Let Their Spirits Dance

  We were in great spirits as we approached Laguna Park, shouting loud once we saw our destination was near. I heard music blaring, Mexican music, and flamboyant colors, dancers spinning on a stage. People were trying to find a spot on the grass to spread their blankets and food. The crush of so many brown bodies gave me a feeling that I was safe, totally protected. So many of us, thousands…there was nothing they could do to us. We were Aztlán. The power of the ancient world had returned to us, weaving a spell that made us think we were indestructible.

  There were tables under trees with information on voting and other community events. People sold soda pop from coolers, but lines were long, and many started moving into the neighborhood to purchase drinks at nearby stores. One lone picnic table was set up under a huge tree with an image of La Virgen de Guadalupe propped up in the center. Photos of Chicanos killed in Vietnam were neatly arranged on the table, covering its entire surface. I reached in my purse and searched for Jesse’s picture, a photo of him in his Army uniform. I added it to the rest. The little old lady I had seen en route to the park saw me and smiled.

  Someone got on the microphone and said that we should rename Laguna Park Benito Juárez Park, and all the people cheered. Espi and I were ready to sit down on the grass when we heard Rosalio Muñoz introduced as the first speaker. We remained standing. I was close enough to the stage to see Rosalio. I remember he was telling us that we were like babies learning how to walk. “We fall, but we get back up,” he said. “Time is on our side.” He went on about how we couldn’t live like familias separadas anymore. We were learning how to unite, how to speak up for what was right, and it was our unity that would make us strong.

  “I wonder where Perla and George are?” Espi asked me. We looked at all the families gathered around us. There were hundreds of women there who looked like Perla and children everywhere who resembled Frankie and Fernando.

  “They’re probably over there,” I said, pointing to the long line that trailed to the door of the bathroom.

  Rosalio Muñoz’s speech ended with the cry “Viva La Raza!” We all shouted the words together. Then I heard someone over the microphone say, “There’s nothing happening back there, please everybody sit down. Everybody sit down. Stay still, por favor.” People were standing up at the west end of the park, then more people started standing up. The man kept repeating the words. “Everybody sit down, please, remain calm. There’s nothing happening.” Someone else got on the microphone…“We got women and children here, no queremos pedo.”

  I stood on a park bench and looked over the heads of the crowd at a line of sheriff’s deputies standing toe to toe with a line of monitors. Behind the deputies, the street was packed with police cars, lights blinking, sirens wailing.

  “Oh, my God, Teresa, there’s gonna be trouble…big trouble!” Espi said. I heard several men’s voices over the microphone shouting, “POLICE HOLD YOUR LINE! HOLD YOUR LINE! HOLD YOUR LINE!” It was a loud chant that rang in my ears over and over again. “HOLD YOUR LINE! HOLD YOUR LINE! HOLD YOUR LINE!” Suddenly, the line of deputies attacked the monitors, beating the men down. The men got up and advanced toward them, some of them picked up rocks and threw them at the officers. Three times I saw the line of deputies advance toward the line of monitors, pressing on them, beating them brutally with their clubs. Then I saw smoke rising between the people. and people gasping, choking, their eyes red, watery. “Tear gas!” somebody shouted. “Run! Run!”

  At that point, a great sound erupted from the people. The sound was like that of a terrible storm at sea when the waves of the ocean roar over the shoreline and earth wars with heaven. The sound grew louder and louder until it reached the peak of its momentum, then it turned into a solid, despairing cry, a huge, aching wound with a human voice. I was shouting, too.

  I heard gunshots blasting in the distance. Espi and I took off running toward the bathrooms, searching for Perla and the kids. All around me was a great stampede of people, men, women, children. I saw babies crying, lost, unable to find their parents in the terrible confusion. I knew Ricky was one of the men the police had beaten up.

  “Ricky! Espi, where’s Ricky?” Everyone was running in between buses that were parked at one end of the park. Behind us, the police were pushing people up to tall chain-link fences, trapping them—everyone, men, women, babies. I saw an officer hit a boy on the side of the neck with his club. I ran up to the officer. “You fuckin’ pig!” I yelled. He started chasing me, and I fell on the ground. He hit me once on the head, and I saw the world go black. Seconds later, I felt someone helping me up. It was Ricky. His head was split open on one side.

