A Few Excerpts:
“The government of this state is bent on destroying the Chicano liberation struggle and the form of progress made by the Crusade for Justice. It is no secret that the Crusade is locked in a struggle for survival. We are witnessing the work of a conspiracy, a conspiracy to destroy the Crusade and render it ineffective … When they see the revolutionary face of the Crusade for Justice, they, the rulers and the criminals, feel that their system is being threatened. Now I think that everyone who is here today and has experienced the tremendous presence and inspiration of the Crusade, everyone who has experienced this, can say that, brothers and sisters, they are quite right, their system is being threatened.”
– Part of a statement by Angela Davis, April 1973. This is probably from a talk she gave in Denver at Loretto Heights College, April 28, 1973, to help raise funds for the “March 17” defendants.
“The truth is that both parties, the Elite Republicans and the party of promises, the Democrats, operate for their own selfish interests. They are both ruled and controlled by money and racism … THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM IS ONE ANIMAL WITH TWO HEADS EATING OUT OF THE SAME TROUGH. HOW DO WE PROVE THIS? Very simple. Start checking out who sits on the same board of directors at your local bank, who are the people who have shares in the same companies … Find out the political affiliation of the lawyers who are running for office and the [affiliation of their law partners]. Check out the country clubs and you’ll find out that the two-party boys drink together, hold hands together, and vomit together in the same toilets. Meanwhile, Chicanos go around saying ‘my President’…‘my party’ and they have to deliver their people’s votes and get castrated at the same time for a pat on the head or a small favor while Gringo businessmen can buy any politician in this state or this nation. Some people will question my statements and ask, ‘How do you know?’ I know because I was an organizer for the Democratic Party. I was the first Chicano District Captain in the history of Denver … Yes, I learned the hard way that I was a stooge for the party delivering my people’s vote. And, when I asked for social change, when I demanded jobs for people, they winked and I could have gotten a liquor license under the table, a zone change for a paying businessman, or a political job that was equipped with a gag to keep your mouth shut … I can just hear them running around saying you have to vote for the lesser of two evils. If four grains of arsenic will kill you and eight grains of arsenic will kill, which is the less of two evils? You’re dead either way. Another statement you often hear is that ‘We must work within the System, we’ll make the changes by using them.’ Let me tell you that you can’t walk into a house full of disease with a bottle of mercurochrome and cure the disease. You end up sick yourself. Look around at our politicos today and ask them … if they have done away with unemployment, racism, discrimination, irrelevant education, police brutality, political corruption, organized crime, do-nothing service agencies, bad housing, high interest rates, and WAR.” (from pages 125-126).
– Excerpt from a speech by Rodolpho (Corky) Gonzales at a state convention in Pueblo, Colorado, mid-May 1970, held to launch the Colorado branch of the national La Raza Unida Party.
Some Longer Excerpts:
Chapter 11, “Death and Destruction on Downing Street”
“Crusade officials, noting the speed with which scores of Denver police were able to get to the area well-armed and prepared for attack … speculate that the reason for the attack was much larger than a jay-walking incident. They point to a recent demonstration organized by the Crusade for Justice and the American Indian Movement in which over 1,200 Chicanos and Indians marched in support of Wounded Knee.”
– Ernesto Vigil, El Gallo, April 1973.
NOTE: In Denver, on the night of March 17, there was a confrontation outside the Crusade headquarters between the police and members or friends of the Crusade, which resulted in one member being shot and killed by police, and one policeman shot and wounded by someone. A number of people were arrested, including the author (Ernesto Vigil), who was the individual actually charged with shooting the officer. (Vigil wasn’t the shooter [he apparently managed to escape] but was shot by one of the officers.) The confrontation grew out of the detention and questioning (in the backseat of a patrol car) of a young male for jay walking in front of the Crusade headquarters building. Everyone arrested was eventually acquitted, except one individual, who was in an upstairs apartment, which, when riddled by police bullets, was demolished by a large explosion. This night, in a sense, could be seen as the beginning of the slow demise of the Crusade, through continuous legal battles and negative publicity. Vigil shows how this was accomplished, and makes a good case for the view that most, if not all, of the legal battles (and the negative publicity accompanying them) were essentially harassment, intended to drain the organization’s resources, hopefully jail some of the leadership, and alienate the Crusade from the community.
