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All the President’s HombresCommentary
"Al Gonzales is a great friend of mine," a peeved George Bush told USA Today last week. And, in calling off the radical right dogs snapping at the heels of his buddy for being too “liberal” on abortion and affirmative action--if nothing else--Bring-em-on Bush shamed the rank breakers further: "When a friend gets attacked, I don't like it." Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is posed as the frontrunning choice of the president to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It would be a just, and culminating, reward for a little guy who’s stood by his hombre (Gonzales, as Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Bush of Texas, even got his boss excused from jury duty!), and who’s assimilated the very political persona of his patron. The Hispanic community is beginning to show cracks in pushing for or pulling away from a Gonzales appointment. The more moderate conservatives are for, progressives against, with South Floridians even calling for a South Florida (read Cuban-American) nominee. But Latinos come in every shape and size, every religious and non-religious persuasion, all races and of as many ethnic origins as North Americans—just open a Mexico City or Lima phone book for proof—and they funnel their origins and personal coordinates, as well as their experiences of hardship here, onto a shattered mirror of values, beliefs and traditions. The one thing, however, that unites the evangelicos with the independentistas is that a Latino be named.* But before championing a candidate for just boasting a Hispanic surname, Latinos might do well to ask A.G. the AG, and all other comers, “What have you done for me lately?” Gonzales, while the Guv’s special counsel in Texas, advised his boss on executions in this killingest of all states in which a disproportionate number of the executed are of Hispanic origin. His counsel sent to an early grave a retarded man as well as a man whose public defender was asleep during the trial! Pal Al’s’ trashing of human rights and international law, dismissing the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete” when applied to terror suspects interned by the U.S. on foreign shores, suggests he forgets that his own parents were born on the other side, and that he is too short-sighted to see that such abridgements fuel the fire for the kind of hatred of us coming home to roost in Afghanistan and Iraq and killing, again in disproportion, Latinos. And, by shilling for the energy companies (Halliburton, Enron, for whom he was counsel for 13 years, accepting contributions from both while in office), as well as keeping hearings on their nefarious doings secret, he insures higher prices at the gas pump, unchecked energy bills, and more darkened homes and streets in California and elsewhere. On affirmative action, from this purview, it looks like he’s been wishy-washy at best. So what if we all can’t make Harvard Law? Should we let the Ivy Leagues revert to country club schools where your LSAT score is who your daddy knows and how much he promises to bequeath? Gonzales’s view of a CEO of justice is certainly a narrower one than Thurgood Marshall’s, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, who brought to the Court a fierce and eloquent vigilance against injustice. The Gonzales mission, on the other hand, as expressed to his cheerleaders at La Raza, is knee-jerk and pedestrian: “to defend the promise of America from its enemies, both foreign and domestic.” Emilio Garza, another of Arbusto’s Texas hombres, currently sitting on the 5th Circuit, is more palatable to Latinos of the ultra-right. A staunch states’ rightist, he has routinely upheld Texas executions, he’s judged against restrictions on clear-cutting Texas forest land, he refused to hold accountable, in three cases, Texas schools for not protecting three schoolgirls raped BY THEIR TEACHERS on school grounds. La Raza, LULAC, and the Hispanic National Bar Association all endorsed Al for AG. Why would they swallow whatever this unfriendly administration shoves down their throat when there are, of course there are, truly Latino-friendly and highly qualified candidates to promote? For them, would any home boy do? Would they rather choose patronage over people? The ad hoc group, Hispanics for Fair Judiciary and the Dems, for example, are proffering two middle-of-the-road, if not progressive choices, Judge Edward Prado, also of the 5th Circuit, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court in New York. The clamoring for a Hispanic judge begs the question “who is a Latino”? Merely someone who is self-identified? Someone who self-identifies when there’s something to gain? Someone who speaks only Spanish at home, prepares rompope for Christmas, and has an icon of la Virgen de Guadalupe over the bed? (Substitute comparable trappings for Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Colombian-Americans and all up and down the line.) Gonzales’ CV points to heading one major Hispanic Organization—the Houston Hispanic Bar Association --president for, count ‘em up, one year--yet he is forever being paraded about by Hispanic groups as the greatest, most Latinest thing to hit our shores since Desi Arnaz. The creds are hardly convincing. In calling for a Latino seat on the Court, do we want a company man or someone who identifies with the struggle all people of the Spanish diaspora have had to wage here since the loss of Nueva España? Don’t we need someone who strives to make common cause with others short-shrifted by the majority powers of this land? Don’t we need a Latino justice, no matter the associations belonged to or lionized by, who would adjudicate against racial profiling, English-only laws, would instigate for bilingual education and the rights of immigrants and farm workers, and bring dignity back to the right to unionize? Or finally hear the case against Jose Padilla? Where is the victory and the pride if Gonzales, or Garza, or any Latino sitting on that most august bench, doesn’t step up to the plate for Latinos and argue for their people, for all people, as did Marshall in Brown v. Board of Ed. (not yet on the Court, he argued the case for the N.A.A.C.P.), or the United Steelworkers of America v. U.S., or Bob Jones U. v. U.S.? Can Latinos be proud of a legacy of shrinking human and civil rights and aggrandized corporate greed? What a shame, indeed, if the first Latino to sit on the Supreme Court is likened more to Clarence Thomas than to Thurgood Marshall!
Other Readings of Interest
What’s more important to you? That the new Supreme Court Judge recognize the struggle of minorities and promote the values of equal rights and broad civil liberties, or that there is Latino-American representation on the Court?
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Carol
Amoruso has had several vocational callings over the years. She's
taught young children, run volunteer programs for seniors, had a
catering business, designed clothes. Ultimately, she found that
nothing engaged and challenged her the way writing has. She's
written every day since childhood, professionally since 1990. Her
involvement in the arts, society and politics of Africa, the
Caribbean, and the Latin World have been the most inspiring and her
work concentrates on those areas. She travels extensively but lives
in New York City.