More than 80 million people in the United States and Latin America tuned in to “Betty La Fea,” the telenovela in which an ugly woman navigates a world where beauty is generally all that matters.
High-profile Spanish-language columnists, politicians and pundits touted the show’s feminist message, a rarity in the formulaic world of telenovelas. Respectable publications such as Colombia’s leading daily, El Tiempo, dedicated entire columns to the soap’s heroine, Betty, an unattractive but brilliant economist.
Betty message boards buzzed with e-mails from fans eager to discuss the previous night’s episode. Even newspapers in the United States, which generally ignore Spanish-language television, reported on the “Betty” phenomenon as it captured record television ratings in the countries, including the U.S., where it had its finale in May.
Why, then, did this groundbreaking cultural event end with angry words from critics and widespread hostility from fans? Simple. It reverted to type and dashed the hopes of those who had watched it with a giddy sense of a revolution.
When Betty began airing last August on the Telemundo network, I tuned in wondering just how big a risk a telenovela would take. The soap was already generating buzz in Latin America, where critics were raving about the show’s social message: Beauty is only skin-deep.
Like their English-language counterparts, Spanish-language filmmakers and advertisers had begun to learn that women are so eager to see realistic portrayals of themselves in the media that they are willing to throw their support behind any show that promises even the slightest hint of reality.
Telenovelas, however, have stubbornly maintained a traditional view of women’s aspirations, one that equates female success with being beautiful and married. While there have been a few exceptions, most recently the Mexican telenovela “Mirada de Mujer,” which told the story of a middle-aged woman who confronts life on her own after discovering her husband is having an affair, soaps have mostly remained faithful to a single plot involving a beautiful ingénue’s search for love.
It was against this backdrop that Betty the Ugly One began.
It was clear from the beginning that the show’s creators understood how to get attention. In a world where heroines tend to look like Salma Hayek and Jennifer Lopez, they created an antiheroine who lacked the kind of stunning looks and physical attributes that cause men to propose marriage after just one meeting. With her thick glasses, braces and unibrow, Betty wasn’t much to look at, by Latin standards. Her poor sense of style, squeaky voice and intelligence only made her plight that much more desperate.
And just in case viewers weren’t convinced of the burden of her ugliness, the show’s creators put Betty to work in a fashion designer’s “house” and made her love interest a man who was breast-fed on beauty. Betty’s Romeo was the owner’s son — a guy who had grown up thinking the average woman wore a size 2.
The premise was stunning: a woman whose appeal is her intelligence, humanity and humor struggles to be seen, heard and, ultimately, adored.
The show drew even hardened skeptics like me who believe telenovelas are made for housewives, retirees and recent immigrants whose language constraints force them to watch bad television.
I had watched a few soaps while growing up. My mother watched them religiously and through her viewing habits I came to know the formulaic plotline that usually involved a poor but beautiful girl falling for a rich guy whose family wasn’t about to put up with their love affair. I came to regard telenovelas as the cinematic equivalent of Harlequin romances. They offered a kind of fuzzy, airbrushed image of love and life that lacked any realistic wrinkles or messy details.
“Betty,” however, was unlike anything I had seen. I was hooked. I tuned in nightly. I watched as Betty was treated cruelly because she was ugly. The show’s creators never spared her an insult or avoided a joke. Everything was fair game. The soap offered some of the most realistic portrayals of race and class in Latin America that I have seen on Spanish-language television, including a single mother struggling to eke out a living, a black secretary who insists her blind dates be informed of her race and a cast of wealthy personalities whose lack of empathy made them seem like Leona Helmsley clones.
The showed appeared to remain true to the philosophy of its creator, Fernando Gaitan, who was once quoted as saying that telenovelas are really about class struggle. For Gaitan, the telenovela was made for the poor, who live in a world where it is nearly impossible to get ahead. Other soaps were meant to offer an uplifting message in which downtrodden characters finally succeed, thanks to their love lives. Gaitan said his characters also succeeded, but instead thanks to their work.
