Let Their Spirits Dance (19 page)

We're moving back in time to '68, before it all started. Michael says every living thing in the universe creates a sound, the sun, moon, planets, the earth, trees, plants, animals, humans, everything emits invisible sound waves that ring, buzz, sputter and produce frequencies we can only pick up with radar instruments and some only with our spirits. My mother picked up Jesse's voice, vibrations that started in her ears, and traveled to her mind and heart. We're paying him a visit now where his memory lives in cold granite, behind the letters of his name. Each name is a story on the Wall, each story is a cry of despair, ringing, buzzing and sputtering pain throughout America.
War is real! War is death
! My mother listens to such things even when I wish she wouldn't.

B
y 1968, rage against the Vietnam War exploded onto the streets of America's cities. Protesters, throats rubbed raw with shouting, feet blistered with marching, eyes blurred from not sleeping, took up the battle cry to end the war in Vietnam. War had come to America, and it wasn't bombs exploding, it was balled fists raised in signs of power, drug communes, and kids burning their draft cards. Sounds of grief for our dead boys rose like the mad cries of an animal caught in a hunter's trap. All over the world, the shouting was heard—students caught in dreams of building a perfect society were living out a nightmare. In Mexico, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, all around the globe students rioted and were beaten down by police, their lives crushed by heavy artillery, corrupt governments, the FBI, and the CIA. Finally, war was something we could hold in our hands, and it defied the American dream.

 

• T
HE
B
ROWN
B
ERETS
came to Phoenix in late 1968, two years before Ray and I got married. Actually, Ray and I didn't get serious about each other until August of '69 on Little Lally's wedding day. Little Lally was one of Tío Ernie's daughters. Little Lally was so happy on her wedding day, nobody could have dreamed she would one day be divorced from
Demetrio. Ray's band played for the couple's wedding dance at the American Legion. That night was the first time I felt Ray loved me, although the idea surfaced after we fought in the parking lot and I tore up a pair of Jose Feliciano tickets in his face. In those days, I believed jealousy was proof of love. I saw it in Mom's face when she watched Dad walk out the door on his way to Consuelo's. This time the tables were turned. Ray was jealous of me, the suave, experienced man jealous of the girl still in high school who might run off with the star athlete. That was probably why we argued in the parking lot, but my memory is dim on this. It was torture for him to play on stage and watch me dance with other men. There wasn't much I cared about in those days. I was still wrapped up in Jesse's death, in the awful reality that I would never see him again.

By the time the Brown Berets came to Phoenix, I had decided to join in the protest against the war. My rage against the Army was so great I couldn't even see images of generals and politicians on TV without wanting to spit in their faces. Ray took me to the Brown Beret rally the night before Thanksgiving Day. The rally was held in one of the ramadas at South Mountain Park.

I remember the night was cold, starless, with a misty quarter moon dangling in the sky. Tall saguaros held up their arms in the gloomy night, like hands held up in prayer, or, as one guy said, looking like fingers, flipping off the world. The Brown Berets would have nothing to do with Thanksgiving Day, a gabacho holiday, they said—the story of the white man and his supposed conquest of America. What kind of picture did the white supremacists paint of the Indian Nation anyway? Not a pretty one—a servile people at best, aiding them, feeding them. Una mentira! The group said the story of Thanksgiving was all wrong and that los gringos wanted to prove they had befriended the Indians, when the truth was they were plotting to murder them all and take over their land, which is what happened in history.

We got there late. By that time, the group had built bonfires with dry brush to protect themselves from the chilly air. The flickering firelight reminded me of Don Florencío and the campfires Jesse and I danced around when the old man told us stories. As a child, I pretended I saw faces close to Don Florencío's fire, flesh-and-blood embers, grotesque forms, impish-looking fairy folk who hid in dark forests, chanting magic spells and unleashing dark powers to do their bidding.

Someone was talking over a bullhorn. I later found out it was Antonio Fuentes, the leader of the group. Antonio was dark like Jesse, but wide around the shoulders. He was slow-moving and sure of himself.
He kept fingering the brim of his beret as he spoke. I could see why he was the leader. He emanated passion like a hard, unyielding fist ready to swing. I was caught up in the aura he cast, eager to listen to every word he said, uncertain what I would do if I was ever alone with him.

