Gringo Justice

Alfredo Mirandé

Description

Gringo Justice is a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the experiences of the Chicano people with the legal and judicial system in the United States. Beginning in 1848 and working to the present, a theory of Gringo justice is developed and applied to specific areas—displacement from the land, vigilantes and social bandits, the border, the police, gangs, and prisons. A basic issue addressed is how the image of Chicanos as bandits or criminals has persisted in various forms.

Sujets

• Hispanic American Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Social History
• 19th Century
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• América
• Hispanic and Latino Americans
• Latina
• American
• United States

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 25 mars 1994
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268086978
• Langue: English

Extrait

Gringo Justice
Alfredo Mirandé
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 1987 by
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
E-ISBN: 978-0-268-08697-8
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] Manufactured in the United States of America Reprinted in 1990, 1994, 1997, 2002, 2011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mirandé, Alfredo. Gringo justice. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Discrimination in criminal justice administration—United States. 2. Mexican Americans. I. Title. HV9950.M57 1987  364.3′468073 86-40580 ISBN 0-268-01012-9 ISBN 13: 978-0-268-01023-2 (pbk.) ISBN 10: 0-268-01023-4 (pbk.) ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper . -->
Para El Futuro—“Los Chilpayates”
Gamin
Vita
Armando
Raúl
Michele
Ayala
Lucía
Alejandro
Contents
Preface ix -->
Acknowledgments xi -->
1. A Legacy of Conflict 1 -->
2. Mi Casa Es Su Casa: Displacement from the Land 27 -->
3. Vigilantes, Bandits, and Revolutionaries 50 -->
4. The Border and the Law 100 -->
5. La Placa: The Police 146 -->
6. Gangs or Barrio Warriors? 183 -->
7. A Theoretical Perspective on Gringo Justice 216 -->
Notes 237 -->
Bibliography 241 --> Index 259 -->
Preface
This book deals with an important but neglected area of study—the experience of Chicanos before the legal and judicial system. Other works have addressed specific topics such as social bandits, the Texas Rangers, the zoot-suit riots of the 1940s, and contemporary Chicano gangs, but this work attempts to trace the relationship of Chicanos to the legal and judicial system from 1848 to the present. Although my training is in sociology, I am convinced that the contemporary situation cannot be divorced from its historical context. Historians may well be critical of my treatment of materials, but my intent is to provide a historical context, not to write a history of Chicanos.
Titles such as Law, Justice, and the Chicano and Chicanos and the Legal and Judicial System were considered and discarded because they implied that the American legal and judicial system had been just and equitable in its treatment of Chicanos. The title Gringo Justice seemed to more accurately capture the reality of the Chicano experience before the American tribunals. An underlying premise of the present work is that since the end of the war between Mexico and the United States, displaced Mexicans, or Chicanos, have been subjected to prejudicial and discriminatory treatment—a double standard of justice that applied one system to Anglo-Americans and another to Chicanos. A related premise is that while there have been obvious differences between undocumented Mexican nationals who enter the United States and American citizens of Mexican descent, there are also important commonalities between them. Racism knows no borders. All too often Mexicans on both sides of the border were labeled as “greasers” and members of an inferior, mongrel, treacherous, and innately criminal race.
A final caveat is in order. Those who believe that academic scholarship is a value-free process where one arrives at objective observations and detached conclusions will not be pleased with Gringo Justice . As a Chicano scholar, it is my contention that it is neither possible nor desirable to be indifferent towards racism or the unequal system of justice that has prevailed. On the other hand, I do not wish to suggest that a Chicano has never committed a crime or perpetrated an injustice. Every racial/ethnic group has its share of good and bad persons; its saints and sinners. The issue is not one of individual differences, but, rather, of collective experiences. The point is that subsequent to the American takeover, Chicanos were displaced politically and economically and subjected to an alien, inherently unequal legal and judicial system which placed them at a distinct disadvantage, and functioned to maintain their subordinate status.
Until very recently, historical and social science depictions of la raza were written by members of the dominant group. Since I do not believe that value-free scholarship is possible, my intent is simply to join a number of Chicano scholars who have started to tell the other side of the story. I do take comfort in the knowledge that truth and justice are ultimately on the side of the oppressed and only the oppressor finds it necessary to distort history so that it will conform to and justify the socially created order.
