Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  00:00

As I start investigating Oscar’s death, one of the first documents I get a hold of is his college transcript. I expect Oscar's grades to be just as good as those he received in high school. But the transcript tells a very different story. As a freshman, Oscar's averaging Bs with some As and Cs thrown in. By his junior year, there's a noticeable decline. These are his grades for the Spring Quarter of 1994, his last quarter at UC Davis: Mexican-Chicano Mural Workshop: C+; Socio Cultural Change: B-; Economic Development: F; Intro to Social Research: F. Fall quarter of 1994, those months before his death? He's not taking any classes. Oscar's status is at the bottom of the transcript: "Student not in good academic standing." Oscar, [music in] what was going on in your life? And why weren't you enrolled in school in the Fall 1994 quarter? Oscar's grades remind me of my own. And Oscar's declining grades means something. I know this, because I know the story behind mine. I pull up a copy of my own college transcript. It's painful to look at. I'm getting a lot of Cs. But there are more Ds and Fs than I want to admit. What's not written in the transcript is that my capacity for handling my life is being stretched to the limit, like a fraying rubber band, that I'm living with my mom, my stepfather, and my younger half-siblings, who I take care of on weekends. That it takes me an hour and a half of public transportation to get to campus. And when I get home, that I wonder whether my stepfather is having a good day, or a bad day, whether he's going to yell at me for making too much noise while I chew my food during dinner, as if my very existence is an affront. My mom remembers my stepfather this way too- fights, screaming matches, fists. And my mother is always on the losing side. [breath] Then one night in particular, I think about- it's when the rubber band breaks. My stepfather is drunk, and he yells that he's going to kill me. And it all clicks for me. It's not a motion. It's just what happens when you need to survive. I throw my wallet and car keys and a change of pants, shirt and underwear into a backpack. I tell my mom I'm leaving, and she says not to go. But there's something different now. For one of the few times I remember up to that point, I willfully defy what she's telling me to do. My memory is hazy. [music out] I couldn't tell you where I sleep that night. I end up crashing on friends couches for a while. It's my last few months at UCSD and suddenly, I don't have a commute. I have time to myself, and I have mental space. And by my last quarter in winter of 1993, my grades pick up. I finally graduate. This is what's in between the lines of my own transcript. I had the chance to turn around my academics, but Oscar didn't. Is there something in the trajectory of his college years that can help me understand his death? [music in] My investigation into Oscar's death will take me up and down the state of California. But the quest begins close to my home in LA County, talking to two people who lived some formative experiences with Oscar. Those two people will push me closer to understanding his rise into activism and its cost and how that could have led to his death. I'm Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and this is Imperfect Paradise: The Forgotten Revolutionary. [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:14

[cemetery ambient sounds] I'm back at Oscar's grave at Resurrection Cemetery east of Downtown Los Angeles. This time to meet Oscar's childhood friend, Ricardo Tapia. But someone else has beat us here.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:37

Wait a second. What's going on here? I see some chairs.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  04:40

Well, I knew you guys were coming in, so I set it up so you guys could find it easy. [duck under]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:45

That's Oscars dad, Oscar Gomez Sr. He's arranged on the grass, a couple of camping chairs next to a blue cooler, big enough for a six pack. I feel like it's the Fourth of July.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  04:55

This is very, very kind of you. Thank you. I'm curious. How did you find out we were coming?

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  05:01

Uh, presidente call me. [in background- AGL: Presidente?] That's Ricardo Tapia. Oscar's friend. He's coming over. [duck under]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  05:08

Tell me, Mr. Gomez. I mean, your son's buried here, but why did you want to be here today when we interview Ricardo?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  05:08

I feel good that Oscar Gomez Sr. wants to be involved and sense he's getting more comfortable with me, but I also have this feeling I'm being watched.

Oscar Gomez, Sr.  05:25

Because I, I don't want to miss the conversation that you guys are gonna have. I never get tired of hearing people talk about my son. That just makes him feel like he's alive still.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  05:37

Ricardo shows up. He's tall, broad shouldered. He's using both arms to carry a box full of high school memorabilia.

