America Libre

by Raul Ramos y Sanchez

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  Characters

  Who was your favorite character? Why?

  Who was your least favorite character? Why?

  What emotions drove Mano’s conversion from loyal citizen to insurgent?

  Do you think Mano’s actions were immoral? Why or why not?

  Under the same circumstances as Mano, what would you have done differently?

  How did Mano’s view of their rebellion differ from the views of Jo and Ramon?

  What experiences ultimately radicalized Rosa?

  Do you think Rosa’s reaction to her predicament differed from that of a mainstream American woman? If so, how?

  Stereotypes and diversity

  Did the story make you question your assumptions about the people and culture of Latin America? For example, were you surprised by the diversity of the Latino characters in the story?

  What role has the media played in fostering Hispanic stereotypes?

  What are the positive and negative aspects of using an ethnic label like “Hispanic” or “Latino”?

  Immigration and demographics

  Did the story change your perspective on U.S. immigration policy? If so, how?

  Do you think a separatist movement like that proposed by fictional character José Antonio Marcha could ever take root in the U.S.? Why or why not?

  What can we do to prevent the social turmoil presented in the story?

  The media

  Where is the balance point between the news media’s responsibility to highlight social problems and the exploitation of those problems to attract viewers and readers?

  Short of censorship, how can we protect ourselves from the economic impetus to “sell the news”?

  Historical parallels

  The events in America Libre are similar to some real-life events in U.S. history, such as the race riots of the 1960s and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Do you think that today’s society has changed to prevent events such as these from happening again? If so, how has it changed? If not, what are examples of how society has stayed the same?

  Could the U.S. recognition of the State of Israel in 1948 ever be used as precedent for a Hispanic homeland within current U.S. borders? Why or why not?

  Do you believe any of today’s public figures are using the immigration issue for political gain? If so, how?

  GUÍA DE LECTORES

  Caracteres

  ¿Quién era su carácter preferido? ¿Por qué?

  ¿Quién era su carácter menos preferido? ¿Por qué?

  ¿Qué emociones condujeron la conversión de Mano de ciudadano leal al insurrecto?

  ¿Piensa usted que las acciones de Mano eran inmoral? ¿Por qué o por qué no?

  Bajo las mismas circunstancias que Mano, ¿qué habría hecho usted diferentemente?

  ¿Cómo es diferente la opinión de Mano de la rebelión de la de Jo y de Ramon?

  ¿Al fin, cuál experiencia le convirtió a Rosa en una radical?

  ¿Piensa usted la reactión de Rosa a su lío diferenció de el de una mujer americana de corriente? ¿Si es así, cómo?

  Estereotipos y diversidad

  ¿Cambia usted sus asunciones sobre la gente y la cultura de América latina a causa de la historia? Por ejemplo, ¿fue sorprendido por la diversidad de los caracteres latinos en la historia?

  ¿Qué papel han desempeñado los medios en fomentar estereotipos hispánicos?

  ¿Cuáles son los aspectos positivos y negativos de usar una etiqueta étnica como “hispánico” o “latino”?

  Inmigración y demográficos

  ¿Cambió usted su perspectiva de la politica de inmigración en los E.E.U.U.? ¿Si es así, cómo?

  ¿Piensa usted que un movimiento separatista como eso propuesto por el carácter ficticio Jose Antonio Marcha podría echar raíces en los E.E.U.U.? ¿Por qué o por qué no?

  ¿Qué podemos hacer para prevenir la agitación social presentada en la historia?

  Los medios

  ¿Dónde es el punto del balance entre la responsabilidad de los medios de destacar problems sociales y la explotación de esos problemas para atraer espectadores y a lectores?

  Corto de censura, ¿cómo podemos protegernos contra el ímpetu económico “para vender las noticias”?

  Paralelos históricos

  Los acontecimientos adentro América Libre sea similar a algunos acontecimientos de la historia de los E.E.U.U., como los alborotos de la raza de los años 60 y el inter-namiento de Japonés-Americanos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. ¿Piensa usted que la sociedad de hoy ha cambiado para evitar que sucedan los acontecimientos tales como éstos otra vez? ¿Si es así, cómo ha cambiado? ¿Si no, cuáles son ejemplos de cómo la sociedad ha permanecido igual?