  “My God! You’re bleeding!” I said to him.

  “So are you,” he said. He rushed with me, holding me close as we ran between the parked buses to get out into the street. Laguna Park was a vision out of Hell. The police had overturned all the tables, kicking them down. Papers were blowing all over the place. Sacks of food were crushed underfoot, and here and there I saw shoes, clothes, an empty baby stroller. The table with the altar to La Virgen de Guadalupe lay upside down with the photos of all the Chicano soldiers strewn on the ground.

  “Jesse’s picture! I have to go get Jesse’s picture!” I remembered the little old lady and looked around for her. I couldn’t see her anywhere.

  “No!” Ricky shouted. “We can’t go back there.” By this time, his girlfriend, Faith, was with us, crying, screaming. I looked at her and felt anger. She was white. This wasn’t her fight, it was ours.

  I saw Espi running toward us. “They threw tear gas into the bathroom! Perla and the kids are hurt. What are they, devils?”

  Ricky led us all across the street and into the neighborhood. All around us people were running into houses and yards. Some people were throwing rocks at the police, hiding behind parked cars and buses. Neighbors were turning on their water hoses and letting us wash the tear gas out of our eyes. One lady handed me a towel for the cut on my head. I soaked it in water and held it up to the huge knot I felt at the top of my head. For an instant I felt dizzy. I held the towel tight around the wound until the bleeding stopped. A baby was crawling in the yard, crying as his mother washed him off. I heard the screech of car brakes—a woman had been hit running across the street. Sirens were wailing and more smoke was rising—now from everywhere, black, billowing. The air was filled with the smell of burned tires. Men ran out into the streets, cracking windows of police cars with sticks and rocks. All around me the world was a war zone. This is how Jesse must have felt in Vietnam—helpless, afraid, not knowing when the attack would stop, not knowing if he would live or die.

  “Ricky—no!” I shouted as I watched him run back into the park and start fighting with a police officer who had just beaten up a teenage boy. Ricky took the officer’s club away from him and hit him several times. Then I watched on in horror as Ricky was jumped by three officers. His body went limp after they put a choke hold on him and cuffed him. Between the three of them, they picked Ricky’s bruised and bleeding body and, swaying under its weight, they threw him into one of the black and white buses I had seen following us all the way to Laguna Park. I shouted from across the street, “You fuckin’ assholes…you’ll get yours!” One of the officers lifted his club at me from the distance, menacing. “You want some?” he shouted, smiling as he said the words. Espi had her arm around me.

  “Teresa, don’t!” she shouted. “Let’s go!” We took off running down the street with Faith next to us. In front of me, I saw a young man with a torn shirt and a bloodied face. He turned around and yelled at two other guys behind us.

  “Matarón a Ruben Salazar!” he said in Spanish.

  “What?” I yelled. “What did you say?”

  “They killed Ruben Salazar!” he repeated. “They killed Ruben Salazar!”

  “Who…who killed him? Where?”

  “The cops! The sheriff, over on La Verne at the Silver Dollar Café.”

  I spun around and grabbed Espi by the shoulders. “Oh m
y God, Espi! They killed Ruben Salazar! They killed Ruben Salazar!”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Ruben Salazar…the L.A. Times reporter…our voice to the nation! Oh, my God! Let’s go, come on!” I was ready to take off running after the three guys. Faith said, “I’ll go with you!” I looked at her with a new respect and thought about the little old lady who just that morning had told me that only faith could get us to Heaven…fe…that was this girl’s name. Faith and I were ready to take off when Espi grabbed my arm again. “What are you, crazy? They’ll arrest us. There’s nothing we can do!” Just as she said the words I saw the cops grab a man and woman who were running out of a store. They beat them both down with their sticks and hauled them into a police car.

  “See!” Espi yelled. “We’re next!”

