America Libre (3 page)

“It’s OK. You can come out now,” he said.

Moving away the wet towels, Rosa cautiously opened the door. The noise outside had ended and the air was clear. With gentle
pats and soothing whispers, she led her exhausted children to their bedroom, tucked them in, and returned to the living room.

“Ay, Dios mio, look at this mess,” Rosa said, shaking her head. While stanching the gas, Mano had toppled her shrine to Our
Lady of Guadalupe. The painted statuette had survived the fall, but the glass-encased votive candle flanking La Virgen Morena
had shattered, littering the floor with globs of wax. Stuck to the hardening mess were grains of rice from the small offering
of food Rosa kept at the shrine. “Our Lady fell but she didn’t break. That’s a good sign,” Rosa whispered as she began cleaning
up.

“Leave that for the morning, querida. It can wait,” Mano said and then patted the cushion next to him on the frayed red couch.
“Come here, Rosita. Sit with me.”

Rosa settled next to her husband, leaning her head on his beefy shoulder as Mano kissed her hair softly. They said nothing,
content with the warmth and nearness of each other. During their twelve years of marriage these intimate moments of silence
had become a refuge, an escape from stress and worries.

But tonight their closeness did not calm Rosa. This rioting was threatening her family—and she could not understand why the
people in their barrio seemed bent on such mindless destruction.
Of course life is hard for Latinos; it always has been. So why start burning and looting now?
she wondered.

Rosa knew she made little effort to keep up with events outside their home. She rarely watched the news or read a paper. Her
world was her family. She had three children and a husband to feed and keep healthy. She trusted God to take care of the rest.
Her isolation was born out of long habit. The only child of a single parent, Rosa had spent much of her childhood caring for
her mother, who’d been paralyzed by MS when Rosa was eight. Only after her mother’s death had she consented to Mano’s patient
courtship, giving her life a new focus.

Even today, her travels in the barrio were along well-worn paths between home, shopping, and church. This rioting, however,
was forcing Rosa into a realization she was not eager to accept: there was something going on around her she had not yet grasped.

She raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. “All this rioting, Mano… What’s made people so angry?”

Mano slowly rubbed his jaw, mulling her question. “I think it’s more than one thing, Rosita,” he said softly. “To begin with,
I’m not the only one who’s looking for a job.”

“Yes, I know that, mi amor. But the streets have been full of teenagers with nothing to do for the last few years. Why now?”

Mano stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I’ve heard some people say that shutting down the Metro lines in L.A. was done to
spite Hispanics… and to keep our kids out of the malls.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

Mano shrugged. “I don’t know, querida. But I think this trouble has been building up for a while. A lot of hotheads were upset
when they cut off Social Security for non-citizens last year. And there are people who think all these ‘English only’ laws
are a slap at Latinos, too.”

“Yes, but is that any reason to riot?”

“Life has always been tough for Hispanics, querida. And right now, it’s hard to find work. I can understand why a lot of Latinos
are angry. But destroying other people’s property isn’t going to make things easier.”

Rosa stared at her hands and sighed. “What are we going to do, Mano?” she asked. “It could be a long time before you find
another job.”

Mano smiled. “The only way to find work is to look for it.”

His confidence lifted her mood. “Well, if you’re going to look for work tomorrow, it’s way past your bedtime,” Rosa said,
patting his muscled back. “What time should I wake you up, mi amor?”

“The same time as always.”

“Mano, you can’t get up at five forty-five after being up half the night.”

“My job now is to find a job, remember? That’s been our game plan and we should stick to it,” Mano said, then effortlessly
lifted her from the couch and carried her to their bed. “You lay down, querida. The kids are going to need you tomorrow. I
want to stay up for a while.”

After Rosa was asleep, Mano returned to his rounds, scanning the darkness for signs of trouble until the glow of dawn emerged
above the buildings. Convinced the danger was finally over, he moved to the living room and turned on the television, keeping
the volume down.

“… the East Los Angeles area now appears calm after the second night of rioting,” the newscaster was saying. The camera panned
across Mano’s neighborhood from a high point downtown. Several plumes of dark smoke were rising in the hazy dawn. “The LAPD
is advising commuters to avoid the area…”

Mano stared absently at the TV. For a long time, he’d dreamt of buying a house, a place with a bedroom for each child and
a yard where they could play. This morning, as he sat on the wax-stained couch, the dream seemed blurry and distant. This
barrio was already a dangerous place for his family. The rioting would only make it worse.

When the TV station cut to a car commercial, a chilling thought crossed Mano’s mind. Had their station wagon survived the
riot? His family’s only vehicle was parked around the corner of the building, out of sight from their apartment.

Locking the door behind him, Mano made his way through the courtyard of the apartment complex, pausing at the threshold. Fourth
Street was deserted, its pavement blanketed with stones, bricks, and bottles. Every street-facing window was broken. Several
cars were overturned and torched, black smoke rising from their smoldering tires. Mano broke into a run. Rounding the corner
of his building, he was devastated by what he saw.

All four cars in the parking lot had been torched, including the aging Taurus station wagon for which he still owed eleven
payments.

Mano was now without wheels and jobless in Los Angeles—a city that had ended all public transportation.

As San Antonio’s turmoil spread from Los Angeles across the Southwest, publications of every political stripe offered explanations
for the disturbances.

The
Washington Post
claimed the rioting had been triggered by a recent congressional bill making English the nation’s official language, in effect
eliminating all Spanish-language versions of public documents and ending national support for bilingual education. Coming
on the heels of earlier legislation that terminated Social Security benefits for non-citizens, the
Post
said these new laws “exposed the hidden rage lurking in the barrios.”

