The Great Shark Hunt, page 17
The door is locked, thank Christ—but how can you say for sure in a place like the Hotel Ashmun? Especially on a morning like this with a mob of wild junkies locked out of the hall bathroom and maybe knowing that No. 267 is the only room within lunging distance that has a private bath. It is the best in the house, at $5.80 a night, and the lock on the door is brand new. The old one was ripped out about 12 hours earlier, just before I checked in.
The desk clerk had gone to a lot of trouble to get me into this room. His key wouldn’t fit the new lock. “Jesus Christ!” he kept muttering. “This key has to fit! This is a brand new Yale lock.” He stared balefully at the bright new key in his hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “But that key is for a Webster lock.”
“By God you’re right!” he exclaimed. And he rushed off, leaving us standing there in the hallway with big chunks of ice in our hands. “What’s wrong with that guy?” I asked. “He seems out of control—all this sweating and grappling and jabbering…”
Benny Luna laughed. “Man, he’s nervous! You think it’s normal for him to be lettin four nasty lookin Chicanos into his best room at three in the morning? With all of us carryin chunks of ice and funny-lookin leather bags?” He was staggering around the hall, convulsed with laughter. “Man, this guy is freaked! He doesn’t know what’s goin on!”
“Three Chicanos,” said Oscar. “And one hillbilly.”
“You didn’t tell him I was a writer, did you?” I asked. I’d noticed Oscar talking to the man, a tall sort of defeated looking Germanic type, but I hadn’t paid much attention.
“No, but he recognized me,” Oscar replied. “He said, ‘You’re the lawyer, aren’t you?’ So I said ‘That’s right, and I want your best room for this gabacho friend of mine.’ ” He grinned. “Yeah, he knows something’s wrong with this scene, but he doesn’t know what. These guys are scared of everything now. Every merchant on Whittier Boulevard is sure he’s living on borrowed time, so they go all to pieces at the first sign of anything strange going on. It’s been this way ever since Salazar.”
The room clerk/manager/keeper/etc. suddenly rounded the hallway corner with the right key, and let us into the room. It was a winner—a rundown echo of a place I stayed in a few years ago in the slums of Lima, Peru. I can’t recall the name of that place, but I remember that all the room keys were attached to big wooden knobs about the size of grapefruits, too big to fit in a pocket. I thought about suggesting this to our man in the Hotel Ashmun, but he didn’t wait around for tips or small-talk. He was gone in a flash, leaving us alone to deal with a quart of rum and God only knows what else.… We put the ice in a basin next to the bed and chopped it up with a huge rigging knife. The only music was a tape cassette of Let It Bleed.
What better music for a hot night on Whittier Boulevard in 1971? This has not been a peaceful street, of late. And in truth it was never peaceful. Whittier is to the vast Chicano barrio in East Los Angeles what the Sunset Strip is to Hollywood. This is where the street action lives: The bars, the hustlers, the drug market, the whores—and also the riots, the trashings, killings, gassings, the sporadic bloody clashes with the hated, common enemy: The cops, the Pigs, the Man, that blue-crusted army of fearsome gabacho troops from the East L.A. Sheriff’s Department.
The Hotel Ashmun is a good place to stay if you want to get next to whatever’s happening on Whittier Boulevard. The window of No. 267 is about 15 feet above the sidewalk and just a few blocks west of the Silver Dollar Cafe, a nondescript tavern that is not much different from any of the others nearby. There is a pool table in the rear, a pitcher of beer sells for a dollar, and the faded Chicano barmaid rolls dice with the patrons to keep the jukebox going. Low number pays, and nobody seems to care who selects the music.
We had been in there earlier, when not much was happening. It was my first visit in six months, since early September when the place was still rancid with the stench of CS gas and fresh varnish. But now, six months later, the Silver Dollar had aired out nicely. No blood on the floor, no ominous holes in the ceiling. The only reminder of my other visit was a thing hanging over the cash register that we all noticed immediately. It was a black gas mask, staring blindly out at the room—and below the gas mask was a stark handprinted sign that said: “In memory of August 29, 1970.”
Nothing else, no explanation. But no explanation was necessary—at least not to anybody likely to be found drinking in the Silver Dollar. The customers are locals: Chicanos and barrio people—and every one of them is acutely aware of what happened in the Silver Dollar Cafe on August 29, 1970.
