Within the wacky political world of Southeast Los Angeles County — the place scandals appear to bloom yearly with the regularity of jacarandas — there’s by no means been a multitude as pendejo because the one stirred up this week by Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez.
How else would you describe an elected official telling gang leaders, in a video posted to social media, to “f— get your members in order” and take to the streets in opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration raids?
Gonzalez’s rant has set off a nationwide storm on the worst attainable time. Conservative media is depicting her as a politician — a Latino, in fact — issuing a inexperienced mild to gangs to go after la migra. On social media, the Division of Homeland Safety shared her video, which it known as “despicable,” and insisted that “this kind of garbage” has fueled “assaults” in opposition to its brokers.
Gonzalez later requested her Fb associates to assist her discover a lawyer, as a result of “the FBI just came to my house.” To my colleague Ruben Vives, the company didn’t verify or deny Gonzalez’s assertion.
The primary-term council member deserves all of the reprimands being heaped on her — most of all as a result of the video that set off this pathetic episode is so cringe.
“I want to know where all the cholos are at in Los Angeles — 18th Street, Florencia, where’s the leadership at?” Gonzalez mentioned firstly of her video, which was shortly taken down. “You guys tag everything up claiming ‘hood,’ and now that your hood’s being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there ain’t a peep out of you!”
Gonzalez went on to assert that 18th Road and Florencia 13 — rivals which might be among the many largest and most infamous gangs in Southern California — shouldn’t be “trying to claim no block, no nothing, if you’re not showing up right now trying to, like, help out and organize. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you once they’re gone.”
The Cudahy council’s second-in-command appears to have recorded the clip at a celebration, judging by her black halter prime, shiny crimson lipstick, recent coiffure and fancy earrings, with membership music thumping within the background. She regarded and seemed like an older cousin who grew up within the barrio and now lives in Downey, making an attempt to sound exhausting in entrance of her bemused cholo family members.
The Trump administration is searching for any motive to ship in much more Nationwide Guard troops and Marines to quell what it has characterised as an revolt. If inviting a gang to assist — not to mention two gangs as infamous as 18th Road and Florencia — doesn’t sound like what Trump claims he’s making an attempt to quash, I’m unsure what’s.
Maybe worst of all, Gonzalez introduced political ignominy as soon as once more on Southeast L.A. County, higher referred to as SELA. Its small, supermajority Latino cities have lengthy been synonymous with political corruption and by no means appear to get a fortunate break from their leaders, whilst Gonzalez’s technology has vowed to not repeat the sins of the previous.
Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez
(Metropolis of Cudahy)
“In her post, Dr. Gonzalez issued a challenge to the Latino community: join the thousands of Angelenos already peacefully organizing in response to ongoing enforcement actions,” her legal professional, Damian J. Martinez, mentioned in a written assertion. “Importantly, Dr. Gonzalez in no way encouraged anyone to engage in violence. Any suggestion that she advocated for violence is categorically false and without merit.”
For his or her half, Cudahy officers mentioned that Gonzalez’s ideas “reflect her personal views and do not represent the views or official position of the City of Cudahy.”
Raised in Huntington Park and a graduate of Bell Excessive, Gonzalez has spent 22 years as a trainer, principal and administrator within the Los Angeles Unified College District. In 2023, after Cudahy — a suburb of about 22,000 residents that’s 98% Latino — grew to become the primary metropolis in Southern California to approve a Gaza ceasefire decision, she informed The Instances’ De Los part that Latinos “understand what it means to be left behind.”
A couple of weeks in the past, Gonzalez appeared alongside Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and elected leaders from Los Angeles and Ventura counties to decry the immigration raids that had been simply ramping up.
“I want to speak to Americans, especially those who have allowed our community to be the scapegoat of this administration that made you feel that your American dream hasn’t happened because of us,” Gonzalez mentioned, including that firms “are using our brown bodies to avoid the conversation that this administration is a failure and they do not know how to legislate.”
Final week, she introduced that she will probably be operating for the Los Angeles Group School District Board of Trustees for a 3rd time, urging Fb followers to forego donating to her marketing campaign in favor of organizations serving to immigrants. “Our priorities must reflect the urgency of the times,” she wrote.
In these settings, Gonzalez comes off as simply one other wokosa politician. However the feds now see her as a wannabe Massive Homie.
Attempting to enlist gangs to advocate for immigrants comes off as each laughable and offensive — and describing 18th Road and Florencia as “the Latino community” is like describing the Manson household as “fun-loving hippies.” Gang members have extorted immigrant entrepreneurs and terrorized immigrant communities going again to the times of “Gangs of New York.” Their modus operandi — increasing turf, revenue and energy through concern and bloodshed — will ceaselessly peg Latinos as liable to violence within the minds of too many Individuals. Transnational gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13 are Trump’s ostensible motive for his deportation tsunami — and now a politician thinks it’s smart to ask cholos to attract nearer?
And but I sympathize — and even agree — with what Gonzalez was actually getting at, as imperfect and bumbling as she was. Homeland Safety’s declare that she was riling up gangs to “commit violence against our brave ICE law enforcement” doesn’t maintain up within the context of historical past.
For many years, Latino activists have strained to encourage gang members to hitch el movimiento — not as stormtroopers however as wayward kids and veteranos who can depart la vida loca behind if solely they change into enlightened. El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, a manifesto revealed in 1969 on the peak of the Chicano motion, envisioned a world the place “there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.” Its sister doc, El Plan de Santa Barbara, warned activists that they “must be able to relate to all segments of the Barrio, from the middle-class assimilationists to the vatos locos.”
From Homeboy Industries to schools that enable jail inmates to earn a level, folks nonetheless consider within the energy of forgiveness and attempt to reincorporate gang members into society as productive folks. They’re family members and associates and neighborhood members, the considering goes, not irredeemable monsters.
Gonzalez’s video comes from that do-gooder vein. A better pay attention reveals she isn’t lionizing 18th Road or Florencia 13. She’s pushing them to be really powerful by working towards civil — not felony — disobedience.
“It’s everyone else who’s not about the gang life that’s out there protesting and speaking up,” the vice mayor mentioned, her voice heavy with the Eastside accent. “We’re out there, like, fighting for our turf, protecting our turf, protecting our people, and like, where you at? Bien calladitos, bien calladitos li’l cholitos.”
Good and quiet, little cholitos, which interprets as “baby gangsters” however is much extra dismissive in Spanish.
Her supply was horrible, however the message stands, to gang members and actually to anybody else who hasn’t but proven up for immigrants: if not now, when? If not you, who?
It’ll be a miracle if Gonzalez’s political profession recovers. However future chroniclers of L.A. ought to deal with her kindly. Calling out cholos for being cholos is simple. Difficult them to make good of themselves at a key second in historical past isn’t.
