civil rights revolution is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights, for our white allies know that they cannot be free while we are not.” Forceful words. Prescient words.

And in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 A. Phillip Randolph had the effrontery to call for a rise in the minimum wage of the day: to an outrageous two-dollars an hour! Those are the thoughts that stick with me as we observe this important 50th anniversary.

And we’ve just been through observances of Labor Day, a day that for decades was an opportunity to re-charge the political batteries for the ongoing fight for decent wages and respect for workers, but which has lately been reduced to – as the Saturday Night Live Coneheads would say – charring mammal flesh and consuming mass quantities of alcoholic malt beverages behind the family shelter (barbecues and beer in the backyard.)

Labor Day in this country once celebrated a proud tradition of struggle and activism. Things we take for granted today, such as the 40-hour workweek and the prohibition of exploitative child labor, were among the victories of working men and women to be celebrated. It came from organizing. Unions were once quite strong and an important factor in the economic equation. Not so much anymore.

Today only about 12 per cent of workers are unionized nationwide. Unions have been vilified by the extreme rightwing of the country, and even more or less reasonable folks are wary of unions. There are lots of reasons for that. Manufacturing has disappeared in this country – transplanted to factories in China and elsewhere. A reactionary political climate has created so-called “right to work” laws (which are really “right to not get a job” laws) in places such as Michigan, once the Mecca for a strong unionized presence. And unions have been the targets of well-financed propaganda campaigns by corporate interests who want to ensure that the wealthy “one per cent” remain filthy rich while the rest of us of the “99 per cent” remain on the outside looking in.

So let’s use the milepost of Labor Day as a reminder for us to keep up the struggle for economic justice. And remember too that Cesar Chávez was, first and foremost, a union organizer.

And there’s another anniversary we’ve just observed. Perhaps it’s not as momentous as the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, but it possesses its own validity and significance. I’m talking about the anniversary of the August 29, 1970 Chicano Moratorium. I remember it well because it was the first time I was tear-gassed by police. But it’s important to remember for more substantial reasons beyond that, of course. The August 29 Moratorium in East Los Angeles was held to protest the War in Vietnam and the fact that Chicanos were being used as cannon fodder for that unjustifiable war. And it was a call for an end to injustice and discrimination on all fronts – in education, in employment and in political participation. The police turned it into a riot. Journalist Ruben Salazar was killed by an L.A. County Sheriffs deputy. Despite the losses we suffered, that event served to galvanize the broad Chicano community in a fight for justice and freedom. We should not forget the importance of that day and what it represents.

And, finally – disconnected somewhat from all of the above – there’s another recent development we would do well to note: the passing of pop singer Eydie Gorme. I suppose she’s best known for the big pop hit song “Blame it on the Bossa Nova,” but like most Chicanos I remember her for something else entirely. (By the way, her “Blame it on the Bossa Nova” was a monster hit right at the time the March on Washington was going on.)

I remember Eydie Gorme for that incandescent album “Eydie Gorme with Los Tres Panchos.” It was an album in Spanish. It included lots of beautiful boleros, backed by the incomparable musicians who comprised Trio Los Panchos. Her Spanish was perfect and it seemed to amaze us all. (Gorme was a Sephardic Jew with cultural roots in Spain.) I was in elementary school when that album came out and I heard it playing from record players throughout the neighborhood. (Jovenes are asking themselves right now, “What’s a record player?”)

It seemed everybody on L.A.’s eastside and in every barrio in the Southwest had a copy of that album. It continued to sell for generations. Interestingly, when I was in Mexico City once in the late 1970s I went into a record store. (Many chavalos right now are probably asking “What’s a record store?”) Anyway, the album was there, but the title was reversed. Instead of “Eydie Gorme with Trio Los Panchos,” the album’s cover read: “El Trio Los Panchos con Eydie Gorme.” It’s still a great album/CD/mp3/digital download whatever we call it. Descanse en paz, Eydie Gorme.

See you next time.
___________________________________________________

Copyright 2013 by Luis R. Torres

To contact Luis write:  luis.r.torres@charter.net

NOT CINCO DE MAYO BUT CUATRO DE JULIO.

