Chicano Mexicano Prison Project:

Editor’s Note: Since the military occupation of our territory (northern Mexico) by the U.S. in 1848, the killing and terrorizing of Mexicanos by the police and European (white) settlers has been a constant and common occurrence. As we move into the year 2000, we find that this situation has not changed. Therefore, this article is part of Unión del Barrio’s struggle to provide our membership and other Raza activists-revolutionaries with a fundamental understanding as to what is the real basis for police terror. We include this article: (1) recent killings of Mexicanos, specifically the case of Jose Luis Ramirez; (2) references to the killings of other oppressed nationalities; (3) the response of the vendidos to police terror; (4) the social-political-economic basis of police terror; and (5) what needs to be done to end police terror.

THE CASE OF JOSE LUIS RAMIREZ: A YOUNG MAN DESPISED BY THE PIGS

Jose Luis was a young man of 30 years and father of five children. In the past, Jose Luis had participated in anti-police brutality demonstrations and because of his background as a home boy from Logan Heights (one of the oldest Barrios in the city of San Diego), was known and despised by the police. It was this hatred that the pigs had for Jose Luis and other homeboys, that we argue was the reason for his assassination. The following are edited excerpts of an article in Pueblo Unido (April 1999), the official newsletter of the Raza Rights Coalition which describes the killing of Jose Luis by the San Diego City pigs:

“On Wednesday, March 17,1999, on the corner of 25th and Imperial, in Barrio Sherman, Jose Luis Ramirez was gunned down by a San Diego Police officer as he attempted to leave a scene of what the police had said was the site of an attempted robbery. As Jose Luis ran from the police, the pigs opened fire, shooting him in the back, fatally wounding him.

“According to police, they attempted to detain Jose Luis because a gasoline station clerk had called and reported a “suspicious looking man” was seen hanging around near the station. Two pigs, both who had a history previous shootings, said that they shot Jose Luis because as they ordered him to stop, he brandish a gun towards them. The pigs also claim, that as they approach his body they found a .45 caliber revolver in his hands.

“However, according to several eye witness accounts, Jose Luis was not armed and was shot as he was running away from the police. The witnesses said they did not see Jose Louis with the so-called weapon that the police claimed he had. The witnesses also said that when they did see a revolver near his body, it was at least 20 minutes after the shooting. Furthermore, neighbors said the what looked like hundreds of police, surround the area of the shooting and forced everyone to stay inside their homes. The neighbors said that they we literally held hostage in their homes for over 4 hours. Never, according to the neighbors, did the police asked them what they had seen; the police report was based solely on the accounts of the two pigs who had killed Jose Luis. We, the Raza Rights Coalition, believe that the revolver was placed near Jose Luis’ body to justify their murderous actions. (from Pueblo Unido, newsletter of the Raza Rights Coalition, April 1999)

COMMUNITY DEMANDS THAT THE KILLER PIGS BE PUT ON TRIAL

A large sector of Mexicano community was outraged at the murder of yet another Mexicano. Once again we saw savagery on the part of the pigs, claimed the life of another Mexicano.

In response to this brutal killing, the Brown Berets de Aztlán and the family of Jose Luis, called on the community to denounce the actions of the police against our gente. On March 22, joined by the Chicano Park Steering Committee, Raza Rights Coalition, and Unión del Barrio, -the Brown Berets de Aztlán led 300 people, homeboys and community gente in a candlelight vigil/marcha to demand justice for Jose Luis. The marcha went right down Imperial Avenue (a major street in the City of San Diego) to the site where Jose Luis was killed. Militant chants of: “Put the Pigs on Trial”, “Raza Si, Placa No”, “Abajo Con La Chota”, “No Justice, No Peace”, were heard through the streets of the barrio.

It was no coincidence that Jose Luis was gunned down by pigs at the very corner where an 11 million dollar police substation, at the request of vendido city councilman Juan Vargas, is being constructed. La Raza made it a point to let the pigs know that the people were serious -as “We Want Justice” was spray painted on the walls of the police substation being constructed on 25th and Imperial. Moreover, when the vigil ended and as the people were leaving, some gente expressed their hatred of the placa by throwing rocks at the yet unfinished substation. About 50 pigs quickly responded with riot gear and pigs on horses. In a military style formation, the pigs marched up Oceanview Blvd, while other placa in cars blocked the street and arrested several young people (see San Diego Union-Tribune, March 24,1999).

But the community was not intimated. The main police headquarters in downtown San Diego was the target of a second mobilization to demand justice for the family of Jose Luis. On Wednesday, March 24, closed to 100 people gathered in front of the main headquarters of the SDPD. The call by the Brown Berets de Aztlán was responded by Union del Barrio, Chicano Park Steering Committee, Raza Rights Coalition, dozens of Jose Luis’ friends, and other community people. In agreement with the struggle against police terror here in occupied Mexico (Aztlán) and symbolic of the growing unity of the national liberation movement, a comunicado from the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in solidarity with the demands for Justice for Jose Luis was read at the rally. (title/date of EZLN statement?)

