WINTER
2003
NORTE-SUR
CALIFORNIA'S WAR IN THE FIELDS
A
Long Road to Delano
Part
3 of 3
Julia
Reynolds and
George Sánchez
Center for Investigative Reporting / Centro de Periodismo
de Investigación
“Then
Cain was driven out for murder? … I can’t get over a feeling
that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.”
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
 |
|
| Cap's Saloon,
old town Salinas photo, Salinas Police |
The
gang murder at Cap’s Saloon took place on an evening that
was unusually warm for late spring in the Salinas Valley. May is a month
when the air is cool, suspended in a lull between the rainy and dry seasons,
when if all has gone well, the early lettuce and strawberry crops are
in and the valley’s migrant workers are once again employed.
Cap’s sits in Old Town, plunked between the great contrasts that
are Salinas— on one side is the gleaming new Steinbeck Center and
beyond it, the shabby ruin of old Chinatown, now the home of prostitutes
and heroin dealers. To the south lies the one-story Salinas Police building,
where gang unit officers feel they are soldiers in their town’s
war on terror.
The saloon is a relic of the city’s roustabout past. Inside is a
card room where older Asian, Black, Anglo and Latino men play California
Lowball, Pan Poker or Texas Hold'em while younger patrons shoot pool in
a dark barroom papered in red velvet. Because it was warm that night,
the door was open to Gabilán Street. A bright-eyed teenager with
an easy smile was drinking and hanging around the pool table. Around nine
o’clock, he pulled out a gun and shot a man.
The death of Raymond Sánchez went mostly unnoticed, even in the
local press. Like other Northern California farm towns where gang crime
rates have risen sharply in the last ten years, Salinas has grown used
to such occurrences. Sánchez became the city’s 15th gang
homicide victim of the year, his murder a shameful episode in a major
FBI racketeering case in San Francisco, and the fate of his teenaged killer
just another example of a young life lost to gangs in this gentle valley
that Steinbeck once compared to Eden.
•••
“Lil Mando” was hanging out in Chinatown drinking most of
the day, and in the late afternoon he and his crew crossed the railroad
tracks to play pool at Cap’s.
People loved Lil Mando. Born Armando Tizok Frias nineteen years earlier,
he had greenish eyes and a broad smile. At Cap’s Saloon, a woman
in the bar who had beat him at pool took a liking to him and called him
“Mijo.”
The woman in the bar gave “Mijo” a big hug, which was no surprise,
since people often took to Armando. Except Ray Sánchez and his
friend Joe Cantú, who thought he was a young punk.
Through the fog of several Kamikazes and two Budweisers, Mando spotted
the guy he was supposed to kill. Sánchez sat on a barstool and
didn’t even recognize him. At least, that’s how it seemed
to Armando through his Kamikaze haze.
He drank, played pool and waited for instructions.
The tension between the gang and Sánchez had been building for
weeks. It had turned to war a few days earlier, when Armando and his boss
Roque pulled out a gun and tried to persuade Sánchez to share the
wealth from his Chinatown heroin trade with Nuestra Familia.
It was not a suggestion anyone would take lightly. Nuestra Familia, or
NF, is the strongest gang in Northern California, run from inside the
Gulag-like Security Housing Unit in Pelican Bay State Prison. Its revenues
come from robberies, gun and drug sales in agricultural towns like Stockton,
Visalia and Salinas, where seedy districts like old Chinatown generate
cash that flows from armies of teenaged gangbangers up to the illegal
banks of NF’s leaders in “The Bay.”
Armando was one of those teenagers. He was raised in the gangs of Salinas.
He learned about The Cause and about César Chávez, and also
about the history of Northern Chicanos in prisons who were ridiculed as
Farmeros and were abused and raped by the Mexican Mafia prison gang in
the 1960s. He learned about Sureños — Chicano street gangs
originally from Los Angeles whose ranks are now filled all over the state
by fresh Mexican immigrants. He knew that Sureños were his enemies,
and the Mexican Mafia often controlled them. He learned that Nuestra Familia
in the prisons and their affiliate, the Norteño gangs on the streets,
existed to protect him, his family, and his Raza from the Southern invaders.
He learned to shoot when he was six and got stoned when he was nine. His
dad had been a gangbanger and his uncle was a prominent member of NF.
Aunts, cousins and uncles were in gangs. Armando could almost joke that
California’s correctional facilities were kept in business by his
family.
In April 2001, Armando reported for duty the same day he paroled from
Youth Authority. He was assigned to Roque Martínez’s crew.