Celebrations of the Fourth of July and this country’s Independence Day are booming all around us. In my neighborhood that’s literally the case, with mocosos exploding firecrackers at all hours of the day, scaring the hell out of my cats. Benchmark occurences such as Independence Day give us a chance to step back and evaluate the significance of events in this country and how they have historically shaped our socio-political consciousness and our cultural and historical frame of reference.

Stick with me; I intend to get to the point.

When we look at Independence Day it conjures the notions of what this country presumably stands for and strives to achieve. We hear words and phrases such as “liberty” and “freedom” and “equality” bandied about. Nice words, but what about the actual context associated with them? To me, the story of the United States is the story of a country struggling to live up to the noble ideas upon which it was presumably founded. It’s a constant struggle and it has often been a losing battle for those who are oppressed and marginalized in this society – today and throughout this country’s history.

Three developments in the last few weeks help illustrate that, I think. First, there’s the passage by the U.S. Senate of the immigration reform bill. Second, there’s the 60th anniversary of the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for supposedly giving “the secret of the atomic” bomb to the Soviet Union, occurring as the world plays “Where’s Waldo” with NSA leaker Edward Snowden. And, finally, there’s the publication of an excellent, meticulously and exhaustively researched book on the U.S.- Mexico War of 1846-1848. It may not seem so at first glance, but there are links among all of these events and issues that give us a look at what often drives this country, its attitudes and ultimately its policies.

IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL.   

A lot of folks were surprised that the Senate passed the current version of the immigration reform bill. For people who want a genuine revamping of the nation’s immigration laws this was a pretty weak bill that doesn’t come close to providing a fair deal to the nation’s estimated eleven-million undocumented workers and their families. Still, getting half a loaf was seen as an achievement. The ridiculous emphasis on spending 50 billion additional dollars to “beef up the border with Mexico” was an inevitable part of the package. How about beefing up the border with Canada? At this moment, it looks like passage of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House of Representatives has a snowball’s chance in hell.

Underlying all of this, especially if you listen closely to what right wing Republicans and Tea Party types are saying, is the fact that Latinos are still regarded as “other.” They are regarded as inferior and somehow unworthy of being full-fledged United States citizens. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to detect that reality.

THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR.

The just-published book “A Wicked War” by historian Amy Greenberg gives us an evidence of how long that attitude has persisted. Like the war in Iraq, the U.S.-Mexico War was launched by a president’s lies and was kindled by what can politely be called “official misinformation.” George W. Bush claimed there were weapons of mass destruction. James K. Polk claimed, “American blood was shed on American soil” by Mexicans. It was all bullshit. But back to the attitudes toward Mexicans.

Greenberg’s book is bursting with examples of the racist attitudes toward Mexicans – an attitude which drove the imperialistic notion of Manifest Destiny and was used as justification for the invasion of Mexico. She quotes Sam Houston as saying simply, “Mexicans are no better than Indians.” A newspaper of the time blithely states: “The people of Mexico are clearly facial inferiors, but little removed above the Negro.” And Greenberg summarizes the prevailing attitude of the populace: “They saw Mexico as an immoral nation and Mexicans themselves as an inferior race practicing a suspect religion.”

Those attitudes are still beneath the surface today when issues such as immigration reform come up.

SPY vs. SPY. 

Another intriguing notion from the era of the U.S.-Mexico War is the way the White House regarded newspapers that provided information about the atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Mexico and the speeches made by politicians opposed to the war. President Polk lashed out at them, saying they were “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Not too far removed from today’s attitudes toward whistle-blowing leakers such as Edward Snowden and presumed “spies.”

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York state on June 19, 1953. Among other crimes, they were charged with “conspiracy to commit espionage.” Edward Snowden is also charged with, among other things, “conspiracy to commit espionage.” A look at those cases, although very different from each other in crucial ways, highlights the paranoia of the U.S. government when it comes to secrecy and the government’s interference with the right of citizens to their privacy.

Fundamentally, the Rosenbergs were convicted of “giving the atomic bomb to the Russians,” as preposterous as that sounds. The evidence at the trial included crude rudimentary drawings. Scientists have said there is no way something as sophisticated and complicated, as a plan to build an atomic bomb could be hand-scrawled on a napkin. The Rosenbergs, like Snowden, were a symbol. They had to be punished and made an example of.

