Espejos de Aztlán; Robert Rodríguez; Part 1

night. I know you're a little bit sick, but we appreciate your efforts. No, it's all right. As long as they don't see, I'm in a jogging suit instead of a regular suit. I don't think they'll be able to do that. Roberto, can you remember for us your interest in what a lot of people referred to as critical thinking that goes into writing? How did that come about? Well, it's probably is. I don't know, maybe I can track it to my interest in writing as a whole, which in a way it didn't start out very critical in the sense. It started out because Rowan Salazar was killed. Nice to live down the street where he was killed. Where I grew up is only two. I grew up on Whiterville, which is like there's only two houses on Whiterville, or now even my house is gone. I think there's one left and that's where I grew up and so a lot of the women in the world. That's what I meant about that triggered the interest in not see a lot of us felt

at the time and of course, people older, of course, but people my age, you know, felt that the only voice like Rasa had was literally silenced. So again, I had this desire to say something and I was always pretty nervous type of person. That is, I couldn't speak in public. So I think writing came to me naturally. When did you start having an opportunity to write your, not only to write your thoughts down, but to actually start publishing them? I would say in 1972, as a freshman at UCLA, I wrote for La Hempton newspaper, which I probably claim it because in the profession, you're supposed to claim your first

professional wherever you start, but I always start with La Hempton because I think it was my formation to place there. Would you say that that Periodico La Hempton, would you say that was that a university newspaper? Was that pretty much a newspaper of the voyage of Chicago? Absolutely. And at the time, you know, there was a fusion between community and university so that it wasn't, say, a university publication where people from the university read, it was published at the university read by everybody else. And the few rasa that were there, they would also read it, but the one that many, she got another very many, not much rasa at universities in those days. You know, you could see, you know, two, three hundred maybe. And so, you know, he's to publish 20,000, so obviously most of it went out. And then, somewhere along the

line, you give it, Patricia, and I am wondering if once you graduated, did you continue with your career as a journalist or was that already defined for you with your association with La Hempton? What did you start considering yourself as say, I am a journalist of this, what I want to do? Well, you know, I tell you the truth, I never really thought of myself as a journalist, I always thought of myself as a writer as a writer. Yeah, which I am, I guess nobody told me the difference you might say. I mean, it just to me, I just saw writing as something that you do, kind of like lawyers, they lawyer, you know, well, I thought, you know, our people need it writers, you know, so you know, whether it was journalism or writing fiction or writing books or whatever, I just thought of myself as a writer. And you know, my wife, she's been trained as a journalist, you know, professional journalist. And of course, I've been writing also more

than 20 years now. But the training is very different. So that, you know, her schooling was in the school journalism. And she went up the ranks the way she's supposed to do it. So again, I never saw myself in that that realm. I saw myself as, again, like, we needed lawyers. So we got lawyers, you know, we needed doctors. Well, me, I thought we needed writers for our people. So I became a writer. And so again, I never thought of myself as like, hey, there's a dog got run over down the street, go cover it. You know, that wasn't my idea of writing. It was like, hey, there's something wrong in our society. And we got to do something about it. And writing was one of the means to do it. So that's where my background was and is. It led to America, you would be considered an intellect 12, you know, intellect 12 that uses writing to develop his ideas. But along the line, you have found that newspapers have given you opportunities that perhaps you haven't found elsewhere. Well, you know, what a way. I mean, not tell you, you know, again, 72 is what 24 years ago, they're about or 25

somewhere out there. It's not, it wasn't a very pleasant, very easy journey. I mean, in the least, in fact, quite the opposite, you know, as you probably know in the entire country, there are four, maybe five, go in Salir Rodriguez and Strada's out there, you know, syndicated column is in the country. You know, when's a governmental who publishes out in New York, Strada delis and ourselves, and maybe one other one. I'm not so sure right now, but this one, this guy's, this guy's claiming to be syndicated, who used to be syndicated. His name is Raula Olao de Contreras. And he's not a very good journalist in my opinion, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, it doesn't, it isn't so much about our talent. It's more about a statement about our profession. It's the widest profession. It's the most bigoted profession. I mean, it's bad. And, you know, we should have 20, 30, 40, you know, brass

