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  #81  
Old 10-23-2009, 06:16 PM
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Old 10-14-2009, 10:08 PM
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Rodriguez 2)

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Mexicans will remember this century as the century of loss. The land will not sustain Mexicans. For generations, from Mexico City, came promises of land reform. This land will be yours.

What more seductive promise could there be to a nation haunted by the memory of dispossession?

The city broke most of its promises...

The Goddess of Liberty... may well ask Mexicans why they are so resistant to change, to the interesting freedoms she offers. Mexicans are notorious in the United States for their skepticism regarding public life. Mexicans don't vote. Mexicans drop out of school.

Mexicans live in superstitious fear of the American diaspora. Mexican Americans are in awe of education, of getting too much schooling, of changing too much, of moving too far from home.

Well, never to be outdone, Mother Mexico has got herself up in goddess cloth. She carries a torch, too, and it is the torch of memory. She is searching for her children.

A false mother, Mexico cares less for her children than she does for her pride. The exodus of so many Mexicans for the U.S. Is not evidence of Mexico's failure; it is evidence, rather, of the emigrant's failure. After all, those who left were of the peasant, the lower classes – those who could not make it in Mexico.

The government of hurt pride is not above political drag. The government of Mexico impersonates the intimate genius of matriarchy in order to justify a political strangle hold.

You betray Uncle Sam by favoring private over public life, by seeking to exempt yourself: by cheating on your income taxes, by avoiding jury duty, by trying to keep your boy on the farm.

These are legal offenses.

Betrayal of Mother Mexico, on the other hand, is a sin against the natural law, a failure of memory...

Mexico always can find a myth to account for us: Mexicans who go north are like the Chichimeca, - a barbarous tribe antithetical to Mexico. But in the United States, Mexican Americans did not exist in the national imagination until the 1960's – years when the black civil rights movement prompted Americans to acknowledge “invisible minorities” in their midst. Then it was deemed statistically that Mexican Americans constituted a disadvantaged society, living in worse conditions than most other Americans, having less education, facing bleaker sidewalks or Safeways.
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:17 PM
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Old 10-14-2009, 10:11 PM
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Rodriguez 3)

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3
The sixties were years of romance for the American middle class. Americans competed with one another to play the role of society's victim...

In those years, the national habit of Americans was to seek from the comparison with blacks a kind of analogy. Mexican American political activists, especially student activists, insisted on a rough similarity between the two societies – black, Chicano – ignoring any complex factor of history or race that might disqualify the equation.

Black Americans had suffered relentless segregation and mistreatment, but blacks had been implicated in the public life of this country from the beginning. Oceans separated the black slave from any possibility of rescue or restoration. From the symbiosis of oppressor and the oppressed, blacks took a hard realism. They acquired the language of the white man, though they inflected it with refusal. And because racism fell on all blacks,regardless of class, a bond formed between the poor and bourgeoisie, thence the possibility of a leadership class able to speak for the entire group.

Mexican Americans of the generation of the sixties had no myth of themselves as Americans. So that when Mexican Americans won national notoriety, we could only refer the public gaze to the past. We are people of the land, we told ourselves. Middle class college students took to wearing farmer-in-the-dell overalls and they took, as well, a rural slang to name themselves: Chicanos.

Chicanismo blended nostalgia with grievance to reinvent the mythic northern kingdom of Aztlan as corresponding to the southwestern American desert. Just as Mexico would only celebrate her Indian half, Chicanos determined to portray themselves as Indians in America, as indigenous people, thus casting the United States in the role of Spain.

Chicanos used the language of colonial Spain to declare to America that they would never give up their culture. And they said, in Spanish, that Spaniards had been the oppressors of their people.

Left to ourselves in a protestant land, Mexican Americans shored up our grievances, making them alters to the past...

Ah, Mother, can you not realize how Mexican we have become?

But she hates us, she hates us.
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:18 PM
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Old 10-14-2009, 10:15 PM
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Rodriguez 4)

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Chicanismo offended Mexico. It was one thing for Mexico to play the victim among her children, but Mexico didn't like it that Chicanos were playing the same role for the gringos.

