Dear Anaheim Cholos: Stop Shooting Each Other And Screwing It Up for the Rest of the City's Mexicans


Dear Anaheim cholos:

You don't know me since few of you read the Weekly (for some bizarre reason, most of you read the Orange County Register as evidenced by your many comments over there), but I probably know your older brothers, cousins, or maybe even fathers–the previous generations of the gangs that passed through Sycamore Junior High and Anaheim High during the 1990s, the last time there was a big wave of gang violence in my beloved hometown. I get why you click–turf, respect, raza, blah blah blah.

But here's the problem: your throwdowns with each other are fucking it up for the rest of the city's Mexicans, at a time when they can't afford it. And if you fuck it up for them, you're going fuck yourselves for good in a way that makes the rape scene in American Me seem as pleasant as pruno.
]

Here's the background for non-cholos: for the past couple of years, gangs in Anacrime have escalated their turf wars, targeting innocents but mostly each other. Anaheim police have responded in kind, with arrests, raids, and more than a few killings of said cholos–some supposedly warranted (police claim suspect aimed a gun), most not (most of the killings involved suspects who were unarmed). All of this blew up this summer, of course, with riots involving a whole bunch of folks for various reasons, and the subsequent national attention.

But while one would assume that you cholos would keep some sort of truce under intense scrutiny by cops and a Latino community tired of their shit, the opposite has happened: you can't stop shooting each other with impunity, especially around my old neighborhood near Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Coker reported on a 14-year-old killed two weeks ago, a 14-year-old cops say was a cholo, and there was just another shooting around that area this past Friday–and this came on the heels of two officer-involved shootings in the same area involving gang members. All in October.


Now, I know a lot of Anaheim Mexicans who are cheering ustedes on–they want you to kill yourselves off and leave the city for good. I'm not one of those, because I'm a raging liberal who cares for everyone (which makes me, as one of you called me when I once jumped in to save a kid from being beat up from three of you, a “fucking faggot”). But here's the problem: you shooting each other is scaring voters into going for the candidate who promises to crack down on ustedes as hard as possible. And that candidate is some vendido named Steve Lodge.

The last thing any Mexican–or anyone, for that matter–needs in this city is Lodge. He's problems for cholos, because he's promising to eradicte ustedes, which makes him popular for all the gabachos and Mexicans scared of cholos. But he's also a problem for those gabachos and Mexicans, because Lodge is a dirty cop who's favored by a bunch of corrupt assholes. And Lodge is already using ustedes to exploit scared voters into voting for him–every time you go after each other, you convince more people to side with Lodge. And if Lodge gets elected, heaven help all of Anaheim–and you're going to have beef with way more people than each other and the pigs.

So…stop shooting each other. I'd say stop shooting each other for good, but that'll probably never happen–so can you at least stop shooting each other until after the election? Yeah, you hate BST or AVLS, or Travelers, or Westside, or CST, or Lopers–oh, wait, that last one's SanTana. But we can't have your kind fuck it up for the rest of the city's Mexicans–not ever, of course, but especially not right now. If you can stop shooting each other for a week, I promise to call into Art Laboe's show and dedicate “Smile Now, Cry Later” to ustedes–or even “18 With a Bullet.” Deal?

Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *