Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  00:00

There's just one photograph I've been able to find of me and Oscar Gomez. [sounds of protests] It's from the day we met, at a Chicano student protest in downtown Santa Barbara, February 1st, 1992. There's Oscar, in the center of the picture. Tall and determined in his black beanie, eyes focused, holding his large cassette recorder, his silver microphone raised like a hammer. And I almost missed it, but I'm there too. On the photo's left edge, I make out the sleeve of my white Zapata t-shirt, that indigenous vest I bought in Mexico City, and my Levi's 501s. I'm barely in the picture. It's so telling of that day, that it's Oscar who's fully within the frame. Oscar was on his way to being a popular college radio DJ, and an incredibly influential student activist. He certainly changed my life. But that would come much later. That day, [music in: Upright Bass] he and I barely said more than a few words to each other. Now, I wish I'd said more. I just remember him as intimidating. The clothes said cholo; the body said jock. And me, in my carefully considered horn- rimmed glasses and embroidered vest, I was neither of those. I was holding on to so many secrets, so much insecurity, and there was Oscar with his confidence, the golden boy energy of the high school football star. I was put off. I didn't grow up knowing any Mexican American kids like that.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  01:56

[audio clip of OG Show Intro: Aqui no mas Cruising down la firme avenue of Aztlan. This is La Onda Chicana musica del barrio, coming at you...] [fade out] Oscar hosted La Onda Chicana, a college radio show out of UC Davis.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  02:17

[music in] The early 1990s were an especially xenophobic time in California politics. Oscar focused the show on Mexican American empowerment. Oscar was on the airwaves talking education, culture, and Chicano self-determination.

Oscar Gomez  02:35

[audio clip OG Show] And we continue to challenge what goes on raza, little chicanistos and chicanistas en escuela make sure and question the history that you're being taught, because a lot of times, you know that George Washington is not your father. What are these people scared of? That the raza is gonna get educated, that they're going to be able to go back and empower their communities. It's something that we've got to ask ourselves raza, and something that we must continue to ask ourselves because la lucha continua.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  03:00

Oscar traveled to protests and conferences up and down California and outside the state. He recorded what he saw, the people he met, to broadcast to his audience. He gave a radio platform to young Chicano rappers, connected listeners to indigenous thought, and tutored public school kids. He made being Chicano sound fun and exciting. In 1993, the Mexican American labor leader Cesar Chavez died and without him, there was a leadership void. And here came along Oscar, a young, handsome, charismatic, politically engaged college student. An inspiring radio host and activist at just 21 years old.

Judith  03:48

I just remember tuning in to the campus radio station and having that connection without physically being there.

Dianna  03:58

He was fire. He was charisma incarnate. All the girls, married, with a boyfriend, or single, everyone had a crush on him.

Rosanna  04:10

He knew that this government is not for us, and that we needed to take action.

Montoya  04:15

Yeah, he would have been someone that people should follow. Someone that could walk alongside Cesar Chavez, you know? [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:31

Two and a half years after that Santa Barbara rally, two and a half years after that photo of the two of us was taken, I would be out of college and freelancing for weekly newspapers on my way to a public radio career. And Oscar? [deep breath] Oscar... was dead.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:55

[music in] I'm Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, and this is Imperfect Paradise. This season, Oscar Gomez. The Forgotten Revolutionary. [music out]

KEYT Newscaster  05:26

[audio clip] The body of 21-year-old Oscar Gomez was discovered at the bottom of a cliff near the UCSB campus last November. The Sheriff's Department says Gomez was drunk and hit his head on a rock after falling off the cliff.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  05:48

Oscar had been at a protest in Santa Barbara on November 16th, 1994. He was last seen at a college party that evening, around 9:30pm. Early the next afternoon, a passerby spotted Oscar at the edge of the surf, covered in seaweed, with the upper part of his skull smashed in. The coroner would find sand in Oscar's upper and lower airwaves. No broken bones. He died from "craniocerebral trauma." It would take law enforcement 14 hours to break the news to Oscar's family. The Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office initially investigated Oscar's death as a homicide. Deputies walked along the shore next to the 50-foot cliffs where Oscar was last seen and interviewed people nearby. [music in] But after just 12 days, the Sheriff's department closed the case, listing the manner of death as undetermined. According to the Sheriff-Coroner's Report, they never found a single witness to his final hours. Never found where he fell, if he fell at all. Their theory? That the death... was an accident. Their report references Oscar's blood alcohol level when he died. Point one eight percent. But Oscar's father did not believe it. [music out]

Oscar's Father  07:16

[audio clip] We think somebody killed my son.

KEYT Newscaster  07:18

[audio clip] Gomez died of massive head wounds, but his family doesn't believe he got them from falling off a cliff. Today, his friends and family urged the Sheriff's department to reopen the investigation into his death. But the Sheriff's department says the case will stay closed unless a significant lead develops.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  07:35

It's been 28 years and the case has stayed closed. 28 years and many of Oscar's family and friends still believe he was murdered. They rallied around the phrase, Justicia para Oscar, Justice for Oscar. Oscar's father sued the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office, the county and the University of California Santa Barbara. Friends and family revisited records, protested, tried to find the last people to have seen Oscar alive. They still honor Oscar every year with a college scholarship for students in his hometown. [breath] And me, to be fully honest, I packed away that whole chapter of my life, the part associated with being a Chicano activist. I stopped marching, and I stopped protesting. I became a reporter in California's largest public radio newsroom and found mainstream success. But one person would not let me let go of Oscar completely. Oscar's best friend, Juan Gonzales.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  08:42

[cemetery ambient] What's the date today, Juan? And why is it important?

Juan Gonzalez  08:50

Well, today is uh, it marks you know, the 27th year exactly that we were notified that Oscar had passed into the other world. And today is November 17th, 2021. And like I said, it's about a little after 4:30 and we're here just to remember Oscar. I come by probably about four to six times a year.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  09:13

I meet Juan at Oscar's grave at Resurrection Cemetery. It's a Catholic cemetery about half an hour east of Downtown LA. I saw Juan a lot in the early 1990s. We both went to college in San Diego, and we ran into each other at Chicano activist meetings where we'd greet each other with the Chicano handshake. You know the four parts: regular handshake to diagonal handshake, to fingers curling into each other, and a fist bump to close it off. Juan calls me carnal, brother from another mother. Juan and I catch up every few years. And every time, he asks me to use my public radio platform to investigate Oscar's death.

Juan Gonzalez  09:57

There's probably like 10 theories out there that that could have have happened. And I look at the questions that someone has to ask.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  10:04

The thing you have to understand is I was the first Latino reporter at Southern California Public Radio. I had faced complaints about signing off with the Spanish pronunciation of my name. I wasn't about to undermine myself as a reporter by revealing my activist past. I had enough of a target on my back. But Juan kept coming back to me. He told me I had a lot in common with Oscar.

Juan Gonzalez  10:34

I always remember you as a Chicano with a notebook pad and a pencil.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  10:38

I tell Juan about the photograph I found, of Oscar and me at the 1992 Santa Barbara rally.

Juan Gonzalez  10:45

That's the first time I introduced you guys, actually. And a lot of times, you're just so busy. I introduced you guys at least a half a dozen times cause you guys are like, doing news without Chicanos, you know what I mean. And I told Oscar, this is Adolfo. He's one of my uh, he's one of my, uh, you know, senior mechistas, you know, teaching me the ropes out there. And y- yeah of course, you guys had known who each other were, but I want you guys in the years to know, and maybe work together someday.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:09

[music in] I never got to work with Oscar back then. I barely said hello, mainly because of my own insecurities. I was still unsure of my place in the movement. And for decades after his death, I was reluctant to go anywhere near his story. But then something happened that rattled me free of those reservations and brought me back to Oscar.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:43

That's after the break. [music out] [break]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:55

My road back to Oscar was a two-step process. First, in 2019, I did finally give in to Juan Gonzalez's suggestions that I report on Oscar Gomez. A little bit. I was covering higher education for KPCC when Juan called me to tell me that UC Davis would be awarding Oscar a posthumous degree. Ah ha, I thought. That was something that fit in my beat. Here's my report from that time.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  12:28

[sound of car radio tuning] [audio clip] Zepeda made the case that Gomez helped students graduate when she petitioned that UC Davis grant him a posthumous bachelor's degree. The university reviewed the request and approved it in March. Gomez's father, Oscar senior, says he imagines holding the degree, which represents his son's hard work. I'm Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  12:48

But what I still didn't say in the story is that I had also been a Chicano student activist. I believed that journalists are supposed to be out of the frame, observe from the sidelines. The story got a lot of traction, and my editor encouraged me to pitch it as a longer project. Still, the idea of revisiting that time in my life made me nervous. And then a year later, the newsroom assigned me to cover the George Floyd protest happening in Long Beach. [protest ambient] I'd covered plenty of marches. I knew to pack granola bars and wear hard, closed toed shoes in case I got stepped on. I grabbed my recorder, put my press pass around my neck and drove over to Third and Pine in Long Beach. I followed protesters, their chants, their anger, into the thick of the crowd. There was a line of police officers, protesters yelling into their faces. Away from that, yards from the intersection, I saw a Black man who was kneeling. And I crouched with him.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  13:57

[recorded audio] What are you doing?