Indeed, Betty climbed the corporate ladder, getting promoted from a lowly assistant to vice president of finance as a result of hard work. She never stopped trying and eventually captured the attention of her boss, a spoiled man who routinely yelled at secretaries, mismanaged the firm’s assets and constantly cheated on his fiancée.
Slowly, Betty and her boss moved closer. He began to take notice of her as he struggled to keep the company afloat. She fell head over heels for a man who showed her some attention and kindness. Eventually the boss’s interest in Betty moved from what she could do for his pocketbook to what she did for his heart.
And then, just in the nick of time, Betty sheds her ugly duckling image and transforms herself into a beautiful executive who struggles with the realization that her lover isn’t a prince. In the end, Betty chooses to overlook his shortcomings and the two wed.
If Gaitan’s message is that Betty moves ahead thanks to hard work and good old-fashioned smarts, the underlying text is very different. Apparently the antiheroine is intelligent enough to add the numbers but not smart enough to see her boss for the lying, cheating louse that he is. In the end, Gaitan gives us the same old message: Women can’t find true happiness alone; they need a man to help them realize their dreams.
The message is so obvious — and so reactionary — that it has prompted angry opinion pieces accusing the show of being criminal for misleading the public. One Colombian writer mockingly said the country’s attorney general could charge the show with a litany of crimes including fraud and abuse of the public trust. And in Costa Rica, where the show is still broadcast, legislators attempted to ban the soap midway through its run. (The soap is still being shown in several Latin American countries, including Argentina.)
Perhaps the biggest crime of Betty the Ugly One is that it missed the opportunity to bring one of the most popular Spanish-language television genres into the 21st century. Unlike the United States, where English-language films and television offer a broader range of female characters, Spanish-language viewers are confined to the small screen. Latin filmmakers struggle to put out a few movies, leaving viewers little choice other than what they get on the tube. So when viewers were promised a radical new character who broke stereotypes, millions of us tuned in.
What we got was the same old Cinderella story.
With its red-tiled roofs, brightly painted storefronts and quaint town square that’s home to a pair of sloths, El Hatillo is the kind of small Venezuelan town that harks back to an era when life moved at a more leisurely pace.
But tucked away on Calle Bella Vista, just a few minutes from the main square, Wilmer Moreno anxiously watches the clock. “We have 40 minutes to get it to you, otherwise your pizza is free,” the 32-year-old manager of Domino’s Pizza tells a caller.
Armed with an armada of seven motor scooters and a staff of 10 delivery guys who sport familiar red, white and blue uniforms, Moreno oversees one of the most popular food places in town. Once the territory of street vendors and mom-and-pop food spots, this South American nation of 23 million has developed a penchant for hot ham-and-cheese pies delivered right to their doors — rápido.
Like many other American fast-food chains, Domino’s domestic business has slowed, which means its main opportunities for growth remain outside U.S. borders. During the second quarter of this year, the Michigan pizza chain’s domestic same-store sales grew a mere 2.3 percent, compared with 4.5 percent in international markets. Overall, Domino’s international subsidiary last year contributed a fourth, or approximately $840 million, of the company’s $3.36 billion in sales.
Domino’s is thriving globally, particularly in a nation like Venezuela, where the American lure still holds strong — and that’s good news for Bain Capital, which purchased Domino’s in 1998 and plans eventually to take it public. The company now has 22 franchises in the country, adding to its 2,014 stores in 61 other international markets. More impressive, in its 15-year history overseas, Domino’s has yet to see a drop in sales in its international division. By comparison, its domestic franchises last year reported a 1.7 percent sales drop from 1998.
“Forgive the pun, but the international market really is a world of possibilities,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre says. “I think pizza is an American food, and so it is very exotic in some places.”
It wasn’t hard to sell the American fast-food concept to Venezuelans, says Juan Pestana, president of a private firm of investors that owns 11 Domino’s franchises, including the one in El Hatillo. “There have always been pizzerias in Venezuela, but no one ever offered to deliver.”