syndicated column is, you know, whether Puerto Ricanos or Romini Canos or Mexican, you know, whatever, there should be plenty, but there aren't that many of us, you know, and there's a reason for it. But that also shows you on our and how much we've struggled to get there. I mean, you know, what other profession can you point to imagine if it was only four tenured professors in the country? I mean, that'd be the most stupidest thing in the world. That's functional. Right. I mean, so the fact that there's only four in our profession tells you something. And we're upstream always, you know, always battling against censorship in the worst of ways. Can you recall for us how the idea of a national column came about? Well, the initial one was mine. And I'll tell you why. I had I had been given a or I shouldn't say given. I was told that I was that I was now a columnist for the LA Times. This is an 89. Well, yes, by one of the editors, you know, we had a

meeting and said that that's what they'd like to bring me on as a columnist. And of course, that that was like, actually, I don't think they had had a rasa column since Ruben Salazar. That was up to 89. Subsequently, I think now they had one other one, George Ramos, but they removed him. So you actually replace your hero though? Well, no, but no, let me let me explain. It never came through. I was they reneged on it. And of course, I was pretty upset. And I know you mentioned that I moved to El Paso. I actually moved to Washington DC for, you know, right after Los Angeles. And I moved there and right away, I got published in the Washington Post in the opinion pages. And I was treated like a national hero for months because no, not one rasa had ever been published in the Washington Post. Not of the blue. I just moved there and started getting published. And of course, now they all the time discovered, you know, they actually gave you the respects. Los Angeles Times. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And so for me, I think at that point, I knew that that's what I wanted to do. And I

wanted to be a columnist for the other times. I still do. You know, I think both of us still do. Because and I always joke that I'm in exile, you know, I really believe that because, you know, Los Angeles for me is like, oh, maybe like Harlem was, you know, in the 20s, you know, to me, that's where I'm from. And I can't or shouldn't make apologies about it. That's where I am from. I've traveled around the country and I've lived around the country. And there's no place I like better than Albuquerque. I'll say that much. I mean, much better than everywhere else. And I look done a lot of great things. But I still believe that like, I guess maybe as I'm sent to you, you know, I don't like getting booted out of a city. And even though, like, I came back and I come and I'm in a bigger way, you know, to get syndicated is like much higher than to get simply become a columnist at the first for one city. So I'm much higher. But it's still, I guess I'm sent to you for the fact that, you know, kind of like getting booted out of your own town. But the reason I say it's difficult, let me, let me, I can back check a little for you. I was almost killed by

police in Los Angeles, you know, that's what I'm referring to like getting almost booted out. So it's a lot of things that happened to me and not very pleasant. That's why I say my route to in journalism has not been the kind you would advocate or tell someone, hey, go get your head cracked and then you become a columnist because unfortunately, I did get some respect on the basis of that. But again, that's not the way you do it. That is, I had two trials that lasted seven and a half years, you know, but that was partly the reason that there was a bias against me because I was going to have it in for the police. And it was because of intellectual expression. Well, it was like exactly like a Rodney King situation. I photographed Sheriff Beaten, a tar out of one of Michigan. And then they turned on me. And, you know, seven and a half years later, I finally cleared my name. But in a professional sense, and it worked against me, you know, because people saw me as not being very, not that I was very biased, you know. And the thing, think about journalism, the first thing

I'll tell you, you know, such things objectivity to begin with, you know, so the fiction that there's somehow by objective journalism doesn't exist. Everybody carries with them a bias and it reflects on how they report what they I tell you in journalism is to, to be fair. It's very different from being the objective. Yes. Now, so what I was saying earlier about getting finally getting published in the Washington Post and the LA Times, I created this plan, you know, to kind of like a, the plan simply was get published in the 10, get my 10 best columns and then submit them for syndication. And so part of that meant publishing in the top, top newspapers in the country, which included, of course, the ones I mentioned already, and USA to date, Dallas Morning News, you know, papers like that. And so when I had enough, and no, I didn't even mention it. I wrote, I was a columnist for La Pignon in Los Angeles for eight years. So, and I was a smaller paper. Smaller, yes, but it was probably the most important paper in Los Angeles, or rather in the country in terms of Spanish

language. And if you, if you wanted to know about Latinos or, you know, about Rasa, I mean, that's where you went because nobody else was covering this, you know. So I did have that background, you know, I wasn't like I just out of the blue also just showed up, you know, I did have a background. So when I finally got my tip, top 10 columns in English, I submitted them. And then in the process I met by Tracy. And then I got all these responses, about half of the people I sent to gave me response, form letters. And I saw that as a very encouraging sign, form letters, you know, from the ones that respond. The other ones I'd never bothered to think about them again. So I just said, well, next time around, I will send it to these that responded, because all of them said, try back in six months. So actually, a year later, by then, man, by the reason we're already writing together. In fact, we had met like two, three years before. And she had asked me, it goes, hey, I want to be a columnist and I heard your comments. So to make a long story short, you know, next time around, we were