That was the day that Ruben Salazar, the prominent “Mexican-American” columnist for the Los Angeles Times and News Director for bilingual KMEX-TV, walked into the place and sat down on a stool near the doorway to order a beer he would never drink. Because just about the time the barmaid was sliding his beer across the bar a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy named Tom Wilson fired a tear gas bomb through the front door and blew half of Ruben Salazar’s head off. All the other customers escaped out the back exit to the alley, but Salazar never emerged. He died on the floor in a cloud of CS gas—and when his body was finally carried out, hours later, his name was already launched into martyrdom. Within 24 hours, the very mention of the name “Ruben Salazar” was enough to provoke tears and fist-shaking tirades not only along Whittier Boulevard but all over East L.A.
Middle-aged housewives who had never thought of themselves as anything but lame-status “Mexican-Americans” just trying to get by in a mean Gringo world they never made suddenly found themselves shouting “Viva La Raza” in public. And their husbands—quiet Safeway clerks and lawn-care salesmen, the lowest and most expendable cadres in the Great Gabacho economic machine—were volunteering to testify; yes, to stand up in court, or wherever, and calling themselves Chicanos. The term “Mexican-American” fell massively out of favor with all but the old and conservative—and the rich. It suddenly came to mean “Uncle Tom.” Or, in the argot of East L.A.—“Tio Taco.” The difference between a Mexican-American and a Chicano was the difference between a Negro and a Black.
All this has happened very suddenly. Too suddenly for most people. One of the basic laws of politics is that Action Moves Away from the Center. The middle of the road is only popular when nothing is happening. And nothing serious has been happening politically in East L.A. for longer than most people can remember. Until six months ago the whole place was a colorful tomb, a vast slum full of noise and cheap labor, a rifle shot away from the heart of downtown Los Angeles. The barrio, like Watts, is actually a part of the city core—while places like Hollywood and Santa Monica are separate entities. The Silver Dollar Cafe is a ten-minute drive from City Hall. The Sunset Strip is a 30-minute sprint on the Hollywood Freeway.
Whittier Boulevard is a hell of a long way from Hollywood, by any measure. There is no psychic connection at all. After a week in the bowels of East L.A. I felt vaguely guilty about walking into the bar in the Beverly Hills Hotel and ordering a drink—as if I didn’t quite belong there, and the waiters all knew it. I had been there before, under different circumstances, and felt totally comfortable. Or almost. There is no way to… well, to hell with that. The point is that this time I felt different. I was oriented to a completely different world—15 miles away.
MARCHA POR LA JUSTICIA
THERE ARE NO POLICE COMMUNITY RELATIONS IN THE CHICANO COMMUNITIES. NO, EVER SINCE THE POLICE RIOT ON AUGUST 29TH IT HAS BECOME TOO OBVIOUS TO IGNORE THE FACT THAT THE LAPD, THE SHERIFFS, AND THE HIGHWAY PATROL HAVE FOR YEARS BEEN SYSTEMATICALLY TRYING TO DESTROY THE TRUE SPIRIT OF OUR PEOPLE. IN THE PAST, POLICE HAVE BROKEN UP EVERY ATTEMPT OF OUR PEOPLE TO GET JUSTICE, THEY HAVE BEATEN YOUNG STUDENTS PROTESTING POOR EDUCATION, RAIDED OFFICES, ARRESTED LEADERS, CALLED US COMMUNISTS AND GANGSTERS IN THE PRESS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE STREETS WHEN THE PRESS WAS GONE.
EVEN MORE INSIDIOUS THAN THE DIRECT POLITICAL REPRESSION AGAINST LEADERS AND DEMONSTRATIONS IS THE CONTINUOUS ATTACKS ON THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF PEOPLE IN THE BARRIOS. ALMOST EVERY MONTH EACH BARRIO HAS SUFFERED THROUGH AT LEAST ONE CASE OF SEVERE BRUTALITY OR MURDER AND THEN STRUGGLED TO DEFEND FRIENDS AND WITNESSES WHO FACE BUM RAPS. ONE WEEK IT’S SAN FERNANDO, THEN LINCOLN HEIGHTS, EAST L.A., VENICE, THE HARBOR AND POMONA….… THEY HIT ONE BARRIO AT A TIME, TRYING TO BREAK OUR UNITY AND OUR SPIRIT.
ON AUGUST 29TH, THROUGH ALL OF OUR BARRIOS WERE DEMONSTRATIONS FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE AND THE POLICE RIOTED AND ATTACKED. OUT OF FEAR, THEY INSTALLED MARTIAL LAW, ARRESTING AND ABUSING HUNDREDS OF COMMUNITY PEOPLE. THEY KILLED GILBERTO DIAZ, LYNN WARD, AND RUBEN SALAZAR, THE MAN WHO COULD TELL OUR STORY TO THE NATION AND THE WORLD.
WE MUST NOT FORGET THE LESSON OF AUGUST 29TH, THAT THE MAJOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUE WE FACE IS POLICE BRUTALITY. SINCE THE 29TH POLICE ATTACKS HAVE BEEN WORSE, EITHER THE PEOPLE CONTROL THE POLICE, OR WE ARE LIVING IN A POLICE STATE.
WE MUST NOT ALLOW THE POLICE TO BREAK OUR UNITY. WE MUST CARRY ON THE SPIRIT OF RUBEN SALAZAR AND EXPOSE THIS BRUTALITY TO THE NATION AND THE WORLD. THE CHICANO MORATORIUM COMMITTEE CALLS UPON YOU TO SUPPORT OUR NON-VIOLENT MARCH FOR JUSTICE THROUGH THE BARRIOS OF THE GREATER LOS ANGELES AREA.
CARAVANS WILL BE COMING FROM DOZENS OF CITIES AND AROUND OUR BARRIOS. WE WILL ALL MEET AT THE E.L.A. SHERIFF’S SUB-STATION ON 3RD STREET BETWEEN FETTERLY AND WOODS. AT 11:00 AM JANUARY 31, 1971. JOIN YOUR LOCAL CARAVAN. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL 2686745.
—Handbill from the National Chicano Moratorium Committee
My first night in the Hotel Ashmun was not restful. The others had left around five, then there was the junkie eruption at seven… followed an hour later by a thundering, low-fidelity outburst of wailing Norteno music from the jukebox in the Boulevard Cafe across the street… and then, about nine-thirty, I was jerked up again by a series of loud whistles from the sidewalk right under my window, and a voice calling, “Hunter! Wake-up, man! Let’s get moving.”
Holy jesus! I thought. Only three people in the world know where I am right now, and they’re all asleep. Who else could have tracked me to this place? I bent the metal slats of the venetian blind apart just enough to look down at the street and see Rudy Sanchez, Oscar’s quiet little bodyguard, looking up at my window and waving urgently: “Come on out, man, it’s time. Oscar and Benny are up the street at the Sweetheart. That’s the bar on the corner where you see all those people in front. We’ll wait for you there, OK? You awake?”
“Sure I’m awake,” I said. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for you lazy criminal bastards. Why do Mexicans need so much fucking sleep?”
Rudy smiled and turned away. “We’ll be waiting for you, man. We’re gonna be drinkin a hell of a lot of bloody marys and you know the rule we have down here.”
“Never mind that,” I muttered. “I need a shower.”
But my room had no shower. And somebody, that night, had managed to string a naked copper wire across the bathtub and plug it into a socket underneath the basin outside the bathroom door. For what reason? Demon Rum, I had no idea. Here I was in the best room in the house, looking for the shower and finding only an electrified bathtub. And no place to righteously shave—in the best hotel on the strip. Finally I scrubbed my face with a hot towel and went across the street to the Sweetheart Lounge.
Oscar Acosta, the Chicano lawyer, was there; leaning on the bar, talking idly with some of the patrons. Of the four people around him—all in their late twenties—two were ex-cons, two were part-time dynamite freaks and known fire-bombers, and three of the four were veteran acid-eaters. Yet none of this surfaced in the conversation. The talk was political, but only in terms of the courtroom. Oscar was dealing with two hyperpolitical trials at the same time.
In one, the trial of the “Biltmore Six,” he was defending six young Chicanos who’d been arrested for trying to burn down the Biltmore Hotel one night about a year ago, while Governor Ronald Reagan was delivering a speech there in the ballroom. Their guilt or innocence was immaterial at this point, because the trial had developed into a spectacular attempt to overturn the entire Grand Jury selection system. In the preceding months, Acosta had subpoenaed every Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles County and cross-examined all 109 of them at length, under oath, on the subject of their “racism.” It was a wretched affront to the whole court system, and Acosta was working overtime to make it as wretched as possible. Here were these hundred and nine old men, these judges, compelled to take time out from whatever they were doing and go into another courtroom to take the stand and deny charges of “racism” from an attorney they all loathed.
Oscar’s contention, throughout, was that all Grand Juries are racist, since all grand jurors have to be recommended by Superior Court Judges—who naturally tend to recommend people they know personally or professionally. And that therefore no ratbastard Chicano street crazy, for instance, could possibly be indicted by “a jury of his peers.” The implications of a victory in this case were so obvious, so clearly menacing to the court system, that interest in the verdict had filtered all the way down to places like the Boulevard, the Silver Dollar and the Sweetheart. The level of political consciousness is not normally high in these places—especially on Saturday mornings—but Acosta’s very presence, no matter where he goes or what he seems to be doing, is so grossly political that anybody who wants to talk to him has to figure out some way to deal on a meaningful political level.