Ricardo Tapia  05:46

Oscar. I've known Oscar, oh my goodness. I met him in um, honor band, junior high. He played the tuba. I played the tuba. See, there's different phases of Oscar. I knew Oscar from junior high- goofy, big ol poofy hair, tight pants, [laughs] you know, a little belly. And then you know, Oscar, the athletic Oscar, like, I'm a defensive captain. We're gonna, we're gonna lead here. We're gonna take charge and hit somebody, play some smash mouth football. Then you have the academic Oscar. Academic Oscar was like, hey, let's get down to business. I want straight As, advanced classes, everything.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:22

Okay, Ricardo. I'm, I'm looking at the 1990 yearbook, which is your senior year, [in background: RT says, "Yeah."] and I opened it. So describe what's going on in this one.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:30

We flip to Oscar's photo in the yearbook: jean jacket with a fleece collar, watermark of a moustache, mullet, and a big grin.

Ricardo Tapia  06:40

This is- That's got to be uh, the friendliest or flirtiest. Let me see what the heck.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:45

Oh, eh, it says most talkative. [RT: "Most talkative."]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:48

There's also a note from Oscar to Ricardo.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:51

Uh, okay. To Slick Rick.

Ricardo Tapia  06:54

Yeah, that's what they called me. Slick Rick. [AGL laughs]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  06:55

[reading] Well, buddy, what more can I say other than the year is over? Just stay cool, uh Homes and thanks for being my friend. Remember, shoot for the stars and don't uh, let your, let anyone control your life. If you want to be uh, president, [RT: "Yeah."] you got my vote, bud. Take care. Oscar Enrique Gomez.

Ricardo Tapia  07:22

If anyone can, a Mexi can. He [laughter] used to always say that. He used to call me uh, presidente. President, because I always tell him I want to be the first Mexican president. [laughter]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  07:32

That's Oscar Gomez Sr. chuckling behind me. Then, about ten minutes into the interview, he leaves. I don't know it yet, but this is how a lot of my interactions with Oscar Gomez Sr. will be- kind of hot and cold. Sometimes it feels like he wants to be my investigative partner, and sometimes he seems to want to leave the story in the past. But it's time for me to start asking Ricardo about the more difficult things in Oscar's life, especially at UC Davis.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  08:03

What what conversations did you have with him about about what was hard about college?

Ricardo Tapia  08:09

Oscar was, he was uh, he was, he was much smarter than I was. I, I don't think coursework was a problem for him. I think it was the racial conflicts that exist that they don't really talk about, especially UC Davis. UC Davis, it's isolated.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  08:23

What Ricardo Tapia is dancing around here is that UC Davis was very- white. In 1990, over half of the student population was white. Only 8% of undergrads identified as Hispanic or Latino. Ricardo says Oscar felt lonely. And he acted out.

Ricardo Tapia  08:42

That was when he had the problems. He, he stole a um, uh, little golf cart. Yeah. And they caught him off, the police, this is campus security, got him, and they notified his, his, his counselor. He kind of stumbled into the radio thing. It wasn't like, what he was gonna do. He just kind of stumbled into it because it was- his counselor said, hey, you got to do something, you got to stay busy. And he got an internship doing, at the, at the radio station.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  09:10

It's surprising to hear that Oscar's radio career started as a sort of punishment.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  09:15

So, so when did you hear from him that it was getting better? If you ever heard that from him?

Ricardo Tapia  09:21

I would probably say um, uh, ninety, '91, at the end of '91. Because his first semester they were dragging him in to join MEChA.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  09:30

MEChA is a student organization that came out of the Chicano activism of the late 1960s. Ricardo wasn't there when Oscar joined MEChA because he and Oscar went to different colleges, but another student on Oscar's campus, Judith Segura-Mora, was at UC Davis in the fall of 1990.

Judith Segura-Mora  09:49

It was my second year at at UC Davis. Somehow I found myself as the recruiter at the table for MEChA, which is the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, which is a student body that was there to, to promote a cultural uh experience for undergraduate students in Chicano culture. And I put my table up, and there were probably about, you know, 10 other organizations that were there to recruit Chicano Latino students into our organizations. We all had our game face on, right, to try and bring in the new freshmen. [laughs] And I recall, a big, like, guy, some gear on. I remember, because I realized, like, this guy's an athlete. And so I see Oscar coming to the table, and he, he puts his hands on the table, and he just looks at me like dead in the eyes. And he says, so tell me, why should I join? And he looks at the table and, you know, tries to see what the name is. [laughs] He doesn't even know what he's walking up to. He says, why should I join MEChA? [laughs]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:04

And what'd you say, what was your pitch?