That has been a key ingredient to Domino’s success. The 40-year-old pizza chain has capitalized on Venezuela’s soaring crime rate and numerous incidents of carjackings, muggings and shootings, which have kept many of Caracas’ wealthier residents housebound.
“What hooks our customers is they get the best pizza in the safety of their home,” Pestana says.
While Pestana declined to say exactly how much his group earned last year, he says profits grew by a healthy 20 percent in 1999 — an astounding figure considering Venezuela’s high unemployment and other economic woes.
The company — which last year sold 360 million pizzas worldwide — has succeeded because it has targeted a specific Venezuelan customer, namely the rich. At a cost of anywhere from $15 to $23 for a medium pie, home delivery is a luxury only the elite can afford. That has led to an unusual transformation of Domino’s image from a working-class purveyor of fast food to a glamorous American specialty chain that delivers food on command.
For instance, at El Hatillo’s Domino’s, the menu includes a “corte Chicago” or Chicago-style deep-dish pizza that’s cut into bite-size pieces — perfect as an hors d’oeuvre or as an entree at a child’s piqata party, a social event that can rival a debutante ball.
Yet Domino’s still runs into snags in this Caribbean nation. While it has managed to blend good old American capitalism with a Latin flair, it hasn’t adapted some finer points of business, including the notion that customers are always right.
“Making the pizza is the easy part of all this,” Moreno says. “The hardest part can be the people.”
With a smile, Moreno says customers can be less than understanding when orders are botched. The store also has been held up at gunpoint three times. And on weekends, when the eatery averages up to 300 calls a day, life at the chain can be unusually stressful for such a slow-paced town.
Likewise, just getting pizzas to customers is more than challenging in a country where street names and numbers are rarely used. Would-be drivers must take a rigorous road course, spending a few days driving the streets and studying the names of buildings (often the only reference point given). Then they’re paired with a seasoned veteran of pizza delivery until they’re ready to venture out alone on one of the company’s red and white scooters.
McIntyre admits success hasn’t come without bumps. “We had to learn to adapt. At first, we went in like the ugly American and attempted to implement the American model everywhere. We faltered and quickly found out we didn’t know a lot. Now we realize our best approach is to find successful businessmen and teach them the Domino’s way.”
And that’s something Moreno is happy to learn.
“It can be a little tough with the customers, but business is going so well I can’t complain,” he says.
Claudio Mammana paced around the empty parking lot of his downtown gas station, wondering how he would recover the $2,000 a day he has lost since the Democrats came to town.
“My business is down by at least 40 percent, and I’ve been forced to hire extra security in case there are problems,” says Mammana, whose business is just two blocks from the Staples Center, the site of this week’s Democratic National Convention.
After waving at two nearby security guards sitting in lawn chairs, Mammana pointed to a half dozen police officers standing just a few yards away and appropriately quipped: “They’re the only ones on the street.”
The convention was supposed to be a big economic coup for the city — the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated a $135 million windfall with some 35,000 people coming to town.
But just two days into the event, small business owners and local politicians are wondering if the primary beneficiaries of the Democratic love fest will be big businesses and those in posh neighborhoods.
“During the planning of this event there was a lot of talk about the collateral effects this would generate for small business owners in the area,” says David Marquez, chief legislative deputy for City Councilman Mike Hernandez. “But with all the street closures, a lot of people are avoiding the area and businesses are being hurt.”
Thanks to hovering helicopters, cops on horseback and mobs of Democratic convention-goers, much of downtown resembled a ghost town Tuesday convincing many merchants it was better to board up or close their shops amid fears that further chaos would erupt.
On Monday, thousands of protesters flocked to the convention’s fenced-in, designated protest site, where a rock concert by the group Rage Against the Machine was held. By the evening’s end, police had used pepper spray and rubber bullets to quell protesters, who pelted them with bricks and bottles. Although no one was seriously injured, police arrested about 10 marchers.
The chaos was reminiscent of a scene earlier in June, when rioting broke out after the Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA championship victory at the Staples Center. With such a charged event as the Democratic National Convention now being staged at the same arena, many small business owners in downtown decided not to take any chances during the four days of political hoopla.