writing together. And we got a response by three different syndications. And the one we're with now, Chronicle features, is the one that said they had wanted to pick me up all along, because they lost track of them. They said, because we had moved to Mexico City. So they said they couldn't find me. And then now that we had submitted joint publications, they liked it even better. So that's how we got to writing. Now we've been writing together about four years and syndicated about two and a half. The trip to Mexico, Mexico City was that after DC? Yes. Yes. Patricio was writing a book. And so I went down there to join her for about six months. And we wrote from down there. We wrote together. You know, we wrote about the quintentennial. We wrote about almost anything. I 've been writing, I'm also a senior writer for black issues in higher education. I've been there for six years. And so as, you know, that job is as a journalist, not as a columnist. That's why like, whereas my initial training

did not involve journalism, now very much does, you know, and, and you know, with black issues, I do both, you know, articles and sometimes analysis, which analysis allows, it frees you up a little bit more, kind of like you're able to write a little bit more, almost as a columnist. You don't, of course, but, and the difference, you know, maybe for, I guess for writers, we're in a sense, or in newspapers, everybody pretty much knows the difference, but say if a reader or a listener perhaps, is that like a journalist, you're not supposed to put your opinion out there, you know, in your articles. And when you do an analysis, you kind of like, you look at both sides and give it an assessment, but it's not supposed to be like, where you just tilt everything in your direction. You're just supposed to be fair. You try to be objective. Yeah, you're supposed to be, or you try to be. And the columnist is where you have a freer, a much freer hand, but lean on one thing that most people don't know.

And, and that is that columnist, or the best, columnist, or the best journalist, that is, if, if a columnist simply is someone who just, you know, oh, well, I believe this because I believe it, you know, or, I mean, that's the worst column in the world. And very, and that's the kind that make a lot of trouble all the time, you know, people saying things without knowing what they're talking about. Just they, they just say it because they believe it. And that's the worst journalism. And, and, but because of our backgrounds both, but he says a knife, I think that we, I mean, I think we're excellent journalists, you know, we very rarely ever do columns that are simply like, well, you know, this is what we think. And this is why we think it, you know, it's usually we, yeah, I think I was mentioning to you earlier, you know, before the show, that we read six books to write one column, you know, so it's that kind of, that kind of column writing that we do. Yeah, I mean, none of this just off the cuff, you know,

write it in an hour. You know, we probably go through 30 versions before it gets used print at least 30 versions. Now, you can do that with computers now in the past, maybe go to a three, but what a suffice, but now with a computer, you can share with a computer over and over and over. No problem. Tell us about the, you started your career as a writer, you know, working as an individual. Tell us about the chemistry of no working as a team with your company, that made your adjustments or that's what they need. Not necessarily that many because I actually happened to or we both chose people were very compatible in our views. So that doesn't cause much friction. Now, you don't have to have friction or you don't have to have incompatible views to have friction, you know, and so the way we resolve that is that we function more as a writer editor, as opposed to writer writer. And so that like, and the way it works is that whoever

takes the lead or whoever has the idea takes the lead on the story and the person who takes the lead on the story also has final say on a column. So that usually eliminates discussion because it's kind of like a mutual respect, like well, if that's important to you, then you have the final say. And so sometimes we've written columns that if we actually forget who started it, you know, because there's that might, as I was saying, there's that many edits involved. So that like sometimes it might be like 50, 50, but it's not even a percentage because like every sentence is broken down. And so every sentence has both, you know, because it may say something and now suddenly it'll take a different shape. And you know, I don't know, you know, I know not everybody's a writer perhaps, maybe people, I remember when I was growing up, you know, you think about writing as almost a mystery, you know, but the, and I've always saw it as science and poetry. And I think, but this is more the poet and I'm probably more