The Rosenberg case is complicated. Writers Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir spent many years researching the case and produced two solid, comprehensive books on the case. Basically, the U.S. government used prosecutorial sleight of hand to convict the Rosenbergs. However, information made available from Soviet sources after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. seems to suggest that Julius Rosenberg did hand over some materials to the Soviets, even though they were certainly not “the secret of the atomic bomb.”

Yet, the anniversary of that case – caught up in anti-communist hysteria, government paranoia and possibly racism (the Rosenbergs were Jewish) creates an opportunity for us to closely examine the way the government operates. Independence Day is a good time for reflection on all of that, it seems to me. This country’s state apparatus routinely gives lip service to citizens’ rights that are supposedly protected by the Constitution. Protections of free speech outlined in the First Amendment. The guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizure outlined in the Fourth Amendment. Those and other presumed protections go right out the window cuando les conviene. A careful examination of events in the news will confirm that. So, we must be ever vigilant and we must keep up the struggle for the protection of Constitutional rights.

Oh, and one other thing: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they ain’t comin’ after you.

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Copyright 2013 by Luis R. Torres.

Luis Torres, a journalist and writer from Pasadena, California, is at work on a book that examines the 1968 East  Los Angeles high school student walkouts. He can be reached at:  luis.r.torres@charter.net

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS ON RECENT NEWS

I once offered the notion that pretty soon nobody will be reading blogs, because everybody will be busy writing blogs. Maybe. But let’s plow ahead, guided by the assumption that there are still readers out there. Those of you who have landed here before know that I usually scribble some observations about a particular subject, whether historical, cultural or political. This scribbling is a bit of a departure from that. There’s just too much going on and it’s difficult to limit this effort to just one subject. And these subjects are all connected in certain ways and all have an impact on the broad Latino community. So, bear with me and come along for these (seemingly) random observations.

THE ASTONISHING RESCUE OF SEX SLAVES IN CLEVELAND

Who knew that there were so many Latinos in Cleveland? It’s just another indication that we are everywhere in this country. As the details unfolded about that horrific case in Cleveland where three young women were rescued after being held prisoners for a decade, you couldn’t help but notice that so many people in the story were Latinos. One of the victims. The neighbors. Even some of the cops were Latinos. And, of course, the alleged perpetrator of all this horror is a Latino. That particular fact certainly doesn’t help our national image.
But it all points out that Latinos are in virtually every nook and cranny of the United States. Thirty years ago the perception was that Mexican Americans were in the Southwest, Puerto Ricans were in the boroughs of New York and Cuban Americans were ensconced in Miami. Today, those concentrations still hold true, but we are everywhere – in the South, in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, in big cities and in hamlets. When I was in graduate school at Columbia University in the late 1970s, there weren’t very many Chicanos in New York. Puerto Ricans, of course. And a growing number of Dominicans. But there was no Mexican flavor to speak of in New York. I actually bought tortillas in a can at a bodega. Buying fresh chiles was an impossibility. There were just a couple of Mexican restaurants in Manhattan. My how that has changed!

POLICE ABUSE OF LATINOS

One thing that hasn’t changed is the abuse Latinos get at the hands of the chota. In the last several weeks there have been lots of examples of that. In Kern County, north of Los Angeles, witnesses said they saw half-a-dozen cops literally beat a mexicano to death in public view. Several neighbors filmed the assault using their cell phones. The police response to that? They questioned the neighbors and confiscated their phones (and the footage of the incident). The fox said it would “investigate” the action in the henhouse.
On the heels of that incident, a federal court sided with the Anaheim, California police in a case where a Latino was shot to death by the chota. The court concluded “there was no excessive use of force” in the incident that ended with a cop putting a bullet in the brain of a Latino who sat in the driver’s seat of his car. He was shot at pointblank range by the cop. That fact is not in dispute. His name was Adolf Anthony Sanchez Gonzalez. He was 21 years old. The ruling was from a three-judge federal appeals panel. Procedurally, the issue before the judges was whether the case should go to trial with the cop being criminally charged. The ruling put the brakes on that. One judge dissented. Judge Richard R. Clifton questioned the tall tale told by the cops who were involved. Clifton wrote in his dissent that the cop who pulled the trigger “whipped out his gun without warning, shot Gonzalez dead (and) a reasonable jury might conclude that his actions were unreasonable.” But the case will never go to trial. Some things never change. And that includes the all-too-frequent abuse of raza by the cops.