  Across the street, Espi spotted Perla running toward the car with Frankie in her arms and Fernando at her side. George wasn’t with her. We both shouted her name. Perla stopped and waved for us to cross the street. “Get over here, all of you! Get in the car!” she yelled. Her face was streaked with tears, her eyes red from the tear gas. Both boys were in hysterics, their eyes huge, red sores.

  “I’m not going,” Faith said. She took off running back to the park. I was ready to follow her, but Espi held on to my arm. “Don’t do it, Teresa! There’s nothing we can do.” Perla kept shouting at the top of her lungs for us to get into the car.

  We ran across the street and got into the car. I held Frankie in my arms while Espi held on to Fernando. Perla drove like a madwoman, down Whittier, then she cut through the neighborhood because Whittier was blocked by cars, people looting, smoke and fires. I glanced back at the park and thought about the overturned table with La Virgen’s altar on it and Jesse’s picture trampled to the ground.

  “Let me go back and get Jesse’s picture!” I cried. Perla didn’t answer me. She drove the car, jerking and screeching through stop signs and in between cars and buses to get us home.

  • MONTHS LATER, newspeople investigating the Chicano Moratorium March and the murder of Ruben Salazar came up with evidence that the L.A. Sheriff’s Department and judges hearing the case were unwilling to accept. News reports related that sheriff’s deputies claimed they were chasing a burglar who had robbed the Green Mill Liquor Store the day of the march. Their story was that the burglar disappeared into the crowd gathered at Laguna Park, and that they had the right to pursue him. The owner of the liquor store later said he never made a call to the police, nor had he experienced a burglary. Sheriff’s deputies also never explained their aggressive stance toward an unarmed crowd that included hundreds of women and children. They also never explained why they were out in high numbers that day, armed with clubs, tear gas, and buses for loading up protesters.

  It was common knowledge among many in the Chicano community that Ruben Salazar had been on the police hit list for months. People closest to Ruben Salazar related that he knew his life was in danger, and that he had received several death threats before his murder. Salazar’s coworkers said that he cleaned out his desk the morning of the moratorium march, as if he was never coming back. Salazar’s sympathy for the protesters had grown as Chicano leaders pointed out the fact that Chicano youth were drafted to the war in numbers that were largely out of proportion to their actual population, and that once drafted, Chicano youth were most likely to serve in the front lines. Salazar’s voice grew in importance, and the Latino population began to count on him to report their side of the story, which also involved numerous acts of police brutality.

  It was at this point that sheriff’s deputies took action. They chose the day of the Chicano Moratorium March, as they would be able to hide their actions under the disguise of keeping protesters in line and quelling riots. The Silver Dollar Café, where Salazar was killed, was nowhere near Laguna Park. It was about a mile and a half from the park, and the story from the police was that they were chasing a gunman who had disappeared into the café. A gunman was never discovered in the Silver Dollar Café, nor did the police give adequate warning before firing a tear gas projectile into the crowded café, which was aimed directly at Salazar. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the device used that day was only used in cases when a criminal was firing from behind a barricade and police needed to destroy the barricade to apprehend or kill a dangerous criminal. The projectile beheaded Ruben Salazar, and his life ended tragically, while police outside the café hid the truth from the media for hours.

  Ruben Salazar, the Chicano community’s voice to the nation, was never heard again, and many years later, city officials renamed Laguna Park Ruben Salazar Park in an attempt to balance the scales of justice and end death’s bitter memory.

  Albuquerque ·

  Arriving at Gallup, New Mexico, we get off at a convenience store that doubles as a gas station and souvenir shop. The kids use their own money to buy juice and doughnuts, gummy bears, sunflower seeds, and whatever else they figure they haven’t eaten yet. The men are outside filling up the gas tanks. Mom is intrigued with the Zuñi jewelry. It is silver and turquoise stone worked into fragile necklaces, bracelets, and rings. I’m amazed at the delicacy of the designs. It’s all marvelous. A skinny white man with Indian tattoos on his arms tells me he’s the owner. He makes a sales pitch, $400 instead of $600 for a necklace fit for a queen—well, what do you say? I say no, not because I don’t want to buy it, but because I want to buy from the Indian merchants, not the white middleman. We’re in honest country, country that dips abruptly into canyons and cuts into the horizon with jagged mountain peaks. It matters that what I buy is real. I want smudges on the silver made by brown, sweaty fingers, not polished objects sitting under glass cabinets in a souvenir shop.