Judith Segura-Mora  11:08

I just looked at him. Do we really want this guy in MEChA?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:12

Maybe he belongs in the pseudo fraternity, right? [JSM: "Exactly! Exactly!"]

Judith Segura-Mora  11:16

So that's the first response that came out. Like, you know, if you wanna party, if you want an organization that's just social, then by all means, go to the next table. So I was just trying to, like trying to [music in] convince him to keep walking.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:34

Ricardo Tapia remembers Oscar telling him about that day too.

Ricardo Tapia  11:38

And I remember him calling me and telling me, Hey, they're trying to pull me in. I don't want to do this. I want to focus on my school.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  11:44

But Oscar did go to that MEChA meeting. And he got deeper and deeper into activism. That's after the break. [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  12:00

I hope you'll indulge me here. But I think to understand what Oscar was fighting for, and why it meant so much to me, I have to give you some historical context. [music in] Oscar and I were both coming of age during a nativist backlash in California's early 1990s, a backlash that had its immediate roots in the decade or so before. Immigration to California from Mexico and Central America had peaked in the late 1980s. There was overcrowding in public schools. And to top it off, in 1991, there was a recession. Many conservatives blamed California's issues on undocumented immigrants, which culminated in Prop 187, a proposal to take away from undocumented immigrants, social services like health care, and public schools. When Oscar started hosting La Onda Chicana he talked about these politics on the air.

Oscar Gomez  12:57

[radio audio clip] No somos los extranjeros, you know, we're not, you know, strangers in our own land, even though we're made to feel that way, you know, with all these policies that Wilson is trying to push in the, you know, the California gobierno tu sabes and es importantes aver lo que no pasano because when we start seeing walls, you know, raza, especially walls, you know, on the freeway dividers, and walls on the frontera, you know, the military, the National Guard, you know, all these kinds of the army tu sabes in our own tierra, is something that make, you know, people, it makes living conditions pretty rough for the gente.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  13:28

Hear that righteous anger? I didn't feel as empowered to do that. What overshadowed so much of my college years was fear and instability, because when Oscar spoke on behalf of undocumented immigrants, he was speaking up for people like me. [music out] Yes, I had been undocumented. So that nativist backlash, it felt like it was aimed directly at me. Just listen to this 1994 reelection ad from California's Republican Governor Pete Wilson.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  14:04

[audio clip from Wilson ad: They keep coming. Two million illegal immigrants in California. The federal government won't stop them at the border yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them. Governor Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the Border Patrol.] The ad shows grainy footage of people running across the San Diego Tijuana border. The border that defined so much of my childhood. I grew up in Tijuana. When I was just a little kid, my mom and I would cross that border every weekday morning. I knew to tell the border agent, ***vamos, they compress. We were going shopping- every day. Then my mom would go to clean houses, and I would go to the public school nearby. When I was seven, we crossed the border for good. My mother and I overstayed our tourist visa and moved in with my stepfather. There was no running. One day we lived in Tijuana and the next day, I lived in National City, south of San Diego. I never told a single teacher or classmate. I wish I had- just to get it off my chest. But I'd been trained early to keep secrets. My senior year of high school, I was at a crossroads, trying to decide if I should apply to colleges in the US, or if I should go back to Tijuana. I had signed up for the required military service in Mexico, just in case. And then in 1986...

President Ronald Regan  15:34

[sound bite] This bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that I will sign in a few minutes, is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952. It's the product of one of the longest and most difficult legislative undertakings... [duck under]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  15:51

President Ronald Reagan signed into law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, known as Amnesty, which legalized nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country, including me. Suddenly, a future in the US came into focus for me for the first time. It was such a weight off my shoulders, tempered by disbelief. Was this for real? I went to college, but I'd been undocumented for so long, that I couldn't wear my identity proudly. Not the way Oscar wore his. I was fearful of telling people my story, still unsure of my place in this country. I was not fully American, and not fully Mexican. And then I encountered the term Chicano.

***Speaker  16:42

I want to pour like rain into you and make your heart mine. And let the locomotives of the city run forever. Wild squirrels dancing in the park, Chicanos singing.

Judith Segura-Mora  16:53

***Il flora cerve la Raza, the flowering of the people, ***El Bulli yard, the nest row six to soul sera, and the brilliance of our sixth son shall be.

