by Juan Batista
Chapter 5:
Rally at the Alamo
Aztlan Now decided to publicly launch their movement with the largest rally possible. It would have to be in the largest city in the region, San Antonio. And of course the site was never in doubt, the most famous one in the city, the Alamo. Holding it there was a public rebuke both of the Tea Party and of anyone with romantic notions of Texas “independence.”
The rally by Aztlan Now was double the size of the Tea Party held earlier, but you would never know it by the press coverage. Fox News had considered whether to give it any attention. Hopefully they looked for signs of guns or Mexican flags, but were disappointed to find huge numbers of American flags instead, and homemade signs mostly reading “USA!” So they stayed away. The “liberal” media, true to their herd instinct, assumed this was a fringe group and ignored it also.
Still, Guerrero and the others hoped it would draw enough attention to boost their cause. “Mexicans at the Alamo” as a headline? Hopefully that would be enough to draw attention and then in interviews where he could speak further.
What he did not prepare for was the kind of angry reaction it would draw in some quarters….
As Guerrero spoke, the crowd was in a jubilant mood. The local Latino community had not been this united in some time. Patriotism and showing one’s loyalty to America by making certain everyone knew that traitors pushing independence did not speak for the Mexicans of Texas was a cause everyone could unite around.
But in the distance, one could hear gunfire. Semi-automatic guns fired off rounds. The gunfire was getting closer! The crowd scattered in panic. Four armed men rushed in, mounted the stage, threatening those in their way, and pointed their guns at Guerrero.
One held a gun to Guerrero’s head. “Move when and where we tell you to move!”
Aztlan Now security, mostly college student volunteers, were unarmed. They had not wanted the bad publicity, what the race-baiters at Fox would have done with the sight of Mexicans carrying guns. Local police were there largely for crowd control. Nothing like this had been prepared or planned for by the Aztlanistas.
The four men, hostage in tow, rushed from the stage, past the crowds and to their waiting cars near Travis Park. Militia members had left the cars, one old Buick and an old Ford truck, running in the parking lot, with one member guarding them.
The two cars roared down San Pedro Avenue. At any crowded intersection or red light, they fired their weapons in the air to clear traffic out of the way. The plan had been to take Highway 281 north to their hideout in San Antonio’s suburbs in Comal County. The area was a hotbed of fundamentalists, home to the likes of conspiracist preacher John Hagee who, seriously, claims Obama is the Antichrist and a human in lizard form whose human skin would fall away and reveal himself any day now.
But the lead car had turned to the left near Baptist Medical Center instead of right. Instead of the highway they were trapped on the busy avenue, driving on sidewalks, dodging near miss after near miss in traffic.
After the third intersection they had to shoot their way through, the lead car pulled into a parking lot to the right. This was a place he knew, San Antonio College. The top floor of the Moody Learning Center was seven stories high, overlooking all the nearby area. A perfect place to hide out, he thought, accessible only by a single escalator and an old elevator.
Both cars went past the parking lot and hopped up on the sidewalks, honking their horns at startled students. In the “free speech zone” between the Moody and the Loftin Student Center, the first car halted. The truck behind barely avoided hitting the first car.
“What are we doing here?” yelled the militia leader.
Said the car driver, “I know this place. Went to school here. The top floor is the perfect place to hole up.”
“You idiot! We’ll be trapped half a mile from the downtown of a big city!”
“We’d never make it out the city. This is our best bet.”
At that point, campus security was already running up to see what happened. The city police weren’t far behind. The five militia members dragged their prisoner up the steps.
Running up the escalators, the first militia member screamed obscenities and fired a shot in the ceiling. Students scrambled out of their way. The militia hustled their prisoner up the escalator.
At the top floor, the group rushed into the library. “Everybody out!” yelled the militia leader, waving his pistol. “You stay!” he snarled at the librarian. She froze.
More students scattered. The other militia members closed the library doors. The leader ordered the librarian to lock every entrance, his gun at her head while she did so.
Three of the other militia members began piling tables at the entrances and windows. The last kept his gun on their captive.
“You idiot!” growled the leader at the car driver. “You brought us to a place with plenty of windows!” Looking around, one could see the walls of the library between it and the hallway were glass partitions. “Plenty of ways for the cops to take a shot at us.”
“But it’s high up. And hard to get to. We’ll be able to see them coming.”
“And what about that?” The leader pointed indignantly outside the window. The neighboring parking garage was almost as high as the building.
“It wasn’t built yet when I went to school here. So much has changed,” the car driver whimpered.
The leader resigned himself to their situation. “We’ll do the best we can. Not much choice…”
Yet another militia standoff in Texas had begun.
