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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 Gonzalez is posed as the frontrunning choice of the president to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the recent resignation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It would be a just, and culminating, reward for a guy of humble Chicano origins who’s stood by his jefe (Gonzalez, as Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Bush of Texas, even got his boss excused from jury duty!), and who has assimilated the very political persona of his patron. The Hispanic community is beginning to show cracks in pushing for or pulling away from a Gonzalez appointment. The more moderate conservatives are for, progressives against, with South Floridians even calling for a South Florida (read Cuban-American) appointment. 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 those origins and personal coordinates, as well as their experiences of hardship here, onto a crinkled 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., and all other comers, “What have you done for me lately?” Gonzalez, 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 many to an early grave, including a retarded man and a man whose public defender was asleep during the trial! Another plum reaped by his loyalty to Bush was to be named Special Liaison on Mexican and Border Issues, where he was quickly accused by Mexican legislators of “indifference” to Mexicans’ health and safety for pushing to put up a nuclear waste dump near the border. Pal Al is probably best known for trashing human rights and international law, dismissing the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete”, and sanctioning the torture of terror suspects interned by the U.S. on foreign shores. Has he forgotten that his own roots lay on the other side? Is he too short-sighted—or rabid--to see that such abridgements fuel the fire for the hatred turned on us in Afghanistan and Iraq killing, again in disproportion, Latinos? And, by shilling for the energy companies as well as keeping hearings on their nefarious doings secret (Gonzalez was counsel at Enron for 13 years, accepting contributions from both Enron and Halliburton while in office), 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 rises commensurate with whom your daddy knows and how much he promises to bequeath? Can’t we give a guy or a gal a break every once in a while? Gonzalez’s view of a CEO of justice is certainly a narrower one than was Thurgood Marshall’s, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, who brought to the Court a fierce and eloquent vigilance against injustice. The Gonzalez mission, regrettably, as expressed to his cheerleaders at La Raza, is knee-jerk and circumscribed: “to defend the promise of America from its enemies, both foreign and domestic.” Emilio Garza, another of George Arbusto’s Texas hombres, currently sitting on the 5th Circuit, is more palatable to Latinos of the ultra-right. A staunch states’ rightist who supports states’ options to outlaw abortion, he has routinely upheld Texas executions; he’s judged against restrictions on clear-cutting Texas forest land; and 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, will any homeboy do? Is theirs a choice of 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. This 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? Or 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.) Gonzalez’ 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. 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 rulers 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 protect 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 are the victory and the pride if Gonzalez, 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 University v. U.S.? Will Latinos be proud of a legacy of shriveling 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! What’s more important to you? That the new Supreme Court Justice recognize the struggle of minorities and promote the values of equal rights and broad civil liberties, or that there be Latino-American representation on the Court?
Other Readings of Interest
* Semantically, one would have to say that we’ve already had a Hispanic on the bench, but not a Latino. Justice Benjamin Cardozo, appointed in 1932, was of Sephardic Jewish origin and would therefore be viewed as a Hispanic, but not a Latino.
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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.