America Libre Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Raul Ramos y Sanchez

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group 237

  Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: July 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55147-2

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  PRAISE FOR AMERICA LIBRE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: DAY 1

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: DAY 12

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 4

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 5

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 7

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 10

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 22

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 25

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 2, DAY 29

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 4, DAY 3

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 4, DAY 11

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 5, DAY 12

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 6, DAY 3

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 6, DAY 5

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 6, DAY 9

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 9

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 11, DAY 4

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 11, DAY 8

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 12, DAY 17

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT: MONTH 12, DAY 29

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: DAY 1

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 2, DAY 2

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 4, DAY 11

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 4, DAY 12

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 8, DAY 6

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 9, DAY 2

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 13

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 13, DAY 3

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 13, DAY 5

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 15

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 16, DAY 7

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 16, DAY 28

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 17, DAY 4

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 17, DAY 14

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 18, DAY 5

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 19, DAY 5

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 19, DAY 11

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 20, DAY 14

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 21, DAY 2

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 21, DAY 5

  THE QUARANTINE AND RELOCATION ACT: MONTH 21, DAY 29

  THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE

  THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE: DAY 1

  THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE: DAY 2

  EPILOGUE

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  GUÍA DE LECTORES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EL NUEVO ALAMO

  THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE: Day 2

  PRAISE FOR

  AMERICA LIBRE

  “An engaging, fast-moving story of love, intrigue, and personal and ethnic conflict, wrapped in rich, thought-provoking political and cultural commentary.”

  —Richard W. Slatta, PhD, professor of Latin American

  history, North Carolina State University

  “Thematically similar to T. C. Boyle’s enormously popular The Tortilla Curtain, Ramos’s AMERICA LIBRE is a story of what we all struggle with when we decide where we stand on the issue of immigration.”

  —Professor Edward J. Mulens, University of

  Missouri-Columbia

  “A window into the despair, brought about by racism, faced by many of our Hispanic neighbors.”

  —Miguel De La Torre, PhD, director of the Justice

  and Peace Institute, Iliff School of Theology

  “In such explosive times as ours, it is rare to discover a novel that captures fanaticism in all its extremes and tells a story as thrilling and vibrant as AMERICA LIBRE. Future and history collide in a cautionary tale of a new Civil War on American soil. A must-read for all, no matter where you draw your line in the sand.”

  —James Rollins, New York Times bestselling

  author of The Last Oracle

  To Kathy, Ronda, Omaida, and David

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every author’s work is an unpaid debt. We borrow ideas, time, information, even love, in quantities we can never repay. Let this page serve as an accounting of the debits of appreciation accrued in the making of this book.

  I owe my agent, Sally van Haitsma, for her faith, patience, and unflagging determination.

  I owe my partners and siblings, Ronda and David, who take care of business at BRC Marketing while I cavort with the muses.

  I owe my editor at Grand Central Publishing, Selina McLemore, for the trust she placed in my work and her sage editing of the GCP edition. GCP’s Latoya Smith has been a pleasure to work with as well.

  I owe Dr. Miguel De La Torre and Dr. Edward Mullen for their time and generosity in reviewing this work.

  I owe James Adams, Barbara Estes, and Jason Johnson for their help in research. I also owe the scholastic work and counsel of Dr. Oscar Alvarez Gila, Dr. Miguel De La Torre, Dr. Franklin W. Knight, and Dr. Richard W. Slatta.

  I owe Rueben Martinez, founder of Libreria Martinez, for his generous support of a first-time author and for nominating America Libre for the 2008 International Latino Book Awards.

  I owe my mother, Omaida, for a lifetime of support and an example of courage and will.

  Most of all, I owe my wife, Kathleen, who never fails to encourage me while enduring my circadian rhythms, which she’s convinced are from a planet with a rather eccentric spin rate.

  THE RIO GRANDE

  INCIDENT

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT:

  Day 1

  The origins of any political revolution parallel the beginnings of life on our planet. The amino acids and proteins lie inert in a volatile primordial brew until a random lightning strike suddenly brings them to life.

  —José Antonio Marcha, 1978

  Translated by J. M. Herrera

  The trouble had started two weeks earlier. Enraged at the fatal police shooting of a young Latina bystander during a drug bust, a late-night mob descended on a Texas Department of Public Safety complex and torched the empty buildings. By morning, a local newscast of the barrio’s law-and-order melt-down mushroomed into a major story, drawing the national media to San Antonio. Since then, the presence of network cameras had incited the south side’s bored and jobless teenagers into nightly rioting.

