The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  The possibility to fight and save Europe from the Nazis and the fascists created a great desire and readiness in the hearts of American youth to go overseas. The Mexican youth of Simons were no exception. The Mexicans were ready to throw chingadazos with the bad guys in Europe.

  When it came, it hit with a terrible force and no quarter was given. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, every United States citizen, non-citizen, documented and undocumented resident was stunned by the news flashes of the calculated attack on the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. The news of the Japanese sneak attack was screamed in English and in Spanish by every radio station in the country. The reports came emotionally charged and were communicated in an intense, exciting manner by Spanish-speaking reporters in Los Angeles. No doubt existed in the opinion of people that the United States would now declare war on Japan. Days later, Japan’s Axis partners Germany and Italy, pronounced war on the United States. The whole world followed the latest movements and developments in the European and now the Pacific theater.

  In the United States, the people now began to worry about the contribution each individual would make to win the war, and in the Mexican neighborhoods throughout the country it was no different. Since the draft began, many Mexicans had volunteered. Latinos from North, Central and South America came to enlist in the armed forces. They were encouraged by the fact that the first draftee from Los Angeles to be picked by President Roosevelt was a Latino. Mexican young men did not even ask. They shouted what their role would be. They wanted to fight the enemy. And so they came and gathered from all the barrios: North Platte, Cheyenne, Maravilla, La Loma, Austin, Limonera, Hollywood, Lorain, Los Dos Laredos, Del Rio, Saint Louis, Rose Hill, Sespe, West Side San Anto, San Marcos, El Hoyo, Barrio Margarito, Quinto de Houston, San Benito, Mathis, Varelas, Ogden, Los Batos, Jackson, Cantaranas, Barelas Verde, Westside Denver, Calle Ancha, Karrimer, La Smelter, El Piquete, Fernando, Corpos, Fresno, Reclas, Las Cruces, La Daisy, La Chicago, El Dorado, La Palomilla, El Jardin, Trinidad, Conejos, El Globo, La Milwaukee, Verdugo, El Ranchito, El Pachuco, Juariles, Garidy, Flats, Magnolia, Jimtown, Chiques, The Camp, Chavez Ravine, Los Marcos, Calle Guadalupe, Buena Vista, La Seis, El Sur and Simons.

  From all Mexican neighborhoods the homeboys came ready to defend and die for their home turf, the United States.

  Octavio and Nana entered the almost defunct cooperative store. Only the most basic food items were sold by the last people given the charge of running the store. As the cooperative members ceased their participation, it gradually became a private enterprise and holding for Francisco and Ernestina Pedroza, son and daughter of Gonzalo Pedroza who, had been caught stealing food and clothing from the cooperative store and selling the goods at discounted prices to willing buyers. When Walter was told of the misconduct of his faithful servant warrior, he cried. He ordered the immediate release of Gonzalo from his police and foreman duties and demoted him to apprentice worker.

  Gonzalo’s hideous cubed head and face now had such an uncountable quantity of sharp corners and points protruding from it that only the men and women who knew him could recognize him. His family and two women loved him still, and to Octavio’s and Nana’s surprise, both women were in the cooperative store purchasing coffee, sugar and canned food. Amalia picked up two full bags from the counter. She greeted Octavio and Nana as she hurriedly went out the door. Nana stepped to the door and saw Amalia get into the back seat of a car driven by two young men in army uniforms. ... ¡Qué bonitos muchachos! Nana felt in her heart. Octavio moved from the coffee and tea section and placed two cans of each on the counter. Pascuala Pedroza looked at her son behind the counter and pointed to the shelf directly behind him.

  “Francisco, give me two boxes of sugar. When will food be rationed?” Pascuala smiled at Octavio and Nana.

  “It is all ready, Mama.” Francisco placed Pascuala’s purchase into a large box.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Pedroza,” Nana said and raised her hand to Francisco.