By claiming too many exemptions, Chicanos also offended Americans. Chicanos seemed to violate a civic agreement that generations of other immigrants had honored: “My grandparents had to learn English.”...

In the late 1960's, when Cesar Chavez made the cover of time as the most famous Mexican American anyone could name, he was already irrelevant to to Mexican-American lives insofar as 90 percent of us lived in cities and were more apt to work in construction than as farm workers...

Politics can easily override irony. But, by the late 1980's, the confusing “we” of Mexican Americanism was transposed an octave higher to the “we” of pan-American Hispanicism.

Mexican Americans constituted the majority of the nation's Hispanic population. But Mexican Americans were in no position to define the latitude of of the term “Hispanic” - the tumult of pigments and alters and memories there. “Hispanic" is not a racial or a cultural or a geographic or a linguistic or an economic description. "Hispanic" is a bureaucratic integer – a complete political fiction. How much does a central American refugee have in common with the Mexican from Tijuana? What does the black Puerto Rican in New York have in common with the white Cuban in Mimi? Those Mexican Americans in a position to speak for the group – whatever the group was – that is, those of us with access to microphones because of affirmative action, were not even able to account for our own success. Or were we advancing on the backs of those who were drowning?
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:18 PM
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Old 10-14-2009, 10:17 PM
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Rodriguez 5)

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Think of earlier immigrants to this country. Think of the Jewish immigrants or the Italian. Many came, carefully observing Old World distinctions and rivalries. German Jews distinguished themselves from Russian Jews. The Venetian was adamant about not being taken for a Neopolitan. But to America, what did such claims matter? All Italians pretty much looked and sounded the same. A Jew was a Jew. And now, America shrugs again. Palm trees or cactus, it's all the same. Hispanics are all the same.

I saw Cesar Chavez again, a year ago, at a black – tie benefit in a hotel in San Jose. The organizers of the event ushered him into the crowded ballroom under a canopy of hush and tenderness and parked him at the center table, where he sat blinking. How fragile the great can seem. How much more substantial we of the ballroom seemed, the Mexican-American haute bourgeoisie, as we stood to pay our homage – orange women in fur coats, affirmative-action officers from cigarette companies, film makers, investment bankers, fat cats and stuffed shirts and bleeding hearts – stood applauding our little saint. Cesar Chavez reminded us that night of who our grandparents used to be.

Then Mexican waiters served champagne

Success is a terrible dilemma for Mexican Americans, like being denied some soul – sustaining sacrament. Without the myth of victimization – who are we? We are no longer Mexican, we are professional Mexicans. We hire Mexicans. After so many years thinking ourselves exempt from some common myth of America, we might as well be Italians.
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:19 PM
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Old 10-15-2009, 11:46 PM
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Next day or three I want to get into the Denver youth conference and get into the origin of the farfetched concept of Aztlan and contrived north of the border "indigenism" of people with south of the border Mexican mestizo origins, as well as a smattering of associated issues.

I might take a couple days off or post on something off topic but relevant in the meantime.
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:19 PM
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Old 10-17-2009, 09:09 AM
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This is in the words of Ernest Vigil, a member of the Crusade for Justice from 1968 to 1981, organizer, activist, and an ethnic and race research associate at the University of Colorado. From his book Crusade for Justice.


Quote:
El Plan Espiritual De Aztlan

The first Denver Youth Conference is best known for a proclamation called El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, published in English and Spanish and consisting of a preamble and a less well known “program of Action”. The three paragraph preamble read:

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal “Gringo” invasion of our territories, We, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan, from whence came pour forefathers, reclaiming the land of our birth, and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, Declare that the call of our blood is our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds and water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze Continent.

Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner “Gabacho”, who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, We Declare the Independence of our Mestizo Nation. We are a Bronze People with a Bronze Culture, before all of North America,before all our brothers in the Bronze Continent, We are a Nation, We are a Union of free Pueblos, We are Aztlan – Por La Raza Todo, fuera La Raza Nada. March 1969.