  Seizing the national spotlight, the governor of Texas vowed looters would be shot on sight. Octavio Perez, a radical community leader, angrily announced that force would be met with force. He called on Mexican-Americans to arm themsel
ves and resist if necessary.

  Disdaining Perez’s warning, Edward Cole, a twenty-six-year-old National Guard lieutenant, chose a provocative location for his downtown command post: the Alamo.

  “This won’t be the first time this place has been surrounded by a shitload of angry Mexicans,” Cole told his platoon of weekend warriors outside the shut-down tourist site. A high school gym teacher for most of the year, Lieutenant Cole had been called up to lead a Texas National Guard detachment. Their orders were to keep San Antonio’s south side rioting from spreading downtown.

  Now Cole was fielding yet another call over the radio.

  “Lieutenant, we got some beaners tearing the hell out of a liquor store two blocks south of my position,” the sentry reported.

  “How many?”

  “I’d say fifty to a hundred.”

  “Sit tight, Corporal. The cavalry is coming to the rescue,” Cole said, trying his best to sound cool and confident. From a two-day training session on crowd control, he’d learned that a rapid show of strength was essential in dispersing a mob. But the colonel who had briefed Cole for the mission had been very clear about the governor’s statement.

  “It’s not open season on rioters, Lieutenant. Your men are authorized to fire their weapons only in self-defense,” the colonel had ordered. “And even then, it had damn well better be as a last resort. The governor’s statement was meant to deter violence, not provoke it.”

  Lieutenant Cole had never seen combat. But he was sure he could deal with a small crowd of unruly Mexicans. After all, he had eight men armed with M16A2 semiautomatics under his command. Cole put on his helmet, smoothed out his crisply ironed ascot, and ordered his men into the three reconditioned Humvees at his disposal.

  “Let’s move out,” he said over the lead Humvee’s radio. With the convoy under way, Cole turned to his driver. “Step on it, Baker. We don’t want to let this thing get out of hand.” As the driver accelerated, the young lieutenant envisioned his dramatic entrance:

  Bullhorn in hand, he’d emerge from the vehicle surrounded by a squad of armed troopers, the awed crowd quickly scattering as he ordered them to disperse…

  Drifting back from his daydream, Cole noticed they were closing fast on the crowd outside the liquor store. Too fast.

  “Stop, Baker! Stop!” Cole yelled.

  The startled driver slammed on the brakes, triggering a chain collision with the vehicles trailing close behind. Shaken but unhurt, Cole looked through the window at the laughing faces outside. Instead of arriving like the 7th Cavalry, they’d wound up looking like the Keystone Kops.

  Then a liquor bottle struck Cole’s Humvee. Like the opening drop of a summer downpour, it was soon followed by the deafening sound of glass bottles shattering against metal.

  “Let’s open up on these bastards, Lieutenant! They’re gonna kill us!” the driver shouted.

  Cole shook his head, realizing his plan had been a mistake. “Negative, Baker! We’re pulling out.”

  But before the lieutenant could grab the radio transmitter to relay his order, the driver’s window shattered.

  “I’m hit! I’m hit! Oh my God. I’m hit!” the driver shrieked, clutching his head. A cascade of blood flowed down Baker’s nose and cheeks. He’d suffered only a gash on the forehead from the broken glass, but all the same, it was as shocking as a mortal wound. Never one to stomach the sight of blood, Baker passed out, slumping into his seat.

  Cole couldn’t allow himself to panic; with no window and no driver he was far too vulnerable. Mind racing, he stared outside and soon noticed a group of shadowy figures crouching along the roof of the liquor store. Are they carrying weapons?

  “Listen up, people. I think we might have snipers on the roof! I repeat, snipers on the roof!” Cole yelled into the radio. “Let’s lock and load! Have your weapons ready to return fire!”

  On the verge of panic, the part-time soldiers fumbled nervously with their rifles as the drunken mob closed on the convoy, pounding against the vehicles.

  The window on Cole’s side caved in with a terrifying crash. The rattled young lieutenant was certain he now faced a life-or-death decision—and he was determined to save his men. With the radio still in hand, Lieutenant Edward Cole gave an order he would forever regret.

  “We’re under attack. Open fire!”

  When it was over, twenty-three people lay dead on the black pavement beneath the neon sign of the Rio Grande Carryout.

  “The Rio Grande Incident,” as it came to be known, led every newscast and spanned every front page from Boston to Beijing. Bloggers went into hyperdrive. Talk radio knew no other subject. Protests erupted in many American cities, usually flash mobs that drew a wide spectrum of extremists.