In the dim light of bare bulbs dangling on an electrical line and the twinkling lights of Phoenix in the distant valley, I could see the rest of the group. Their uniforms were creased and pressed and they wore their infamous brown berets at a tilt. Men with dark mustaches, some with long sideburns, stood unsmiling, feet apart in a military stance. They had women with them, too, not much older than me. Some looked like Mayan Indian maidens, long hair, bold stares. They shouted slogans: Viva La Raza! Justicia! Somos La Gente de Bronce! Chicano Power! They clapped their hands and stomped their feet.

As the fervor rose, Antonio Fuentes jumped on a park table in one easy, fluid movement. He shouted, “PROTEST RAZA! PROTEST! Uncle Sam stole our land, now he's killing our boys in Vietnam. Two Latinos for every gringo! Is that justice? We're on the front lines, in artillery, blowing mines, the first to fire. We don't get no soft jobs, in offices…we can't get into no fancy officer's clubs, we can't get no deferments…NO! We're coming back in boxes, mi raza. They're wiping us out! My brother was killed over there…to make some fucking white general look good!” His voice broke.

“They killed my brother, too!” I shouted. My words were drowned in the noise everybody else was making. Ray was standing behind me with his hands around my waist. The rage in me was burning like the heat of the bonfires. I slipped out of Ray's grasp. “Take it easy, babe,” he said. “This is a military demonstration. We don't want any trouble!”

“Trouble! The trouble is we haven't yelled loud enough. Ray, are you deaf? You went to Vietnam!”

“Look over there,” he said.

There were two police cars, lights blinking in the dark. Suddenly, somebody turned on a stereo. A Mexican corrido came on, loud, dispersing the crowd.

I heard voices saying, “La chota, con calma raza…these assholes want to drag us all to jail.”

I was more angry than afraid. I saw one of the cops talking to Antonio. Searchlights beamed over us. Somebody handed Ray a can of beer. “Nice party, que no?”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Some of you guys might end up partying in jail.”

“We're ready! Hasta para morir!”

“Let's get out of here, Teresa,” Ray said.

“I'm not leaving!” I shouted.

Ray put his hands on my shoulders, shaking me hard. “You're coming home with me. Right now! These cops are gonna start clubbing everybody to death.”

Just as Ray said the words, somebody screamed. One of the girls had thrown a rock at a cop, and he had pinned her in an arm lock. There was a scuffle in the dark as two guys got into the fight. Before I knew it, Antonio was down, hands cuffed behind his back. Ray grabbed me and slung me over his shoulder. He ran between people, jumping over bushes in the dark. He threw me into the front seat of his car and locked the door.

“Let me out!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “You can't do this to me!”

He drove away, gunning the motor, making a dash for the paved circle that led out of the park.

“Cops are gonna be crawling all over this place like ants!” Ray yelled at the top of his lungs. We sped up to the exit, almost running over one of the park officials. Ray counted on the darkness to hide his license plate. We were all the way down the mountain by the time we saw four more police cars on their way in. I was crying, partly because I was angry at Ray, and more because Jesse was gone, and everything Antonio Fuentes had said was true.

 

• T
HE
B
ROWN
B
ERET
rally was the first time I had ever publicly denounced the Vietnam War. Later, I joined one protest after another, with Ray or without him. I saw Antonio Fuentes again in East L.A. and wasn't surprised to find out Ricky Navarro was working with the Chicano Moratorium Committee. We were
Los Chicanos
back then, united, breathing the same air, sharing the same vision. People had to listen. By 1970 we were ready to protest the war in the biggest demonstration in the history of Aztlán, marching together, thousands of us, protesting the war, all the way to Laguna Park in East L.A. and the death of the
L.A. Times
reporter Ruben Salazar.

I found out in 1970 that a protest is a living thing. It's not just a word. It's made up of people who are filled with pain, anger, despair. It's something that has a life of its own, something that lives and breathes, shouts, cries, and groans.