THE IMMIGRATION “REFORM” PENDEJADA

Still making headlines in recent weeks is the circus in Congress over “immigration reform.” A (sort of) path to citizenship that would take 13 years and include so many twists and turns and potholes as to make the path ludicrous. Oh, and first of all, let’s build the Great Wall of China along the border between the United States of America and the United Mexican States. “Oh, they’re taking our jobs,” say the right-wing wingnuts. Yeah, gringos are just dying to wash dishes for minimum wage and slave beneath the broiling San Joaquin Valley picking grapes. Certain opponents of anything resembling a reasonable change in this country’s immigration laws and policies want “tougher conditions.”
It’s not enough that immigrants who might apply for “legal status” (and remember, this proposed law is a long way from passage) have to pay huge fines and plod through a labyrinth of conditions. No, some immigrant haters would like to see tougher conditions. How about public floggings while reciting the Act of Contrition? How about shame-inducing dunkings in a pond, like we had during the Salem Witch Trials?
One interesting note regarding the media coverage of this whole immigration issue is that some major news organizations – including the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times – have decided to drop the routine use of the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant.” I suppose some things do change for the better, eventually. However, it is a rather small step.

THE IRS AND THE TEA PARTY

The mass media have generally blown it when covering this story which has been making noise and will likely continue to make noise in the coming weeks. (The right wing will try to blame that darkie Muslim foreigner Obama for every thing, and like a dog with a bone, they just won’t let go.)
The mass media have generally blown it by not making the distinction between 501 (c) (4)s and other categories of “nonprofit, tax-exempt” organizations. And that’s key to this whole story.  The basic story, of course, is that for a couple of years groups of Tea Party schmoes and similar right-wing wackos have been applying to the Internal Revenue Service to get a designation as a certain type of nonprofit organization. It means they won’t pay taxes. It turns out staffers of the IRS were in the habit of giving these applications a close look. They asked the applicants for more specific information, including a list of funders. Now, it may be that some IRS staffers might have been a bit overzealous in asking pesky questions of these applicants. Maybe.
And let’s not forget the fact that, for years, African American and Chicano organizations seeking nonprofit status have been raked over the coals during the application process by the IRS. I’ve been around long enough that I remember those battles.
The media have, generally, blown it by referring to Tea Party applicants as “being targeted” for seeking “nonprofit status.” Well, there are lots of nonprofit designations. Most of us are more familiar with nonprofit groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund which have a “501 (c) (3)” designation. They are tax exempt and can raise funds for scholarships and civil rights activities. There are limits on their ability to be political advocates. But these tea baggers were applying for 501 (c) (4) designations. That means they are supposed to be “social welfare” organizations and their primary activity cannot be political advocacy. But that’s what the tea baggers intended to do – raise money, not pay taxes and use that money to advance their right-wing political agenda. Of course the IRS should give that whole thing some serious scrutiny.
The other level on which the media have blown it in covering this story is that these Tea Party and “Patriot” groups are small potatoes compared to the big guys who are using these nonprofit designations for political advocacy. Big right-wing organizations are using 501 (c) (4)s to raise millions of dollars for political advocacy – and this is the really pernicious part – being able to hide the source of the money. They don’t have to name the donors. The amounts are unlimited. Democracy for Sale. All this is tied to the floodgates that were opened by that nefarious Citizens United ruling issued by the tapados in the majority of the United States Supreme Court. (No “wise Latina” would ever vote for something as ridiculous – and dangerous—as that.) That ruling said that corporations are essentially individuals and have a First Amendment right to raise and spend money for political advocacy. Giving money is the same as “speaking” said the court. And speech is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. That’s part of why we’re in the fix we’re in.
Well, I got that off my chest. See you next time.
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Tales of Torres Copyright 2013 by Luis R. Torres

LET’S GET TOUGH ON ILLEGAL BORDER-CROSSERS!

