A Narco’s Case Against the U.S.-what Zambada’s case reveals about the violence and ‘war’ in Mexico-Salon.com

This piece appeared on Salon.com on November 14, 2011

CIUDAD MIER, Mexico — A Mexican army commander sent to protect a region of villages and ranches in northern Mexico from the Gulf Cartel and Zetas can describe, in detail, the profile of his assigned enemy, the country’s notorious drug cartels.

“These guys are sick in the head,” he says, gazing at the brush and mesquite from behind his aviator sunglasses, toward the camps of the “enemy.” “They follow a sick ideology, they’re animals.” Without missing a beat, he continues, “Look, there’s no jobs, the poverty is bad; there aren’t enough schools. There is nothing for these boys and the cartels offer them a job. They tell them, ‘You can have any kind of pickup truck you want,’ he says. “They get paid more than we do!”

The commander and his soldiers have staked out a lakeside park near this colonial village, providing security for the annual fishing tournament. Bureaucrats from the state tourism department and soldiers, some manning gunners mounted on military trucks, vastly outnumber the few tourists. Even so, reporters from TV Azteca prepare a promotional report about the event, an image that makes an effort to convince tourists that the “frontera chica” (small border), the nickname for this swath of the border, is secure and ready for tourists. Last year when the Gulf Cartel and Zetas launched their siege on the frontera chica, the then governor of Tamaulipas dismissed the reports of decapitations, incinerated cars and shootouts as merely a “collective paranoia.”

Such is the panorama of Mexico’s violence, a distorted battleground of propaganda, impunity and duplicity amid death. Such is the conflict in which the U.S. government has become firmly entrenched over the last four years since newly elected President Felipe Calderon launched his controversial U.S.-backed “war against the drug cartels.” The conflict has cost between 40,000 and 50,000 lives and violence has worsened with the U.S.-Mexican military deployment, according to a recent report on global violence by the Geneva Delegation. Violence in some parts of Mexico now outstrips the levels of many war zones.

For more visit—Salon.com

–This piece was reported from Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas, Chicago, Mexico City.

Against Mexico_the making of heroes and enemies

The story behind  Against Mexico/This column was distributed by Scripps Howard News Service through the  Hispanic Link News Service.

We made the drive north to San Antonio in the spring, a caravan carrying a class of fourth graders from small town South Texas. It was the 1980s and the nuns had excused us from wearing our plaid navy blue uniforms. I was a gangly thing in my Lee jeans, ill-fitting blouse and sneakers, all freckles and excitement. The adults ushered us into the Alamo where I learned that a band of freedom fighters had rebelled against the ruthless Mexican dictator Santa Anna in the fight for liberty and freedom. Those boys fought them Mexicans to give us the freedom we have today, I was told, naturally the story was tattooed onto my mind because on that day I learned that we, who called ourselves ‘Mexicans,’ were descended from the ‘bad guys.’ In Texas anyone with a Spanish surname is a ‘Mexican’ and whites are labeled ‘Anglos.” In my mind the fight for freedom, for America, was inherently tied to ‘fightin’ them Mexicans’.

Over Easter weekend last year, unusually heavy rains had blessed much of Texas with a carpet of wildflowers in reds, lavenders and tiny delicate crowns of blue. The reenacted mass execution of Texian rebels by Mexican ‘soldados’ at Goliad –at a site of the ‘Texas Revolution–’ had just wrapped up. A little boy, Boe, sighed and said Mexicans had killed his ancestors during the 1836 battle. “The Texians were the good guys and the Mexicans were the bad guys,” he said. His friend, Jarah Benavides, shyly smiled and said: “Because we’re Mexicans they look at us like we’re the bad guys.” I slipped off and slammed the door to my pick-up truck with tears streaking down my face. Thirty years go by and little girls still grow up believing they are the ‘bad guys.’ Three decades of ‘progress’ and some die because of that belief.

The year before Shawna Forde and two accomplices burst into the home of nine-year-old Brisenia Flores. Flores’ father was shot and killed. Forde, a member of the Minutemen had set out to rob homes to fund a border vigilante group. She was convicted in the shooting deaths earlier this year. According to Brisenia’s mother, the shooter turned to Brisenia who begged, “please don’t shoot me.” Brisenia was shot in the face at point blank range.