E
ast L.A. was hotter than I expected—muggy and overcast. George, Espi's uncle and his wife, Perla, dropped us off at Belvedere Park. George was round and flat at the same time, jolly most times, except the day of the Chicano Moratorium. That day he was mad—mad at los gringos, at the U.S. government, at Uncle Sam, who was nothing more than a murderer of Chicanos, he said. “They killed Chayo, my cousin, and your brother, Jesse.” He stuck up for Jesse like he had known him all his life. I wanted to frown and yell, pound my fist, kick walls, but I did nothing except listen to George blankly, letting his rage hit me in the face. I had too much of my own and didn't know how it would erupt. I was sitting in the back seat with Espi and her four-year-old nephew Fernando. Espi and I were dressed in look-alike jeans and black T-shirts with the words CHICANO POWER on the front. Between us, Fernando squirmed and wiggled, trying to poke his head out the open window.

“Don't let him get his head out,” Perla said. “Next thing you know he'll end up in the street.” In the front seat she repositioned one-year-old Frankie in her arms. Every once in a while Frankie popped a plastic bottle shaped like a bear full of grape juice into his mouth.

Chicanos from all over the U.S. converged in East L.A. that day. Lining the streets were newborn babies in their mothers' arms, elderly men and women who looked like relics of the Mexican Revolution, and
young people, lots of young people. I felt sorry for everybody. The march hadn't even started, and already some of the people seemed to be dying of thirst. I saw men sporting huge straw hats and women with purses dangling on their arms, as if they were walking down to the neighborhood grocery store to do some shopping. Flags were flapping in the breeze, the Mexican flag, the moratorium peace flag, Cesar Chavez's huelga flag, and flags bearing the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Banners announced in huge letters
PEACE MORATORIUM AUGUST
29, 1970,
BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL, CHICANO POWER, QUE VIVA LA RAZA, QUE VIVA CHE
!

“Just like la raza,” George said, “to make a fiesta out of the protest. Look at this, strollers, babies, nanas, tatas.”

“What if there's trouble?” Perla asked him. “I don't want no trouble for the girls. We shouldn't let them march.” My stomach went up and down like I was on an elevator when Perla said that. I started thinking what I would do if George didn't let us go. I was ready to jump out of the car if necessary. I had already been through hell talking Mom and Dad into letting me come to L.A. in the first place, not to mention all I had to do to convince Ray that I wasn't after Antonio Fuentes. If Ray had been any smarter, he would have been jealous of Ricky Navarro. It was Ricky I longed to see…the old Ricky, the one I knew before he went to Vietnam. I remembered, as a child, holding Ricky's hand, and leading him to our hide-out under the miguelito vines that grew like weeds over my mother's back fence. We'd carve out a spot under the thickest part, and play house. He was my husband, and my assortment of dolls, some of them in pathetic condition with eyes missing and hands and limbs falling off, were our children.

“There won't be any trouble,” I told her. “I know some of the guys in the Brown Berets. The leaders of the moratorium got a license to march and all that. The cops can't do anything about it when it's legal.”

“What are you, a Brown Beret?” George asked, half turning his head to get a look at me in the back seat.

“She's no Brown Beret,” Espi said. “Don't worry about it, Tío, it'll be OK.”

“I met them in Phoenix,” I said to him. “They told me what the moratorium committee had planned.” I didn't mention the cops taking over the meeting and throwing Antonio Fuentes and the others in jail. “Jesse was killed. You think I want them to get away with it?” My voice sounded loud. I might have shouted if George hadn't calmed me down.

“Take it easy. Just remember, the two of you—no trouble, heh?
Don't get into no line of fire. Run into the neighborhood if things get too hot.”

“Too hot?” Perla asked as we jumped out of the car. I saw her turn around to look at us and knew she was still trying to convince her husband not to let us go.

“We'll meet you at Laguna Park,” he shouted as they drove away.

It took a few seconds to get our bearings as we walked into Belvedere Park. Then, Espi and I became one with a crowd of hundreds walking in the same direction. Except for a few car radios blasting Mexican songs, and voices coming at us through bullhorns, the crowd was quiet, as if they were whispering or praying. We walked into the middle of the crowd, and I saw a sign that said,
AZTLÁN SI, VIETNAM NO
!

“What did I tell you, Espi. Look over there…Aztlán! Don Florencío was right about that. That's who we are.”