“I’m just keeping everything boarded up because I don’t want to replace the windows again,” says Tony Alfaro, manager of a nearby tire store, which was damaged after the Lakers’ win.
For many mom-and-pop shops downtown, the Democratic bash indeed is appearing more of a bust.
“If this were a normal business convention, everyone would be enthusiastic because they would all benefit,” says Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County. “But this was a very unusual event. It’s a political event that requires lots of security, massive street closures and could spur potential demonstrations. It’s a completely different beast.”
Among the hardest hit are about 2,000 jewelry merchants who operate small shops along Pershing Square, less than 10 blocks from the Staples Center. Most of these mostly immigrant entrepreneurs — who sell everything from diamond rings to watches — chose to board up their businesses, lest they risk being the target of looting or violence. Kyser says these jewelers have estimated their loss this week at $30 million.
“All we can say to that is that we made every effort to ensure people stay open. We are sorry they made that decision because there are LAPD out there,” says Deputy Mayor Manuel Valencia.
Kyser says the convention’s host committee tried to reach out to local small businesses, by posting business opportunities on its Web site and in the Los Angeles Times and other local media.
“But the problem is, many of those in the small business community aren’t hooked up to the Web, or don’t read those publications,” Kyser says. “I’ve heard some [small business owners] say the convention was no benefit to them.”
Meanwhile, Kyser says the flood of big-budgeted parties taking place has amounted to big bucks for limousine companies, valet parking firms, West Side restaurants and anyone involved in corporate entertaining, since the convention has been flush with corporate sponsors wining and dining politicians and delegates.
For instance, El Cholo, a popular Mexican restaurant, catered three major parties this week, including an event at the Pacific Design Center that drew about 2,000 people and an event thrown by the New York Times.
Downtown restaurants, however, haven’t seen their regular customers this week, since many employers in the area encouraged their employees to take the week off or to work from home. Even Mayor Richard Riordan’s restaurant, the Pantry, a block from the Staples Center, has seen a drop in its regular customers. “Business is OK because what I lost in regular customers who are either staying away or took the week off I picked up in convention-goers,” says the Pantry’s manager Mario Frisan.
Yet, Carol Martinez, spokesman for the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau, believes businesses ultimately will benefit because of all the positive media attention the city has received in recent weeks.
“Everyone from the New York Times to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel to the Chicago Tribune have written positive travel stories about L.A., and named places downtown to eat or stay,” Martinez says. “Sure, a lot of people are not coming to downtown L.A. this week, but everyone will be gone in a week, and so in the long run, these businesses will benefit.”
Kyser feels more skeptical.
“It remains to be seen,” he says, while police sirens ring in the background of his downtown office. “We need to get past today and tomorrow, then we’ll find out how everything turned out.”
When Los Angeles County threatened to reduce the number of hospital beds available to poor and working residents, the state’s Latino political leadership rallied to block the plan. When the city’s highest ranking Latino educator came under attack this fall, Latino politicians came out to defend one of their own. And when television crews captured the grainy images of two Riverside County sheriff’s deputies beating undocumented immigrants two years ago, Latino civil rights and elected officials marched and called for a federal investigation of the incident.
But six months after the eruption of one of the worst corruption scandals in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department — in which it was revealed that a rogue anti-gang unit ran amok in the Latino community, shaking down gang members, illegally harassing immigrants and in one case shooting and planting a gun on an unarmed drug dealer — the state’s powerful Latino political bloc remains curiously quiet.
“It’s amazing that you haven’t seen or heard any of the elected or self-anointed Latino leadership speaking out on this issue,” says Sam Paz, a local civil rights attorney. “I think it’s really sad that we have worked so hard to build a body of Latino elected officials and organizations and they have all been paralyzed in terms of speaking out on this case.”
The scandal began when Rafael Perez, a former officer in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, was arrested in September after he was caught stealing 8 pounds of cocaine from a police evidence room. He agreed to cooperate with investigators in exchange for receiving a lighter sentence. He was sentenced late last month to five years in prison.