  ¿Podría ser posible usar el reconocimiento del estado de Israel por los E.E.U.U. en 1948 como precedente para una patria hispánica dentro de las fronteras de los E.E.U.U.? ¿Por qué o por qué no?

  ¿Cree usted que hay algunas figuras públicas de hoy que están utilizando la cuestión de la inmigración para su propio aumento político? ¿Si es así, cómo?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A longtime resident of the U.S. Midwest, Cuban-born Raul Ramos y Sanchez is a founding partner of BRC Marketing, established in 1992 with offices in Ohio and California. Besides developing a documentary for public television, Two Americas: The Legacy of Our Hemisphere, he is host of MyImmi grationStory.com, an online forum for the U.S. immigrant community.

  For more information please visit www.RaulRamos.com.

  The fight isn’t over.

  Look for the upcoming sequel to America Libre,

  EL NUEVO

  ALAMO

  After the disastrous Marcha Offensive, Manolo Suarez stands alone, the sole leader of the insurgency in war-torn Southern California. Despite heavy rebel losses during their nationwide attacks on military installations, public demands for reprisals lead to a siege of the Quarantine Zones. Denied food, water, and medicine for nearly two years, the insurgency appears ready to crumble. But the hardships spawn a rebel splinter group: El Frente—an ultra-radical faction bent on terror attacks against U.S. civilians. Reunited with his family, Mano finds himself at odds with his wife, Rosa, who wants an end to the fighting, and his son Pedro, who joins El Frente. When Mano learns El Frente plans to destroy a Midwestern city with a smuggled nuclear weapon, he must make a dreadful decision: will he betray his son or let millions of innocent people die?

  Now turn the page for a sneak peek at

  El Nuevo Alamo

  THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE:

  Day 2

  Some things had not changed. The dawning sun in East Los Angeles was still a feeble glow in the gray haze, but the city’s infamous smog was no longer a residue of its endless traffic. These days, the smoke of cooking fires clouded the sky. The vehicles that had once clogged Los Angeles were now charred shells littering a war-scarred city divided into two walled-in Quarantine Zones.

  A rooster crowed outside a white stucco cottage on the north side of Quarantine Zone B. Inside the small house, Manolo Suarez got out of bed and began to dress.

  Lying naked on the bed, his wife, Rosa, stirred, her eyelids heavy. “What time is it?”

  “Time for me to go, querida,” Mano answered, fastening his weathered jeans.

  Rosa sat up abruptly, her eyes flashing. “What? How can you leave now, Mano? This is our first day together after a year and a half apart and—” She stopped, the anger in her voice suddenly gone. Rising from the bed, she slipped on a tattered robe. “I’m sorry, mi amor. I understand. Will you have time to eat?”

  “No, it’s nearly daylight,” Mano said, opening the bedroom door. “I should have left an hour ago.”

  “When will you be back?”

  Mano looked into her dark brown eyes. “When I can.”

  “Is this how it’s going to be, Mano? Not knowing if I’ll ever see you again each time you leave?”

  “This is a war now, querida. I wish it
could be different.”

  Rosa pulled the robe tighter around her. Thirteen months without her husband in the Relocation Community had changed her. She’d come to understand Mano’s dedication to the rebel cause—and even to support it. She sighed and embraced him. “At least we’re together again. May God keep you, mi amor.”

  Mano gave her a reassuring squeeze, then walked into the living room where he peered cautiously through the windows before leaving the house. Once outside, he moved along the deserted street with a resolve borne of necessity. He had nothing left to lose. If captured by the government, Mano would be charged with treason and sentenced to death under the Terrorist Arraignment Act. Even his wife and son faced a similar fate under the draconian law passed five months earlier. Mano shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the ever-looming threat. He had a more immediate crisis.