Acknowledgments
In the limited space available it is only possible to acknowledge a few of the individuals who contributed to the completion of this book. I introduced a class on the Chicano and the Law at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) during the fall quarter of 1975. The class came on the heels of two major disturbances in August involving residents of the barrio of Casa Blanca and the Riverside police. For approximately nine months I served on a “blue ribbon” City Council committee that sought to mediate the conflict and tension between barrio residents and police. I am very grateful to the students in this initial class for their efforts in carrying out an extensive survey of community attitudes toward the police and making the results available to the committee. A large number of students have taken the Chicano and the Law class in subsequent years and stimulated my ideas on the topic. Some of the individuals who deserve special recognition are Jorge Cruz Hernández, Ernesto “Neto” Medrano, and Enrique López. Javier “Guero” López, Anna Larios, Catherine “La Carrie” Parsons, Josefina “Josie” Canchola, and Larry Peña are to be commended for reading the entire manuscript and providing invaluable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank David V. Baker for his critique of the last chapter.
For a period of approximately six years a group of UCR students and I taught a Chicano Issues class at the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) in Norco, California, as part of the Chicano Studies Community Internship Program. While I would like to thank each and every student who participated, Richard Alvarado, Gudelia Davila, Mary Figueroa, Irene Howard, Mary Lou López, Julio Espinosa, Diana Váldez, Gilbert Cadena, Elba Quintanilla, Carmen Arreola, Blas Coyazo, and Julio Vigoreaux should be singled out for their contribution to the CRC program. Although we were “teaching” the class, as it turned out we received much more than we gave and learned a great deal in the process. Muchas gracias a los carnales de MAYO de CRC , especially Gilbert “Beto” Ruiz, Mike “Pecas” Ortega, Ben Hernández, Juan Salcido, Ricardo López, and Jeronimo Ulloa.
I received a Rockefeller Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and was in residence at the Stanford Center for Chicano Research (SCCR) in 1985–86. The staff and faculty at SCCR provided a warm and intellectually stimulating environment for my research. Gerald “El Jerry” López of the Stanford Law School read the entire manuscript and made some important suggestions for revision. The Research Committee of the Academic Senate at the University of California, Riverside, provided financial support for the project. During the 1984–85 academic year, I received a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship and was in residence at the national office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) in San Francisco. I would like to thank Mike Baller for giving me access to the MALDEF files on police abuse.
Valuable assistance was provided by staff at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, the Eugene C. Barker History Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Texas State Archives in Austin, and the Special Collections of the Green Library at Stanford University. I am most grateful to Josie Tamayo and Gil Nava, staff members of the Tómas Rivera Library at UCR for their unwavering support and assistance. Nancy Rettig typed and proofread the bibliography under adverse circumstances. I am indebted to Clara Dean who not only typed the entire manuscript but corrected my many errors. Finally, I would like to acknowledge residents of the barrio of Casa Blanca for extending their hands in friendship and being a continuous source of strength, encouragement, and inspiration.
1
A Legacy of Conflict
INTRODUCTION
In 1970 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a landmark report that to date is the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of Chicanos and the legal and judicial system. It concluded:

Mexican-American citizens are subject to unduly harsh treatment by law enforcement officers . . . they are often arrested on insufficient grounds, receive physical and verbal abuse and penalties which are disproportionately severe. We have found them to be deprived of proper use of bail and adequate representation by counsel. They are substantially underrepresented on grand and petit juries and excluded from full participation in law enforcement agencies, especially in supervisory positions. (p. iii)
The commission set forth eighteen recommendations on the federal and state levels designed to rectify many of these problems and to assist Chicanos 1 in obtaining equal opportunity before the law. It also pointed to the existence of a double standard of justice for Anglos and Chicanos.
Although public awareness of the problem has been increasing, little has been done to implement these recommendations (Castro 1974, p. 49). Nearly