Well, in the Coachella Valley, at least. While tens of thousands of scraggly music fans were gearing up to watch Rage Against the Machine reunite on the last day of everyone's favorite music festival, the FBI was busy announcing a drug sting in the surrounding Coachella Valley that resulted in 16 arrests, including an alleged Mexican Mafia shot-caller, Jose Chavez Huerta:
Federal officials said Huerta, who lives in Thermal, collected "taxes" from dealers who operated in his territory and provided a share of his profits to his Mexican Mafia sponsor, Richard Aguirre. Aguirre is incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, where he is serving a life sentence for murder. Huerta is charged with conspiracy to possess narcotics and possession with intent to distribute narcotics.
On another front, Tanya Hernandez is back with another Latino-demonizing op-ed, this time down-graded to the L.A. Daily News, where she uses the anniversary of the 1992 L.A. Riots to contend that the rise of Latino-on-black violence in Los Angeles can be attributed to U.S.-born Latinos' particular societal position and their overall anti-black bias.
This argument gets dismissed on the comment string at blackprof.com. Hernandez seems mystified by the "vast numbers" of residents who told two L.A. filmmakers that there is no epic racialized struggle betweens blacks and Latinos in L.A. Those people, like the rest of us who are committed to coalition-building, probably know instinctually that there are other ways to address tensions naturally brought by dramatic demographic shifts. Fanning them with racial generalizations, non-arguments, and academic-speak is not one of them.