Lost in the circular arguments about ‘border security’ and ‘what part of ‘illegal don’t you understand’ is the payoff for these self-appointed heroes. Fighting Mexicans is part of our national history, and a national myth that created our image of heroes. Fighting Mexicans is at work when political candidates with precious few original ideas propose ‘sending troops to the border’ to resolve the complex tragedy unfolding there. Fighting Mexicans is a wide thread embedded within our national fabric that allows some to write off hate as a natural byproduct of a frustrated society. Fighting Mexicans is the mythical and historical context that explains why killers/attackers are at times supported as ‘heroes.’ “Very typically these men see themselves a valiantly defending their community,” Jack Levin, an expert on hate crimes, told me. “They believe they are carrying out the unspoken wishes of the community.”

With the invaluable support of Latino Public Broadcasting, I returned to the reenacted ‘battle sites’ to explore the murky intersection of myth and history. Our myths simplify the complexities that riddle Texas history and the stories we tell ourselves about who can claim the mantle of ‘American.’ Through the thoughtful reflections of the men who recreate those historic battles, as actors—white and Latino—we discover the enduring power of myth in creating the image we have of ourselves and of the other, scars carried by grown men for decades.

From them came “Against Mexico-the making of heroes and enemies” a short documentary on PBS, where  you will not find bad guys or good guys, but an homage to the history of my home state, a story, I hope, helps to salve the wounds from the myths that define and confine us. Against Mexico honors the little girl I once was, the little girl surrounded by wildflowers that spring day, and the one that begged for her life before she died.

 

In the name of National Security_a 9/11 report

I am grateful to El Diario for creating the powerful image and layout to accompany my 9/11 special report. English-language version below.

To download the Spanish-language version click here.

In the name of National Security_a special 9/11 report

published in El Diario/La Prensa September 7 2011 as part of a special 9/11 series

The 2001 attacks carved a deep gash into Lower Manhattan, and scarred the minds of New Yorkers with memories of the collapsing Twin Towers that left 2,753 people dead. Ten years later, the nation can count two wars and a sprawling national security apparatus as a part of the legacy of that bright autumn day.

Less obvious in the calculus of the ‘post 9/11’ world that emerged is the 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border, the unmanned drones that cruise into Mexico on the hunt for drug traffickers, an unprecedented level of immigrant deportations and one baggy pant wearing baby-faced Mexican kid known as ‘Puebla’—New York state’s first and only convicted terrorist.

What became known simply as 9/11 triggered a reconfiguration in public life, dramatically altering the way Americans travel, fight wars and define ‘security’ and ‘terrorism.’ To understand the massive changes that has unfolded in the name of national security, it is important to recall the national climate of a decade ago

The reaction to 9/11

“We were totally unprepared psychologically to be exposed as vulnerable,” said Charles Strozier, the director of the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College for Criminal Justice. “There was a culture of fear that emerged after the attacks that…now it’s difficult for people to re-imagine it.”

Days later, the U.S. Congress granted President George W. Bush the power to use military force against any entity or nation tied to the attacks. Bush soon declared a war in Afghanistan as part of a mission to capture Al Qaeda operatives and its founder Osama bin Laden who orchestrated the attacks. The controversial PATRIOT Act was adopted which expanded the powers of federal agencies to gather intelligence within the nation’s borders. Torture became the subject of great debate, Arab and Muslim immigrant men were questioned, detained and 531 were eventually deported, according to the 9/11 Commission Report.

In 2002, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created by federal law to house 22 federal agencies including immigration and customs and triggered a gush of government spending to pursue a mission of protecting the nation against ‘terrorism.’

“When you have a culture of fear there is a desperate attempt on the federal level to deal with the threats both real and imagined,” said Strozier, whose Center on Terrorism was created in response to the attacks. “It went 100 different directions at the same time.”

A ballooning budget

The effort to combat ‘terrorism’ that ensued was backed by massive government spending in the name of security. In 2001, the federal government spent about $20 billion on homeland security measures. This year, DHS submitted a budget request of $57 billion. The federal government also recently announced some $80 billion in spending on ‘intelligence activities’ in one year, triple the budget in 2001. If these programs seem vague, it’s because the national security organ that emerged is as amorphous as it is far reaching.