“Aztlan” referred to the origin of the Nahuatl speaking Mexica of Mexico, who are commonly, but incorrectly, referred to a Aztecs. They came from somewhere in Northern Mexico or the present day American southwest. The Mexica, who are not specifically mention in the Plan, arrived nearly one thousand years ago in the Valley of Anahuac, after a long odyssey,and rose to power and splendor until their subjugation by the Spaniards. The location of Aztlan, their homeland, is difficult to ascertain: somewhere between Nayrit, Mexico – 400 miles northwest of Mexico City – and the present day U.S. Southwest. Who could locate, with precision, Aztlan, the ancestral Mexica homeland? Incidentally, no account of Aztlan locates it near Denver, which is 120 miles north of the Arkansas River, Mexico's northern border at the time of the American takeover.
Continued below
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:20 PM
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Old 10-17-2009, 09:13 AM
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Vigil continued
Quote:
“AZLAN” RECONSIDERED

The wording of the Plan demonstrates ethnic pride in its consciousness of a “proud historical heritage”, but its poetic wording creates great interpretive difficulties. It declared unity in gender based terminology (“brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come”). It spoke of “tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brow, and by our hearts”. But what exactly were these tasks for which our hearts called, and what, exactly, was it time to do?

And what did indigenous nations have to say about this grand plan declared in their absence? They clearly have their own myths, legends, and histories of origin that surpass, equal, predate, or displace Aztlan. What did the Plan mean to the tribal nations of the present day American southwest, if this was where Aztlan was once located, tribal nations who had engaged Spaniards and Mexicans (mestizos) in bloody warfare for encroachment on lands they occupied. Or was their input needed, since Chicanos were really “Indian”, or at least mestizo, anyway?

While declaring the “Independence of our Mestizo Nation”, the Plan says nothing about these peoples and nations, nor about African Americans or the role – if any- that the foreign: "Gabacho” would play in the nation it proclaimed. Its wording implies the solidarity of the Americas, since it does “not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze Continent”. But how were Chicanos to commune with their “brothers” across these borders? And what was meant by a “Bronze People with a Bronze Culture”?

The Plan declares, “We are free and sovereign, We are a nation”. Was this to be a new nation called Aztlan? And how would Aztlan relate to Mexico? Or would it? Was the Plan a literal declaration of independence from the United States? If so, where were the limits of these lands, since Mexico's borders were drawn by Spanish imperialists anyway and, at the time of the American takeover, vast regions populated not by Mexican mestizos, but by sedentary or nomadic tribal nations? In what sense did “Chicanos” have “their hearts in their hands and their hands in the soil”? What did this interesting imagery mean?

The verbal and theoretical imprecision of this declaration leaves room for many interpretations. Whatever “Aztlan” meant, the word spread rapidly after the conference. Students, for example, soon adopted the name Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) – The Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan.

The Plan was, as noted above, a two part document; Gonzales wrote the program, while poet Alberto Urista wrote most of the preamble. The program sees nationalism as an ideology around which Chicanos would rally:

"The Chicano, (La Raza de Bronze) must use nationalism as the key for or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztlan, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle must be the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, and our political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society: the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional, to la causa."

Nationalism was so important that a restatement of it served as punto primero (point one): “Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religions, political, class and economic factions or boundaries”. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree on”. Gonzales believed nationalism should, and would transcend those factors that divided Chicanos. Leftists and many intellectuals at the youth conference, however, argued that “La Raza” itself was divided into classes with divergent interests, and that, at its worst, primitive nationalism could be racist. For them, nationalism alone would not transcend class privilege and bias. The Plan did not address these issues.

The resolutions of the crusade's youth conferences of 1969, 1970, and 1971 reflect the prevailing nationalist sentiments of conference participants. Nationalism may not have been a comprehensive political theory, but it prevailed in the conferences' rhetoric, emotion, spirit of unity, and youthful enthusiasm. Philosophical conflict arose between nationalists and those advocating theories based on class, and though the Plan did not cause these conflicts, being merely an expression of pre-existing nationalist sentiment, neither was it an adequate framework to comprehend or resolve them.