  “Morning, Nanita, Octavio.” Pascuala opened her bag, pulled out a small blue book and gave it to her son.

  “How is Mr. Pedroza?” Octavio asked cautiously. Francisco stopped writing.

  “Mr. Simons gave him an administrative job. Thank God he didn’t put him out in the yard with the workers. He can’t do heavy labor. He can’t anymore.” Pascuala took the book from Francisco and placed it in her purse.

  “How are things going for you with this war?” Pascuala asked. The sound of her voice saddened and diminished at the end of the question. She did not wait for an answer. “They took my Wally. Wally is the youngest.”

  Francisco added up the cost of Octavio’s and Nana’s goods.

  The Simons youth were in the thick of battle in the Pacific and European theaters. Sad news came to Simons many times: “He lost his leg, but he’s alive. ... He was shot in the stomach but he’s coming home ... He lost his hearing ... He’s in the hospital ... He’s blind, but he’s in Hawaii ... ”

  Terrible news came to Simons when Amalia was told by an Army captain that both her boys were lost at sea. Pascuala and Gonzalo Pedroza never said a word when they were told that their Wally was missing in action in Sicily.

  On June 2, 1943, Wally Pedroza, after witnessing his company commander and nine enlisted men die and realizing that his company was helplessly pinned by German machine gun fire, picked up a BAR and became a one-man destruction squad. Firing from his hip, he moved on the enemy and put out two machine gun emplacements. Wally took two shots to the stomach but still kept advancing forward. ... ¡Ya estuvo cabrones! ¡Ya me agüitaron! ... Wally headed towards a third machine gun. Grenades exploded around him as he moved forward. Wally threw a grenade and wiped out the machine gun nest. He advanced and killed seven more of the enemy. After one hundred yards he confronted a fourth and a fifth machine gun. Wally was instantly hit by what seemed to him a ton of fiery pins penetrating his body. He squeezed the trigger of the BAR for one long eternal burst. Silence and blackness fell on him forever in a small innocent Italian town.

  Wally Pedroza was proud of the Aztec blood that flowed through his veins. And once pushed against a corner, pinned down and used to the life of the underdog, used to fighting unimaginable odds and uphill struggles, and having a lot of huevos, Wally could only reason one way and that was to throw chingadazos. He was not going to wait to get his butt kicked. ... El Wally Pedroza no se va a rajar ... He would kick ass. He would do it for the United States of America, for his raza, for his barrio Simons, for his homeboys and homegirls, for his sisters and brothers, for his father and mother. Wally was not going to wait around for someone else to do the job because before he went he saw that every man around him was frozen with fear.

  “¡Yo no me rajo!” Wally Pedroza ran forward into millions of butterflies.

  Neighbors and family members stared at each other through the silence that followed after Gonzalo knocked on the door of the bathroom where Pascuala had sobbed for the past half-hour. The military man who had brought the brown envelope which held the words of Wally’s heroism, death and burial spoke with Wally’s brothers and sisters. Octavio and Nana waited behind Gonzalo for Pascuala to exit. The door opened. Nana took Pascuala by the arm and led her to the kitchen. Octavio followed and served hot apple cider. Neighbors talked softly while over their respectable conversation Pascuala’s voice and words slowly demanded attention.

  “I begged him not to go. I offered to pay his way to Mexico. But he refused. He decided to go so that the gringos would understand that the Mexicans feel just as much American as they do. I didn’t want him to go. The Japanese are all over the world. The Japanese killed him.” Pascuala raised her hands as she implored the sky.

  Octavio and Father Charles moved closer to the sobbing Pascuala. Gonzalo’s uncommon face and protruding eyes glared into the noise of people who had come to give their condolences to the family and to cry out the great pride they had been given by the sacrifice of one of their sons. The Mexicans of Simons f
elt as American as any other American in the United States. The war reports had been interpreted as bad during those days and it was logical to expect bad news again. However, the workers of Simons had discovered a confidence in the death of Wally Pedroza.