As Vigil puts it (page 275):
Capt. Doral Smith described the events of March 17 as a “spontaneous confrontation” in which “one thing led to another.” Crusade members and other activists viewed the confrontation as an attempt to crush the Crusade, and believed that the Crusade’s support for Wounded Knee prompted federal officials to manipulate a willing police department to do its bidding that day.
Chapter 12, “The Crusade, AIM, and Leonard Peltier”
NOTE: During the Wounded Knee occupation in South Dakota, the FBI monitored AIM sympathizers in Denver. An FBI document obtained under the FOI act, dated 3/15/1973 (2 days before the March 17 confrontation in Denver), stated:
To: All SAC’s and SAC’s, Wounded Knee Command Post (Personal Attention)
From: Acting Director
As stated in [3/15/73 teletype], Government interested in preventing outside elements from infiltrating troubled area of Wounded Knee. It is desirous to arrest members of such groups before they reach South Dakota ... Where probable cause cannot be established or purpose of trip ascertained without disclosing highly placed informant, other action must be considered to try to prevent these groups from traveling interstate to Wounded Knee ... [When] probable cause cannot be established to stop group, these groups are to be put under physical surveillance 24 hours a day ... It is responsibility of each SAC in whose territory they are to pass at any given time (day or night) to keep FBI [headquarters], the Wounded Knee Command Post ... and each SAC in the adjoining division which the group is approaching fully advised ... US Attorney is to be consulted when sufficient facts developed by investigation establishing there is probable cause a federal violation has been committed ... arrest warrants should be obtained and individuals responsible arrested in territory which they are in at that time. The object is to make lawful arrests as far from Wounded Knee, South Dakota, as possible ... All SAC’s are to personally coordinate implementation of these instructions. FBI HQ and Command Post at Wounded Knee are to be kept informed by telephone or other expedite communication ... Assistant General Harlington Wood is desirous to prevent subversive elements from supporting the militant Indians ... Coordinated with [Special Agent] Arthur B. Fulton, [Internal Security-1], Intelligence Division."
– From an FBI document obtained under the FOI act, dated 3/15/1973
NOTE: The number and complexity of the events in the 1970’s explored by Vigil makes it difficult to summarize. The pattern we have become familiar with as the FBI’s “cointelpro” approach to neutralizing politically militant or radical groups is unmistakably present in many of these events. As with any of the other victims of this approach, there are many unanswered questions. Attempting to frame people for possessing bombs seems to be one of the tactics used. A number of people are blown up by car bombs – for example, six in Boulder (2 groups of 3 each) within 2 days of each other in May, 1974. Most of the six were current or former members of CU Boulder’s UMAS (United Mexican American Students). The authorities claimed they had been blown up by bombs they were transporting somewhere, although they were unable to come up with any evidence to support this. The authorities did seem to use the bombings as an excuse for a much larger investigation of Colorado’s activist network, however. This is reminiscent of the car bombing of the EarthFirst!ers in Oakland, California in the 80’s, who were immediately charged by the FBI with their own bombing. The pattern is immediately recognizable.