Standing a few feet away from us was a group of Brown Berets. I walked up to them, “Do you know Antonio Fuentes?”

“Yeah,” one of them said. “He's over there getting ready to march.” He pointed Antonio out to me.

“What about Ricky Navarro?”

“Ricky who?”

“Navarro,” I repeated, “Navarro.”

“Oh, yeah,” the guy standing next to him said. “El vato from Phoenix. He's around here somewhere. He never joined up with us. He works with the moratorium committee.”

I grabbed Espi's hand and pulled her through the crowd to get to Antonio. If the guy hadn't pointed him out to me, I probably wouldn't have recognized him. They all looked more or less the same in brown khakis, light tan shirts, sunglasses, and brown berets.

I felt proud when I looked around me—proud that we were standing up for our rights and sad, too, as I looked closely at the Brown Berets and noticed most of them were skinny, knobby-kneed teenagers, not much older than Paul.

“Hey,” I called out to Antonio. “Remember me from Phoenix?” He walked up to me.

“How could I forget? I would never forget somebody who looked like you.” Just as he said the words, I saw a young woman materialize from behind him. She was a few inches shorter than me and dressed in the Brown Beret uniform. She walked next to Antonio, placed her hand on his arm and stood in a military pose, feet apart, glaring at me.

“This is Raquel,” Antonio said. He looked down at her. “No em
piezes, these girls are from Phoenix. They traveled all the way to march with us—so viva la raza, que no?” She didn't answer. Any thoughts of chasing Antonio Fuentes ended when I looked into Raquel's hard, unyielding face.

“Listen, where can I find Ricky Navarro? I remember you told me he was involved in el movimiento.”

“He is. He's probably with that bunch over there.” He pointed to a cluster of young men and women, some with papers in their hands, flyers or notes I couldn't tell. I thanked Antonio and half-smiled at Raquel. She stood stoic and unmoving.

“Maybe we'll see you guys later,” I said to him.

“Chicano Power!” he said, lifting one balled fist into the air.

“Que viva la raza!” I answered.

“Boy! You're really getting into this,” Espi said to me.

“Getting? I've been in it…where have
you
been?”

I saw Ricky Navarro's back before I saw his face. He had gained some of the weight he had lost and still wore his army fatigues, this time with a Mexican serape draped over one shoulder and tied at his waist. His hair had grown down to his shoulders. I went up to him and put my arms around his waist. He turned around with me still holding on.

“Hey!” Then he saw Espi and started laughing. I ran under his arm, and he held me in front of him, both hands on my shoulders. His eyes shone lime green in the sunlight.

“Look at you…look at you! Oh Jesus!” He held me in a huge hug. “We're here to do something about Jesse's death, Teresa. We're here to remember all our guys!”

“Please do something for Jesse…his life has to count, it just has to!”

“We will…we will. I was against the protest when I got back, you remember, but now I know there's no other way to end this thing. Your mom, Teresa, how's your mom doing?”

“She's heartbroken. And yours?”

“She followed me here. You know my ma, she's not one to let me go too far.”

Ricky and I might have held on to each other longer, except the march was under way. Ricky motioned with one hand to a girl, a hippie with a long peasant dress and dark hair that went down to her waist.

“Who's that?” I asked him. “Your alter-ego? She looks gabacha.”

“She's half and half.” The girl stood next to Ricky, her eyes hazy and friendly.

“Groovy, is this another radical Chicana?”

“She's a friend from Phoenix. This is Faith, Teresa,” Ricky said, reaching for the girl. Espi and I both looked at each other. All I could think of was LSD, flower children, and drug communes. Maybe it was true that Ricky had joined a hippie commune—here was the evidence. Any thoughts of going after Ricky ended that day too, as I looked at Faith put her arm around him. In my mind, I expected to see a line of tambourine-playing gurus come up from behind her.

“I'm a monitor,” Ricky said. “We're gonna keep the people in line. Come on, let's get closer to the front. I'll keep an eye on you. Those are some of the leaders,” he said, pointing to people at the head of the line. “Rosalio Muñoz, Ernesto Vigil, Roberto Elias, Gloria Arellanes—and over there David Sanchez, Prime Minister of the Brown Berets. Corky Gonzalez is gonna talk to us at the park. He's the big movimiento leader from Denver.”