Maurice  13:59

Ah, just just peacefully protesting.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:02

It's gotten tense here, right? It might not end up peaceful.

Maurice  14:06

Yeah, but I mean, that's how it is. But I mean, I'm doing, I'm having a peaceful protest on my end. Whoever, whoever's acting crazy man, that's on them. But again, we're trying to have a peaceful protest out here. Nothing crazy.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:16

Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:18

We stood up and I turned the recorder off and started writing down the man's name. And then I heard a pop, [rubber bullet pop] and I felt a sudden impact at the bottom of my neck. I brought my hand to my throat. My fingers came back covered in blood.

Larry Mantle  14:35

[radio clip] Adolfo Guzman Lopez KPCC reporter, uh, was at the protest in Long Beach. First of all, Adolfo, how are you doing after getting hit in the neck with a projectile?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:47

[radio clip] Yeah, I got hit by a, by a rubber bullet at Third and Pine. I had been- and I'm o- I'm okay. I'm breathing. So what, here's the sequence of events, Larry... [duck under]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:57

I went on air with KPCC's Larry Mantle a couple of hours after it happened. It had been a foam round, fired by a Long Beach police officer. I count my blessings that the injury wasn't worse. Police would later say the round that hit me was intended for someone else. But at the time, I was just overwhelmed.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  15:18

[radio clip] But uh, you know, it hit me. [small laugh]

Larry Mantle  15:20

Boy, uh, Adolfo. I'm just so sorry that this happened.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  15:25

[radio clip continues] What upsets me is I was trying to take care of myself. I've been, I've been in these kinds of situations. I've covered protests with uh, you know, with police officers in riot gear. I was trying, trying to be very aware, uh, uh, and not be in front close to the police line. And like I told you, it, it upsets me the sequence of events. It was only after I, I was obviously interviewing somebody... [fade out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  15:50

May 31st, 2020 changed me. I'd like to say that it was being injured while reporting that did it. Or that I suddenly saw how I was inherently part of a larger political struggle. But really, it was the physical impact that rattled me. It dislodged fillings in my teeth. For a week, I wore a gauze bandage the size of a credit card over my neck. I stayed home for two months. I had to put myself back together again. And I realized that some of the things I'd been holding on to, I didn't need any more. Like the impulse to hold back, to hide parts of myself.

Larry Mantle  16:34

[radio clip] Adolfo, I know this is uh, very fresh, and you're probably still in pain from this. But um, I assume you're going to be following up with this and um, your news organization will too.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  16:45

[radio clip] I appreciate that, Larry. And I appreciate uh, you having me on, and and you know, I don't like to be the center of the story. I don't like to be the story, but I didn't make me the, I didn't make me the story.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  16:56

[music in] Growing up Mexican in California at the end of the 20th Century, I'd spent most of my life feeling targeted by anti- immigrant politicians and policies, by campaigns to label people like me, as less than human. The badge of "public radio reporter" put a distance between me and all of that. I could report on Mexican American topics, but I always had a sense of remove. I had kept the Mexican and immigrant compartments of me firmly closed to most people. But that foam round shook something in me. I didn't want to close parts of myself off anymore. Why should I care if people complain about how I pronounce my name? And why should I care if people know that I was a Chicano activist? Not just a Mexican American, but a politicized Mexican American. I think it was something a lot of reporters of color were going through after May 2020, for their own reasons. But suddenly, I didn't have a reason to say no to my friend Juan anymore. I could try to find out what happened to Oscar Gomez. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm taking on Oscar’s story, and this time, it's not going to be a three minute newscast feature, but a full-fledged project. Which means diving straight back into the early 1990s Chicano student movement. And my own part in it. I'm moving my history into the frame. [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  18:49