A two-year investigation by The Washington Post concluded that the top secret world created after 2001 “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

A decade after the attacks, national security remains a major portion of government spending with few signs of abating. The New York City Police Department plans to spend about $24 million in federal homeland security grants to pay for overtime. The NYPD budget lists an estimated $180 million in counter terrorism and intelligence spending for the upcoming year, with one half covered with federal grants. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently stated that law enforcement officials have thwarted 13 attempted terrorist plots in the city in the last decade.

The attacks have left an indelible mark on New York City’s cityscape with metal gates and barriers seen throughout the city. A study by the academic journal Environment and Planning A estimated that nearly 40 percent of public space in downtown Manhattan is a ‘security zone.’ This year, the city will unveil the “ring of steel” modeled after London’s surveillance system and consisting of among other things, nearly 2,000 cameras installed in subways and streets.

Indications of what would unfold over the next decade came immediately after the attacks when President Bush in his address to the nation. “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he said. “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

A policy of mass deportation

Terrorism, which is a technique of violence, rather than an enemy, was housed within DHS and alongside with agencies responsible for two ongoing domestic issues-immigrants and drugs. After securing the nation against terrorism, DHS names securing the border and immigration as its top missions. The 9/11 Commission recommended improved screening at borders to detect potential threats and improvements to an “immigration system not able to deliver on its basic commitments, much less support counterterrorism.”

The effect was immediate in Washington Heights where Raquel Batista, then the executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, remembers the immigrant families that overwhelmed her office after a surge of Dominicans in deportation proceedings, many for drug convictions. “We felt the difference with immigration (agents) coming into communities to do raids and knocking on people’s doors in the morning,” Batista said. “People would come to my office and tell me they would come and say they had closed down the street on 179th for a raid.”

Since the 2001 attacks, the number of deportations has tripled with a record number of 400,000 immigrants removed last year alone. “There is a domestic component to the culture of fear–the fear of immigrant,” said Roberto Lovato, an activist and writer who has covered the intersection of national security and immigration. “We imported the fear of Al-Qaeda.”

With the term terrorist left undefined in the state laws adopted after the attacks, the profile of a ‘terrorist’ turned up unexpected face in 2004 when the Bronx district attorney unsealed an indictment Edgar Morales, aka “Puebla,” on charges of terrorism in the killing of 10-year-old Malenny Mendez.

The DA argued that he and the other members of the St. James Boys street gang ‘terrorized’ the civilian neighborhoods of the West Bronx. But Michael Balboni, the Republican senator who sponsored New York’s anti terrorism statute, has said publicly that he envisioned the use of the ‘terrorism’ law in scenarios involving mass destruction and that its use in the Morales case was an “unanticipated application.”
Morales’ parents were shocked at the charge they associated with the 2001 attacks. “What is happening with the laws here,” asked Lourdes Morales, his mother told me in 2005. “Isn’t there a limit?”

Border security

Soon after, the federal government began work on a multi-billion dollar 700-mile fence on the U.S. Mexico border ostensibly to protect against terrorists, although suspected terrorists have entered through the northern border with Canada and with visas through airports. Drones used in Afghanistan have been deployed along the border and into Mexico in the fight against drug traffickers who have been deemed a threat to national security.

“It wasn’t accidental that counterterrorism is housed with immigration and customs because conceptually the two had been long linked,” said Strozier. “All of that had to be in the political culture and social culture of fear where people are willing to turn a blind eye.”

Last November, a state appeals court reduced Morales’ sentence saying his crime did not fit the definition of terrorism. The Bronx District Attorney declined requests for comment. Earlier this year an internal report compiled by the Transportation Security Administration found that security screeners at the Newark Airport regularly singled out Mexican and Dominican passengers for scrutiny of travel documents as a way to appear more ‘productive.’

A decade later the ‘war on terror’ fits firmly within the paradigm of national security. In July, the Obama Administration announced a new strategy against ‘transnational organized crime groups” that pose a threat to national security and threaten to destabilize nations. Among the four groups listed was the Zetas, a Mexican organized crime group responsible for countless killings and tied to the ongoing and lucrative human and drug smuggling trade.