That’s it! I’ve had enough. All this talk about immigration reform. All this talk about “Let’s just accept the fact that they’re here and let’s give them a path to citizenship.” Amnesty? I don’t think so. Enough already! The fact is they brazenly broke the law by coming here without papers. They sneaked across the border into the good ol’ U-S of A. They are criminals – plain and simple. Enough of these sob stories about how resourceful and determined they are to seek a better life in America. If they want a pathway to citizenship, I say they should go back across the border and come into the United States legally. I’m tired of all these illegal border-crossers. I say, “Go back to where you came from!”

Canada!

Yeah, I’m talking about all those illegal aliens from across the border who talk funny. They don’t even speak American! What’s that stuff about putting “Eh” (or is it “ay?”) after every sentence? And they’re taking our jobs, jobs that good Americans would take if they could get ‘em. And they’re diluting and polluting our American culture. All this allegiance to hockey! Why it’s un-American, I tell you. Pretty soon we won’t be celebrating Independence Day on the Fourth of July. Before you know it we’ll be celebrating some weird holiday like Dominion Day on the First of July.

And it’s all because of those illegal border-crossers who have nestled here in the United States, hoping no one will notice. They’re sneaky, this bunch of illegals. I say send them back where they came from. Them damn foreigners.

Them damn Canadians.

They just keep sneaking across the border, “blending in” to America, taking our jobs and slowly transforming our American culture. To show you how sneaky they are, I bet you didn’t know some of the familiar faces you see on TV and in the movies are those sneaky alien Canadians. Here are some of them, in no particular order, no más para que sepan: Pamela Anderson, Dan Aykroyd, Paul Anka, Bryan Adams, John Candy (okay he’s already dead, so never mind him), Raymond Burr (ditto), Jim Carrey, Kim Cattrall, Cirque du Soleil, Celine Dion, Michael J. Fox, Nelly Furtado, Monty Hall, William Shatner, Robert Goulet, Rich Little, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young (Okay, we’ll look the other way on Neil Young because of his great contribution to pop music.) Get the picture? They’ve infested our country, these aliens.

Okay, okay – some of these Canadians have been here a long time and it would be hard to deport ‘em. But what about the other millions of less-well-known Canadians who have insinuated themselves into the United States of America? I say we take immediate steps to develop a comprehensive immigration reform policy to deal with them. Sure, some of these alien Canadians may claim they were brought here by their parents as children and had no say in the matter. Okay, if they are now law-abiding adults and have either gone to college or served responsibly in our armed services, let’s consider a kind of Dream Act for them. They could stay here, if they pay a fine, admit their guilt and pledge to be good Americans, forswearing hockey for baseball and pledging to learn all the verses of “The Star Spangled Banner” and the names of The Three Stooges. (And pledging to never sing that “O Canada” thing ever again.) That kind of reform can lead to a path to citizenship for those kinds of alien Canadians.

And for the rest of those Canadian aliens, those who knowingly crossed the border illegally as adults, well they have to pay to stay. Immigration reform for them would mean that they go back to Canada voluntarily. They apply to come into the U-S of A legally.

Short of that, we could put them on a pathway to citizenship by making them admit their guilt (breaking the law to come here in the first place), submit to a public flogging to show their general contrition (and to add humiliation to their admission of guilt), then pay a huge fine to compensate for using public services, like public roads, public transportation and public schools. And watching PBS without paying for it; what do they think it is, the CBC? Then they could be allowed a pathway to citizenship, provided they promise never to utter the words “Celine Dion” in public. That’s the kind of immigration reform we need in this country, right now.

There are an estimated one-million “undocumented” alien Canadians in our country right now. And they keep sneaking across the border. I don’t see Arizona or any other state taking steps to round ‘em up. No racial profiling of Canadians by cops. They “look” American, unlike some other undocumented people. It’s a gross miscarriage of justice, I tell you. We need to face facts and get tough on alien Canadians.

Oh, and we would make some exceptions. For example, we could make an exception for everyone associated with productions of Cirque du Soleil. And maybe an exception for Joni Mitchell. But absolutely no exception for William Shatner.

Keep our borders secure, eh!
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Luis Torres, a journalist and writer from

Pasadena, California, is at work on a

book that examines the 1968 East  Los

Angeles high school student walkouts.