  The start of yesterday’s Marcha Offensive had been derailed by a mole who’d alerted the government to the rebel’s nationwide attacks. A terrible question now plagued Mano: how much damage had the mole caused?

  Guided by the mole, the Army had discovered the rebel command center in Los Angeles directing their nationwide offensive. Mano had returned from his raid to find their communications equipment seized or destroyed and his comrades killed—including Josefina Herrera.

  The enormity of Jo’s death was too much to contemplate. Mano could not afford to dwell on grief. Most of the insurgency’s leaders were now out of touch or dead, leaving him as the sole survivor of the inner command in the area.

  A quarter hour later, Mano approached a duplex on Fraser Avenue. The man who lived inside was his last resort for help—Angel Sanchez, the mero of Los Verdugos, a street gang that had become the palace guard of the rebel leadership in Los Angeles.

  Mano needed to see Angel right away—if the gang leader was still alive.

  The armored column raced through downtown Los Angeles stirring eddies of dust in the empty streets. As the vehicles crossed the viaduct over the vacant Union Pacific rail yards, the voice of the column’s commander came on the radio.

  “Tango Five to all units,” Captain Michael Fuller said. “Convoy halt.”

  Moving in unison, the five vehicles rolled to a stop and Fuller emerged from the Humvee leading the column. Studying the road ahead through his binoculars, a tight smile formed on Fuller’s face. The rusting steel doors of the North Gate into the Quarantine Zone B were open, creating a glowing portal in the long, early morning shadows cast by the ten-foot concrete wall topped with razor wire. So far, so good, Fuller thought with relief.

  The North Gate was one of only two passages into the twenty-two square miles of Quarantine Zone B. Although it was a likely place for an ambush, Fuller was betting the rebels would not be lying in wait at the gate this morning.

  He climbed back into the Humvee and picked up the radio handset. “Tango Five to all units. Deploy in combat formation and proceed into the Quarantine Zone.”

  The four tanklike Bradley Fighting Vehicles behind Fuller’s Humvee began moving into position at the head of the column. As the Bradleys lumbered past the Humvee, Fuller’s driver nervously stroked the blue figurine taped to the dashboard. “All right, Hefty,” he whispered to the grinning Smurf. “Pancho’s waiting for us inside. Get us through that gate, dude.”

  “Don’t worry, Springs,” Fuller said to his driver. “Getting inside won’t be a problem.” Save up Hefty’s luck for later, Fuller kept to himself. We’re going to need it.

  Angel Sanchez entered the living room of his duplex apartment, cranking the dynamo on a shortwave radio.

  “Good,” Mano said. “You found it.”

  The self-charging radio was one of two acquired by Josefina Herrera for the rebel cause in Los Angeles. The other device, a more elaborate model with better range, had been lost during the Army’s raid on their command center yesterday.

  After charging the battery for several minutes, Angel handed the radio to Mano, who tuned it to the familiar setting for the BBC and placed it on one of the steel milk crates that served as chairs and coffee table in the sparsely furnished living room. Most wooden furniture in the Quarantine Zones had been burned for fuel, along with almost anything else combustible.

  Following a report on the London Stock Exchange, the dulcet-toned BBC announcer reached the news Mano and Angel had been waiting to hear.

  … and now our top news story: the widespread Hispanic insurgent attacks across the United States being called the Marcha Offensive… Mary Ann Kirby reports.

  The scratchy quality of the female voice now on the air indicated her report had been recorded over a telephone line.

  When the reporter had finished, Angel turned off the radio and faced Mano. The gang leader had understood much of the news despite his limited grasp of English. “Muchos muertos, eh?”

  “Yes, a lot of dead,” Mano answered, grim-faced. If the news report was accurate, they’d lost nearly half their fighters, many not much more than boys and girls. Not surprisingly, very few had surrendered. They all knew the consequences of the Terrorist Arraignment Act.

  Mano closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, swamped by a wave of guilt. He was the architect of the Marcha Offensive; he had insisted their fighters attack military installations and not civilian targets. The price for avoiding the tactics of terrorists had been very high. At least very few civilians died, he reminded himself.