Vigil discusses the FBI’s COINTELPRO program in one of his many endnotes. This is endnote #13 on page 430:
ENDNOTE #13: Though FBI improprieties and crimes were disclosed because of the scandal that commenced with the Watergate burglary in June 1972, dramatic evidence had surfaced on March 8, 1971, when unknown persons burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, carted off FBI files, and began to systematically mail copies to the media, politicians, and the activists who were spied upon. An observant reporter became interested in an acronym on one document: COINTELPRO. Subsequent revelations showed that it stood for “counter-intelligence program.” All COINTELPRO’s were coordinated by the FBI Domestic Intelligence Division (“Division Five”), as were most FBI investigations of the Chicano movement. “Counterintelligence” is premised on the assumption that domestic dissidents are knowingly or unknowingly in the service of a hostile foreign power. To counter the enemy, the FBI and similar groups conduct “counterintelligence” efforts. Implicit in this terminology is the logic that those who serve an enemy are themselves the enemy. The FBI’s first formal COINTELPRO targeted the Communist Party USA and was the model for subsequent COINTELPROs. The Watergate-related investigations showed that COINTELPROs employed illegal, politically motivated attacks against targets. This, however, does not mean that COINTELPROs were rare aberrations confined to a particular era. The illegal activities associated with COINTELPROs – burglaries, blackmail, illegal wiretaps – are tactics that were employed throughout the history of the FBI. Martin Luther King, Jr., for example, was the victim of such tactics years before the beginning of the Black Nationalist Hate Group COINTELPRO in 1967. Technically speaking, the FBI conducted few “counter intelligence programs” because the Bureau defines such FBI programs as those in which the words “counterintelligence program” are part of the official file caption – for example, the “New Left Counterintelligence Program,” the “Black Nationalist Hate Group Counterintelligence Program.” By this definition, the Crusade for Justice was not targeted in an FBI “counterintelligence program” because the words are not found on its file caption.
Chapter 15, “The System Weathers the Storm”
NOTE: Vigil demonstrates how the Denver District Attorney’s office used grand juries whenever there was a shooting by a law enforcement officer, particularly when the victim was a member of a minority group. He describes numerous shootings (and killings) of Chicanos in Denver by police during the 70’s. He quotes an article written by attorney Ken Padilla:
“Mr. Tooley has the power, authority, and responsibility to file cases directly against persons alleged to have committed crimes and does so routinely, on a daily basis … [including] shootings that result in charges of first degree murder or first degree assault if the victim is not killed. Of the shooting cases that occur in Denver, it appears that the only ones that are referred to the Grand Jury are those in which a peace officer is the person who is doing the shooting or killing, and most frequently, the victim is a member of a minority group, Chicano, Black, or American Indian … (T)he law is clear that a peace officer may only use deadly physical force to effect an arrest or prevent an escape upon a person who had committed a felony involving the use, or threatened use, of a deadly weapon … Nonetheless, DA Tooley wants to take this matter behind closed doors before a Grand Jury and deny all public access to this inquiry … ”
– From an article written by attorney Ken Padilla
The article charged Tooley’s office with various motives for sending the matter to the grand jury. Among them were to “delay the matter for several months so that the public sentiment and interest will end,” and “to deny (the victim) and his attorneys any opportunity to investigate or otherwise obtain statements and police accounts of the incident.”
“For example, with the use of the Grand Jury in the Curtis Park killing of two Mexican Americans in the summer of 1977, Mr. Tooley has effectively kept all police reports, physical evidence and transcripts of the Grand Jury proceedings from those attorneys representing the families in their lawsuits against police officers … ”
The Chicano community’s anger stemmed from the belief that the grand jury was used to deflect truth and justice, rather than to seek it. This was not the first time the charge was made.
“State Grand Juries, whether regular or special, have been notoriously ineffective in Denver … Their success is so minuscule it must be measured through a microscope … In recent years, the panel’s main responsibility has been to hear testimony and weigh evidence in cases involving confrontations between policemen and civilians, particularly when the latter are injured or killed in such disputes. In a sense, the Grand Jury has become a civilian review board in police matters. The system, as it operates in Denver, has also been used as an escape hatch … A Grand Jury moreover, can, and has been used, politically. City administrations have found that it can be a bottomless well into which irritating issues can be dropped without fear of splash or retribution. Rather than use the open-to-the-public investigative authority available by City Charter, municipal leaders are inclined to refer ticklish but serious problems to the Grand Jury. The secret nature of the proceedings offers administrators an attractive way to avoid airing dirty linen, without seeming to do so.”
– George Kelly, The Old Gray Mayors of Denver (Boulder: Pruett, 1974), pp. 130-31
Chapter 16, “Witch Hunts and Grand Juries”
“[the Justice Department’s Internal Security Division] converted the federal grand jury proceeding from its traditional and recognized function, deciding whether the prosecutor has presented sufficient evidence to justify an accusation of law violation, into a cover for a variety of intelligence-related pursuits divorced from legal ends. The effectiveness of the grand jury proceeding as an intelligence instrument is directly traceable to its subpoena power, the power to compel testimony and the production of documents on pain of contempt. A dominant aim of such compelled testimony was to force a witness to name associates and friends in an ever-widening inquisition.”
