The morning we arrived in the city, the skyline rose from the horizon, glittering in the sunlight, like an Emerald City, so magical and massive. Yet as we drove through it, Chicago struck me as dark and dirty, the brick buildings covered with black soot as the smoke and silt from steel mills, bucket shops and other industry slaughtered the sky and dusted the streets, alleys and gangways. Here was a city unlike any I had ever seen, another world, and it beckoned like books, like the passage to knowledge and the ripening spring of a new world; the city pulled me in, and although it would be another 12 years before I ended up there, it never let me go.
When I returned to Los Angeles, I moved to Boyle Heights and later to neighborhoods such as White Fence, Florence, South Pasa, La Colonia Watts and Gerahty Loma. I found work in foundries, refineries, steel mills and construction sites, which I would do for another seven years before pursuing the disciplines of journalism and literature.
I soon worked with community leaders who battled against police terror, labor issues, the rights of the undocumented, for tenant rights and decent education—they were welfare mothers, war veterans, trade union members, students and unemployed—a mixture of nationalities and colors, linked by an economic equality, a commonality of survival.
One day at the Aliso Village/Pico Gardens Housing Projects, where I organized among some of the most neglected youth in the city, I asked Camila Martínez to marry me.
In the summer of 1974, soon after I turned 20, Camila and I wed at the Guadalupe Church on Hazard Avenue: a traditional East L.A. wedding, complete with a lowrider caravan, fights and chair-throwing at the reception, and the bride and groom sneaking out in a beat-up bug for a honeymoon at a sleazy, crumbling motel where we ended up after running out of gas.
I began a new season of life. Intellect and body fused, I now yearned to contribute fully, embodied with conscious energy, to live a deliberate existence dedicated to a future humanity which might in complete freedom achieve the realization of its creative impulses, the totality of its potential faculties, without injustice, coercion, hunger and exploitation.
I’m at a quinceñera dance at the American Legion hall in San Gabriel, my cousin’s, one of Tío Kiko’s daughters. I’m older, married with a child, and dressed in plain shirt and pants, hair shortened, not much to show for what I’d been through only a short time earlier.
I step outside to take in some air. I lean against a parked sedan, looking at the stars which seem extraordinarily large and bright this evening. Just then a short figure, wobbling, with a kind of limp, moves toward me. He has a blue beany cap over his head and a dark, hooded sweatshirt.
“You Chin. … de Lomas,” says the figure. I don’t recognize him, not even the voice, which rasps as much as it slurs. No pangs of familiarity.
“I guess I am—but it’s been a long time since anyone’s called me that.”
“You’re going to die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You thought you killed me, but you didn’t,” the dude says, haltingly, measuring every word. “I took all your shanks … eight of them … right here.”
The dude lifts up the sweatshirt. A ghastly number of scars traverse his torso. A plastic bag is strapped at his side, to hold his urine.
“You did this to me … look hard, you did this!”
“You got it wrong, Chava, it wasn’t me.”
“Sure—I’ve heard it all before. I know who did this … and you’re going to pay.”
From the sides emerge two other guys, healthy and strong, looking like street, although a lot younger than the both of us.
“Chava—listen,” I say. “I heard about what happened that night. But I wasn’t there. For some time now, I’ve been working my way out of that useless existence. Now I’ve found something to live for, bigger than you and me, bigger than Lomas and Sangra. You don’t want me.”
Chava gets closer, alcohol on his breath. I can see tears forming in his eyes.
“Lomas did this—somebody has to pay!” he yells while pulling off the beany cap, revealing a misshapen head with scattered slivers of hair. The scars on his body don’t compare to those on his head and the side of his face; they’re larger with indentations and purplish membranes.
“Look what you did to me. Somebody has to pay for this!” Chava repeats. He’s so disturbed, I can see him pulling out a knife and stabbing me just to salve his pain. I look at the guys next to me, and they strike me as too young and inexperienced to act. I keep talking.