  “The Japanese killed my Wally!” Pascuala screamed.

  Father Charles placed his hand on Pascuala’s shoulder to calm her down.

  “It was not the Japanese,” Octavio said to Nana who agreed and went to comfort Pascuala.

  Octavio watched Nana cool Pascuala’s face with a wet towel. He remembered watching, over a year ago, a Japanese woman cool the face of her hysterical mother who refused to be forced from her home of more than forty years. In broken English, the Japanese screamed that they owned the land and had deeds to confirm their claim. Pearl Harbor intensified long-standing animosity toward the Japanese in California. In Southern California, like an unexpected wave, the army forced the Japanese from their lands and homes and imprisoned them in concentration camps. Octavio, Nana and the children had witnessed these events. On a Saturday in March, Montebello police, federal agents and army troops moved down Vail, Date, Washington, Greenwood and Maple streets, surrounding the entire area where the Japanese school was located. They found several Japanese families hiding in the basement. Rumors circulated that long distance radio equipment and large amounts of money were found with the Japanese spies. One of the older Japanese men refused to leave and demanded his rights as an American citizen. The police grabbed the old man and clubbed him to the ground. The Japanese were loaded onto trucks.

  “My husband is fighting for America!” a Japanese woman with two children at her legs screamed at the agent who pushed her toward the truck.

  In the afternoon, Nana and Arturo, who had gone to buy vegetables at the Japanese farms on Telegraph Road, discovered the abandoned Japanese houses. They had not taken anything. Food had even been left cooking on the stove. The Japanese had disappeared and those who remained for the time being were soldiers watching over their properties until the government decided what to do with their belongings. Stories ran rampant that the Japanese had been organizing an internal fifth column to sabotage the American war effort. For the Japanese, civil liberties and rights had been suspended. They were considered dangerous, the enemy within.

  “Get out of here, lady. Them Japs are all gone and they won’t be back. Get lost and don’t come back here anymore,” the soldier yelled at Nana and Arturo while several soldiers rummaged through the house.

  Arturo looked away from the house to the fields where he had worked in the summer and in the spring. He felt the world had become eerie, strange, unrecognizable without the presence of the Japanese families. The fields belonged to nobody. The crops would go unpicked, and there would be no job for Arturo. Octavio was watering Nana’s plants when Arturo returned home and spoke of the injustice he and Nana had witnessed at the Japanese farm.

  At the Pedroza home, Arturo brought another wet towel to his mother to cool Pascuala Pedroza who had screamed that the Japanese were planning to murder all of the people of Simons.

  “The Mexicans are in danger!” Pascuala cried in anguish when she saw Arturo and the other young men of Simons.

  Not long after the Japanese had been herded into concentration camps in California and Arizona, the Anglo-American population discovered that this action had not solved any pre-existing economic and political problems. And the fear of espionage did not go away. Outside Simons, in a world where fantasy was a way of life, the dominant ruling mentality had decided that the scapegoat replacement for the Japanese would be the Mexicans. The Hearst newspapers launched the first rumors against the Mexicans and set out to effectively and deliberately create fear: “Mexican Crime, Mexican Juvenile Delinquency Rising.” Within six months, the newspapers had fired up a strong anti-Mexican sentiment on the verge of violent retaliation against the Mexicans. The police of Los Angeles and the surrounding cities used any excuse to arrest and beat Mexicans. The Anglo-American citizenry followed the official example and freely attacked Mexican males old enough to be dangerous. While men were dying in Europe, Africa and the Pacific, the press removed the war news from the front page, paving the way for Mexican blood on the pavement.

  Eleven sailors on leave from their station in Los Angeles walked through one of the worst slum areas of the city. The section was predominantly Mexican. The sailors were in an area where few Anglo-Americans, let alone sailors, found their way. Waiting to go overseas to get into some of the action, and bored by military discipline and life, the sailors were driven to an explosive edge. As they later reported, the attack came by surprise. Forty to fifty Mexicans, a gang of zoot suiters, pounced on them and beat them up. By late that evening a vengeance squad made up of off-duty police went to get the Mexicans. The squad entered the barrio where the attack had supposedly occurred and found no one to arrest. Frustrated, they went from house to house searching for any Mexican wearing a zoot suit.

