Fall 98-- NCX -- Archives -- Electrons to the Editor
ON MARCH 23, 1979, the documentary "Boulevard Nights" opened in East Los Angeles. Pickets protested the film's opening, for it portrayed young Chicanos cruising for dates in customized cars as violent gang members. "Lowriding" in East L.A. dated from the 1940s and was peaking in 1979. "Lowrider Magazine" had an estimated one million readers in the Southwestern US. Almost every Mexican neighborhood had its cruising strip, with a festival atmosphere through bumper-to-bumper weekend evenings. As the "lowriding capital of the world" and the subject of "Boulevard Nights," East L.A.'s Whittier Boulevard also had constant police stops and searches.
On that night a young journalist named Roberto Rodriguez was taking pictures for "Lowrider Magazine" on the corner of Whittier and McDonnell. He photographed nine sheriffs beating a mentally confused man with such gusto that they fought each other for the best kicking positions. Rodriguez in turn was severely beaten and arrested. After a detour down an isolated road, two officers high-fived each other for successfully terrorizing him into thinking he'd never make it to a hospital. They charged him with assault and battery on a peace officer and assault with a deadly weapon (his Olympus camera). Over his three days in Los Angeles County Hospital, Rodriguez learned that 538 people were arrested that night, many severely injured while "resisting arrest." Foreshadowing the later containment of whole urban sectors, this showdown led to barricades that closed Whittier Boulevard to cruising.
After nine months and nearly 30 more stops and arrests, Rodriguez' charges were dismissed. On average, police stopped him daily after that until he left the state. One time, his car was full of "Lowrider" magazines with March 23rd coverage. The arresting officers shackled him to a precinct bench for the evening with the magazine's photo of his smashed, bloody face taped to the wall behind him. Seven years later he won his civil suit against four sheriffs after a cliff-hanger jury trial including surprise witnesses and exposing blatant cover-ups by the sheriffs. Justice: A Question of Race reprints together two books that Rodriguez wrote during that period. Assault With a Deadly Weapon was first published in 1984, when Rodriguez feared that he might be killed before he could testify in his civil case. On the Wrong Side of the Law (1986) recounts his lawsuit, though his 1996 Epilogue reveals that its first three chapters were written before that trial, during a sojourn alone in Mexico.
Rodriguez offers three accounts of what he laconically calls "the incident." The first is a reprint of his original "Lowrider Magazine" article, which gained him widespread support among its readers during the several years he traveled the Southwest before returning to Los Angeles for his civil case. Wrong Side's opening chapters are extraordinarily powerful: a riveting, lean and chilling description of March 23, 1979. Finally, he recounts how his own trial testimony provoked a traumatic reliving of that night which he had been warned would occur. Rodriguez has a fine eye for courtroom duels. He offers some excellent, accessible discussions regarding the relation of police violence to such practices as plea bargaining and manipulation of juries. He also struggles for his own sanity and well-being. Open about being no hero, he remained in the intersection snapping pictures only because the crowd implored him repeatedly to stay. The aftermath has been harrowing.
Focused on legal and political aspects of police violence, U.S. public discourse has rarely defined it directly as torture or trauma. But recently some police accountability activists have tried to frame police violence in terms of international human rights. This shift coincides with the U.S. ratification of three international conventions in the early 1990s. For the first time, U.S. compliance includes reporting on its own domestic behavior to the United Nations. This further spurs the move toward thinking about police violence here in new terms, which may be as significant as the legal consequences of these treaties. Rodriguez himself recounts how a young Guatemalan woman who survived police torture in her birth country helped him overcome his trauma. His book may become a landmark in this shift.
Because he was a working journalist when attacked, Rodriguez' lawsuit was almost argued as a First Amendment case. It's taken him a decade to get this book into print. It is released almost simultaneously with a collection of syndicated columns by himself and his wife, "Gonzalez/Rodriguez: Uncut and Uncensored" (April 15, from UC Berkeley). Much of that book addresses varieties of censorship, including that which is self-imposed by a community often reluctant to acknowledge police violence.
Nancy Rhodes, one of the editors of the Peace Newsletter (PNL), writes about police accountability and human rights. This article appeared in the May 1997 issue of PNL, published monthly by the Syracuse Peace Council, Syracuse, New York/USA:
JUSTICE: A QUESTION OF RACE
by Roberto Rodriguez (1997)
Bilingual Review Press/Hispanic Research Center:Tempe, Arizona. ISBN 0-927534-68-1 (paper), 283 pp. $19.00