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  “Suarez!” Eddie slurred. “Come here, man!”

  Hoping to learn more about the mob, Mano waded into the mass of bodies. At six foot three and a hard two hundred sixty, he plowed easily through the crowd.

  “Take a swig!” Eddie said, holding out the bottle as Mano approached.

  “No thanks, Eddie,” Mano shouted over the noise. “How long has this been going on?” he asked, gesturing to the chaos around them.

  “I dunno, man,” Eddie said, staggering closer, booze on his breath. “Me and the guys were tossing down a few back at Paquito’s and heard all this racket about an hour ago. Been checking out the scene ever since.”

  “I’m surprised to see you out here doing this, Eddie. You’ve got a family to support.”

  “Hey, man, I think it’s a shame these kids are tearing up the barrio,” Eddie said indignantly. “A lot of these businesses are owned by Latinos. They don’t deserve this shit. But what can I do about it, man?”

  “What you can do, Eddie, is go home. Hanging around out here only gives these cholos safety in numbers,” Mano said and walked away.

  Rosa used her nightgown to wipe a tear from Elena’s cheek. The trembling five-year-old clung to her mother on the worn living room couch, terrified by the angry screams and crashes outside.

  “Where’s Papi?” the half-awake child asked, suddenly noticing her father’s absence.

  “Papi will be back soon,” Rosa cooed soothingly, hoping it was true. She knew Mano could take care of himself on the street. He’d done it all his life. But this rioting was something new, something that made no sense.

  Rosa glanced at Pedro and Julio tucked into the pallets she’d laid out on the living room floor. The noise outside had energized her sons, their brown eyes flashing with each new swell in the din.

  When Mano entered the front door, Rosa stifled a sigh of relief to avoid alarming the children.

  “Make the people stop, Papi,” Elena cried, pointing outside.

  Mano stroked his daughter’s cheek. “It’s OK, m’hijita. You’re safe in here. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  Ten-year-old Pedro sat up excitedly. “I want to go out and riot with you, Papi.”

  “Me, too,” said Julio, who, at eight, was always eager to follow his big brother.

  “I did not go outside to riot, Pedro. I went outside to make sure we weren’t in danger.”

  “But everybody at school says rioting is tight, Papi. You know, so people will listen to us Hispanics. It’s on the news and everything.”

  “What they’re doing outside is senseless, Pedro,” Mano said calmly. “They’re attacking places that provide us jobs. Rioting isn’t going to make people listen to Hispanics, m’hijo. It’s going to make things worse.”

  Rosa stroked her son’s forehead. “Pedro, you’ve seen your father looking for work every day for the last five months. Do you think this rioting is going to help him find a job?”

  The boy lowered his eyes. “No, Mami,” he said softly, settling back under the covers.

  Rosa could sense the tug of excitement the rioting had on her boys, an undertow she would have to guide them to resist. Drugs, crime, the gangs, and now this pointless violence—it was one more danger her kids would face. Asking God for the strength and patience to protect them was always first in the prayers she said daily. “Close your eyes, m’hijo,” she said, gently smoothing Pedro’s blankets.

  The boy blinked drowsily a few times—then his eyes widened suddenly as the shriek of sirens joined the din outside.

  “All of you stay here,” Mano said, rising to his feet. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

  Without a view of the street from the living room, Mano went to the kitchen window. The pulsing red lights of emergency vehicles glowed against the wall of the warehouse next door. Moving to the bedroom window at the back of their apartment, Mano was alarmed to see the flickering yellow reflection of flames on the building behind them.

  Trying to determine the source of the fire, Mano heard a series of dull thumps coming from the street. He recognized the sound of tear gas canisters and could tell from the sudden drop in voices that the crowd was in retreat. Soon pale smoke was seeping into their apartment.

  By the time Mano reached the living room, Rosa and the children were already coughing. “Get the children into the bathroom,” he called out to Rosa. “Seal the door with wet towels, then wet down some washcloths and breathe through them.” Mano leaned close to Rosa, speaking softly so the children could not hear. “I saw flames outside. Keep the children ready to move in case the fire spreads.”