– Frank Donner (The Age of Surveillance (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 356)
According to Donner, the ISD “exploited the grand jury format to develop information for the ISD’s intelligence unit, the IDIU.” The IDIU in turn shared its “intelligence” with other governmental spy agencies, including the CIA. Donner details ISD misconduct involving informers who spied on the legal defense efforts of subpoenaed individuals, thus violating the privilege of confidentiality between attorneys and clients. Other abuses involved warrantless wiretaps. When individuals who appeared before the grand jury alleged government misconduct via wiretaps, federal prosecutors often dropped subpoenas, nervous about placing themselves in jeopardy if caught in illegal activity.
NOTE: Crusade defense lawyers used this approach of alleging government misconduct with one of their many cases, that of the Lucero brothers (subpoenaed to appear before a New York federal grand jury investigating the Puerto Rican independence group, the FALN). In a five-page motion to quash the subpoena, attorneys Kenneth Padilla and Robert Bloom stated:
“In light of Van Lucero’s and Stephen Lucero’s extensive exercise of their legitimate First Amendment rights, the government’s long history of COINTELPRO activity, and illegal harassment of persons exercising First Amendment rights, and the unnecessary harassment of the Lucero family, the Court should examine closely the government’s motivation in subpoenaing Van and Stephen Lucero, and quash the subpoenas in that they chill legitimate First Amendment rights of the subpoenaed witnesses. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a documented history of attempting to sabotage, discredit, falsely charge, falsely label members of groups as informers, to misuse judicial process, to create antagonism among ethnic groups and organizations seeking civil rights, and to generally dissipate and discredit efforts of minority groups and civil rights organizations as part of their COINTELPRO program and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has practiced this program against the Crusade for Justice, its Chairman, Rodolfo ‘Corky’ Gonzales, its members and its members’ families, and those who associate with said organization.”
– From a five-page motion to quash the subpoena written by attorneys Kenneth Padilla and Robert Bloom
NOTE: Government prosecutors dismissed the subpoenas.
Extensive Excerpts From Chapter 7, “East Los Angeles, 8/29/1970”
RUBEN SALAZAR
If any name is linked in the public mind with the August 29, 1970, Chicano Antiwar Moratorium in East Los Angeles, it is that of Ruben Salazar, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In 1967, Salazar’s name was entered in an FBI report that described him as “most cooperative when interviewed” by FBI agents seeking information about Stokely Carmichael …
… At the time the FBI interviewed him about Carmichael, the bureau maintained data on Salazar that predated by a decade and a half the files it kept on the Chicano movement …
Salazar’s career started in El Paso, Texas, in 1955, and he began working for the Los Angeles Times in 1961. He served as its foreign correspondent from 1965 to 1968. Returning to Los Angeles in 1969, he reported on the growing Chicano movement. Later he would become news director for KMEX, a Spanish-language television station that served Los Angeles’ huge Mexicano community. No one who knew him personally or professionally described him as a militant or leftist, except for the Los Angeles Police and Sheriffs Departments and their informants.
LAPD Chief Edward M. Davis wanted to tear “the hide right off [Salazar’s] back” for an article he wrote on March 13, 1970, describing the chief’s meeting with Latino reporters …
Salazar’s article on the dinner with the Latino press corp may have embarrassed Davis by illustrating the bigotry implicit in his foot-in-mouth remarks …
In retaliation for Salazar’s article, Davis ordered the LAPD to open an intelligence file on him …
TARGETING THE BROWN BERETS
… It is well documented, though possibly poorly appreciated, that the FBI launched illegal attacks against a broad spectrum of targets, ranging from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the Communist Party, USA. It is far less well known and publicized that the FBI waged a similar campaign against the Chicano movement.
