Latinos convicted of terrorizing African Americans in L.A.

4 Los Angeles Latino Gang Members Convicted of Anti-Black Conspiracy
The jury finds that the defendants terrorized African Americans to try to drive them from the Highland Park neighborhood.
By Joe Mozingo, Times Staff Writer

Four members of a Latino gang in Highland Park were found guilty Tuesday of unleashing a barrage of assaults and killings to push African Americans out of the predominantly Latino community in northeast Los Angeles. The verdicts in a downtown federal courtroom marked the first time a street gang had been convicted of breaking federal hate crime laws, traditionally employed against white supremacist groups like skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.

"I'm glad the truth is out," said Luisa Prudhomme, whose 21-year-old son, Anthony, was killed when Avenues members allegedly kicked open his door and shot him in the head as he lay on a futon. "This wasn't just regular gang activity as usual," she said. "This was hate crime. They promoted hatred and racism and ignorance." The four defendants — Gilbert "Lucky" Saldana, 27; Alejandro "Bird" Martinez, 28; Fernando "Sneaky" Cazares, 25; and Porfirio "Dreamer" Avila, 31 — face life in prison without the possibility of parole for their roles in the conspiracy...

Unlike other racial gang strife in the city, the Avenues' violence was deliberately aimed at African Americans with no gang affiliations, including women and children. The gang scrawled threats and racial epithets in graffiti on walls. Among crimes committed by the defendants from 1995 to 2001, according to testimony, were shooting a 15-year-old boy riding a bike; hitting a jogger in the head with a pistol; drawing outlines of human bodies in chalk on a family's driveway, along with a racial slur; and knocking a woman off her bike, threatening her husband with a box cutter, and saying, "You niggers have been here long enough."

One night in April 1999, the defendants were riding in a van and came upon a black man, Kenneth Wilson, parking his Cadillac. When Martinez asked if anyone wanted to kill a black man, three of them jumped out, ran up to Wilson's windows and opened fire, witnesses said. A shot to the head killed him before the car had even rolled to a stop. Saldana bragged later that he just wanted to test out his new 9-millimeter Ruger. Another black man, Christopher Bowser, was harassed and beaten up by the defendants for years. In December 2000, he filed a police report saying Martinez had assaulted and robbed him at a bus stop near his house. A week later, Bowser was shot to death at the same bus stop on Figueroa Street. Five days later, Avila told a fellow gang member, in a taped phone call from jail, that he and Martinez had been beating up mayates for weeks, using a Spanish-language epithet for blacks. After mentioning Bowser, he added, "That fool is gone." Avila was convicted in state court of the murder...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-avenues2aug02,1,7740206.story?coll=la-headlines-california

I hope those gang members are taken out of circulation for a long time.

The racism from the hispanic population here
is rather disturbing.
It is not just aimed at African Americans, but
also at any one who is not Hispanic.

I feel like I am living in the south...we have a new "Klan"
in Southern California.

BHN
:banghead:
When will the global madness end?

and I get the same vibe sometimes. :scared:

I work in a local high school, we have a large
hispanic population.
I can not believe some of the things I hear
from the kids.
My daughter had a Mexican boyfriend about four years ago-
He invited her to a party for a friend of his, a "coming out"
event for a girl turning 15. I was invited too.
We went and were the only non-hispanic guests there.
I could not believe the blatant racism expressed towards us.
My daughter was treated so badly by the other
young girls there- simply because she was not hispanic.
None of the adults would talk to me, but rudely spoke in
Spanish at the table and were clearly making remarks
about me- you know the old "laugh and look" my way?
It was a hideous experience.

I thought to myself on the way home,
"So... this is what it feels like to be a black person in
a Klan town, to be judged and condemned
simply for the color of my skin."

It's rather asounding to think such hateful ignorance
and racism still exists in the year 2006 from ANY people
in the world, but it does.

BHN

"In December 2000, he filed a police report saying Martinez had assaulted and robbed him at a bus stop near his house. A week later, Bowser was shot to death at the same bus stop on Figueroa Street." - Proof the legal system failed to protect an American citizen.

is that no one in the county of Los Angeles or the city will get the proper police protection for the ethnic nieghborhoods. The gang bangers are not the majority. They are allowed free reign by the authorities in certain ethnic neighborhoods because they aren't bothering the rich on the westside. As far as the police and sheriffs are concerned they can fight it out among themselves as long as they are "contained". The honest, hard working brown people in those neighborhoods should "look after their own problems".

The people in these neighborhoods find that the gangs are their only protection as long as that particular gang rules. Yet, we read about Mel Gibson being arrested in an area of LA that really couldn't handle a gang if it arrived on their doorstep. Of course the LA cops always told me that working the westside was for retirement. Yet, they don't seem to work the other places except to "contain".

Gated communities and favelas run by gangsters. Porra! :(

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would have been suppressed.

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I work part time in a local high school.
We have a rather large hispanic student population-
what I see on a daily basis is very alarming to me,
because I know that what many of these young people
believe has been instilled in them at HOME.
They are simply parroting what they have grown up hearing.
I know this to be true because I confront them from time to time,
they can not explain the basis of the fucked up shit they
believe, which means they have learned it by rote
from their PARENTS.
No different than the way the KKK indoctrinates hatred in
their young.
It is truly disturbing.

BHN

You might get a better idea of what they have been
"indoctrinated" at home if you do. If they give you answers in English, I doubt if the indoctrination is from home.

We are more americans (Los tigres del norte)

Let me remind the Gringo That I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me
They drew the line so I would have to jump it And they call me Invader
That's a big error
They took eight states from us—who is the invader here?
I am a stranger in my own land

...We are more American <“Somos Mas Americanos”>
We are more American Than any son of the Anglo-Saxon

They purchased from us, without money , the waters of the Rio Bravo
They took from us Texas , New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado
California too, and Nevada
Even with Utah it was not enough—they also took Wyoming from us!

...We are more American Than every last one of the Gringos

http://www.pc.maricopa.edu/languages/hispanic-heritage-southwest/page3.htm

bierria and Tecate.

my mexican friend started mouthing off about blacks. never mouthed off about whites, but blacks. not days later my black friend was mouthing off about mexicans, again, not whites, but mexicans. i asked them both, why..... do you talk about that race the way you do in your experience, yet you are not ANGRY at the whites. perplexed. i will never forget it. to this day i will give this to both of them on occassion, when relevent.

in poor neighborhoods of the southland. But this is from American kids who went through the school system and the differences were pointed out about each other in the cafeteria.

granted I attended school quite a few years ago (ahem):blush: Which of course, isn't to say the problem did not exist in other schools or just away from my eyes. :shrug:

There was a small group of hispanic kids in my jr. and senior highschool. They got along with everyone and were well liked. They kept to themselves for the most part, but there wasn't any sense of hatred on my campuses between these ethnic groups at all. Maybe times were different. We all seemed to think we were on the same team. :shrug:

A friend that attended school in a different part of southern california, (years after me) spoke of some of this--but I didn't know what to think of what she said. It just all sounds so bizarre. Yet, I shouldn't be dismissive just because I haven't experienced something personally...

I recall some reports on the news a year or so ago about some bruhaha between the kids of both ethnicities at a southland school. It all took me by surprise, though.

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All the black gangs and the hispanic gangs and the white supremists are all in jail with each other. It makes the place really unpleasant.

to stir this pot? These problems have been part of Los Angeles since the fifties. Could it be the new and divisive conservatives who have bought out the paper? No politician has ever bothered to try to fix it. Even all the celebrities, who live there, seem to want to go to Africa or Asia to make a difference, yet there is a real difference they could try to make in their own back yard.

and they are far less likely to work against the oppressor. Oldest trick in the book. Whether or not the LAT is trying to further this, I don't know. It's an interesting issue you raise, and I had forgotten the LATimes had sold out. On one hand, I hate to see this if it is indeed political pot-stirring; still, I guess it's a good thing to bring to public discussion. It certainly won't go away if no one talks about it.

become so important in Los Angeles County? So many of us have worked for years to get our pols to address the problem and now we don't even have a national guard anymore for emergency purposes.

Hey, gringo, I'm locking and loading.

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A very old saying.

I wish the racist Hispanic murderers who took the lives of their black fellow Americans would end up in the same cell block as the blacks.
..or whites or Asians or anyone else they hate.

Justice for their hate and intolerance.

Why do you wish it on people you think are different from you?

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deleted, not me.