the science in our writing because I really believe that every word has a meaning, every single one. And so I look and look and look and, you know, and revise until it says exactly what we wanted to say. And Patricia is much freer, you know, she's a great writer, you know, she'd probably be a great poet and a great fiction writer if allowed to. And I think where we clash and not, and I shouldn't say clash, where we differ in styles and also with our editors is I love humor. And I studied column writing. Like I said, I really approached this in a scientific way in the sense that I'm read and read and read for years of the columnists. I studied them and studied them and I came to a determination that humor is the route to go. Of course my editor doesn't agree. But I really believe that that is the route. And I'll tell you what I mean. I, I used to read or rather when I read the paper, I would see people

like, oh, you can or will or fill a shape leader. Yeah, a whole bunch of different people. I understand I actually would read. But these other people I would see their names and I would just pass them over. And precisely I asked myself one day, I said, why am I passing people over? And I said, I actually I know why because I already know what they're going to say. I already know what they're going to conclude. So there was no mystery in their writing. There was nothing that, you know, it's like, it's like they saw it as almost a contest between somebody with a hammer or somebody with their pen as a hammer, you know, you just use it against somebody. And then there was another writer who of course is now infamous and much hated by Ressa, Mike Reiko. He was actually like my hero, you know, right as a writer. I would read his writings and I was very impressed. And again, not not so much with the content, but the fact that I would work 16 hours a day, probably like lots of people. And the last thing I

want, well, it's not the last thing, but what I enjoyed was coming home and having a good laugh. And I really enjoyed that. I got it from him. Yeah. And I thought to myself, you know, that's that's what writing should be about, you know, it's not about whether you agree or not, but I mean, it's like again, when you think of the big picture, you know, humanity, you know, he was wrong with, you know, a little laugh here and there, you know, and why I can't somebody even who doesn't like you laugh a little once in a while. And so a lot of times, and we've gotten, you know, in two and a half years, you know, that's about probably 150 columns or their bounce. We've probably gotten about 10 humor columns in there. To me, I wish it would have been half. You know, yeah, yeah, and we're working on another one. I'll tell you one that we wrote, it was called champagne 96. Yeah, so we interviewed all these comedians about elections. And I think without even having to explain it, you know, if I get the drift of I think it's that was a platicado. And it's the issue of this program. I spoke with Kornel, Les

Grittor Robert Rodriguez, Roberto is now based here in Albuquerque, and he and his company are Patricia Gonzalez, or syndicated columnist. Roberto, one of the main things that we've been concerned here in Albuquerque for a long time, and I get the feeling you have to the censorship. How have you have you had to deal with censorship in your career as a, as a columnist? Well, absolutely. And that should probably be my middle name. But just to give you an example, I mean, independent of myself as an individual, us as a couple, you know, our, we have a book coming out at the beginning of 97. It's called Gonzalez Rodriguez, uncut and uncensored. In the reason it has that title, and I'm sure lots of people could have a similar title, but I mean, we get, we get heavily censored and we get heavily cut. You

know, I didn't used to read the journal a lot. I used to read it maybe once a month at most, you know, but now of course I read it every day, but in other, other cities, I mean, God, they would chop up our material and it would lose its meaning, or it's like it would jumble around like where something went from, from A to D, you know, like missing B and C. And you didn't never know what it was. And readers would read it and they had to get it that way or literate or something. But I mean, censorship isn't simply not being run, but I mean, where they literally wreck your writing. So it doesn't say, it doesn't say what you meant. Remember when I was talking about writing being a science, is if you write something and you say something, then it's exactly what you say. If somebody changes it, then it doesn't mean what you say anymore. And so that would happen all the time. And that would happen to us internally and externally. That is within our own editing, that is in our, our syndication. Sometimes they

would do that too. You know, they would change it. Because I guess they didn't know as they weren't familiar with those or something. No, anyway, look that it like things weren't coming out the way we wanted it. And now they are better away internally. But externally, we're still subject to people changing. People come up with their own creative ways to change our stuff. We don't, they don't ask permission. They just do it. And of course, you know, I'll give you one example. One story that's been heavily censored around the country is a whole drugs CIA connection. And you know, you probably heard about that in the last couple months. But we actually broke that story a year and a half ago. And it's 10 times bigger than the story you've been hearing. The problem you've given read it anywhere. Now the way we've gone around that is, is through the internet, you know, the electronic news networks. And I'll tell you what the story is. There's a guy that was in the DEA who was sent to, he was a DEA station chief. And he was sent there to do what DEA chiefs are supposed to do