  The man at the cash register is Indian. “Hey,” he says to me, “aren’t you the family from Phoenix, Arizona, traveling to the Vietnam Wall?”

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “I saw your story last night on TV. That was great. I mean all that money. The government is a big screw-up. It always makes me happy when the government loses money.” He leans close to me. “Listen, I got the best Indian jewelry around.” He slips me a business card that reads Leroy’s Indian Jewelry.

  “You must be Leroy.”

  “Yep, and you must be Teresa. I remembered your name from the news report. I’m telling you, Teresa, I’ve got authentic stuff. My own grandfather makes it, and he saves the best pieces for family and friends. Call me, or e-mail.”

  “You’ve got computers on the reservation?”

  He laughs. “I live here in Gallup,” he says. “But yeah, I got a computer here and one over there, too. Business is business.” He looks over at the white guy, and says out loud, “Anything else you folks need? The Wall is days away, you know. Hey, Byron, this is the family I saw on TV last night. They’re headed for the Vietnam Wall.”

  Byron is showing Manuel and Priscilla some jewelry. “What family?” he asks.

  “He never watches TV,” Leroy explains. “Vodka, that’s his company. Look, there’s my wife,” he says pointing to a middle-aged woman walking toward us. “Lovely, isn’t she?” He lowers his voice and says, “Hey, hon, show these people what real Indian jewelry looks like.” She raises up her sleeves and shows off her bracelets.

  “Gorgeous!” I tell her.

  “This is the family we saw on TV last night, hon.”

  The woman’s eyes light up. “This is my lucky day! I’ve got a nephew on the Wall, Benjamin Rush, but his Indian name is Gathering Eagle Feathers. You won’t see his Indian name on the Wall, though. Touch his name for me, please?” She presses my hand into hers, and holds it tight. “Benjamin Rush,” she whispers in my ear, “Don’t forget, OK? Touch his name.”

  “I’ll remember,” I tell her.

  I check out with a cup of coffee and a pack of gum. I put Leroy’s business card in my purse, and wonder if Michael knows anything about our story being shown on TV.

  Gates passes me by carry
ing a white paper bag. “Something for Erica,” he explains. “A dream catcher. To tell you the truth, I wish that woman would dream more, and leave me alone. But she’s good to me, too, Teresa,” he adds. “It’s me that messes up her mind. Hey, you think they got nightmare catchers? I need one of those!”

  “You have nightmares, Gates?”

  “Yep, sure do!”

  “About Vietnam?”

  “Those are the main ones!” he tells me.

  “After thirty years?”

  “After thirty years. Time hasn’t taken that away.”

  “I wonder if Jesse had nightmares in Vietnam.”

  “Believe me, Teresa, he did. We all did.”

  I notice Willy listening to our conversation.

  “Do you have nightmares, too?” I ask him.

  “Oh, yeah, once in a while, I still have one of those nightmares. I’ve got them all categorized by now. I guess it’s not over till it’s over, as the saying goes. Maybe this trip to the Wall will put an end to them.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Gates says, and walks away.

  As I make my way out of the store with Mom and Irene, I notice people staring at us. They ask about the Internet address Michael pasted on the van’s windows. Already Michael is getting responses from men who say they were there in ’68, ’69, ’66, on and on. The war lasted so long there was always somebody there. Families are sending messages—touch my son’s name for me—my husband’s—my cousin’s—my boyfriend’s—don’t forget my neighbor’s, he was only nineteen. I was there when they told his mother.

  Michael is sitting in the van working on the laptop. “Look, Tía! I’ve got over a hundred messages already, and the trip just started.”

  “Here’s another name to add to the list,” I tell him. “Benjamin Rush. The lady inside the store is his aunt. Her husband saw us on TV last night. Do you know anything about that?”

  “Here’s your answer,” Michael says. He points to the screen on the laptop. I peer at the screen and notice it’s a message from Holly Stevens.