  Rosa’s eyes flared with alarm for a moment, then she composed herself and nodded calmly. She led the children into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Feeling as if his eyes were being boiled, Mano rushed into their bedroom and ripped the sheet from the bed. After soaking the fabric in the kitchen sink, he jammed the dripping cloth under the front door. From a wet kitchen towel, he fashioned a gas mask for himself and began patrolling the windows.

  Inside the cramped bathroom, Rosa coughed violently as she prepared wet-cloth masks for the children before making one of her own. She sealed the bathroom door, then herded the kids into the bathtub, trying to keep them comfortable but alert. Sitting on the edge of the tub, she began a familiar nursery rhyme. “Palomita blanca, pico de coral,” she recited, playfully patting each of their heads in time with the verse. “Pidele al Señor que no llueva más.” The children giggled and joined in, their squeaky voices muffled by the cloths. For the next hour Rosa led them through the many cancionitas she’d learned from her mother.

  Although Rosa spoke little Spanish and barely understood the meaning of these nursery rhymes she’d passed on to her children, their familiar rhythm was always reassuring—especially tonight. After more than an hour, the children were struggling to stay awake, their heads lolling. Rosa was relieved when she heard Mano’s voice from the other side of the bathroom door.

  “It’s OK. You can come out now,” he said.

  Moving away the wet towels, Rosa cautiously opened the door. The noise outside had ended and the air was clear. With gentle pats and soothing whispers, she led her exhausted children to their bedroom, tucked them in, and returned to the living room.

  “Ay, Dios mio, look at this mess,” Rosa said, shaking her head. While stanching the gas, Mano had toppled her shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The painted statuette had survived the fall, but the glass-encased votive candle flanking La Virgen Morena had shattered, littering the floor with globs of wax. Stuck to the hardening mess were grains of rice from the small offering of food Rosa kept at the shrine. “Our Lady fell but she didn’t break. That’s a good sign,” Rosa whispered as she began cleaning up.

  “Leave that for the morning, querida. It can wait,” Mano said and then patted the cushion next to him on the frayed red couch. “Come here, Rosita. Sit with me.”

  Rosa settled next to her husband, leaning her head on his beefy shoulder as Mano kissed her hair softly. They said nothing, content with the warmth and nearness of each other. During their twelve years of marriage these intimate moments of silence had become a refuge, an escape from stress and worries.

  But tonight their closeness did not calm Rosa. This rioting was threatening her family—and she could not understand why the people in their barrio seemed bent on such mindless destruction. Of course life is hard for Latinos; it always has been. So why start burning and looting now? she wondered.

  Rosa knew she made little effort to keep up with events outside their home. She rarely watched the news or read a paper. Her world was her family. She had three children and a husband to feed and keep healthy. She trusted God to take care of the rest. Her isolation was born out of long habit. The only child of a single parent, Rosa had spent much of her childhood caring for her mother, who’d been paralyzed by MS when Rosa was eight. Only after her mother’s death had she consented to Mano’s patient courtship, giving her life a new focus.
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br />   Even today, her travels in the barrio were along well-worn paths between home, shopping, and church. This rioting, however, was forcing Rosa into a realization she was not eager to accept: there was something going on around her she had not yet grasped.

  She raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. “All this rioting, Mano… What’s made people so angry?”

  Mano slowly rubbed his jaw, mulling her question. “I think it’s more than one thing, Rosita,” he said softly. “To begin with, I’m not the only one who’s looking for a job.”

  “Yes, I know that, mi amor. But the streets have been full of teenagers with nothing to do for the last few years. Why now?”

  Mano stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I’ve heard some people say that shutting down the Metro lines in L.A. was done to spite Hispanics… and to keep our kids out of the malls.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  Mano shrugged. “I don’t know, querida. But I think this trouble has been building up for a while. A lot of hotheads were upset when they cut off Social Security for non-citizens last year. And there are people who think all these ‘English only’ laws are a slap at Latinos, too.”

