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Red is the Color of Ignorance
-- Culture Wars --
Muriel Gladney
Issue date: 2/5/07 Section: Features
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Media Credit: DJ Hughes


Moving with the stealth of an animal stalking their prey, two Latino males quietly eased across the street towards a group of African Americans.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to the African Americans as they continued going about their own business.

Cheryl Green, 14, was standing next to her scooter laughing with a friend.

Ernesto Alcarez, 20, and Jonathan Fajardo, 18, got close enough to fill the air with sweet words or wolf whistles. Instead they pulled out guns and filled the air with bullets.

Fajardo just barely out of his teens and Alcarez not yet old enough to legally buy alcohol. Both said to be members of a gang, they were so intent on their hunt for a black victim they didn't care whom they shot.

When the pop-pop-pop of the firearms ceased, two bullets had torn through Green's young body. Perhaps the first one caught her in the arm, but before Green could catch her balance and run, the second bullet entered her upper torso and cut through her major organs like a hot knife through cold butter. As she folded to the ground, her future flowed out of her body like thick red syrup onto the cold gray cement.

Green, once precariously perched on the precipice of womanhood, is dead.

The neighborhood where this "judge and jury decision about the right to live" took place is in Harbor Gateway, an area that has been fraught with hate crimes between the African Americans and Latinos. However, in this deadly arena of hate, where the exacted toll fee is one's life, neither side can pinpoint the exact reason behind this racial hatred.

On the other hand, a 161-year-old voice from the grave may be able to help.

In 1845, the last Mexican governor of California, Pio de Jesus Pico, stated in a letter to the authorities in Mexico City that while Mexican Californios were fighting each other, foreign invaders were taking over their land. Historian Robert Glass Cleland later wrote, seemingly in agreement with Pico, that the takeover by the Americans had been relatively easy due in part to the dissension among the Mexicans.

Although Pico's political shrewdness is a matter of dispute by many and his political terms were short-lived, his mixture of family ancestry may have provided him with the insight to understand the consequences of dissension among those at the bottom of the food chain.

Pico was part Mexican, Indian, Italian, and, by the way,-African American. Pico Boulevard in L.A. is named in his honor.

Today, the Latinos and African Americans are killing each other over their supposed "turf," their territory, if you will.

A short lesson in history seems appropriate.

The "turf" that is so vigorously being fought over was humbly started by eleven families that were recruited "from Mexico" by the Spanish government. That original settlement is now called the City of Angels, or the City of Los Angeles.

The historical records list the heads of the families as well as their ancestral lineage. A few of the names are Mesa-Negro, Camero-Mulato, Quintero-Negro, and Moreno-Mulato. The seven other families were a "mixture" of Indian, Mexican and Spanish.

Pico accurately spoke 161 years ago on the consequences of dissension, but Alex Vertelka, economics major and Democratic Club president said it best today.

"Ignorance is strength, but it doesn't belong to you," Vertelka said.

In a nutshell, strength is displayed by the fighters, but the sheer power of their feud stirs up so much dust that they cannot see the quiet and sometimes weaker predator sliding in and stealing the prize.

Today, Pio de Jesus Pico may well have asked Alcarez and Fajardo, "Do you really know who you just killed?"

During the month of February, African Americans celebrate their history, their life, and their achievements.

Given the ancestry of Pico and the 11 founding families, Latinos can join the African Americans in honoring ancestral contributions rather than painting the town streets in red.