Perez detailed how Rampart’s special anti-gang units, known as CRASH, routinely framed individuals. Perez himself confessed to shooting Javier Francisco Ovando, an unarmed gang member, and planting a gun on him. Ovando, who was left paralyzed by the shooting, served three years of a 23-year sentence before being released.
More damaging evidence surfaced in January, including information that Rampart officers routinely targeted immigrants for arrest and deportation. The allegations are a direct violation of a city ordinance known as Special Order 40, which prohibits police from stopping anyone based on their immigration status. At the end of February, the FBI joined the investigation into the Rampart Division.
Adding to the flap over police treatment of immigrants, last week two agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service filed a lawsuit against the LAPD alleging they were falsely arrested and roughed up by officers.
One city councilman has described the Rampart scandal as “the worst manmade disaster this city has ever faced.” But despite months of startling revelations, Latino leaders have remained in the background, saying little. Last week Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, took a small action, introducing a bill in the Legislature calling for stiffer penalties for officers caught tampering with evidence.
The silence has been even more striking in light of the recent political changes that have characterized California’s politics. Last spring, opposition to Proposition 187 — the ballot measure that sought to cut off medical and educational services to undocumented immigrants — propelled Latino politicians into powerful new roles. Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, Rep. Xavier Becerra and state Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco are just a few of the state’s powerful new Latino elite — and all four represent districts involved in the Rampart scandal.
Many of the cops implicated in the scandal are Latino, but no one interviewed believes that is what has kept leaders from speaking out.
So why the silence? Politics.
Insiders say with elections just around the corner, once-outspoken leaders such as Villaraigosa and Becerra, both of whom are running for mayor, have been taking a more cautious position.
No one wants to appear soft on crime, political strategists say. So candidates are choosing their words carefully. Speaking out too harshly against the LAPD could cost them votes among the city’s Anglo voters. And appearing soft on gangs could alienate middle-class Latino voters who want to get rid of gangs at nearly any cost.
More important, however, no candidate appears willing to risk angering the city’s powerful police union. “The Police Protective League is very friendly with a lot of people. And no one wants to come out and hit their friends,” says Leo Brillones, a political consultant who has worked on some of the toughest campaigns in recent years. “Their endorsement means a lot.”
That has angered civil rights attorneys who have often fought alongside Villaragoisa and Polanco.
“If it weren’t for the black community speaking out on cases like Rodney King, where would we be?” says Paz.
Now that Latinos are gathering power, activists want to see them use it. “Among the reasons these politicians were elected is because one presumed they would provide a voice for this community, and now they are silent,” says Antonio Rodriguez, a civil rights attorney representing a victim of the Rampart scandal.
For their part, Latino leaders such as Villaraigosa dismiss critics who say they’ve been shy about taking on the issue. “No one asked me about this until now,” says Villaragoisa. He says he spoke out about the scandal in an editorial published in October. For now, he says he wants to be responsible and review the function of the CRASH units. “I’m not an ambulance chaser,” he says.
Others such as Becerra don’t want to bash “the people who are there to protect my wife and children just because there are some truly bad apples in the department,” as he recently told the Los Angeles Times.
Critics say many politicians aren’t willing to risk an election to defend a community that still lacks political clout.
“I think both Latino elected officials and whites look at this community as being largely from an area that doesn’t vote, either because they don’t have documents or don’t want to,” says Rodolfo Acuna, a professor of Chicano studies at California State University at Northridge. “And besides, historically the Latino community has done little about police abuse issues.”
But don’t expect things to stay quiet. The latest revelation involving the illegal deportation of immigrants may finally spark a reaction.
“I think this will tip the scales,” says Rodriguez. “The subject of deportation has always been a special hurt in the Latino community.” In the 1940s, thousands of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were rounded up and deported.
Already some leaders are beginning to act.
Democratic Rep. Lucille
Roybal-Allard announced last week she was meeting with federal
officials to discuss the immigrations charges.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund has begun
meeting with other groups on the issue to
discuss a strategy,
including litigation that would strengthen Special Order 40.