  “Yes, but is that any reason to riot?”

  “Life has always been tough for Hispanics, querida. And right now, it’s hard to find work. I can understand why a lot of Latinos are angry. But destroying other people’s property isn’t going to make things easier.”

  Rosa stared at her hands and sighed. “What are we going to do, Mano?” she asked. “It could be a long time before you find another job.”

  Mano smiled. “The only way to find work is to look for it.”

  His confidence lifted her mood. “Well, if you’re going to look for work tomorrow, it’s way past your bedtime,” Rosa said, patting his muscled back. “What time should I wake you up, mi amor?”

  “The same time as always.”

  “Mano, you can’t get up at five forty-five after being up half the night.”

  “My job now is to find a job, remember? That’s been our game plan and we should stick to it,” Mano said, then effortlessly lifted her from the couch and carried her to their bed. “You lay down, querida. The kids are going to need you tomorrow. I want to stay up for a while.”

  After Rosa was asleep, Mano returned to his rounds, scanning the darkness for signs of trouble until the glow of dawn emerged above the buildings. Convinced the danger was finally over, he moved to the living room and turned on the television, keeping the volume down.

  “… the East Los Angeles area now appears calm after the second night of rioting,” the newscaster was saying. The camera panned across Mano’s neighborhood from a high point downtown. Several plumes of dark smoke were rising in the hazy dawn. “The LAPD is advising commuters to avoid the area…”

  Mano stared absently at the TV. For a long time, he’d dreamt of buying a house, a place with a bedroom for each child and a yard where they could play. This morning, as he sat on the wax-stained couch, the dream seemed blurry and distant. This barrio was already a dangerous place for his family. The rioting would only make it worse.

  When the TV station cut to a car commercial, a chilling thought crossed Mano’s mind. Had their station wagon survived the riot? His family’s only vehicle was parked around the corner of the building, out of sight from their apartment.

  Locking the door behind him, Mano made his way through the courtyard of the apartment complex, pausing at the threshold. Fourth Street was deserted, its pavement blanketed with stones, bricks, and bottles. Every street-facing window was broken. Several cars were overturned and torched, black smoke rising from their smoldering tires. Mano broke into a run. Rounding the corner of his building, he was devastated by what he saw.

  All four cars in the parking lot had been torched, including the aging Taurus station wagon for which he still owed eleven payments.

  Mano was now without wheels and jobless in Los Angeles—a city that had ended all public transportation.

  As San Antonio’s turmoil spread from Los Angeles across the Southwest, publications of every political stripe offered explanations for the disturbances.

  The Washington Post claimed the rioting had been triggered by a recent congressional bill making English the nation’s official language, in effect eliminating all Spanish-language versions of public documents and ending national support for bilingual education. Coming on the heels of earlier legislation that terminated Social Security benefits for non-citizens, the Post said these new laws “exposed the hidden rage lurking in the barrios.”

  The Wall Street Journal suggested that our once-porous borders and unrestricted immigration were responsible for “the crowded, crime-ridden ghettos within our cities, now erupting into violence.”

  An article in Time countered that Hispanics had not yet learned to flex their political muscle. The rioting was “an unfocused attempt to voice the nascent political influence of this emerging power bloc.”

  Blogs cited a long list of combustible elements for the disturbances, including the high unemployment rate the last six years, an exceptionally hot summer, and even Mayan prophecies about the end of time. Many found parallels to similar movements around the world—the Basques in Spain, Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka, the Quebecois in Canada, the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey, the implosion of the Soviet Union, and the ethnic clashes of the Balkans.

  Whatever the causes, two months after the Rio Grande Incident, riots were now nightly events in many barrios of the U.S. Southwest.

  THE RIO GRANDE INCIDENT:

  Month 2, Day 4

  The vu-phone rang, playing the opening of Beethoven’s Für Elise.