If I'm going to find out what happened to Oscar, I need to talk to the one person who spent the most time trying to get answers. Oscar's dad, Oscar Gomez Sr. When I reach him on his cell, he says he's excited about my investigation. But he's also hesitant. He doesn't want our phone call recorded. He tells me that there's still a lot of pain, and that he's been burned before by people who said they wanted to help. I can't do this investigation without the Gomez family. For one, families have rights to certain documents that the public doesn't. But also, it just wouldn't feel right to me to pursue this story if they didn't want me to. Finally, Mr. Gomez agrees to let me record an interview.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:35

[interview clip] Oh, it's just the beginning. This feels like a beginning...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:41

Producer Natalie Chudnovsky and I meet him at his house. It's a cream-colored one-story on a corner lot in Baldwin Park, in LA County.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:50

[interview clip] Hola hola! Buenos tardes.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:52

Mr. Gomez greets me at the door. He's fully decked out in Dodger blue.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  19:57

[interview clip] Hola, como estas.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:58

[interview clip] Dodgers. Ah, look at that!

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:00

And so am I.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  20:02

[interview clip] [laughing] Yeah, they gotta win, man.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:05

Mr. Gomez is a tall man, though you can tell he used to be even taller. He has a deeply lined face and a white bottle-brush mustache. He used to be a firefighter, so his family and friends sometimes call him "Chief." Juan Gonzalez is already at the house, and Mrs. Gomez is around too. She's short and wears her dark brown hair in a bob. I feel her wariness, but she's polite and says hello, even though she doesn't want to be recorded. We all sit on folding chairs in the front yard. Mr. Gomez says they've lived in this house since 1973. He points out six Italian Cypress trees that he planted almost 50 years ago, one for each member of his family.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  20:49

[interview clip] So it's me, my wife, Oscar, Eddy and Gladys and Christina at the end.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:56

Eddie, Oscar's younger brother, joins us a little ways in.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:59

[interview clip] How's it goin' Eddie?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  21:01

Seeing Eddie is a jolt because he looks a lot like the photos of young Oscar. Except Eddie got to grow to middle age. He says he loved growing up here. Their house was a magnet for the neighborhood kids.

Eddie Gomez  21:14

[interview clip] We all knew each other. We all played together. We all like um, they were compadres with a couple of, you know, my parents, and it was uh, safe. You know, that streetlight would come on and we'd be like, time to go home.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  21:27

Mrs. Gomez chimes in that the grass in the front lawn was always dead because the neighborhood kids used it as a baseball diamond. She once counted as many as 17 kids buzzing around the front.

Eddie Gomez  21:39

[interview clip] But a lot of these kids growing up, they didn't have like what we had. I think that's why they enjoyed coming over here so much because they saw like, the love that my mom would give. And I think that's why, because we kind of gave them that, that, that love that kind of what they were missing in in their home.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  21:52

I asked Mr. Gomez to tell me a story about Oscar as a teenager.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  21:56

[interview clip] He- he started working real young. He started working at Burger King, and his friends would go, and they knew that he was working there. So they would go in and he gave 'em all free hamburgers. Everybody showed up. Well, he didn't last long. He got fired. You know, so...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  22:13

Mrs. Gomez gets up and heads into the house. A few minutes later, she comes back with a wooden plaque. Teenage Oscar is smiling at us in a sports coat and skinny tie. [interview clip: Put up, put Oscar over there.]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  22:26

Above his picture, I read "Baldwin Park High School Scholar Athlete of the Year." And underneath Oscar is a list of his accomplishments: junior class president,

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  22:37

[interview clip] football, baseball. He was a wrestler too? In high school? Oh my god.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  22:44

They put the plaque on an empty chair next to me. It feels like Oscar's watching us.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  22:49

[interview clip] You know, at school, at school, he was always like, like admired and, and, and the teachers always liked him. Especially if he was sick, they would come here and bring him his homework and, and they never did that for my other kids.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  23:03

[music in] Eventually, our conversation turns to why I'm here. The Gomez family already spent years, really painful years, trying to figure out what happened to Oscar. And they've tried to move on. Now, I'm asking their permission to let me resume that investigation. Mr. Gomez is honest about the toll those years of searching took on the family.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  23:05

[interview clip] It was ve-, it was a, it was a nightmare for us, our full family. It was a nightmare. It was terrible. So anytime that you kinda redo it again and you, like you said, it's not uh, it's not something that you're looking forward to doing. But like I said in the beginning, I'll, I'll do what I can. [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  23:46

[interview clip] Wha- what does justicia para Oscar mean to you, Mr. Gomez?