On February 29, 1968, FBI Supervisor S.S. Mignosa, on J. Edgar Hoover’s authority, ordered an Internal Security investigation of the Crusade for Justice organization …
… the Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge (SAC) quickly wrote to headquarters asking for authorization to launch an internal security investigation of the Brown Berets. The National Brown Beret Organization, as its “Prime Minister” David Sanchez referred to those chapters who accepted his leadership, saw three of its leaders (Sanchez, Ralph Ramirez, and Carlos Montes) indicted with other activists in June 1968 on felony conspiracy charges stemming from the March 1968 East L.A. school walkouts. The indictments followed an undercover investigation ordered in early March by D.A. Younger and conducted by detectives from the LAPD and the Sheriffs Department (LASD), as well as investigators from the DA’s office …
Ramirez and Montes were in Washington for the Poor People’s Campaign at the time of Younger’s announcement. When the Chicano contingent there learned of the indictments, it held a protest at the Justice Department to demand that the activists be released …
The “Los Angeles 13”, as the walkout defendants became known, were later victorious in court, where they were provided an inspired, effective, and unorthodox legal defense by attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. In May, the Sheriffs Department planted an undercover deputy sheriff, Robert Acosta, in the National Brown Beret Organization, after recruiting him from the Sheriff’s Academy. In November Fernando Sumaya infiltrated Sanchez’ Brown Berets; a graduate of the LAPD Academy, Sumaya was recruited for undercover duty by Sergeant Ceballos of the LAPD Intelligence Division …
Montes, arguably the most observant and articulate member of the Brown Beret leadership in Sanchez’ constituency, claimed that LAPD Officer Robert Avila also infiltrated the Brown Berets around March 1968 and, according to Montes, urged members to shoot police officers.
Ruben Salazar reported on all these personalities and events. He also wrote about Rodolfo Gonzales and the 1969 and 1970 Crusade for Justice youth conferences. In time he developed friendships with activists, including Oscar Zeta Acosta, who ran for sheriff of Los Angeles in 1970. Acosta proposed to reconstitute the Sheriff’s Department as the “People’s Protection Department.” Governed by civilian review boards, it would serve “as a shield, not a sword,” because “justice for all members of the community must always precede claims for ‘Law and Order.’”
On June 2, 1970, Salazar reported on Acosta’s campaign in an article headlined, “To the Chicanos, It Is How Narrowly a Candidate Lost”:
“A Chicano who had an impressive loss was Oscar Z. Acosta, a militant attorney who received more than 100,000 votes for sheriff. During the campaign, he defended the establishment–shaking Catolicos por La Raza, spent a couple of days in jail for contempt of court, and vowed if elected to do away with the Sheriff’s Department as it is now constituted. Acosta, easily recognized in court by his loud ties and flowered attache case with a Chicano Power sticker, didn’t come close to Sheriff Pitchess’ 1,300,000 votes but did beat Everett Holladay, Monterey Park Chief of Police.”
– From the article "To the Chicanos, It Is How Narrowly a Candidate Lost," written by reporter Ruben Salazar
Within three months of writing the article, Salazar would die at the hands of a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy, shot through the head with a 10-inch-long metal tear gas projectile when a riot erupted during the Chicano Moratorium. And Oscar Acosta, who won 100,000 votes while campaigning to dismantle the Sheriff’s Department, would be the defense attorney for Rodolfo Gonzales, arrested on a weapons charge during the riot.
THE CHICANO MORATORIUM
On August 29, 1970, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Chicano protesters marched in East Los Angeles to protest against the Vietnam War. The march was the largest minority protest against the war, the largest protest gathering of Chicanos until that time, and probably the largest anti-war protest composed of working-class people.
Police Riot
… While the crowd waited for the music and performances to end, a commotion began at the rear of the crowd. Crusade member Antonio Salinas recalled seeing what he thought was a soda can land on the stage near where he was standing. From the object came a white cloud of tear gas. People near the stage stood and turned to see what was causing the commotion. They saw scores of uniformed police and sheriffs file into the park in full riot gear and riot formation. No orders to disperse were heard. Having decided to use the incident at the liquor store to break up the gathering, the officers went on the offensive. Speakers on the stage attempted to calm the crowd, telling them to remain seated, but tear gas canisters were landing everywhere.