  Ernesto Alvarez flicked aside his half-smoked Kool and flipped open the vu-phone’s cover. Instead of a live image of the caller, the words “secure mode” flashed on the display. Nesto brought the toy-like instrument to his ear.

  “Yeah,” he said with studied nonchalance. Under the streetlights, he listened distractedly, admiring the collection of crude tattoos on his hand. “Cool,” he said finally and slipped the vu-phone back into his baggy pants.

  “It’s set,” Nesto announced to the three teenagers slouching against the playground fence. A faint orange glow washed over their pubescent faces as they dragged hard on their Kools. None of them were over sixteen.

  Tonight would be their salto, an initiation to prove they were daring enough to become vatos in Nesto’s gang, El Farol.

  El Farol had emerged in East Los Angeles during the early ’80s as families fleeing the death squads of El Salvador found another source of intimidation in their new home—Mexican street gangs. The gang’s current mero mero, Nesto, had already instructed the boys on their salto—and they were eager to begin.

  “De verdad, Nesto? The guns will be ready?” asked Freddie Estevez, oldest of the boys.

  Nesto moved within inches of Freddie’s face. “I’m only going to tell you this once, Frederico,” he whispered. “In El Farol, you never question the word of your mero mero. Entiendes?”

  “Sí, Nesto,” Freddie said, lowering his eyes.

  “OK, now get the fuck outta here. You know what you need to do.”

  After the boys hurried away, Nesto silently asked himself again if he was making a smart move. This gig could bring some major heat down on El Farol—and on him. But the opportunity was too sweet to turn down. First, there was the money. The twenty thousand he’d been offered to stir up some trouble had been impossible to resist. But the brilliant part was in taking this play far beyond its original intent and turning it into a warning to the other gangs crowding his turf. The sheer cojones of this salto would send a message to his rivals: El Farol is too tough to be messed with.

  Sure, it was risky. But Nesto knew the gangs would honor their code of silence. And with all the rioting and looting, there was little chance of being caught.

  Ten minutes after leaving Nesto, the boys reached their destination: the roof above the Casa Mia restaurant. As Nesto had promise
d, the black plastic garbage bag was already there and Freddie opened it eagerly. Inside were three loaded .38s.

  After Freddie distributed the revolvers, the boys squatted behind the low wall along the front of the roof, their eyes fixed on the Best Help drugstore across the street, already closed for the night. Before long, a rusting Mercury Cougar pulled into the drugstore’s parking lot.

  A man emerged from the car and methodically doused the vehicle with a can of gasoline. After throwing the empty can into the backseat, he struck a match, flung it at the car, and casually walked away.

  As Nesto had predicted, the burning car quickly drew a crowd. Freddie recognized several members of El Farol shouting angrily among the onlookers, trying to incite them. It wasn’t difficult.

  Someone smashed a window, triggering the drugstore’s burglar alarm. The impotent ringing did little to deter the mob. More windows were broken and several men assaulted the front door.

  When the boys heard sirens in the distance, they dropped to their bellies. By the time the fire and police vehicles arrived, the would-be vatos at the edge of the roof were peering through the drainage holes in the wall like troops at the gun slits of a fortress.

  Nesto had told them to choose targets without body armor and wait until the police were firing tear gas to mask the sound of their shots. Freddie would give the command to fire.

  To Freddie, the policemen visible through the small opening were unreal figures—shooting at them was like playing Vice City 5. As he’d done countless times at the arcade, he lined up the target’s torso in his gunsight.

  “Now!” Freddie shouted and squeezed the trigger.

  The man in his sight arched his shoulders and slumped to the ground. “Let’s go!” Freddie said after hearing the guns of the boys beside him. Nesto had been clear: take one shot and get out.

  The boys crawled away from the wall, dropped into the alley behind the restaurant, and ran. In a secluded gravel lot two blocks away, Nesto waited for them in his car. Driving away slowly, Nesto said solemnly, “You have brought honor to El Farol. You are now men, and my brothers, carne de mi carne.”