monitor drugs. And he just happened to stumble onto the whole drug operation between the Gondras and the US government. And he documented every single shipment documented every single plane, readjust everything was registered. Every pilot was on a DEA list of drug carriers. And the guy turned it over to Bush, you know, before this, before that rank went through a fair. And Bush just walked away, pretended the guy wasn't there. So the guy ended up turning it into his own superiors. And they disappeared his material. And to this day, they claim it doesn't exist. Now of course, the guys retired now the DEA agent. And he wrote a book called Gondras CIA and and cocaine or something. But the story is bigger than the CIA. That's why I met like it's 10 times bigger. Because God, it really sad about that story is that they've put it into almost a, a, I guess, buffoon category. I might even call it because like the Washington Post, for example, they made fun of African Americans kind of like, Oh, well, they think

everything is a conspiracy. You know, they think they're being sterilized by the water they drink. And they think, you know, so they went on and ridiculed them. So it's kind of like they've allowed it to surface that that story, because they figured, well, nobody's going to believe it anyway. And if they believe it, it's they're just going to punish a couple CIA guys, you know, maybe even the good guys within the CIA, they'll probably slap it on them. And that'll be the end of that. But see the real story that Selerino talks about it wasn't the CIA. CIA people think of as a rogue agency or rogue agents. This was at a top secret military base, US government, US military. And so that's, and, and talking about handing the evidence over the bush. So if you, if you connect the dots, you know, it's like, hey, this is coming directly from the top, not from some rogue agency. In other words, a war was being financed out of, with US approval, US government approval, the guy has the documentation to, he says it, he never got, he was told he was going to be testifying at the Iran Qantra and never did. He says that if you

were to testify, which is name North, would have been in jail and Bush and Reagan would have been impeached. I mean, because he had everything on him. That's why that story's 10 times bigger. He, it's not a mystery. He has the evidence, you know, straight to the top. But when are you going to see that story, you're not going to see it too harder. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, it's been on the internet for us, you know, but even as he's, read, read that other story or listen to that story, you're not, yeah. Sounds big and explosive and it is, but like I say, one thing is to be the CIA. The other thing is to be the US government, you know, which they're one insane. But I mean, in the public's mind, the CIA is like, oh, well, they're always into cloak and dagger stuff. Anyway, you know, you know, okay. So that's, that's a, that's a big kind of censorship. You know, but we have all kinds of other kinds of censorship that happened also. We've, we've been dropped by newspapers. One of them told us that we didn't represent the Hispanic community. One of them told us that we, we weren't, they wanted to get authentic Latino voices, you know, and you know, of course, which would surprise anybody,

you know, since when did we have authentic ones? Another who's the authenticator, you know, or who is the representative of the Hispanic community, you know, we never claimed to be any of that. And that leads to, to another question that I had in, in, as you develop your column and writing styles and focus on certain issues. In terms of audiences that, that you, that you like to reach, it seems to me that as a rasa writer, you write for rasa, but, but you're writing is, it's broad or no? Absolutely. That's the other form of censorship that I was, I was alluding to that there are different kinds. We've had to struggle with internally on that subject, because I mentioned to you, I used to write for Lopino for eight years. I used to write one, sometimes two, two columns a week, and not once was I ever told what to write, how to write, or who to write for. It was just a assume that whoever reads, I mean whoever reads Lopino and most people with us, people that speak

Spanish, but people that speak Spanish don't have a limited view of the world. So I would write about the Soviet Union, I would write about South Africa, or I would write about Washington DC, or East Los Angeles, or anywhere I wanted to write about. You know, so the notion of not when we got syndicated, we were told, oh, you're gonna, your column is gonna be called Latino spectrum, and you're going to write about Latinos, you know? And we were like, okay, and so we found out what that meant. You know, we wrote a column on O.J. Simpson couple weeks after he did his thing, or after he allegedly did his thing, and we wrote about the death penalty, and saying that if Simpson were guilty, that this country would come face to face with the death penalty in a way that they have never come face to face with it before, that is, they would, if guilty, that they would put a national hero to death, just different than, say, putting a monster to death, you know, or an unknown. And so again, we weren't presuming his guilt, and we weren't, we were simply,