The march started down 3rd Street, slow, a Sunday stroll, moving in scattered rows that looked like we were crossing the street together. The monitors, lined up alongside the entire route, were telling the people to stay on one side of the street. I saw a little old lady who looked like Nana Esther. She wore a bright gold medallion of La Virgen de Guadalupe. I walked slowly up to her. “Eres Guadalupana, señora?” I asked her.

“Si, mija. Yes, forever. I've been a Guadalupana all my life.” She lifted up her medallion for me to see.

“So was my nana, and my mother.”

“And you?” she asked me.

“Not yet,” I told her, surprised that I had left a door open, a possibility for becoming an aficionado of La Virgen in the future.

“Here,” she said, handing me La Oración del Justo Juez. “This is for anybody who goes to the war.”

I looked at the prayer card but wouldn't touch it. “My brother had that with him when he was killed in Vietnam. Why didn't God protect him?” For a few seconds, the woman's eyes locked deeply with mine. She muttered a prayer under her breath. A throbbing ache started between my breasts, a dull thud, Mom's pain stuck in my breastbone.

“No one knows. Quien sabe. But I know your brother went right up to God Himself. That's the way it is when you have faith. La fe…it will get you to Heaven.” She put one hand on my arm, and it felt good. Her touch made the ache in my chest go away. In a few minutes, I lost track of the little old lady and figured she had stopped to get a drink of water.

People were chanting…
Chicano—Power! Chicano—Power
! over and over again, mixed in with cries of
Que Viva La Raza! Raza Si, Guerra No!
Chale con el draft
! Espi, next to me, got into the spirit of things, lifting one fist in the air with me every time we shouted
Chicano—Power
! Young people stuck up two fingers in the form of the peace sign.

As we moved, I began to feel full inside, as if the very act of marching was food for my soul. The louder the shouts became, the fuller I felt. The whole world might have ended for me at that moment, and I would have died strong, unafraid, the aching in my heart over Jesse's death only a memory. I looked on all sides of me, left, right, front, back at banners waving and at thousands of brown faces with features that told our history—Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Spanish. There were black faces with us that day too and white, and all of them were believing the same thing—that the war had to end—and our boys had to come home. Here and there I saw the flashing lights of police cars, the L.A. sheriff, watching us from outside the line of marchers, circling around us like buzzards, starving, desperate for death to own the living.

At Whittier and Atlantic I saw a man approach Rosalio Muñoz and give him a hug. I moved over to Ricky Navarro, walking only a few feet away from me. “Who is that?” I asked him.

“Ruben Salazar,” he said, “the reporter from the
L.A. Times
. He's the director of the Spanish station, too. He's our voice to the nation.”

Our voice to the nation. I looked closely as we passed him by, not knowing that it would be the last time Ruben Salazar would ever see his raza march. He was standing at attention as we passed by, as if he was watching a military parade. At his side was a cameraman. Ruben's face was passionate, kind. Not an hour would go by before he would be brutally murdered by the host of buzzards who now circled us.

Almost immediately after seeing Ruben Salazar, a ruckus began in the crowd. A young man threw a rock at a police car. Two monitors grabbed the guy, stonewalling him between them. Ricky whispered in my ear, “Provocateurs, people planted by the police to make us look bad. Some of them are even posing as Brown Berets.” A chill went up my back. If there were troublemakers planted along the way…what could we expect at Laguna Park?

I looked at the swaying, bobbing heads and bodies of thousands of protesters once we turned the corner onto Whittier Boulevard, the last stretch of the parade route. Hope rose in me—and pride so great it almost burst through my skin. On either side of the street, businesses were decorated with flags and banners, showing their support. Some businesses were closed for the day. The protesters were so numerous, they now took up the entire street. The monitors cried out to no avail for the people to
stay on one side of the street. A couple, newly wedded, happily joined the march. The bride's veil trailed behind her, white filmy lace so out of place in the crowd of black moratorium clothes, straw hats, ponchos, Levi's, and bare-chested men. Ricky pointed toward the back of the crowd. “Look, over there…those black and white buses. They're loaded with cops, sheriff's deputies.” I looked behind me several times and could barely make out the white, cylinder tops of the buses.