“There’s some things to fight for, some things to die for—but not this. Chava, you’re alive. I feel for you, man, but you’re alive. Don’t waste the rest of your days with this hate. What’s revenge? What can you get by getting to me? I’m the least of your enemies. It’s time to let it go, it’s time to go on with your life.”
Chava begins to shudder, to utter something, a guttural sound rising to his throat, a hideous moan. I think he’s trying to cry, but it’s hard to tell. I don’t know what to do, so I pull him close to me. He twists away, the dudes to the side look lost, not knowing their next move, unprepared for what follows. I again pull at Chava, and hold him. He breaks down, a flood of fermented rage seeping out of every pore.
“If I thought my life could cleanse you of the hurt, of the memory, I would open up my shirt and let you take it from me. But it won’t—we’re too much the same now, Chava. Let it all out, man … let it out.”
I hold Chava as if he were cornmeal in my arms, then pity overwhelms me, this complicated affection which cuts across the clear-cut states of being we’d rather seek: Here’s friend, here’s enemy; here’s sadness, here’s happiness; here’s right, here’s wrong. Pity draws from all these opposing elements and courses through me like an uncooked stew, mixing and confusing the paradoxes, because now this man I once admired, if not revered, I once feared, if not hated, stands here, a fragment of the race, drunk, agonized, crushed, and I can’t hate him any more; I can’t see him as the manifestation of craziness and power he once possessed; he’s a caricature, an apparition, but also more like me, capable of so much ache beneath the exterior of so much strength. Pity links us in a perverted way, transcending our veneers, joining us in our vulnerability, and at the same time distancing us from one another. I want to escape from Chava’s tired, perplexed and tattered face, to run away from how something so beautiful, in its own way, can become so odious.
After an eternal minute, Chava pushes me away, wipes his face with a soiled sleeve, and then turns. The dudes next to us don’t seem to know what to do but follow. I see Chava hobble away, two confused teenagers at his side, and as he vanishes into a flicker of neon, I hear the final tempo of the crazy life leave my body, the last song before the dying, lapsing forever out of mind as Chava disappears, enveloped in flames breaking through the asphalt, wrested into the black heart of night.
Epilogue
“Go ahead and kill us, we’re already dead …” —Young Latino participant in the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, as quoted in USA Today, May 1, 1992
THIS BOOK IS A gift to my son Ramiro, to all my children, who will traverse a more severe and uncertain path to maturity than I had to undertake. I look at him now, at his handsome face, at his almond-shaped eyes and cinnamon color, and it’s hard to believe how many impacted layers of hurt and abuse these features conceal. He has a right to be angry. And he’s not the only one.
From Chicago, we watched the fires that consumed miles of Los Angeles and some other American cities beginning on April 29, the day a jury in Simi Valley, California declared four police officers innocent of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King.
Fire for me has been a constant motif. I was 11 years old when the 1965 Watts Rebellion tore through my former neighborhood. At age 16, I participated in the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War—the so-called East L.A. riot. Later, mostly as a journalist, I witnessed uprisings in such far-flung places as Juchitan, Oaxaca; Overton in Miami; and “Da Bulls Revolution” (after
the Chicago Bulls won their second N.B.A. Championship on June 14, 1992).
The heart of the L.A. uprising was in the African American community. But it soon involved large numbers of Latinos (who make up almost half of South Central’s population) and whites—Latinos were the largest group among the 18,000 arrested; at least 700 of those detained were white. Some called it the country’s first “multi-ethnic” revolt; the common link was the class composition of the combatants.
Los Angeles 1992 was the first social response to an economic revolution which began years before: The shift from mechanical productive energy to one based on electronics. In Los Angeles, this translated into tens of thousands of jobs lost as factories such as Goodyear, Firestone, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel and American Bridge closed down forever—many of which I worked for during the 1970s. Along with this came the cyclical crisis of glutted markets and a shrinking consumer base, where more was being produced by fewer people (as the new technology could only integrate a few). The mode of distribution began to break down. From cars to electronic items—including such necessities as food, clothing and homes—goods lay idle while an increasing number of people had to do without.