But justice for Jose Luis has not been served. Never mind that there were witnesses to counter the pig version of the shooting -because as is historically been the case with police shootings- in early July (of 1999), the district attorney found the pigs innocent of killing Jose Luis Ramirez.

THE POLICE KILLING OF MEXICANOS IS A COMMON OCCURRENCE

As we stated in the introduction of this article, the killing of Mexicanos and other non-white nationalities has been a constant and common historical fact of U.S. history. The killing of Jose Luis Ramirez, is but one example of the numerous police killings that take place throughout occupied America (United States) everyday. The magnitude of this vicious-cold-blooded terror being waged upon nuestra Raza can be seen by the following examples:

°On January of 1999, Julio Castillo, a 17-year Mexicano was shot in cold blood by the pigs in Lynwood, California. The pigs claimed that had kidnapped his “girl friend”. But the young lady herself said that the pigs were lying and that they had shot Julio while he was trying to surrender. Again, in complete disregard for eyewitness accounts and demonstrations held by the community, the pigs were not prosecuted for the murder. (Los Angeles Times, 1/16/99)
°On May 6, 1999, the Orange County Grand Jury voted not to indict a Santa Ana pig who blew the brains out an unarmed Mexicano who the pig had suspect of “driving a stolen car”. Despite eye witnesses accounts blaming the pigs for the shooting, and protests from Chicano Mexicano community who claimed the pigs were covering-up the murder, the district attorney found the the pig not guilty. (Los Angeles Times, Orange County Addition,5/6/99 )
°Yet another police killing took in San Diego. On May 11,199, Jaime Franco a 35- year Mexicano was shot and killed as he was hiding in a backyard shed while encircled by over 50 pigs. The pigs were after Franco because earlier he had rob a can of beer at nearby store. According to the pigs, under the influence of alcohol and meth, Franco fired a couple of shots at them and fled. After surrounding Franco, the pigs did not once order him to surrender, instead, like they have done since the occupation of our lands in the 1800s, they became jury, judge, and executioner, firing hundreds of rounds into the shed where he was hiding. (San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/11/99).
°On August 14, 1999, the Los Angeles pigs executed two Mexicanos. Jose Figueroa, 24, and Mario Guerrero, 23, who were “suspected of robbery”, were both shot execution style (with high power shotguns) in the back by members of a special police unit known by its initials as SIS (Special Investigation Section). The SIS has a long history of inflicting brutal and murderous attacks against Mexicanos and other non-white people. (read, “FBI to Probe Police Slayings”, Los Angeles Times, 8/17/98)

OTHER MEMBERS OF OPPRESSED NATIONS ALSO VICTIMS OF COLONIAL PIG KILLINGS

Colonial oppression is not limited to Mexicanos, other nationalities have also been victims of colonial police killings. The following are two recent examples of Africans killed by the U.S. colonial police:

° December 28, 1998, Riverside (California) pigs police kill 19-year-old Tyisha Miller. Miller was unconscious and sitting in the back of a locked car. According to the pigs, Miller was unconscious foaming at the mouth as they attempted to open the doors of the car by busting the windows of the car, when suddenly Miller woke up and suddenly reached for the gun, fearing for their own safety, the pigs shot her over 20 times. (Los Angeles Times, 12/29/99).
°On July 24, 1999, San Diego pigs killed 28 year-old Demetrius Dubose. According to police, Dubose was a “burglary suspect” and refused to be handcuffed and attacked the pigs with their own nunchakus. At 10 feet away, the pigs shot Dubose 12 times, 6 times in the back. (San Diego Union-Tribune, 8/2/99)

Taking into account that other nationalities also suffer from police brutality, the Unión del Barrio and other organizations (specifically the African People’s Socialist Party) have in the past called for the formation of an anti-imperialist front of colonized peoples. (read “Anti-Imperialist Front To Unite African, Mexican And Other Liberation Movements In The U.S.”, from a position paper submitted by Unión del Barrio, The Burning Spear, Sept-Oct, 1997)

BUT WHAT HAS BEEN THE GENERAL RESPONSE TO THESE KILLINGS BY THE VENDIDOS AND UNCLE TOMS?

In San Diego, for over a year, City Council member Juan Vargas lobbied and succeeding in getting funding for a large substation to be built in the middle of the Mexicano and African community. The vendido Vargas (who some day wants to become mayor) and others like him, have served well their gringo-colonial masters by playing upon community fears and stereotypes, and promoting more police and prisons as the answer to the social, political, and economic problems facing the Mexicano community.