Some people briefly formed a line between the police and the crowd and tried to keep the two groups separated, but the police kept advancing and firing tear gas. Thousands streamed from the park to escape the gas, while hundreds, incensed at the police assault, fought back with sticks, rocks, fists, and bottles. The angry crowd rushed the police and sheriffs and twice drove them from the park, catching and beating many officers. The officers returned in greater numbers and finally occupied the park, beating and arresting hundreds.
Most of the Crusade delegation remained together near the front of the stage. Others attempted to leave the area in school buses parked nearby. Police tossed tear gas into the buses, and many people were dragged from them and beaten. At least two helicopters flew above. A large group of Crusade members and their associates piled onto a flatbed truck and drove from the area … the truck’s occupants noticed that they were being followed by one of the helicopters. About a mile and a half from Laguna Park [now Salazar Park], the truck stopped at a red light at the far end of an underpass. The helicopter hovered above. When the light turned green and the truck proceeded into the intersection a large contingent of police officers with drawn weapons stopped the truck and ordered everyone to lie on the ground. “As the [police] were making people get off the truck, they were telling each other ‘Look for Corky! He’s the one with a mustache.’” Confusion resulted when police found many men with mustaches.
Everyone in the truck was arrested, and many were beaten …
Those arrested on the truck were held on “suspicion of robbery” because Gonzales had $370 in his possession. Hunter S. Thompson, a friend of Oscar Acosta and a contributor to Rolling Stone magazine, quoted Gonzales as saying: “Only a lunatic or a fool could believe that 29 people would rob a place and then jump on a flatbed truck to make their getaway.”
On the truck were some of the most visible leaders of Colorado’s major movement organizations: Colorado La Raza Unida Party, the Crusade for Justice, and the Black Beret and Brown Beret organizations …
The Moratorium police riot led to disturbances as far west as Wilmington and as far east as Barrio Casa Blanca in Riverside …
Riots would continue into 1971. Activists faced a dilemma well summarized by Jerry Mandel and Jay Alire: “Unwilling to turn to violence and unable to find another way of raising their concerns peacefully, many of the Mexican American activist groups, including the Moratorium Committee, gradually faded from sight, leaving a vacuum which was filled only gradually over the following decade.”
“A Well-planned Conspiracy”
… [Oscar] Acosta said, “When [Gonzales] was arrested, I went to the East Los Angeles Sheriff’s substation to interview him. I was prevented from entering the station at the point of three rifles by armed uniformed deputies at that station.” Upon his release from jail, Gonzales said, “The disturbance, we feel, was planned to disrupt the greatest, the biggest, the most historic march against the war by Chicanos in the history of this nation. This racist society was going to prove to us that we could not demonstrate, we could not go out in a fiesta-like event to say we are concerned about the war, we are concerned about the death of our young people.”
The Death of Ruben Salazar
Salazar was killed in the Silver Dollar Cafe on Whittier Boulevard, some distance from the scene of the rioting. The initial press accounts of his death, like reports on Gonzales’ arrest, were based on information from the authorities and were plagued by inaccuracies. The Los Angeles Times initially reported:
“The dead man was identified as Ruben Salazar, 41, award-winning Times columnist and news director for television station KMEX … ([Sheriff’s]) Deputies found him sprawled on the floor inside the Silver Dollar Bar, 4945 Whittier Boulevard, with a bullet wound in the head. The deputies had surrounded the bar and ordered it evacuated after receiving a report of a man carrying a gun inside. Tear gas – but no bullets – was fired inside, deputies said. When no one came out, they entered and found Salazar … Although deputies said they had fired no shots before entering the bar, they speculated that Salazar might have been killed by errant gunfire during clashes between police and rioters near the bar earlier in the evening.
– From an initial report by the Los Angeles Times
In fact, Salazar was killed by a deputy sheriff who fired a high-powered tear gas canister through the curtain of an open doorway from a distance of about ten feet. The 10-inch metal projectile struck Salazar in the temple, passing completely through his head. This “Flite-Rite” projectile was designed to be used against barricaded criminals and was capable of penetrating a one-inch pine board from 100 yards. According to reports, the projectile that killed Salazar was not intended for use in riot situations but was to be fired only when there was no other way to rout a dangerous criminal and then only upon command of a supervisory officer in the field. Some believe Salazar died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some felt, or speculated, that he was murdered. No criminal charges were ever filed over his death.