A decade after then President George W. Bush said, “the object of terrorism is to try to force us to change our way of life,” one might argue that the fight against terrorism was grafted onto our way of life.

Report: Voices from inside_10 years later_Our choices

On September 11 2001 a reporter in her late 20s prepared to take her first step away from journalism toward a career in the law. What we have come refer to as 9/11 made taking that step impossible. It was immediately clear that I would abandon well-laid plan to return to Texas and a waiting job. I chose instead New York City, and all the uncertainty that lay ahead, compelled solely by an inexplicable sense of duty to stay and witness the aftermath. Over the weeks and years that followed that clear autumn day, many life-changing decisions were made–in people’s hearts and by the U.S. government.

Arnulfo Chino chose uncertainity. I met him while producing a public radio report about the flourishing Mexican population in New York City. Like many other Mexican immigrants, he took the lowliest job in a restaurant– at the World Trade Center–and worked his way up to become a waiter. With a microphone and recorder in hand, I followed Chino: through the subway tunnel, through the massive walkways of the Twin Towers and into the restaurant kitchen where he greeted his friends, the prep cooks. Chino was on his way to work when the planes hit; when we spoke, he didnt know what had become of his friends. In this report for NPR’s Latino USA, I followed Chino’s journey to work, his experience of that day and his decision to stay in New York City despite his mother’s pleas that he return to Mexico. All these years later, it was good to see Chino is still a New Yorker.

In late 2002, a little over 150 young men and women in a huge gymnasium at Fort Dix, an Army base in New Jersey, began drafting a Last Will and Testament as part of ‘soldier readiness processing,’ the last stop before deploying to fight the nation’s wars. Many had signed up with the Army Reserves after 9/11 and they explained the reasons for their choices and the decisions that they now confronted–what to include in their Will and who to leave ‘everything’ to; all that a 19 year old values. For one reservist, her dog-eared Bible was her most prized possession, for another,  his baseball cap, and yet another, with a tattoo of a ‘guardian angel’ he had inked on after 9/11 said, his little brother. Theirs are reflections about choices and what we ‘leave behind.’

Over the last decade the choices made by our political leaders have changed the face of this city, the way we define and discuss security and our images of the ‘enemy.’ Earlier this week, I looked back at the last decade and the far reaching effects of what was been done “In the name of National Security” and I invite you to take a look. Excerpt: Less obvious in the calculus of the ‘post 9/11’ world that emerged is the 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border, the unmanned drones that cruise into Mexico on the hunt for drug traffickers, an unprecedented level of immigrant deportations and one baggy-pant wearing baby-faced Mexican kid known as ‘Puebla’—New York state’s first and only convicted terrorist. 

In looking back and listening to early reports, I’m taken by, well first,  the youthfulness and pained sound in my voice. I believed I was living through a momentous period in history, a time of overwhelming change.  I have come to understand, though, that to bring about ‘overwhelming change’ we must scrutinize and reflect on our choices, the ones we make from the core sense of who we are, our beliefs. The tragedy of that day served to accentuate and to heighten what was already there for me, for them and as a nation. A decade later, that ‘momentous day’ should now encourage a reflection on our beliefs and choices, writ small to large.

When the subject of 9/11 comes up is people often ask: Where were you? It is a question I avoid because in thinking about September 11 2001, the questions I think that beg reflection, as individuals and as a nation: What choices did we make? What did we do?

Machos y Putas

Machos y Putas-masking Mexico’s violence

Michelle García, a border-crossing Mex-American journalist, deconstructs the daily press orgy of “sex and violence.” It is a visual force that diminishes the real victimization of women as well as their often genuinely heroic responses,” as summarized by Froylan Enciso, co-curator with Paul Gootenberg.

My analysis piece that appeared in the special May/June issue of NACLA Report on the Americas expands on the critique contained in the post-Sexing Violence in Mexico.

I highly recommend visiting the site and reviewing the incredible reports by including gems by Howard Campbell and Elaine Carey.  I especially enjoyed Natalia Mendoza Rockwell’s piece Boots, Belt Buckles and Sombreros:Narco-Culture in the Altar Desert. Many thanks to both Froy and Paul for inviting me to be part of the issue. I am deeply honored.