In response to the brutalization and terrorizing of our community by the police, other Hispanic vendido (neo-colonial) elements call on the community to stay calm and let the police do the investigations to the on-going killing of Mexicanos. Often times, the vendidos (sellouts) and so-called Hispanic leaders (in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Jose, El Paso, Houston, San Diego, etc.) refer to police brutality as the work of a few bad apples found within the police departments. They cry for the hiring of more “African American and Latino” police as the solution. Others promote the idea that sensitivity and cultural training of the police will put an end to rampant pig brutality. Yet, it has been crystal clear, even to the gringo capitalist media, that none of these responses have decreased police terror (read “Police Must Be Held Accountable” 6/21/99 or “Its Not The Act of A Few Bad Apples” 5/17/99, in issues of Newsweek Magazine)

OPERATION WEED AND SEED, COVER FOR POLICE TERROR

Yet another response from the Hispanic vendidos, has been their embracement of a federal program called “Operation Weed and Seed”. According to government documents, the objective of the program is to “weed out violent crime, drugs, etc., and then seed the target area by restoring neighborhoods through social, and economic revitalization.” The target area becomes the objective of “intensive law enforcement and prosecution, and work in partnership with ‘community leaders’”. The local operations (mostly in urban areas with large Mexicano and African populations) are administered by “Management Teams” which are usually administered by a police agent. A key component of the program is something called “community policing”.(see “Operation Weed and Seed”, Justice Department files). In an article in the Burning Spear, Weed and Seed, and Community Policing is summed-up as:

“Community Policing is a counterinsurgency technique used by U.S. imperialism all over the world. A key element of this strategy is the use of population control, through which the ruling class and the oppressor State can readily identify and eliminate militant elements among the rebellious populations. It employs the cooperation of sell-outs among the oppressed people who invite the police in to gather intelligence on our community under the guise of doing charity work or some other ploy. This allows the police to hold the people under close surveillance while exercising greater control of the entire oppress population and its resources.

“In many places in the U.S., the police post their substations in community centers where they are able to collect intelligence on the people under the guise of providing services to impoverished African workers.” (The Burning Spear, Special Edition 1997, publication of the African People’s Socialist Party)

ENEMIES OF LA RAZA: OPPORTUNISTS AND VENDIDOS MAKE MONEY FROM OUR OPPRESSION

While the program might appeal to Hispanic vendidos, opportunists, or very naive people, the Weed and Seed has nothing to do with community control of its own needs as the program is administered by the federal government and local police. Its clear, that by working with government, many of the Hispanic, opportunists, or naive members of our community, are actually collaborating with the pigs to identify, prosecute, and send more Raza to prison.

The opportunists are usually the poverty pimps and clergy who make their living out of government handouts. While the naive people are those community gente who have been victims of crime, but because of ignorance imposed on them by the colonial media or confused by the lies of the Hispanic vendidos (such as councilman Vargas), have been over to believe the answer to crime is more police and incarceration.

The Hispanic vendidos and liberal opportunists (clergy, government officials, Democratic Party flunkies, police, etc.) refuse to acknowledge the historical truth that the U.S. government has never had the best wishes for our community in mind and that European colonization of America and the birth of the United States were based on the biggest hate crime in the history of humanity: the genocide, slavery, and colonization of Mexicanos-Indios, Africans, and other peoples. It is this denial of the truth and their collaboration with gringo colonialism that makes this sector enemies of La Raza. By placing a few brown faces in the right places, neo-colonialism (a strategy by which the colonial powers use elements within the colonized masses as fronts) blind and trick the masses as to what is the real source of their oppression

IT IS COLONIALISM WHICH DEFINES THE PAST AND PRESENT REALITY OF POLICE TERROR

Again, as we stated in our introduction to this article, the killing of Mexicanos has been a constant historical fact and part of the over-all strategy of U.S. imperialism to occupy and maintain control of Mexicanos and our land, Aztlán (northern or occupied Mexico). The historian and political scientist, Michael Parenti clearly explains this strategy:

“When imperialism is imposed upon a people, they do not always remain passive victims. Contrary to the image of a mute and mindless multitude, they frequently organize, protest, strike, resist, sabotage, riot, and rebel in the hope of bettering their lot or preventing its further deterioration. In turn, the foreign colonizers and the collaborationist Third World rulers [vendido neo-colonialists] will exercise every measure of control to keep the people in tow-from the subtlest manipulation to the most dreadful violence.

“We need to be reminded that only by establishing military supremacy were the European and North American colonizers able to eliminate the crafts and industries of Third World peoples, control their markets, extort tribute, undermine their cultures, destroy their villages, steal their lands and natural resources, enslave their labor, and accumulate vast wealth. Military supremacy was usually achieved after repeated and unspeakably brutal applications of armed violence.” (read The Sword and the Dollar, by Michael Parenti)

It is this need to maintain “military supremacy” where we find the roots of police terror. It is impossible for the gringo imperialists to rule over and oppressed our Raza, and occupied our lands, without its military and various police agencies.