The resultant economic decay—L.A. has the second largest homeless population in the country—was the foundation for the kind of response that followed the Rodney King verdicts. Add to this one of the most brutal police forces in America, and you have a riot in the making; it was only a matter of time.
Government officials at local, state and federal levels proved they would not allow any serious challenge to the economic and political underpinnings of poverty in this country. They dispatched National Guard and Army troops, who turned their guns against Americans—barely more than a year after the bloody (for the Iraqi people) Persian Gulf War.
The L.A. violence also uncovered a two-year effort to unite the two largest gangs in the city—the Bloods and Crips. A “Bloods/Crips Proposal For L.A.’s Face-Lift” was soon circulated; it proposed building parks and community centers, repaving streets and schools—not just reconstructing the taco stands, liquor stores and exploitative businesses which dotted the South Central landscape before the uprising (a radio broadcast stated that in a three-mile radius of South Central, there were some 640 liquor stores, although not one movie house or community center!).
A major decline of gang-related incidents was reported throughout the South Central community. Graffiti sprouted up with sentiments such as “Mexicans & Crips & Bloods Together,” although police later removed most of the unity-related scrawl.
In the months after the uprising, police broke up as many gang “unity” rallies as they could, arresting truce leaders, and inflaming the ire of residents of housing projects, in which many of the rallies were being held. The LAPD told the media they feared the gangs were going to turn on them, possibly ambush them. Yet no police officer has been killed or severely hurt since the King verdicts—even during the uprising, although instances have emerged of police shooting several people, some in the back, during and since the riots.
Then several hundred FBI agents were sent in to “break up the gangs” involved in the April/May violence—the largest investigation of its kind. Although there were some 600 Los Angeles youth killed in 1991 from gang and drug-related incidents, the federal government never before provided the commitment or resources that they have since the Crips and Bloods declared peace.
At the same time, the immigration authorities terrorized Mexican and Central American immigrants, placing the Pico-Union community under a virtual state of siege (this area was one of the hardest hit in the fires). They deported thousands of heavily tattooed gang members to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize—exporting the gang/cholo culture to countries that had never experienced this level of gang violence.
This is not the first time the federal government has intervened. It has derailed and, whenever possible, destroyed the unity which emerged out of the Watts Rebellion, out of the Chicano Moratorium, out of the Wounded Knee protests. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Panthers, the Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords, the Weathermen, Puerto Rican liberation groups, the Chicano Liberation Front—and more recently MOVE, the Republic of New Africa, FALN, the Black Liberation Army—every major organized expression for justice and liberation was targeted, its leaders killed or jailed, its forces scattered.
To challenge how power is held in America meant facing a reign of terror, some of which I witnessed over the years, most of which failed to reach “mainstream” America—although this is changing. L.A. helped bring it home.
This is the legacy of the period covered in this book. This is what my son, Ramiro, and his generation have inherited.
What to do with those whom society cannot accommodate? Criminalize them. Outlaw their actions and creations. Declare them the enemy, then wage war. Emphasize the differences—the shade of skin, the accent in the speech or manner of clothes. Like the scapegoat of the Bible, place society’s ills on them, then “stone them” in absolution. It’s convenient. It’s logical.
It doesn’t work.
Gangs are not alien powers. They begin as unstructured groupings, our children, who desire the same as any young person. Respect. A sense of belonging. Protection. The same thing that the YMCA, Little League or the Boys Scouts want. It wasn’t any more than what I wanted as a child.
Gangs flourish when there’s a lack of social recreation, decent education or employment. Today, many young people will never know what it is to work. They can only satisfy their needs through collective strength—against the police, who hold the power of life and death, against poverty, against idleness, against their impotence in society.