Sexing Violence in Mexico>Machos y Putas

Dear readers,

I am delighted to inform you that I have expanded upon the blog post-Sexing Violence-and it will appear under the title, “Machos y Putas-Masking Mexico’s Violence” in an upcoming special issue of NACLA Report on the Americas. The special issue on Mexico will include the work of some of the leading writers in Mexico and U.S. Please check back in the coming weeks for more details. Thank you for your support.
MG

Recoding Ciudad Juárez

Ciudad Juárez is the woman clinging to a wooden cross, a Christ-like figure planted at the foot of a bridge waiting for her poet-prophet. She presses her chest forward and casts a defiant gaze to the south, into the abyss from which he has come. He storms across the desert toward her, the sun setting behind the mountains to his left, racing toward the pink painted bridge and grieving mothers, toward Mexico’s ‘epicenter of pain.’

Javier Sicilia once found solace in his poetry but his rich words fell limp after his son was shot down, a casualty in the swell of violence that claims some 40,000 dead. Instead Sicilia organized a caravan and last week set out from his home near Mexico City on a journey dubbed the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity fueled by indignation at a government led ‘war,’ in which battle-lines between the good and the bad were long ago obliviated, if they ever existed.

He set his sights on the border, and Ciudad Juárez because the war to win is waged for control of ideas and perception. And Sicilia, a man of words, knowing this said: “We must not lose what Juarez symbolizes…it is the symbol that the country is torn.” The most apparent codes in Mexico’s war were written by killers in blood and strung from bridges, left in burning cars, and set to music, with the less obvious coded violence contained in the horrific silence of the disappeared and the din of impunity. And the grieving families, with no hope for restitution or even justice-fewer than 5 percent of violent crimes result in conviction, by the government’s own count- construct humble messages with cardboard placards that bear the names and images of the young boys and girls generally referred to as ‘the victims.’

With Sicilia’s arrival to Ciudad Juárez emerged a new code, a code constructed with symbols that transforms Christ into a woman, frees strong men to cry, and raises the lowliest factory worker to stand as an equal to a celebrated writer.

Sicilia reaches the top of the bridge where he finds the waiting factory worker, a woman with a spin top silhouette and a shy smile and he bows to her. Luz Maria Davila raises her arms and places a rosary strung together with mother of pearl beads, around his neck and they embrace. Davila’s two sons were killed after gunmen busted into a neighborhood party and shot down 17 students. President Calderón later dismissed the massacre as just another gang fight and the victims as mere hoodlums involved in the drug trade. Without warning anyone, Davila slipped off to confront her president and informed him he was not welcome in her city.  (Usted no es bienvenido, señor Presidente.) And in her Juárez gained a symbol, a weapon to battle the messages that their losses were simply the cost of war against the ‘bad ones.’

Later that night the crowds gathered at the soccer field built in honor of the murdered children and chanted her words, recast for the poet’s arrival: señor Sicilia si es bienvenido. Mr. Sicilia, yes, is welcome.

In the recoding of war, men, discovering that fighting words fall short, shed tears and invoke the passion and force of birth as a source of strength. ‘El amor no es debil, es rojo, fuerza presenta en el parto.’ Love is not weak, it’s red, the strength present in the birth,’ Julian Lebaron-brother, Benjamin, shot dead– told the crowds in the shadow of the monument Benito Juarez. And a rebirth is needed, he said.

Young men show off their  ink tattoos of butterflies and the word PAZ (peace). Older men speak of fragility and strength and women clasp their hands in gratitude that the men have, at last, joined them. “To see a man cry like that, for his son. I had never seen a man cry so much for his son, it moved me, it inspired me, because men are strong and, hard,” says Alicia Camacho, who holds a placard that reads: if I were a poet I would have justice for my husband. “And we need them standing with us.” Her husband had no chance for tears, he died covering his son’s body with his own, protecting the boy from a spray of bullets at the massacre and for her, justice never came.

Near the flatbed trailer, the stage testimonials always begin with a name and the date of death. Jose Rayas Flores stands behind a large photograph of his daughter, Viviana. “Men don’t join the marches, they don’t go into the streets because they are afraid. They are men, and as men, they feel they are more likely to be killed. Or worse, their efforts may fail. But after his daughter disappeared, Rayas’ union buddies joined search parties and he found, her. I found her, he repeated, over and over, his gaze drifting off. I found her on a hill, three months later. The animals were eating her. Anguish takes hold, his body shudders from its grip. My youngest daughter, he says, he eyes brimming red.