For all its conceptual murkiness, and rhetorical quirkiness, the Plan's preamble and program denounce exploitation and advocated liberation and self determination, calling for driving out exploiters and “occupying forces”. It was provocative In its advocacy or “revolutionary acts” by youth and was traditionalist, or conservative, in its defense of culture, morals, and values like “respect” and “family and home”. It was idealistic in advocating “love”, “humanism”, and “dignity”. It criticized and rejected American society and government and served as a radical voice that spoke to many ideas, emotions, visions, and issues within the community.
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:20 PM
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Old 10-18-2009, 02:52 PM
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Here is a description of “youth” behavior in Denver which would be described by the Plan of Aztlan as “revolutionary” rather than criminal juvenile delinquency. There is also some “ethnic cleansing” of public employees at these parks, without detail provided how the previous employees were persuaded to quit their park jobs. It states that black employees were still employed at Mestizo park after the take over, but doesn't say how many or what percentage. There are descriptions of a night fight in the park between black and brown, exchanged gunfire, and gunfire directed towards a police car as well as housing units the next night.

This is just one account of the many sided story. Reading between the lines, I believe there is much left unsaid or favorably stated towards the narrator's side, and it doesn't seem there was a single incident of spontaneous eruption of resentment and violence between black and brown as the narration seems to suggest.

I wonder how many of the participants were actually drop outs instead of school attendees as described, and I wonder what the drop out and gang banging rate is now compared to the early 1970's.

From Vigil's book.

Quote:
LIBERATED TERRITORY: ALMA, MESTIZO, AND LA RAZA PARKS

Though law and order politics had the edge in the polls, activists continued to gain ground in the barrios. During the summer of 1970, young political activists and community residents took over the public swimming pool in the Northside's Columbus Park, a tactic patterned after the 1969 take over at Lincoln Park. The pool at Curtis Park was taken over in 1971, and the three parks were renamed La Raza Park, Alma Park, and Mestizo Park.... Though it lost influence over Alma Park in the early 1970's, the Crusade for Justice continued as the key influence at the East side and North Denver parks, which became centers of community organizing, leading to conflicts with local authorities.

Conflicts at Mestizo Park

Youth activists in the East side pressured employees at Curtis Park to quit their jobs in 1971, and replaced them with staff from the community. Among the new employees were Artie, Victor, and Tomas Ornelas, Danny Castro, Ray Zaragosa, Philip Miera, and others. The Mestizo Park takeover had led to unforeseen complications.

Chicano youths were well organized and highly politicized through their participation in school walk outs and involvement in the Berets and the Crusade for Justice. Though the African American community in the East side is larger than the Chicano community, Chicanos predominated in the immediate area of the park. African American youths were also employed at the park, but conflict arose when some resentful black youths felt that “the Mexicans had taken over”.

Community activists recall that some of the African American youths had recently moved to Denver from the Deep South or were staying with relatives during the summer months. Unfamiliar with Mexicans, some of these youths viewed Chicanos as dark white people.

In the summer of 1972, conflict escalated when Chicano youths reported that they had been assaulted or bullied by this particular group of youngsters. The park staff sought them out and told them both groups suffered discrimination and should get along peacefully. The staff reported that this attempt to forge unity was misinterpreted as weakness and fear. After another run in with these youths, the Chicanos challenged them to meet in the park to settle matters.

The twenty or so black youths who arrived that night found themselves outnumbered. Shots were exchanged, and one Chicano suffered a minor wound, reportedly from a rifle shot. The Chicano youths had small caliber pistols and missed their targets in the exchange of gunfire. Representatives of the black youths went to the park the next day saying they wanted to establish a “peace treaty”, The Chicanos responded that this is what they wanted before the violence escalated, but the previous night's incident had changed the situation. A Chicano was shot, while their rivals suffered no injury. The Chicano youths made a counter offer. Both groups were to show up that night. At the appointed hour of 9p.m., the black youngsters were told, they must, as a sign of good faith, shoot the first police car to pass through the Area. Chicanos would then join the battle.

Sporadic gunfire was heard during the day as Chicano youths shot out street lights. By nightfall two city blocks around the park were in complete darkness. Over a hundred Chicano youths from different barrios gathered in the darkened park.

Police cruised the area, but the 9p.m. Deadline passed without incident.A messenger was sent to inform the African Americans that the Chicanos would wait until 10 p.m. for action to be taken. People with police scanners monitored police communications, so youths in the park were aware that riot equipped police were congregating four blocks away and that the nearby fire station was in radio communication with the police to report developments.