Without definitive solutions, it’s easy to throw blame. For instance, politicians have recently targeted the so-called lack of family values.
But “family” is a farce among the propertyless and disenfranchised. Too many families are wrenched apart, as even children are forced to supplement meager incomes. Family can only really exist among those who can afford one. In an increasing number of homeless, poor, and working poor families, the things that people must do to survive undermines most family structures. At a home for troubled youth on Chicago’s South Side, for example, I met a 13-year-old boy who was removed from his parents after police found him selling chewing gum at bars and restaurants without a peddler’s license. I recall at the age of nine my mother walking me to the door, and, in effect, saying: Now go forth and work.
People can’t just consume in this society; they have to sell something, including their ability to work. If decent work is unavailable, people will do the next best thing—such as sell sex or dope.
I’ve talked to enough gang members and low-level dope dealers to know they would quit today if they had a productive, livable-wage job. You’ll find people who don’t care about who they hurt, but nobody I know wants to sell death to their children, their neighbors and friends.
If there was a viable alternative, they would stop. If we all had a choice, I’m convinced nobody would choose la vida loca, the “insane nation”—to “gang bang.” But it’s going to take collective action and a plan.
Twenty years ago, at 18 years old, I felt like a war veteran, with a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I wanted the pain to end, the self-consuming hate to wither in the sunlight. With the help of those who saw potential in me, I got out.
And what of my son? Recently, Ramiro went up to the stage at a Chicago poetry event and read a moving piece about being physically abused by a step-father when he was a child. It stopped everyone cold. He later read the poem to some 2,000 people at Chicago’s Poetry Festival. Its title: “Running Away.”
There’s a small but intense fire burning in Ramiro. He turned 17 in 1992; he’s made it so far, but every day is a challenge. Now I tell him: You have worth outside of a job, outside the “jacket” imposed on you since birth. Draw on your expressive powers.
Stop running.
A Biography of Luis J. Rodríguez
Luis J. Rodríguez (b. 1954) is a poet, journalist, memoirist, children’s book writer, short story writer, and novelist whose documentation of urban and Mexican immigrant life has made him one of the most prominent modern Chicano literary voices. He is perhaps best known for his memoir Always Running (1993), a powerful account of his time spent in Los Angeles–area gangs in the 1960s and ’70s.
Rodríguez was born in El Paso, Texas, although his family lived in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where his parents worked in the public school system. When he was two years old, Rodríguez and his family moved to Los Angeles. Growing up in L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, Rodríguez was exposed to violence, ethnic tension, and the dehumanizing effects of poverty. He joined a gang not long after the Watts riots of 1965 and became addicted to heroin at a young age. Kicked out of his home, he spent many of his teen years living on the streets or in the family garage. He would later draw on these difficult experiences for much of Always Running.
As a teenager, despite his troubled home life and increasing criminal arrests, Rodríguez continued to attend school and developed a strong interest in both art and politics. He rallied against the Vietnam War and helped organize walkouts and protests in high school and the community. He was also commissioned to paint murals throughout his South San Gabriel neighborhood. After community members testified on his behalf during sentencing in a criminal trial, Rodríguez vowed to clean up his life. He quit drugs, attended college classes, and worked a number of jobs to support himself.
In his mid-twenties, Rodríguez began to establish himself as a journalist and writer, producing stories for LA Weekly, the San Bernardino Sun, and other papers. In 1985 he moved to Chicago and began expanding his literary ambitions. Rodríguez established himself as a fixture in the emerging poetry slam scene, and in 1989 he founded Tia Chucha Press, which published Poems Across the Pavement (1989), his first book of verse, as well as the works of other poets in Chicago and throughout the United States. He followed his poetry debut with the collections The Concrete River (1991), Trochemoche (1998), and My Nature Is Hunger (2005) from Curbstone Press.
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