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  23:50

[interview clip] For me, it means like number one, is he didn't get justice. He never has gotten justice up to this date. There isn't the same kind of effort done to investigate kids that are unfortunately Chicano kids as other white kids that have money.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  24:06

[interview clip] We got plans to go up to Sacramento. We got plans to talk to some people in Santa Barbara. We want to talk to the Sheriff's Department. Um, we're going to talk to, you know, people here in uh, LA County. But I don't know. What would you want us to ask, look for?

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  24:24

[interview clip] They changed- they said that he died from blunt force trauma. And then later, the days went by and then they started changing the story, you know? And then the, the death certificate, finally, they said that it was, well, we, now we don't know what happened to him. [music] So- but see, I'm sure that something happened because, he died in the university's property. So they tried to hide everything. They tried to hide and make it quick like, like nothing happened. I mean, he was right by the, by the state Capitol. He would talk on the radio and all that. He was not afraid to say things about the governor. He was not afraid to talk.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  25:12

I don't dismiss this, because things like what Mr. Gomez is suggesting, have happened in this country. I think about COINTELPRO, when the US government illegally monitored and infiltrated the Black Panthers. After 9-11, the FBI used an informant to infiltrate a Southern California mosque. And in December 2021, a news report revealed the LAPD hired a marketing firm to track Black Lives Matter protesters' tweets. At this point, I'm taking all suspicions seriously.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  25:47

[interview clip] They told me at the time that they were closing the case, and that if I found evidence, to show it to them, and they will reopen it. I said that doesn't make sense to me. I'm not a sh-, I'm not a sheriff. I'm not an investigator. You do, that's your job to do. How am I going to do that? [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  26:10

As I said, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office initially investigated Oscar's death as a possible homicide. They said his cause of death is "blunt force trauma." But then they conclude the manner of death is "undetermined." There's a news release issued by the Sheriff's Office stating that the death is believed to be accidental. To Mr. Gomez, all of these different labels don't add up. He says the year after Oscar's death, he filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office for violation of the Gomez family's civil rights to a proper investigation.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  26:49

[interview clip] So I tried to sue them. I sue them. I kinda knew that I was going against powerful people. Obviously, the university and the sheriff altogether, the courts.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  26:59

My head feels like it's going to burst with Mr. Gomez's suspicions. He thinks the Sheriff's Office didn't do their due diligence because Oscar was a Chicano. He thinks UC Santa Barbara and the Sheriff's Office covered up Oscar's death because they didn't want trouble. And he thinks Oscar may have made important people at the state capitol angry for calling out racist laws. [pause] I'm feeling the heaviness of the Gomez family's grief. The heaviness of so many unanswered questions, 28 years later. [breath] But it's late, and everyone has to go home.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  27:40

[interview clip] And I hope you get to see the game, man.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:42

[recorded audio] Yeah! Well, it started. [laughter] [someone says: "It started quickly." "Bye bye."] Gracias.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:45

[music in] In this season of Imperfect Paradise: Forgotten Revolutionary, I go back in time- to Oscar- and to my own history- to peel back the layers of what happened to both of us.

Sabrina  28:02

Oscar was a complex person. You know, he had a lot of drive and animo, but he also had of um, there was I think, a little bit of a chaotic part to him.

Ricardo  28:15

Nene know who killed him. Nene know who killed Oscar.

Pepe  28:18

Prepare yourself because uh, it's an intense ride and, and just when you think you've a, a notion of where this story may be going, bam. You'll jump tracks.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  28:29

That's coming up on Imperfect Paradise: The Forgotten Revolutionary.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  28:39

Imperfect Paradise: The Forgotten Revolutionary is written, reported and hosted by me, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez. The show is a production of LAist Studios. Antonia Cereijido and Leo G are the executive producers for LAist Studios. Natalie Chudnovsky is the lead producer, and our associate producers are James Chow and Francisco Aviles-Pino. Editing by Audrey Quinn. Fact checking by Audrey Regan. Mixing by our engineer, E. Scott Kelly. Our music supervisor is Doris Anahi Muñoz. The music is written, performed and recorded by Joseph Quiñones at Second Hand Sounds in Rialto, California. Our website LAist.com is designed by Andy Cheatwood and the digital and marketing teams at LAist Studios. The marketing team of LAist Studios created our branding. Thanks to the team at LAist Studios including Taylor Coffman, Sabir Brara, Kristen Hayford, Kristen Muller, Andy Orozco, Michael Cosentino, Emily Guerin and Leo G. Imperfect Paradise: The Forgotten Revolutionary is a production of LAist Studios. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in apart by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]