  Outside the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, tens of thousands chanting “Rio Grande” burned American flags alongside an effigy of Texas governor Jeff Bradley. Massive demonstrations multiplied across Latin America, Asia, and Europe in the days that followed. The prime minister of France called the confrontation “an appalling abuse of power.” Germany’s chancellor labeled it “barbaric.” Officials in China declared it “an unfortunate consequence of capitalist excess.”

  Fed by the media frenzy, the destruction and looting on San Antonio’s south side escalated. In less than a week, riots broke out in other Hispanic enclaves across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

  Many Americans were shocked by the sudden turmoil in the Southwest, yet in hindsight, the origins of the discontent were easy to see.

  As the United States entered the second decade of the twenty-first century, a severe recession was under way. With unemployment benefits running out, millions of Americans sought any kind of job, saturating low-rung job markets. From farms to fast-food chains, Hispanics were pitted against mainstream workers in a game of economic musical chairs.

  Only a few years earlier, the election of the nation’s first African-American president, Adam Elewa, had brought hope to Hispanics and all minorities. But Elewa was voted out after one term following a renewal of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Elewa’s successor, Carleton Brenner, resumed what many were calling the War on Terror II. With widespread public support, Brenner quickly launched a wave of overseas military deployments and stiffened border security.

  The tighter borders stemmed the flow of illegal immigrants. But the presence of millions of undocumented Hispanics already within the country was a political quagmire that remained unresolved. More significant, Latinos born in the U.S. had long overtaken immigration as the prime source of Hispanic growth thanks to birth rates that soared far above the mainstream average. The nation’s Hispanic population had exploded—and the lingering economic slump had created a powder keg of idle, restless youth.

  Fear of this perplexing ethnic bloc among mainstream Americans had given rise to an escalating backlash. Armed vigilante groups patrolling the Mexican border had shot and killed border crossers on several occasions. Inside the border, anyone with a swarthy complexion was not much safer. Assaults by Anglo gangs against Hispanics caught in the wrong neighborhood were now commonplace. “Amigo shopping,” the epidemic of muggings on illegal immigrants who always carried cash, was rarely investigated by police. Graffiti deriding Hispanics was a staple in schools and workplaces. Another burning cross in the yard of a Latino home was no longer news.

  Meanwhile, politicians had discovered a wellspring of nativist passion. In a scramble for votes, a deluge of anti-immigration and “English only” ordinances had been passed over the last decade by state and local governments as Washington’s inability to resolve the thorny immigration issue continued. Most of these laws were struck down by federal judges. Yet local politicians persisted in passing new ones. The strident nativist vote was too powerful to resist. This conflicting patchwork of laws created an unforeseen side effect. Fleeing the legislative backlash, most Hispanics—both legal and illegal—were now concentrated in “safe haven” communities, usually in crowded urban areas.

  Out
raged by the growing attacks against Hispanics and seeing the anti-immigrant laws as thinly veiled bullying, Latino community leaders in the Southwest had grown increasingly militant. Protest marches and rallies were on the rise. Hispanic separatists, once only fringe groups at the marches, were visibly growing in number. A favorite banner at many of these events reflected an attitude gaining in popularity: “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”

  Now, in a sweltering July, these long-smoldering elements were reaching the flashpoint in the nation’s teeming barrios.

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT:

  Day 12

  Manolo Suarez awoke to the crash of breaking glass.

  Through the bedroom’s lone window, opened to the stifling heat, he heard the shrill wail of a burglar alarm and loud, angry voices. Mano glanced at the glowing clock. It was 12:27 a.m.

  Rosa lay naked against his side, using his brawny biceps for a pillow. Mano gently moved his wife aside and stepped out of bed.

  “Wake up, querida,” he said, pulling a T-shirt over his chiseled torso.

  Rosa stirred, still torpid from their lovemaking less than an hour earlier. “Mano? What’s going on?”

  “There’s rioting outside. I’m going to take a look. Move the children into the living room—away from the windows,” he said as he finished dressing.

  From the courtyard of his apartment building on East Fourth Street in Los Angeles, Mano watched the mob, surprised by its makeup. The main source of violence was a few dozen teens at the edge of the crowd. They were hurling bricks, bottles, and stones at the shops along Fourth Street. Behind the teenagers were small groups of adults shouting encouragement, waiting for a chance to grab anything of value. Most people on the street were simply milling around, watching curiously, drifting with the action.

  Near the back of the crowd, Mano spotted a familiar face. Eddie Paz was loitering with two other men, sharing swigs from a bottle of Cutty Sark. Eddie had been a lot boy at the dealership where Mano worked as a mechanic—until the business had gone under five months earlier.