Their NF boss was a high-level commander one of them called “the
Big Homie,” a powerful man youngsters on the street never saw.
By May, the Salinas crew informed the Big Homie they were worried about
Raymond Sánchez. He was cutting into NF’s drug territory.
A witness said Sánchez showed up in Chinatown with “twenty
of his nephews,” and declared war on the NF. According to Frias,
a member of his gang called the Big Homie, who gave them a “green
light” to kill Sánchez. Besides Frias, three other members
of the Salinas gang later said that the Big Homie approved the hit.
And a few days later, on this May evening, there was Sánchez, sitting
on a barstool, not even caring that Armando was playing pool a few feet
behind him.
Roque drove up with the gun. Armando pulled on a black beanie, walked
back inside and waited till Joe Cantú stepped away from the bar.
Sánchez sat alone. Armando slipped behind the jukebox. Quickly,
he pulled the 9mm from his pants, and leapt out like a nervous cat, rushing
behind Sánchez and popping him once in the neck, near the base
of the head. Armando swirled and ran to the door, crashing into Ray’s
friend Joe, and he shot him, too. Outside, Roque picked him up and sped
away.
It was over in a few seconds. Sánchez bled out on the sidewalk
and died at the hospital within an hour. Joe Cantú lived to say
he wished he had beaten the crap out of that punk youngster.
 |
|
| Paramedics attempt
to save the life of Raymond Sánchez photo, Salinas Police |
•••
It only took a few weeks for Armando to be betrayed by his homeboys, who
all told the police he was the gunman. It didn’t help that the saloon’s
surveillance camera caught the whole thing on video. Armando never thought
to look up at the ceiling.
But the worst thing wasn’t getting caught – having grown up
in and out of detention, he was used to doing time. The pain came from
learning the hit he did for “The Cause” was actually for nothing
at all. He had shot a man for an organization he believed in, but its
oaths of loyalty were lies. There was only the sting of betrayal from
comrades who fingered him.
That was his first shock. Awaiting trial in jail, he was stunned again.
The news spread that while Armando was likely to spend his life in prison,
the Big Homie who gave the “green light” for the murder would
go free. The Big Homie, Armando learned, worked for the FBI. His name
was Daniel Hernández.
Frias pled guilty to the murder and was sentenced in October 2003 for
a term of 29 years to life. Hernández, on the other hand, is going
to become the star witness in a federal racketeering trial now underway
in San Francisco that was former US Attorney Robert Mueller’s last
major case before leaving California to head the FBI in 2001.
 |
|
| Frías
signs a plea agreement for the murder of Sánchez, accepting
a sentence of 29 to life. photo, Janjaap Dekker |
Hernández,
who was born in a working-class town near San Francisco, has a violent
history that includes assaults with deadly weapons, taking part in murder
plots and plotting with fellow gang members about killing two Santa Clara
County district attorneys. In grand jury testimony in 2000, a former cellmate
said Hernández ordered 17 gang-related stabbings while in prison.
In one prison fight, he left his battered victim lying in a sea of blood.
The six-foot-tall Hernández is nicknamed Lizard, but in NF he is
called by his Náhuatl name, Achillí. He has a bulky, muscled
build, a clean-shaved head and a long handlebar mustache. On his forehead,
there is a large lizard tattoo.
“The more tattoos and the bigger the moustache,” Armando says
an aunt told him, “the more of a coward.”
 |
|
| FBI informant
Daniel Hernandez, right, at a meeting where he sold a pound of marijuana
without the FBI's knowledge. photo, FBI |
Hernandez
loves the spotlight. In FBI undercover videos, he can be seen pontificating
in hour-long lectures to his subordinates.
“Success and money, that’s all we’re looking for,”
he told an NF gathering in a motel. “If you have concerns about
your old lady, then you’re in the wrong business. You’re running
with the wrong crowd. Women are expendable.”
In Dec. 2000, Hernández struck a deal with the FBI. Upon being
paroled after serving more than six years for assault, he would become
a paid informant and he would not be prosecuted for his role in the 1999
murder of Nuestra Familia dropout Robert Viramontes, according to his
agreement with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office.
For the FBI, Hernández was a huge catch. When he left prison, he
became Nuestra Familia’s “Street Regiment Commander”
in charge of all the gang’s operations outside prison.
Hernández would wear a recording device, tape telephone conversations
with gang members and set up organizational meetings in Northern California
that the FBI would secretly videotape.
