Photo by OCW staffWhen Nativo Lopez recently announced that he was seeking assistance to fend off a political attack, the Latino activist received support from an unlikely backer: a website that had previously Jew–baited the non-Jewish Lopez.
Lopez is facing a recall campaign as member of the Santa Ana Unified School District Board. The recall requires 8,600 signatures to force a special election early next year and was launched by residents who claim Lopez's policies hurt schoolchildren.
The recall has been marked by angry charges and countercharges of fraud. Lopez opponents have villified their target as a lawless Mexican nationalist. At a Sept. 24 board meeting, Lopez's allies fired back. They asked the board (and the DA) to investigate allegations that recall leaders have violated election laws, spread lies and even improperly used a photo of Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez posing with anti-Lopez campaigners.
Lopez, who was targeted by Republicans for unproven voter-fraud allegations in 1996, believes he is under siege.
“I have been targeted by the most extremist conservative wing of the Republican Party in Orange County,” Lopez wrote in a July 23 letter to supporters under the title of his PAC “Kids and Parents for Nativo Lopez.” “I want to tell you that we refuse to be intimidated, cowed or bullied by the well-financed EXTREMISTS.”
Quick to pledge support was Hector Carreón, the paranoid anti-Semitic, anti-homosexual, anti-logic Whittier resident who runs La Voz de Aztlán (www.aztlan.net), an ostensibly Chicano website notorious for intimidation. Carreón said he believed Lopez didn't realize the power of those opposing him. “I am writing to express my opinion,” Carreón wrote in his Sept. 4 letter to Lopez, “that your analysis did not go far enough to pinpoint the political forces that are actually behind the effort to oust you and others like you who are fighting for the educational rights of Mexican immigrant children.”
Carreón's theory? It's the Jews. “There is more to why we are in the state we are in than meets the eye!” Carreón excitedly trumpeted in his letter. He then tied together Proposition 227's Ron Unz; Gloria Matta Tuchman; Michael Eisner-owned radio stations; two unnamed individuals that “you (Lopez) may consider friends”; the Weekly; the former director of national affairs for the American Jewish Committee; the Democratic, Republican and Mexico's ruling PAN parties; me; talk-show host Dennis Prager; anti-immigrant loudmouth Glenn Spencer; and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles as all being part of a Jewish conspiracy against Lopez and other Latino officials. “I hope that you are starting to get the picture,” Carreón advises to Lopez. “Need I say more?”
Carreón's attempt to assist Lopez represents a change in philosophy for La Voz. In an Aug. 8, 2001, letter, Carreón accused Lopez's Hermandad Mexicana Nacional of kowtowing to Jewish influences and “defending the deviant, perverted, sinful and decadent homosexual lifestyle” that La Voz claims comes from Jews. The same letter also pointed out that Hermandad founder Bert Corona was married to a Judia (female Jew) and that Carreón was now wondering “how much this has to do with Hermandad also pushing the [homosexual] issue.” Lopez never bothered to dignify Carreón's accusations.
In an e-mail to me, Carreón denied Jew-baiting Lopez in the past, innocuously replying that he was merely trying to enlighten Lopez to the Zionist scheme for world domination. He then called me stupid and a faggot.
“We assumed that he may not be aware that Ron Unz is a Jew and that his lackey Gloria Matta Tuchman is married to one,” Carreón wrote to the Weekly. “Listen, pendejo . . . don't you have better things to write about than La Voz de Aztlán?”