  The night after the police raid, two hundred sailors decided to take matters into their own hands and set out to hunt for zoot suit greasers. Near Chinatown the sailors hired forty taxicabs and began to cruise the downtown streets. Minutes later they came across the first victim in a long list of bloodied names. The boy was left naked, badly beaten and bleeding profusely, lying on the pavement. The military task force resumed the search for more gangster Mexicans. The Mexican boys did not have much chance against two hundred drunken sailors hell-bent on raiding the city for Mexican zooters. The police watched the confrontations and picked up the broken bodies of the Mexican youths, arresting them for disturbing the peace, assault and drunkenness. The newspapers reported the sailors’ actions in heroic terms, praising the military men’s effort to do what the police seemingly had failed to. The papers did not report the resistance on the part of the Mexicans but described them as being rough, cowardly youth fleeing for cover. The Anglo-American population was convinced that their Anglo military youth had the enemy on the run.

  The Los Angeles press published dire warnings that the Mexicans were preparing to launch massive attacks on Anglo-American servicemen and the community at large. To insure that a million-dollar newspaper riot would occur, the papers published the exact time and place where the Mexicans were expected to attack. In the Mexican communities parents were not allowing their sons and daughters to leave the house for fear of them being brutalized or killed.

  Time and history would later write about the days after June 7, 1943, when the movie theaters were invaded and every zoot suiter the military boys could find was dragged out to the street and beaten senseless; when cripples were attacked; when children were viciously taken from their parents and stripped of their clothing and battered with sadistic frenzy and joy; when the Mexican barrios were in constant turmoil; when thousands of Mexican mothers searched frantically to locate their missing sons and daughters; when Anglo-American military terrorists hoodlumized thousands of innocent people; when the Anglo-American population, the government representatives and the press applauded the neo-Nazi actions.

  “It’s too bad the servicemen were called off before they could finish the job,” a journalist said.

  “That’s exactly what we need to end lawlessness: more of the same action being conducted by the servicemen. All loyal citizens should follow their excellent example,” a Los Angeles County Supervisor declared.

  “Zoot suits are an indication of subversive character. The greasers will do anything to get the Southwest back!” the Ventura Assistant District Attorney stated.

  “ ... the wearing of a zoot suit is declared to be a misdemeanor,” a resolution stated that was drafted, adopted, and enforced by the Los Angeles City Council.

  “Speaking Mexican is un-American, subversive and should be declared a felony and unconstitutional. Don’t these greasers know that the official language of the United States is English?” the Anglo-American citizenry demanded.

  “ ... The time has come to serve notice that the City of Los A
ngeles will no longer be terrorized by a relatively small handful of morons parading as zoot suit hoodlums. To delay action now means to court disaster later on,” McAnhester Boddy editorialized and signed in the Daily News.

  Mexican youth reacted by proudly and defiantly wearing the zoot suit. The boys sported pegged pants with tight cuffs around the ankles, pleats and high waists up under the armpits, wide-shouldered long, loose coats, heavy thick-soled shoes with a glass shine, long gold chains which added glitter to the elegant attire, and duck-tailed haircuts protected by a super fine hat, or tondito. They were not going to be repressed as to what they should wear or the language they should speak.

  “A mí nadie me va a decir lo que puedo vestir. Tengo el derecho de llevar lo que me da la gana,” a Simons youth declared.

  “My three carnales are fighting in Europe, ese, and nobody is going to tell me what to wear,” a fourteen-year-old girl said.

  “A mí no me importa si me echan en la cárcel pero no me quito el zoot suit y no les hablo inglés,” a thirteen-year-old boy said.