POLICE ARE INSTRUMENTS OF THE RULING CLASS

Any rudimentary study informs us that the police are instruments of the ruling class. The police are not ordinary city employees or a force independent of the gringo capitalist-colonial ruling class. Under capitalism-colonialism, Mexicanos (including Africans, and the poor), through our labor and the resources of the land, are exploited for the benefit of a small rich gringo ruling class. The role of the various police agencies, including the Migra (INS), whether individual cops are conscious of it or not, is to protect the property and lifestyle of the sick filthy rich capitalist pigs, and to keep Mexicanos and other Indigenous people from taking back what was stolen from us. Working under the orders of and brainwashed by the gringo ruling class, the pigs (black, brown, or white) will brutalize, terrorize, imprison, and kill any Raza who dares to struggle for the liberation of our nation. (read “Capitalism and Cop Violence”, Workers World, 5/21/98 or “A Latina Border Agent Defends Her Country and Convictions, El Andar, Winter 1998)

We see that historically the people who make the rules, define what is right or wrong, or what is criminal or not, has been the ruling class. In occupied Mexico (Aztlán), this is the concrete reality in which the masses of our gente exist. While the gringo colonial institutions (media, schools, churches, local governments, etc.) and the Hispanic vendido neo-colonialists (petty bourgeoisie, professionals, liberal democrats, social service agency administrators, etc.) tells us that the police are employed to defend “law and order”, the reality is that they uphold capitalist rule, as it is the capitalists, a tiny minority of the population, who hold power and make the rule (laws) in the society in which we exist.

In an article by syndicated columnists Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez, their observations, while liberal in content, support some of the issues we have raised when they explain:

“Police brutality, or the unnecessary use of force by law enforcement officers, has long been America's dirty war against its own people......Because it involves mostly people of color, to eliminate this abuse would also require that we begin to view it as a hate crime, a form of political violence and torture, and a human rights violation. Amnesty International already regards it as such.” (8/22/97)

Silly notions and ignorance imposed by the gringo institutions that claim that the police are there to protect and serve the community soon disappear upon experience. One just has to asked the literally hundreds of thousands of victims of Police and Migra abuse, or the thousands of Raza currently locked-up in prisons throughout the occupied America (United States).

But experiences are not enough; it is the task of the activists and revolutionaries to expose the real cause of police abuse, unite and organize the victims of police terror, and explained to the masses that only a complete change in society will put an end to it. In the past we explained police abuse as:

“Those of us involved in the struggle for Raza self-determination understand that police physical and psychological terror is directly related to the necessity of the gringo ruling class to maintain our people in a state of colonization, thereby using us a cheap labor (slaves for their farms, hotels, restaurants, car washes, house cleaning auto repair shops, construction projects, factories, etc.) and as scapegoats or shock absorbers -objects to blame during economic crisis.” (see “Police Terror is a Symptom of a Colonial Situation”, ¡La Verdad!, May-July, 1991)

THE ANSWER IS A REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY

For Mexicanos, as is in the case of all oppressed people, only after a revolutionary transformation of society, which unifies our nation (Mexico-Aztlán), places the ownership of our lands and control of production in the hands of the masses of our gente (the working class and poor), under a truly democratic government, will the role of the police change. They would no longer be special agents doing the dirty work of the rich gringo colonial ruling class, but instead a force whose role will be to protect the interest of the masses of our gente; a situation where they will always be controlled and accountable to our communities and our nation.

This transformation demands that the activist-revolutionary work 24 hours a day to raise the consciousness of the masses and expose to them real roots of their oppression: the capitalist-colonial system. Everywhere we go, whether its a conference, marcha, meeting, street corner, party, etc., the activist-revolutionary must politically educate the masses and win them over to ideas and objectives of self-determination and national liberation.

Revolutionary transformation also requires the end of liberal (non-militant), petty-bourgeois anarchism (unorganized. undisciplined struggle), and the backward cultural nationalism presently found within our movement. Because these individuals, whether they hold honest intentions or not, are confusing nuestra Raza as to what needs to concretely be done to end our oppression, thereby prolonging our existence as a colonized people. At this particular period, the struggle against these elements within our movement must be waged through open dialogue and debate, utilizing newspapers, pamphlets, and discussions at conferences and meetings.

Finally and most fundamentally, the transformation from an oppressed to a free people, necessitates the building of a national liberation organization that is disciplined, united, armed with science,willing to sacrifice and wage struggle by any means necessary. This is the answer Raza!

END COLONIAL POLICE TERROR!
JOIN US IN BUILDING A NATIONAL LIBERATION ORGANIZATION!
HASTA LA VICTORIA -SIEMPRE!