“He was directed that any telephone calls he made, any meeting he
had with various NF members or associates, he was to record the conversations,”
FBI Special Agent Sean Ragan told a grand jury.
Hernández was paid $52,200 for seven months of FBI work. He agreed
to abide by Justice Department guidelines that said he must not commit
“unauthorized crimes.” The only crimes in which he could participate
were those approved by his FBI handlers, such as planned drug and gun
purchases.
At first, Hernández performed as expected, providing hours of incriminating
tapes. But by April 2001, he failed to record phone calls with gang members
and sometimes disappeared without telling his handlers.
Then in May, his Salinas street regiment shot and killed Raymond Sánchez.
Gang member Martín Ramírez was arrested and told police
that Hernández had given the order to hit Sánchez.
Hernández looked like the top suspect as the intellectual author
of the crime. It was only later that Ramírez and the Salinas police
learned that he worked for the FBI.
Ramírez also told police that Hernández had him pass on
an order to a gang member in jail that led to an inmate’s face getting
sliced to the bone, according to Salinas police documents.
By late June 2001, information from other informants began to emerge that
Hernández had not been truthful with his FBI handlers. When confronted,
Hernández admitted he had slipped away without permission on three
occasions in April to play golf in Stockton.
He later admitted the “golf” trip actually was to deliver
two pounds of methamphetamine to a cousin. He also admitted receiving
about $7,000 in drug sale and other criminal proceeds from gang members,
and to participating in other drug deals.
According to FBI reports, Hernández also told his FBI supervisors
that his Salinas regiment commander, Armando Santa Cruz, was distributing
more than a dozen guns to young gang members in town.
Armando Frias told La Jornada that in addition to himself, two other young
men received the guns and within months used the weapons in a murder and
an attempted murder, respectively. Salinas police sources say the FBI
never notified them that the guns were being passed out in the streets
of their city.
By late July, the Bureau stopped working with the problematic Hernández,
and he was arrested on a parole violation. He is now in protective custody
at an unknown location.
On Nov. 30, 2001, FBI agents overseeing Hernández wrote in one
of their final reports: “Source (Hernández) participated
in unauthorized criminal activity while under the direction of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.”
In 2004, Hernández is scheduled to testify for the government in
the 26-count RICO trials against the entire leadership of NF. The case
is expected to become a test of the FBI’s informant program.
“I’m not saying I’m innocent,” says Armando Frias.
“I’m not saying I’m this good person, that I never done
nothing wrong. But at the same time Daniel Hernández should have
been held accountable and the FBI should have been exposed for what they
did.”
Armando speculates that the FBI simply let the murder happen so they could
make a bigger bust.
 |
|
| Armando Frías
leaving the courthouse in Salinas for the last time. photo, Janjaap Dekker |
•••
Today, Armando is also disgusted with Nuestra Familia and its leaders.
Top NF members, once sworn to loyalty, have begun to turn and some will
testify against each other in the upcoming trial in San Francisco. Armando
is now considered “no good” by the gang, which makes him subject
to a potential hit at any time.
“I believed I was doing something right,” Armando says. “If
it took me to go and do the rest of my life in prison for this guy, for
doing something I believed in, oh well. Because that’s the sacrifice
I was willing to take and that’s how much I believed in the cause.”
Lately he has begun to think that maybe this whole war has been misguided.
“Sureños really ain’t no different from me,”
he says. “A real Sureño is pretty much the same as me. They’re
just from down south. I’m from up north. Their beliefs are different,
that’s all. ”
Even though he’s condemned to prison, Armando says he feels free
for the first time. He won’t have Nuestra Familia giving orders
and controlling his life.
Soon he will be on a long bus ride southward, through the central artery
of California’s agricultural empire, through dusty farm towns that
are the frontlines of this civil war between the state’s young Latinos.
He will go to the state prison in Delano, the place where the farm workers’
movement began, where Chávez led the first grape boycott and where
50,000 people mourned at his funeral.
Delano is where Chávez spent his first jail term in 1945, after
he refused to sit on the designated side for Mexicans and blacks in a
movie theater. “I made my home in that jail,” Chávez
said.
The war over La Raza rages on. The battered white prison bus leaves.
Over the roads and damp-black fields of this great valley of California,
into its weary arms, one of the lost sons of Chávez is headed home.
Additional reporting for this series by Nada Behziz, Justin Kane,
David Montero, Michael Chandler, Marlena Telvick, Mara Reynolds, Oriana
Zill de Granados and students from Lowell Bergman’s investigative
reporting seminar at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
© 2003 El Andar Magazine