The 10 p.m. Deadline also passed. A patrol wagon ventured into the area and was met with gunfire from Chicanos in the park. It quickly retreated. Many volleys of gunfire were then directed at the housing units in the nearby projects where the black youths lived. After 11 p.m. The police marched into the area, but found the park abandoned, thanks to police scanners.

No arrests were made. The next day organizers from the Crusade for Justice and the Black Panthers were called in to negotiate an end to the violence, and conflict between the two youth groups ended.
This isn't the end of general disorder and violence. There are dozens of fire bombings, gun battles with police, beatings, at least one stabbing, mob action, rocks and bottles thrown at police, property damage, at least one lawsuit by MALDEF, lots of violence of one sort or another.

40 YEARS OF CHICANO STUDIES
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:21 PM
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Old 10-18-2009, 03:15 PM
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Things don't seem to have changed much in Denver over forty years.

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Activist puts gangs at crux of shootings

Denver cops cite homicide drop to dispute connection

By Kirk Mitchell and Manny Gonzales Denver Post Staff Writers

Updated: 07/12/2007 01:48:32 AM MDT

A poster offering $2,000 in reward money is posted on a lamppost on the corner of 44th Ave. and Fillmore St. where a man was killed and son wounded by a gunman early Monday morning. (Post / Glenn Asakawa)

A trail of dried blood leads up to the doorstep of a church where one of three fatal shootings happened within eight hours this week.

Members of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on South Federal Boulevard held a candlelight prayer and vigil Wednesday night on the church's lawn.

"This city is a place that can be torn apart - a place where blood can be shed on the doorsteps of churches," pastor Jay McDivitt told the congregation.

Community activists say a battle is escalating between rival gangs in the city. But Denver police are downplaying any connection and say homicides in the city are down from previous years.

"There are a lot of things that have triggered our concern," said the Rev. Paul Burleson, vice president of political affairs for the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance.

"We want to make sure it isn't another summer of violence."

Lakewood officials say they suspect that a slaying there early Tuesday involved gangs. Denver police, however, say they don't believe two other killings in Denver involved street gangs.

Denver police also say that the 27 homicides in Denver this year are six fewer than at the same time last year and almost half the 53 homicides by the same time in 2004.

Furthermore, Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said it doesn't appear the three recent homicides are related.

But the Rev. Leon Kelly of Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives said the shootings - particularly a drive-by shooting - appear to him to be the work of gangs.

Kelly said the past three weeks have been particularly violent, with many shootings going unreported. Some appear to have been racially motivated, with black and Latino gang members attacking each other. Police reported that a Monday night shooting started as a dispute between groups of black and Latino youths.

"There has been this kind of hostility in Park Hill and the east side the past several weeks," Kelly said. "It takes two or three deaths at about the same time for people to take notice."

He said some of the dead and injured may be innocent victims of gang shootings.

At 9:30 p.m. Monday, two men were shot - one fatally - following a fight outside the South Federal Boulevard church. Roberto Perez-Juarez, 26, was killed, Jackson said.

Four hours later shots were fired from a dark sport utility vehicle at Christopher Pacheco on the 5600 block of West Mexico Avenue in Lakewood.

Members of Pacheco's family say he was not connected to gangs and they don't know why he was shot while playing pool in his garage.

"It certainly is a suspicion that at least the shooters are gang-related," said Steve Davis, Lakewood police spokesman.

Four hours after the Lakewood homicide, two other men were shot - one fatally - in the 4300 block of Fillmore Street in Denver. Eusebio Barboza-Aguilar, born in 1969, was killed, Jackson said.

Police have not arrested anyone in the three homicides, according to authorities.
40 YEARS OF CHICANO STUDIES
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Old 10-23-2009, 06:22 PM
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Old 10-18-2009, 03:38 PM
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The Gang's All Here (in Denver)

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Her grandmother will never forget the day Venus Montoya died. And she will never forgive her killers.

By Steve Jackson
Published on July 17, 1997

We can sit out here," Becky Estrada says from her front porch. She shrugs and shakes a cigarette out of its pack, pausing a moment to stare down the street as though looking for someone. Then she lights up. "The house is a mess."

Small wonder. An endless parade of nieces, nephews, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, in-laws and other family members bang in and out of the screen door. Inside the house, where Becky raised her own children, the curtains are drawn as if to protect the inhabitants from the bright summer sun and the world outside.

A small boy with enormous brown eyes emerges from the dark cocoon and crawls up on Becky's lap. He wants an ice cream from the two teenage boys in baggy shorts and oversized shirts who are pushing a cart up the street. He pleads. "Please, Mom, can I have a dollar?"

"No, son," she replies. Both she and her husband work, but there is never enough--not with so many mouths to feed. A dollar is a lot of money for an ice-cream bar.

Most of the modest homes in the neighborhood are well-kept, with green lawns and relatively fresh paint. Becky's place looks like something has sucked the life out of it--out of the yard, the house, the people who live there. Everyone except the children...nothing seems to knock them down for long.

The boy continues to beg until he gets his dollar. Then he bounds down the cement steps in pursuit of the vendors.

"That's Angel," Becky says, using the Anglo pronunciation of the name. "He was four when they killed his mother."

Becky draws sharply on her cigarette, as though inhaling smoke could smother the sadness waiting inside. But her eyes gleam with tears as they track Angel's return, the already melting ice-cream bar clutched triumphantly in his small brown hand.

Becky is a small, round woman with blue-green homemade tattoos fading on her arms. She looks like a person who once laughed a lot--the tell-tale lines are there around her eyes--but now does not find much reason for laughter. The years have been hard on her; there's been so much death and pain.

When she talks, her eyes mirror the emotions of the moment. Her anger at gangs and guns and the senseless, never-ending violence. Her fear that Angel and the other children face a future in which they will likely be victims of or participants in that violence. But mostly Becky's eyes reflect her apprehension, her anticipation that any news will certainly be bad.

A year ago this week, Becky learned that her nineteen-year-old granddaughter Venus Montoya, Angel's mother, had been murdered--by cowards who attacked in the dark and killed an innocent girl.

But there has been some good news of late. In June the Lakewood police arrested several members of the Westside CMG Bloods, and charged them with Venus's murder. It didn't surprise Becky that the same gang members were also accused of killing another young girl, whose body had been dumped like trash in the mountains back in May.

Becky had known in her heart that Venus's killers murdered that girl, too, even before the police figured it out. And now Denver and Jefferson county prosecutors and police officials were talking about having broken the backbone of the CMG Bloods, both Eastside and Westside, through a series of arrests for drug dealing, robbery, racketeering...and murder.

Including the murder of Venus, who wasn't even the gangsters' target that night last July.




In late spring 1996, word was out among the CMG Bloods that Salvino "Sal" Martinez was a snitch. That he was talking to the "po po's": the Denver Metro Gang Task Force and the Denver Police Gang Bureau. Giving up some of his homies to save his ass...or maybe to further his own business interests by eliminating the competition.

Martinez was asking for trouble. The Crenshaw Mafia Gangster Bloods, who'd started out as a black gang near 104th and Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, had shown up in Denver over a decade ago--and their power had been growing ever since. Although at first their numbers and influence had been negligible compared with some of the homegrown gangs, by last summer they covered much of the metro area.

The CMG Bloods split Denver by race and territory. Eastside CMG was predominantly black and claimed the Park Hill area down to Aurora and into Montbello.

Westside CMG came along a little later, when more Latinos joined up. Most of that branch remained Latino, although there were also white, Asian and black Westside CMGs. Generally, the Westside CMG claimed anything west of downtown Denver, into the east side of Lakewood and south into Bear Valley. But not north of Colfax--that was Northside CMG.

What made Eastside and Westside CMG unusual was that the gangs cooperated in their various criminal activities, as well as for mutual protection. (By comparison, black and Latino Crips gangs in Denver rarely had anything in common other than a name and, in fact, were often violent rivals.)

Some Westside CMG members even claimed to be Eastside as well, especially if that was their original affiliation. Like reputed Westside CMG leader Daniel "Bango" Martinez, a 24-year-old with a seven-year history of arrests for drugs, assaults and acting as a general menace to society.
http://www.westword.com/1997-07-17/n...ng-s-all-here/
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