and we weren't even saying anything good or bad about death, and simply that, that would happen, and that might change people's minds on the subject. Our editors said, hey, what's this about? And what do you mean, what is about? It's about the death penalty in O.J. Simpson says, this is not about Latinos, and we were like, what? It's terrible. You write, so it was like, we had to like, wow, and we couldn't, well, no, that's how we got to understand what they meant. And so we told us, you know what, I don't know what, well, you're talking about, but that's not the world we live in. I said, I can guarantee you, you go to any barbershop or beauty salon in a lot or anywhere in the country, and you're going to be, people are going to be talking about O.J. Simpson. I go with that notion of that somehow we are different, you know, it's, I guess, people believe, I guess they believe fiction or something. But anyway, that would be an example of at least how our style of we had to deal with that form of censorship. Yeah, because we're very conscious, and we still have to battle it to this day. And we have very good relations with our editors,

you know, initially we didn't with one editor that once gone, but we have very good relations, but you still struggle with it because of expectation. You know, like I said, in all the eight years that I wrote for Lopinio, and I never once had this notion of a Latino column, you know, to me, it's like, hey, the world is out there, and not only that, we pay taxes, so we're part of the whole world. So to me, anything and everything is out there for us to be writing about and debating about. So we find ourselves, we have to, we've had to create a, a bigger space, and it's going to be much bigger by the time we're through, because see, look, in our last column, we wrote about politics, and we went to a Native American for analysis, you know, and we said, why not? Yeah, we also went to a Chicana. So it's like, in a way, it's almost like that's how you open the door, you know, and in another instance, you know, we may interview an African-American, we will interview, whomever we want. But I mean, as long as like, there's a connection with, with Rasta,

for the editors, that's acceptable. So it's kind of like we have to interview two people all the time or three, you know, but and in a sense, we don't mind in terms to be able to open it up, you know, but of course, we don't, I mean, we prefer that we didn't even have that, you know, but see, it's because like, people have missed understand that nobody needs to tell us to write about Rasta, because nobody else is writing about us, you know, so we're going to write about us, you know, but nobody should also restrict us, you know, because like, you know, again, there's like, we feel like there's a few people out that literally get paid to destroy us, you know, and they come in all colors. And so, so we, we have a duty and responsibility to combat that, you know, but again, there's sometimes that the issues are bigger than that, you know, sometimes you have to write in a bigger sense, and that's how sometimes we feel trapped, but we really do enjoy, like I said, we got, if you look at our cause, we're probably the most multiracial in the whole country, or the amount of African-Americans and Native Americans

Asian-Americans that we interview, I mean, nobody does that, you know, because that we read, that's what I'm saying, we read columns and African-Americans don't interview anybody other than African-Americans. That's most important for the Native Americans, Native Americans and whites off the top. So, you know, for us, you know, that, that, I guess what you call a damnation in the sense has gone our way in some respects. I am wondering if there's a format where perhaps there would be so much censorship or limitations, and you're branching out into writing books, and I wonder if you could briefly talk about that because we're running short on time, but also maybe tying it up with what we have been talking about, whether perhaps the book format will give you an even greater freedom. Well, we have three books coming out, and one thing I call an anti-book. I've created my own genre of literature. I'll tell you about the books first, and then the last thing will be the, the, the, the anti one is called the

exen la rasa. But the, the first one coming out at the beginning of the year is called Gonsaille Rodriguez and Katnán sensor, and that's simply a collection of our columns, and they're expanded. And even for some people, the regular column would have been an expanded version over what was printed, but they're most of them are about 800 words, which is about 200 words more than what they, that's usually what we, we need about 800. They cut us down a seven or even less. Then I have two books on police brutality, written in 1984 and 1986. In 1979, I was almost killed by sheriffs in Los Angeles, and I faced charges of trying to kill four police officers all by yourself with my camera. What the hell was my camera? And, you know, as funny as it is, it wasn't that funny, but it, of course it's funny, but it took me seven and a half years to clear my name, you know, criminally I, I won after a year, and then my civil, it took me another six and a half years, and I won, and I'm probably one of the very few people in the country to be alive,

to be able to tell you this, because if you follow, and of course I know everybody's witness to Rodney King thing, even even with the videotape, you still lose, and he lost, you know. I mean, it's impossible to win, and I won twice. So it's something that's very unique, but at the time, nobody had an interest. You know, I had to get a church to give me money to, to publish the, the first book, and now it's been republished by, uh, bilingual press, along with part two, which is on the wrong side of the law. I wrote the first one, because I thought I was going to get killed, uh, in the middle of my two trials. Yeah, I thought they weren't going to let me see day, you know, and I wanted to explain, let people know why I was almost killed, and because I had, I had all the goods, all the, you know, how, how the whole police brutality work, and how they covered up, all that stuff. And, uh, that, that's what, and then the second one, I, there was actually after my second trial, an incredible perimason type of thing, you know, where the cop disappeared in the middle of the trial, I found the witness out of the blue in the middle of the trial, and saw everything, things like that, and, uh, so it's really, I mean, it's, it's, it's something that