And last week civil rights attorneys including Paz, Rodriguez and Connie Rice sat down to hash out a collective response to the scandal.
In the meantime, however, the strongest voices of protest have come from the city’s white politicians, including state Sen. Tom Hayden, who has been meeting with the U.S. attorney and the INS. “I haven’t been getting any calls from my colleagues,” says Hayden.
Some say no one should be surprised by the silence from Latino leaders. After all, this is politics, and if Latinos play to win they have to consider the rules. “How they handle this will determine if [Latino politicians] become the big hitters,” says Raymond Rocco, a professor of political science at UCLA. “And in the end it will be a sticky situation for them no matter how they choose to handle it.”
On Jan. 21, Alex Sanchez walked along the streets of Los Angeles’ mid-Wilshire area, as he had many times on his way home. But that night as Sanchez, a stocky 27-year-old with closely cropped hair and a smattering of tattoos, moved toward his car, he was stopped suddenly by a Los Angeles police officer and handcuffed.
Sanchez, a former gang member, was arrested on a 2-year-old warrant from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He faces federal criminal charges stemming from his reentry into the U.S. after having been deported in the early 1990s. He could be deported to his native El Salvador. His arrest has sparked protest from gang peace organizations in Los Angeles and added to the controversy over the LAPD’s Rampart division, which has been facing one of the most widespread and highly publicized police corruption investigations in U.S. history.
Once a member of one of the city’s most violent gangs, Mara Salvatrucha, Sanchez had transformed his life. In recent years he has split his time between work, family and heading up Homies Unidos, a bi-national gang peace organization with roots in Los Angeles and San Salvador. As the lead organizer of Homies, Sanchez’s work had captured the attention of some of the city’s most noted gang peace advocates, as well as California state Sen. Tom Hayden, who believed Sanchez was helping to bring peace in a war that has claimed thousands of lives.
Why would a police officer seek to arrest a man who works successfully to stop gang violence? As it turns out, Sanchez and arresting officer Jesus Amezcua had met several times before — at hearings in which Sanchez spoke out against police harassment of former gang members like himself. Sanchez also happens to be a witness in a murder case that pits Amezcua’s credibility against the word of a teenage gangbanger.
Amezcua, a veteran of the force, picked up Sanchez on what by many accounts is a stale immigration warrant. Some claim Amezcua is guilty of violating Special Order 40, a decade-old city ordinance that forbids police from stopping someone to ask about their immigration status. The ordinance was put in place after police and activists agreed that allowing police officers to act as immigration officers would inhibit the city’s large population of undocumented immigrants from cooperating with police or reporting crimes, for fear of being deported.
The arrest raises questions about whether the LAPD is able to clean up its act in the wake of a scandal that began in September, when allegations first surfaced that Rafael Perez, a Rampart officer, was caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from an LAPD evidence room.
Perez agreed to cooperate with investigators in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence. His testimony includes admissions that he and other officers routinely planted drugs and weapons on people and even shot Javier Francisco Ovando, an unarmed gang member, and planted a gun on him. Ovando was left paralyzed and sent to prison. He was released in September after serving three years of a 23-year sentence.
A Los Angeles Times report estimates approximately 20 officers are under investigation in connection to the case. Police Chief Bernard Parks announced Jan. 26 that the corruption probe had extended into Latin America. Investigators traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala in an effort to locate some of the victims framed by former officers. Those victims had been deported after their arrests.
Sanchez’s arrest by Amezcua — as well as the department’s reaction — has ignited allegations that little has changed at Rampart and that some police officers are still targeting innocent people for retaliation.
The LAPD has denied wrongdoing, offering its own version of the events leading to the arrest. “To try and create a nexus between this case and the Rampart investigation is a bit of a stretch,” says Cmdr. Robert Kalish, a spokesman for the LAPD. “We have not violated Special Order 40 because he had committed a crime. He reentered the country illegally.”