  Mano knew the element of surprise was a guerrilla’s primary weapon. The informer had robbed them of that advantage—and the Army would be quick to exploit their heavy losses.

  Mano rose to his feet. “The baldies will be coming, entiendes?” he said, striding toward the door. “We need to be ready.”

  “Si, Mano,” Angel replied, falling into step behind him. “I talk con mis vatos. They tell me when baldies come.”

  Captain Fuller leaned forward in the Humvee’s seat, scanning the rooftops visible over the Quarantine Zone wall for snipers. He was relieved—but not surprised—to find their entrance into the zone unopposed.

  Most Army patrols entering the nation’s Quarantine Zones over the last year had suffered heavy losses. Michael Fuller, however, was determined to avoid that fate for the five vehicles and forty-three soldiers under his command. That’s why he’d chosen this time and place to enter. Still, the thirty-one-year-old captain had qualms about his decision. He was breaking an unwritten truce with the Panchos by launching an armored patrol into the zone during the Army’s weekly delivery of food.

  Once inside the solid steel doors, Fuller’s convoy skirted past a line of open-bed Army trucks loaded with sacks of cornmeal parked along the boulevard. Civilians in blue arm-bands were hastily transferring the sacks from the six-by-six trucks into an odd assortment of civilian vehicles while a platoon of National Guardsmen stood warily nearby. The civilians stopped their work, staring hard at Fuller’s trespassing column.

  From the rear bench of the Humvee, Lieutenant Gerald Case gazed expectantly out the window. “You think we’re going to see some action, Captain?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “C’mon, Cap. What’s wrong with stirring up a little firefight? I missed out on the action at the outpost yesterday. A combat commendation would be a fast way out of this shithole.”

  Case’s words stung Michael Fuller—mostly because they were true. A domestic assignment in today’s Army was for bottom feeders. Overseas duty was the fast lane to promotion. “Stow it, Case. I’m not going to risk getting anybody hurt to help your career… or mine.”

  “We ain’t likely to get anybody hurt with a platoon of Brads around, Cap,” Case said, nodding toward the four treaded vehicles trundling ahead of them. Each Bradley was armed with a turret-mounted 25mm chain gun and carried seven heavily armed troopers.

  “What about civilians, Case? Don’t you think… Watch the kid, Springs!” Fuller yelled to his driver as a naked toddler wandered into the path of their vehicle. The screeching of the brakes brought the boy’s mo
ther running into the street.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Springs said, his face pale. “I didn’t see the kid. I guess I was looking out for the Panchos.”

  Lieutenant Case sneered. “Wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d taken him out. They breed like rats,” he said as the boy’s mother swooped up the child and retreated into the doorway of a dingy apartment building. “Why we fight these people on one street and feed them on another one is beyond me, Cap.”

  “If we starved the QZs, every person inside would be fighting against us, Case. Beans are a lot cheaper than bullets. And besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

  “They teach you that kind of bleeding-heart crap at West Point, Captain?”

  “Yeah, right after the mandatory class on the virtues of appeasement.”

  Case stared at Fuller blankly. “Appeasement?”

  “Never mind, Lieutenant. We don’t have the time right now.”

  “Well, explain this for me, will you, Captain… How the hell did an Academy ring knocker like you wind up with this dead-end posting anyway?”

  Fuller turned slowly toward Case. “Lieutenant, your mouth is going to get you in deep shit one of these days… possibly very soon.”

  As their convoy drove deeper into the zone, Fuller silently cursed the politicians who’d hatched the Quarantine and Relocation Act—and then left the military to clean up their mess.

  Two years after the bill was enacted, most Americans now saw the attempt at the largest ethnic internment in the nation’s history as an epic failure. The government had halted construction of new Relocation Communities for Hispanics in North Dakota after the deaths of over two thousand internees during the first winter. Meanwhile, the once-temporary Quarantine Zones—built around Hispanic urban enclaves to end the bloody street battles between vigilantes and Hispanics—had become rebel strongholds from which the Panchos launched strikes and then melted back into the civilian population.