I've lived with for, for years now, and out of the blue has been discovered or rediscovered, and, uh, the, the last one I was telling you is called the X and Larasa, and it's kind of a treatise of sorts, you know, it's like, it's very indigenous in a sense, because when I wrote 16, if 16 years ago, it was called, uh, who declared war on the word Chicano, and 15 years later, I, it needed a part two because people were misusing it, and so I, I decided to write it because I thought people should know that amongst us, it's not about our names or our identities per se, but it's, it's, it's that, but it's much more, it's, it's about a spirit, you know, and that's something that that's what the X and Larasa is about a spirit that, you know, and I am very indigenous in, in the sense that like I respect our elders, and that's where our knowledge comes from, you know, in the most, you know, just like our, our colleague of mine, the material Martinez from here, you know, she's a local, right, yeah, she, when she talks about that when she writes, she feels her ancestors writing through her, and I feel the same way, all right, yeah.

Well, good luck of those books, and I'm wondering, um, in terms of, uh, it'll, fouturo, fouturo para, para patricium, does that include, uh, continue with the column, and maybe branching out a little bit? Yeah, well, ideally, you know, we may end up with two columns, you know, so it's, and then maybe if, if all goes right, maybe we both pick up a new writing partner, that would be ideal because, well, unfortunately, it's almost has to be that way because like, how else is another dresser writer going to break, you know, break in, you know, and this may be a way to like, you know, we'll multiply the, we'll double the amount of rasa columns in the country, uh, yeah, you know, but we both have our own identities, very separate identities, and we've both developed them for years, and so it's not a problem for either one of us, you know, we can hold our own either one of us, you know, we can travel separately, we can do it. I mean, we enjoy a writing together and speaking together, and I think people see us as a novelty to around the country,

so I don't, you know, we don't mind that at all, at the same time, and I think part of it too is like, you know, you know, how, I mean, um, not only the movement, but also feminism, you know, it, it taught us to be very individual, you know, and to be very separate and develop our idea, but I think people really enjoy the fact that, that here's to individuals with separate identities that can come together as one, come together and speak their minds and, you know, and I think there's been a reevaluation by lots of people, hey, they're not the wrong with being together, you know, and not the wrong with the family, you know, it's almost like that was a bad kind of, it sounded like a bad concept of, uh, like a generation ago or something, you know, it's a good marriage, yeah, and, uh, and I think that three people really enjoy it, like, we wrote a column recently about, uh, a couple, another couple out of New York, uh, Elena Maria Villamontas, a writer, and Eloyo Rodriguez, a scientist, uh, he's one of the top scientists in the world who himself developed a new, uh, field of scientific discipline. Not that many people run around creating disciplines on the spare time, and what he did is created a discipline based on the study of animals, how they cure themselves. So he's like, uh, you know, if he

doesn't have the title to put on that, oh, he should, I mean, he knows everything about plants, uh, everything about year was, probably as much as his grandmother knew, uh, and, and his wife is incredible writers, so, you know, things like that, though. I've read her work, yeah. Well, the fellow that is supposed to be, uh, helping us here is outside, so we'll just continue talking, uh, uh, I'm wondering how you decide on what topics, uh, you're going to be writing on, uh, but to put it more precisely, uh, election days tomorrow, we'd like certainly like to encourage everyone to go to vote. Did you see a need to write something about elections with the election day, uh, well, well, two, two things. And, you know, we've, we're avid listeners of radio, uh, more than anything, and we've listened to democracy now, uh, you know, for about a year or so. And like, we like it because, I mean, we just like listen to it over here. But as writers, you know, that's the last thing we would write about, you know, spend so much time,