//El amor no es debil, es rojo. Love is not weak, it’s red.///

The cross country journey culminates with a signed ‘pact’ a wide reaching set of demands that includes the obvious-withdrawing the military to indigenous rights and calls for an end to neoliberalism. A document written in haste, printed on paper, signed by a few, and sure to raise doubts about the enduring power of ‘movement.’ Perhaps that explains why Sicilia introduced ‘the pact’ with a poem about long journeys and the fear of disillusionment.

//And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn’t deceived you.

So wise you have become, of such experience,

that already you’ll have understood what these Ithakas mean.//

But he needn’t have bothered, because the defiant mothers and grieving fathers who encountered each other, on the pink bridge, on the soccer field, on the abandoned streets had already begun to draft the living poem of Juárez.

A Wall with a Laugh

A little something to remind of us what a ‘wall’ once meant. And the tricky politics of crossing the border the way only Cantinflas can do it.

 

Blaming the Victim-a Texas Memory

This piece was published on the sites of  The Texas Observer and Women in Media and News. The story has faded a bit but the struggles faced by the victim and her family continue as does our need to remain vigilant of the criminal justice process for the accused.
Thank you for the read.

A few days after my 16th birthday, a woman walking along a lonely highway in the neighboring town accepted a ride from an acquaintance. She climbed into a car carrying four men. Linda Gaitan was 19, a young mother who wore a tattoo, “Soy Gaitan” (I’m a Gaitan), her husband’s surname. The four men drove Gaitan to an outdoor party—beer and men cheering on their birds in an illegal cockfight. Gaitan was gang-raped on the hood of the car by 11 men and a teenager. The beer, the cockfight, Latinos queuing up for their turns. The details became an open wound with rumors and news reports buzzing around like flies.

The 1988 rape in San Diego, Texas, swelled in my mind as I read the details of the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, a small town north of Houston, by 19 males, the youngest 14, the eldest 27. The New York Times and Houston Chronicle coverage included comments by locals who suggested that the girl somehow consented or invited the abuse. Some in Cleveland described the girl as dressing beyond her years, walking around alone. She hung around with teenage boys, they said.

The Chronicle made the questionable decision to include details from the girl’s Facebook page. The Times allowed chaotic reactions from locals to dominate the story, and the response to the coverage was swift and fierce. Some in the community had cast blame on an 11-year-old girl, and the press had given them a free pass. Critics have rightly excoriated the press for failing to provide “context,” the context being that a child can never consent to sex. It’s illegal.

I return to the comments by the locals because they reveal much about the way people, communities and the press process sexual violence. These reactions appear to be imbued with shame, exacerbated by internal politicking and are a reaction to the press itself. The result—battle lines are drawn, camps are formed, allegiances are fortified.

As in Cleveland, the scrutiny of the national media fell on San Diego, and it fell hard. As in Cleveland, local leaders were quick to say that “this really hurts the town,” blurring the line between the vicious crime and the subsequent attention. A local newspaper ran a front-page editorial in defense of San Diego. “In a sense, the national and area news media have raped this town in a fashion not too unsimilar [sic] to the gang rape itself.”

While the “town rape” invoked shame, the actual rape was an abuse, a violation. Drawing the parallel frames rape as a shame against family and community, without regard to the suffering of the victim. Shame is what makes people pick sides, makes them forget the victim to save face.

In 1988, an undercurrent of shame helped rally folks in defense of San Diego and South Texas. We knew that the Anglos (as whites are called) would add this shocking crime to the litany of reprehensible behavior ascribed to Mexicans (as all Spanish surnamed are called). They wouldn’t, and couldn’t, see the crime as a horrific act by individuals. It would be viewed through the lens of culture, race, class and become an indictment against all of us Latinos. The sexy mix of beer, fighting beasts and Mexicans guaranteed it. We were all implicated in the shame. Many people took sides, one side really, the community over the girl. It was that simple.

Their suspicions, as it turned out, were not baseless. The Los Angeles Times report on the rape included a portrait of local poverty-“remove the late model cars”, the reporter wrote, “and you could easily imagine this was the 1950s.” A Texas Monthly cover read “Macho Gone Mad.” In the article, the term “Maldito Pueblo” (“Wretched Town”) was slapped onto San Diego, and the rape became an entrée into the town’s sordid history of corruption and domination by the “Duke of Duval,” George B. Parr. Parr ran the county as a fiefdom with local Mexicans as serfs. San Diego was the site of the infamous Box 13, the “missing” ballots of the deceased that catapulted Lyndon B. Johnson into the U.S. Senate in 1948. These details were deftly used to explain the cause of the crime and the community’s reaction. Implicit in the “wretched town” description, as well as a traveler writer’s observation that there was nothing to do in San Diego “but drink and fornicate,” were the circumstances that led to the crime.

In our little part of the world, poverty was rampant, upward mobility was dim and women with slim job prospects married young. No one, no outsider at least, seemed to give a damn until the rape. I remember the Geraldo Show devoting a segment to the story, and I cringe even now. Why does the victim keep talking, people wondered? As if her voice was the reason for the shame, not the men.

Back then, I was an emerging rebel who took the floor in government class and argued against any complicity by the victim. She accepted a ride. She didn’t consent to sex, and her decision wasn’t reflective of her character. (Walking on the street in small town Texas will, to this day, draw stares. Only the downtrodden walk.) I remember my indignation and outrage. It was rape, and it was wrong. I was being naïve about the reality of life and justice.

It’s been 23 years since the nation’s attention fell on San Diego. The events unfolding around the crime in Cleveland are much the same. Some of the men and boys arrested in Cleveland belong to the privileged class of the community: the son of a school board member and several basketball stars. Stories about a rape expand into explorations of the community, its segregated history, the history of racial strife, as if understanding these aspects of Cleveland helps to understand why the crime occurred.

These details may explain reaction, but not why the crime occurred. I doubt we can ever resolve the reporters’, and by extension the public’s, nagging question: Why?

In Cleveland, the painful situation is made more complex by the ever volatile issue of race. The victim is Latina, and all of the arrested males are African American. The arrests have reportedly fueled racial divisions in Cleveland, where half the population is white and the other half split between Latinos and blacks.

“It’s becoming a black and white issue because it happened over in the quarters. It’s segregating our community again,” Brenda Myers a local told the press, referring to the African American neighborhood, “the Quarters.”

On the eve of a Houston activist’s town hall meeting in Cleveland, a Houston Chronicle columnist noted: “In a place like Cleveland, where the black side of town is still known as the Quarters, it’s not beyond reason to question whether race is playing a role.”

But the ‘role’ is not defined. Was it a factor in the crime, the arrests or the quality of justice that will follow? Once again, lines are drawn and choices made. An 11-year-old girl or the town? Race or gender? Missing from coverage of this story is the realization that the nature of the media reaction forces people to take sides. We outsiders and journalists are not mere observers but participants.

Meanwhile, substantial questions are left unanswered: Why did three months elapse between the start of the police investigation and the arrests? Why did the judge place the victim in a foster home and restrict access to her family? A spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said the agency was under a gag order. Does separating her from her family victimize her again? Has evidence of neglect or family abuse surfaced to warrant the ruling? Why is the family being targeted? Why have they been urged to leave their home? In a small town with close ties, who is watching the investigators and the courts? The courts will sort through the details of the crime. We should be vigilant of the caliber of justice dealt to the accused and the interests of the girl.

I realized years later that, after the Gaitan case, my relationships with men became tinged with aggression and wariness. It was the confused reaction of an angry girl who had learned unspoken rules about sexuality and blame. I watched a woman be sacrificed by my community, and I felt betrayed. As Cleveland draws its lines around race, power and reputation, I wonder if girls there—white, black, Latina and Asian—feel like I once did, scrutinized by outsiders looking in, but abandoned at home.

Update: Reports have surfaced that the young girl’s family is experiencing extreme hardship. They were forced to leave Cleveland for their safety, Maria, the victim’s daughter has an untreated brain tumor, and her father has not found work. The parents fear their other children may be placed in foster care as well.
Sylvia Gonzales, southwest representative of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) is handling support for the family: gonzales_sylvia@att.net