The
Wall Street Journal
suggested that our once-porous borders and unrestricted immigration were responsible for “the crowded, crime-ridden ghettos
within our cities, now erupting into violence.”

An article in
Time
countered that Hispanics had not yet learned to flex their political muscle. The rioting was “an unfocused attempt to voice
the nascent political influence of this emerging power bloc.”

Blogs cited a long list of combustible elements for the disturbances, including the high unemployment rate the last six years,
an exceptionally hot summer, and even Mayan prophecies about the end of time. Many found parallels to similar movements around
the world—the Basques in Spain, Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, the Quebecois in Canada, the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey, the implosion
of the Soviet Union, and the ethnic clashes of the Balkans.

Whatever the causes, two months after the Rio Grande Incident, riots were now nightly events in many barrios of the U.S. Southwest.

T
he vu-phone rang, playing the opening of Beethoven’s
Für Elise.

Ernesto Alvarez flicked aside his half-smoked Kool and flipped open the vu-phone’s cover. Instead of a live image of the caller,
the words “secure mode” flashed on the display. Nesto brought the toy-like instrument to his ear.

“Yeah,” he said with studied nonchalance. Under the streetlights, he listened distractedly, admiring the collection of crude
tattoos on his hand. “Cool,” he said finally and slipped the vu-phone back into his baggy pants.

“It’s set,” Nesto announced to the three teenagers slouching against the playground fence. A faint orange glow washed over
their pubescent faces as they dragged hard on their Kools. None of them were over sixteen.

Tonight would be their salto, an initiation to prove they were daring enough to become vatos in Nesto’s gang, El Farol.

El Farol had emerged in East Los Angeles during the early ’80s as families fleeing the death squads of El Salvador found another
source of intimidation in their new home—Mexican street gangs. The gang’s current mero mero, Nesto, had already instructed
the boys on their salto—and they were eager to begin.

“De verdad, Nesto? The guns will be ready?” asked Freddie Estevez, oldest of the boys.

Nesto moved within inches of Freddie’s face. “I’m only going to tell you this once, Frederico,” he whispered. “In El Farol,
you never question the word of your mero mero. Entiendes?”

“Sí, Nesto,” Freddie said, lowering his eyes.

“OK, now get the fuck outta here. You know what you need to do.”

After the boys hurried away, Nesto silently asked himself again if he was making a smart move. This gig could bring some major
heat down on El Farol—and on him. But the opportunity was too sweet to turn down. First, there was the money. The twenty thousand
he’d been offered to stir up some trouble had been impossible to resist. But the brilliant part was in taking this play far
beyond its original intent and turning it into a warning to the other gangs crowding his turf. The sheer cojones of this salto
would send a message to his rivals: El Farol is too tough to be messed with.

Sure, it was risky. But Nesto knew the gangs would honor their code of silence. And with all the rioting and looting, there
was little chance of being caught.

Ten minutes after leaving Nesto, the boys reached their destination: the roof above the Casa Mia restaurant. As Nesto had
promised, the black plastic garbage bag was already there and Freddie opened it eagerly. Inside were three loaded .38s.

After Freddie distributed the revolvers, the boys squatted behind the low wall along the front of the roof, their eyes fixed
on the Best Help drugstore across the street, already closed for the night. Before long, a rusting Mercury Cougar pulled into
the drugstore’s parking lot.

A man emerged from the car and methodically doused the vehicle with a can of gasoline. After throwing the empty can into the
backseat, he struck a match, flung it at the car, and casually walked away.

As Nesto had predicted, the burning car quickly drew a crowd. Freddie recognized several members of El Farol shouting angrily
among the onlookers, trying to incite them. It wasn’t difficult.

Someone smashed a window, triggering the drugstore’s burglar alarm. The impotent ringing did little to deter the mob. More
windows were broken and several men assaulted the front door.

When the boys heard sirens in the distance, they dropped to their bellies. By the time the fire and police vehicles arrived,
the would-be vatos at the edge of the roof were peering through the drainage holes in the wall like troops at the gun slits
of a fortress.

Nesto had told them to choose targets without body armor and wait until the police were firing tear gas to mask the sound
of their shots. Freddie would give the command to fire.

To Freddie, the policemen visible through the small opening were unreal figures—shooting at them was like playing
Vice City 5
. As he’d done countless times at the arcade, he lined up the target’s torso in his gunsight.

“Now!” Freddie shouted and squeezed the trigger.

The man in his sight arched his shoulders and slumped to the ground. “Let’s go!” Freddie said after hearing the guns of the
boys beside him. Nesto had been clear: take one shot and get out.

The boys crawled away from the wall, dropped into the alley behind the restaurant, and ran. In a secluded gravel lot two blocks
away, Nesto waited for them in his car. Driving away slowly, Nesto said solemnly, “You have brought honor to El Farol. You
are now men, and my brothers, carne de mi carne.”

Like the thirteen English colonies huddled along the coast of North America in 1776, the countries of Latin America will one
day reach an epiphany of consciousness and unite into a single nation. This is their inevitable destiny.

—José Antonio Marcha, 1982
Translated by J. M. Herrera

T
he nation’s television networks interrupted their regular programming to report on the shooting of three policemen outside
a Best Help drugstore in East Los Angeles. Two officers were pronounced dead at the scene; another was in critical condition.
The talking heads somberly said the shootings appeared to be a premeditated attack against law enforcement personnel—a first
in the current wave of rioting.