Ruben Salazar was neither a cynic nor a militant. He wrote an optimistic article (“A Beautiful Sight: The System Working the Way It Should”) when charges were brought against seven law enforcement officers for killing two unarmed Mexicanos, cousins Guillermo and Beltran Sanchez.
The Sanchez cousins were living in Los Angeles without the benefit of immigration papers. Officers went to their apartment looking for a murder suspect – who no longer lived at the location – and the cousins, fearing deportation, attempted to flee. Police killed both men. The suspect the police sought was himself later shown to be innocent. The only crime the Sanchez cousins committed was entering the country “illegally.” Or maybe, as some muttered, it was that they were Mexicans.
One of Salazar’s articles reported that a member of Congress had called for a federal grand jury to investigate the Sanchez killings. A white reporter challenged the congressman, noting the killing of two Border Patrol officers by Mexicanos and asking why he had not called for a federal grand jury investigation of those killings. Salazar wrote:
“When the Border Patrolmen were killed it was crystal clear what had to be done. The murderers had to be found and punished. When a policeman kills a civilian things aren’t that clear. When there is a question about the officer’s comportment in such a death, the case is sometimes turned over to the county grand jury where it is handled in secrecy … Anyone who has worked a police beat as a reporter, as I have, knows that policemen tend to have different attitudes toward enforcing the law depending on the social, financial, and racial makeup of the people they deal with. This is not a special police attribute, but it becomes very important when an armed policeman has some sort of confrontation with an unarmed civilian … Some time ago I asked a high police official to confirm or deny information which I had which showed that a policeman who had just shot a Mexican American boy had been suspended twice before, once for threatening another boy with a cocked pistol. ‘Before I answer that,’ the police official said, ‘let me remind you that the release of such information will hurt your community more than it will hurt mine.’ The implications of that statement are staggering and too complicated to go into here. But one of the implications was that certain communities, in this instance, Mexican Americans, cannot handle certain kinds of information.”
– From an article by reporter Ruben Salazar
Salazar decided to play on KMEX interviews with two witnesses to the incident in which the Sanchez cousins were killed. Two policemen visited him and “warned me about the ‘impact’ the interviews would have on the police department’s image. Besides, they said, this kind of information could be dangerous in the minds of the barrio people.” Incidentally, charges filed against the officers involved in the Sanchez killings were later dropped. Such circumstances led many Chicano activists to doubt that Salazar’s death was accidental and to surmise that a conspiracy led to his death …
“If I Survive … ”
Salazar’s articles recount that Los Angeles law enforcement officials were unhappy with his reporting and let him know it. After his death Sam Kushner wrote, “Salazar had been a staunch advocate of the rights of his people. His broadcasts and his columns have often … brought the police to his office. They urged him to tone down his criticism and reporting.” His family saw his behavior change in the weeks before the Moratorium. When the station manager of KMEX told Salazar that he would see him Monday after the Moratorium protest, Salazar responded, “Yeah, if I survive, you’ll see me.”
Salazar was gathering material for a series on Los Angeles police, entitled, “What Progress in 30 Years of Police-Community Relations?” He confided to the KMEX station manager that he thought police were following him. He believed that someone had gone through his desk at KMEX, so he began to keep research materials in his car trunk. Activist Bert Corona recalls that Salazar was concerned about the FBI. The night before the protest, he told Corona that he had reason to believe that the Moratorium Committee and Prime Minister Sanchez’ Brown Berets had been infiltrated by provocateurs. He was afraid that the police would take action against the protest. Corona says that the police were deliberately shooting tear gas at Salazar’s film crew to impede their filming when the riot erupted; he notes that the riot film and research material kept in Salazar’s car trunk have never been seen since.
The role played by the law enforcement agencies in disrupting the August 29 Moratorium will remain a tangled mystery until the files of the LAPD, LASD, LEIU, FBI, ATF, and other collaborating agencies are opened to the taxpayers who fund their endeavors. That day may never come.