But the LAPD’s explanation of why Sanchez was arrested has changed several times. First, a spokesperson said Sanchez was stopped after a traffic violation that revealed he had an outstanding INS warrant. A few days later, officials said Amezcua saw him and knew he had an outstanding warrant. On Monday, yet another version was offered that revealed some Rampart division officers had been in contact with the INS and discussed Sanchez’s case. “The officers knew he was wanted because they had had conversations with INS agents,” said Rampart Capt. Robert B. Hansohn. “They routinely talk to the INS,” he said.
For their part, police are fighting back. During a recent press conference outside the Rampart division where 15 police officers stood guard as protesters filed a complaint, one officer accused Hayden, one of Sanchez’s strongest supporters, of trying to further his political career.
If Sanchez’s past raised questions, so have Amezcua’s tactics over the past year. A member of the Rampart division’s anti-gang unit, known as CRASH, he had stopped Sanchez and other members of Homies on several occasions. Amezcua was also on hand when Sanchez testified before a state Senate subcommittee on gang violence and police abuse.
Hayden, who chaired the hearing at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in the mid-Wilshire, described Amezcua’s conduct at that event. “He came into the room like he was tailing Alex and the guys from Homies. No one had asked him to come to the meeting. He was very intimidating,” Hayden added, “and for a moment it seemed like they” — Amezcua and other officers — “were going to break up the meeting.”
But it wasn’t just Amezcua’s presence that night that has led Hayden and others to allege that the officer is retaliating against the former gang member.
On Aug. 12, Amezcua arrested Jose Dimas Rodriguez, another Homies Unidos member. Rodriguez, 14, was booked for the murder of a rival gang member who had been killed that night. Rodriguez insisted he was innocent and even offered an alibi. He told investigators he was at a Homies Unidos meeting at the time of the murder.
Sanchez, along with a handful of others at the meeting, vouched for Rodriguez. “I was with him that night,” says Thom Vernon, a coordinator with Arts Expand, a citywide program that works with Homies Unidos. “A bunch of us including Alex were with him. We didn’t get out of here until well after 9:30 p.m. This is absurd,” Vernon said of the charges against Rodriguez, “but it doesn’t surprise me because the police have been harassing Homies for a long time.”
Since Sanchez is in jail and could be deported, he may never get a chance to testify in Rodriguez’s case. “Alex is at the center of a lot of stuff,” says Jorge Gonzalez, Rodriguez’s attorney. Gonzalez is among a handful of Latino attorneys in Los Angeles who routinely handle police abuse cases. “He’s a material witness in a murder case and he is out there talking about police abuse against gang members.”
There are also serious concerns about Sanchez’s safety in El Salvador should he be deported. At least two former Homies leaders who returned to San Salvador have been murdered. Rival gangs as well as paramilitary groups are suspected in the killings.
“You could say Alex’s life is in danger in El Salvador,” Hayden says, “and it appears to be here as well.” Hayden argued in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece that Sanchez is just the latest victim of LAPD’s brutal war on gangs that now targets even those working to end the violence.
Beyond the issue of police conflict with the Homies, the case is also raising serious concerns over LAPD’s routine violation of Special Order 40.
Groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund have received complaints over the years that police routinely question immigrants about their status. “We went through this stuff with Rampart during the [1992] riots,” says MALDEF attorney Vibiana Andrade. “There were complaints that Rampart officers were picking people up and dropping them off at INS.”
While prosecution of immigration cases is not unusual, issuing a warrant in this case was very unusual, immigration attorneys say. Dan Keseselbrenner, director of the Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild in New York, said the circumstances of Sanchez’s arrest were peculiar. “This is very suspect to arrest someone on a stale warrant of this nature. Normally a warrant is issued when somebody is already in hand, when they’ve been caught at the border reentering or if they have been picked up for some other crime and it turns up they are here illegally.”
He adds that police have little time to pursue passive crimes. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles confirmed that most cases involving illegal reentry are prosecuted after someone is detained for another offense or caught at the border.
Last week, a U.S. magistrate released Sanchez on $50,000 bail, and Sanchez now sits in an INS detention center awaiting word on whether the agency will begin deportation proceedings or review his case.