so much ink on election. Uh-huh. I mean, you know, again, we're, we're tuned into all the politics, but to us, that's not very exciting. Uh, to us, the decision was very clear a long time ago between Clinton and, and, and dole. And I don't know, I don't know that just because somebody says something constitutes news, you know, Clinton says X, you know, or dole says Y, and that becomes the news for the day, whether it's July or August or September, you know, or even now the day before. And so to us, it's like, what is there to write about? I mean, there's a lot, a lot of, I mean, our columns are backed up 20, 30 columns every, you know, there's 20, 30 things backed up, always, you know, we never had, that is, we never have a shortage of what's it right about. Oh, so you have like 20 that you could set out to, absolutely, you know, that we've been, we've been telling people, God, I wish we had three columns a week because if we did, we'd only be backed up around five columns or something, you know, maybe 10. But yeah, we never have a shortage. And so to us, the, the elections haven't been that exciting

to us. We've written two columns on it. And one was, as we told you, champagne 96, where we interviewed all these comedians around the country, I think there's a great piece. But then there was the one we just did this past week, where we looked at the analysis of the election, where everybody says that there's no excitement, that there's a lot of apathy. And I think what we've done is we've looked at it in a different way. We said, there's not apathy, what it is, people are repulsed by the choices. And I think, and actually, we have written another column in the past, in between those two, wasn't specifically about the elections, but it was pretty much how we feel about politics. So we, we, we talk about the third option in politics, that people around the world, you know, have always tended or people who want something different, have tended to what we call the third option in politics. That is neither, neither left nor right, neither liberal or conservative, but indigenous. And you can interpret

that in different ways. And digit is also literally meaning, you know, native peoples or indigenous peoples. But when we speak of third option and indigenous politics, we're talking about local politics. That is that community politics, where communities come first, not politicians. In fact, we've revised our concept of the third option to call it the first option. That is that our community should always be first, first and foremost, and politicians should always be last. And so we should never talk about whether Democrats are good or Republicans are bad or vice versa, but about what's good for our community. And if anyone will be good for our community, because the moment you start talking, Democrats, Republicans are, but then you're always reduced to the lesser of two evils. And then our politics should never be about lesser of two evils, should always be about the good of our community. Exactly. And doesn't matter where you are in the world. I like that. I'm a total agreement. Roberto, how about letting people know about the column.

It's part of the journal now. And could you give us the basic information? Yeah. Well, we come out once a week. Well, we write it once a week. And when we're lucky, we're able to write it in advance. And I tell you, most of the best columns that we write are always written in advance. That is the ones that are like up to the minute, you know, something happened last week or this week. Those are, we think they're always good. But the ones that are the best are the ones that are timeless. And they, you know, we come out in 30 newspapers around the country. We're in about five, six electronic networks. And sometimes we do a little radio, you know, we're going to be doing a little bit more. And then we travel around the country on the basis of our columns. And we really enjoyed doing that. We enjoy speaking because I think it is unique, what we have to say. And let's see, we don't object to anybody else writing. A lot of people think, oh, we must hate this trial or we must hate Linda Chavez or Richard Rodriguez and stuff,

you know, I think at at certain point, we probably hated the fact that they would be used as the spokespeople, you know. And now I think we just simply view them as like, hey, they're one of 10 writers or one of 20 or and why shouldn't they be writing, you know, I mean, people should be exposed to all points of view. So because the last thing we'd want to be telling people is that we're the spokespeople, you know, that we are the ones, you know, like our community, the tons of views and we just happen to be one of them. And we want to be rated by the work that we do not by how we put down, you know, we try not to put down anybody, you know, I know, you know, I'm a 42 and by Tracy, I don't know, maybe she's not, maybe I'm not supposed to say her age. So I'll say she's entered her. But it was very spiritual people, you know, and literally I pray every morning, every day I pray and I meditate, and I try not to put anybody down, you know, I don't, I don't, I mean, it's not a conscious thing

where I say I'm going to attack somebody. If anything, you know, what we're trying to do is illuminate, you know, illuminate our own past primarily, hopefully everybody else is, but I mean, you've got to start with your own. So we do that, you know, we start with, you know, hoping that we're in the right that we're doing right. And as you mentioned, how we select columns, well, a lot of times, God, we don't have a choice, you know, people, somebody gets shot in the head, you know, and they get away with it. I mean, I mean, sometimes we have to write that as opposed to somebody doing a successful business. Sometimes you want to write about that, you know, took us about a year to write about a lawyer and an Atlanta, you know, because every week something would happen, somebody's been attacked. And, you know, you feel a sense of duty, a sense of responsibility, you have no option to react to your immediate problem. Well, yeah, I mean, somebody's got to do it, because, you know, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean,