Friday, April 5, 1996R-e-s-p-e-c-t
Editor:
I am writing to express outrage and disgust  but not
surprise  at the vicious beatings of undocumented workers by
Riverside County sheriff’s deputies. The images in newspapers and
on TV screens of peacekeepers brutalizing Mexicans are not
unfamiliar to Mexican immigrants or to Mexican Americans  or
to other Latina/os, for that matter. For many, these are images of
daily existence in the Southland, where race, ethnicity and class
determine individual freedom and human rights; the beatings reveal
the fragility of both for working people of color.
Police brutality has a long history in Southern California. The
murder of Pedro Subia in the Pixley "riots" of 1933 by sheriff’s
deputies; the beatings of young men and women "zoot suitors" in
1944 by military and Los Angeles police; the murder of Ruben
Salazar at the close of the Chicano Vietnam Moratorium
Demonstration in 1970; and now, the beating of Alicia Sotero
Vasquez and Enrique Funes Flores have a place in our historical
memory because someone bore witness to a police force out of
control.
News reporters and photographers who directed the public’s gaze
to these outrages served, intentionally or not, as the moral
conscience of the populace. Their images and words are reminders of
the consequences of racial, class and ethnic hatred Â
consequences that are the lived reality of Latinas/os, African
Americans, Asian Americans, native peoples, and working poor in
this country. But the brutality and violence directed at people
like Subia, the zoot suitors, Salazar, Vasquez and Funes Flores
affect everyone, for they make a lie of our professed ideals of
freedom and liberty for all.
The beatings testify to a shocking absence of respect for basic
human rights and the sanctity of the human body. They reveal the
ugly face of race and class relations in the United States. The
videotape and eye-witness accounts are searing reminders to those
of us who are repulsed by violence and sick to death Â
literally  of race and class hatred that we must come
together to demand not only equal protection under the law, but
 to paraphrase community activist Joan Nestle  the
respect one life owes to another.
Camille Guerin-Gonzales
Associate professor and chair
César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction
in Chicana and Chicano Studies