“The thing is to never talk down,” he says. “We’re not trying to win votes out here. Hell, that trip’s been done, it’s over. The idea now is to make people think. Force them to think. And you can’t do that by walking around slapping strangers on the back and buying them beers.” Then grinning. “Unless you happen to be babbling drunk or stoned. Which is certainly not my style; I want to make that one thing very clear.”
But today the talk was easy, with no ulterior politics. “Say, Oscar,” somebody asked. “How do we stand on that Grand Jury thing? What’s our chances?”
Acosta shrugged. “We’ll win. Maybe not on this level, but we’ll win on appeal.”
“That’s good, man. I hear you’re really workin out on the bastards.”
“Yeah, we’re fuckin em over. But that one might take another year. Right now we have to think about Corky’s trial. It starts Tuesday.”
“Corky’s in town?” The interest is obvious. Heads turn to listen. Rudy eases back a few feet so he can watch the whole bar, scanning the faces for any that might be too interested. Paranoia is rampant in the barrio: Informers. Narcs. Assassins—who knows? And Rudolfo “Corky” Gonzales is a definite heavy, prime target for a frame or a set-up. A scholarly, soft-spoken ex-boxer, his Denver-based “Crusade for Justice” is one of the few viable Chicano political organizations in the country. Gonzales is a poet, a street-fighter, a theorist, an organizer, and the most influential “Chicano leader” in the country next to Cesar Chavez.
Whenever Corky Gonzales appears in East L.A.—if only to stand trial on a misdemeanor weapons bust—the level of political tension rises noticeably. Gonzales has a very intense following in the barrio. Most of his supporters are young: Students, dropouts, artists, poets, crazies—the people who respect Cesar Chavez, but who can’t really relate to church-going farmworkers.
“This weekend is going to be hell,” Oscar had told me the night before. “Whenever Corky’s in town, my apartment turns into a fucking zoo. I have to go to a motel to get any sleep. Shit, I can’t stay up all night arguing radical politics when I have to be in court the next morning. These wild-eyed fuckers show up at all hours; they bring wine, joints, acid, mescaline, guns… Jesus, Corky wouldn’t dare take that kind of risk. He’s already here, but I don’t know where he’s staying. He’s checked into some kind of goddamn Holiday Inn or something, about five miles out on Rosemeade, but he won’t tell anybody where it is—not even me, his lawyer.” He smiled, “And that’s pretty shrewd, because if I knew where he was I might go over there some night all twisted and crazy about calling a general strike at dawn, or some other dangerous bullshit that would freak him.”
He nodded, smiling lazily down at his drink. “As a matter of fact, I have been thinking about calling a general strike. The movement is so goddamn splintered right now that almost anything would help. Yeah, maybe I should write Corky a speech along those lines, then call a press conference for tomorrow afternoon in the Silver Dollar.” He laughed bitterly and called for another bloody mary.
Acosta has been practicing law in the barrio for three years. I met him a bit earlier than that, in another era—which hardly matters here, except that it might be a trifle less than fair to run this story all the way out to the end without saying at least once, for the record, that Oscar is an old friend and occasional antagonist. I first met him, as I recall, in a bar called “The Daisy Duck” in Aspen, when he lumbered up to me and started raving about “ripping the system apart like a pile of cheap hay,” or something like that… and I remember thinking, “Well, here’s another one of those fucked-up, guilt-crazed dropout lawyers from San Francisco—some dingbat who ate one too many tacos and decided he was really Emiliano Zapata.”
Which was OK, I felt, but it was a hard act to handle in Aspen in that high white summer of 1967. That was the era of Sergeant Pepper, the Surrealistic Pillow and the original Buffalo Springfield. It was a good year for everybody—or for most people, anyway. There were exceptions, as always. Lyndon Johnson was one, and Oscar Acosta was another. For entirely different reasons. That was not a good summer to be either the President of the United States or an angry Mexican lawyer in Aspen.
Oscar didn’t hang around long. He washed dishes for a while, did a bit of construction work, bent the County Judge out of shape a few times, then took off for Mexico to “get serious.” The next thing I heard, he was working for the public defender’s office in L.A. That was sometime around Christmas of 1968, which was not a good year for anybody—except Richard Nixon and perhaps Oscar Acosta. Because by that time Oscar was beginning to find his own track. He was America’s only “Chicano lawyer,” he explained in a letter, and he liked it. His clients were all Chicanos and most were “political criminals,” he said. And if they were guilty it was only because they were “doing what had to be done.”