Aslan Underground  17:08

***Mexicano! Espanol! Chicano! Or whatever I call myself, I look the same. I feel the same. I cry and I sing the same. I am the masses of my people and I refuse to be absorbed.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  17:32

[music changes] It was a word many Mexican American organizers, writers and artists used in the 60s to define themselves as politically conscious. And it was also a third space for people who weren't just Mexican, or just American- people like me. At first, the term didn't inspire me. It made me feel like I was compromising my Mexican identity, that adopting one would take away from the other. I still heard in my head, the word ***bocho, a word used in Mexico to describe someone who's forgotten the language and culture after leaving. But then I saw that being Chicano was very much about that moment in the early 1990s. Listen to the Chicano rap group, Aslan Underground, performing at a demonstration in 1991. Their anger, their message...

Aslan Underground  18:29

[sound bite] Get in our own now, we are prevented from going into higher education. We are prevented from having the type of professors that we need like ***Rudy Hakuna. So check this out, the source of 500 years of oppression which has kept our raza down and reduced us to second class citizens. And this is why we come out to educate and bring this message to you of self-determination, pre-colonization and liberation. Check it. Oh yeah, all the brown people in the house I want you all to put a big ol' fist up in the air and wave it like you just don't care...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  19:08

Chicano sounded like resistance to celebrating Columbus Day, resistance to Prop 187, resistance to the erasure of Chicano Studies on college campuses. I joined the UC San Diego Chicano student newspaper, Voz Fronteriza, and when I covered an August 1990 march in East LA, it opened my eyes to what Chicanos were fighting for at that moment. I was on the sidelines, though, covering the story, but not participating. Maybe it was that undocumented mindset. I think of Oscar and his confidence, his leadership, and behind that I see the stability of his family life, his unquestionable Americanness. If you feel like you belong here, then it validates your fight to change things for the better. Judith says Oscar was doing just that, as he got more involved with MEChA.

Judith Segura-Mora  20:10

From the moment you met Oscar, he would give you his hand, like a MEChA handshake. [laughs] It's a certain handshake. Give you his hand and it was solid, and then a hug, not defensive at all. It's just open.

Ricardo Tapia  20:26

So now Oscar was a natural leader. Ever since I've known him since junior high, high school, college. He was a leader on our football team. He was a leader in classes. By the second semester of '91, he was already there, and he was already leading the chapter.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:44

Soon after that, Oscar's reach starts outgrowing his college campus. That's after the break. [music out]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  20:53

[cemetery ambient sounds] Did you ever attend any marches that he was at or anything like that?

Ricardo Tapia  21:03

Oh my gosh. That was one of our main things. He was down here quite often. Uh, eventually, his dad gave him a little car. We'd call him the, we'd call the tangerine. It was his little B210, little Datsun B210, that could barely run. It didn't even make it up the hill one time, up the grapevine. So that's how bad the little car was but he was happy in that little car and it was a tangerine color. So we called it the tangerine. So he would take that up and down the coast and then I had a little truck.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  21:33

The scene is so clear. Oscar driving the tangerine down the Central Valley and up the California coast to join marches for the Chicano movement. Ricardo shows me some photos of him and Oscar at these protests. One is from the United Farm Workers reenactment of the pilgrimage that Cesar Chavez did from Delano to Sacramento.

Ricardo Tapia  21:54

So we did the pilgrimage, and we actually marched literally on the street, on the dead country roads, 26 miles a day. There, that's actually from a march we did in San Diego. That was an anti- Christopher Columbus March. And at this time, Oscar was already getting deeper, deeper into indigenous, indigenous roots. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't want to just know the history. He wanted to know the spiritual aspect as to why, why our ancestors did certain things.

Oscar Gomez  22:23

***[radio show] To all you young warriors out there, the war is not within yourselves, you know *** norte surto es Aslan. It's the ***Corvette and the power of the raza and soundscape. One big tribe, the proud indigenous gente fighting for hope esperanza and respect to Canada. So isn't that what it's all about? It's all about respect and respect. And finding our other side are indigenous to that and not just to throw it up and say, oh, yeah, that's done. You know, that's the thing with that is that a lot of it doesn't get told to it will never get talked about. Our indigenous side of our group today. Didn't say about hinted***

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  22:58

This embrace of indigenous beliefs led Oscar and a lot of other Chicano activists to adopt the view that the Southwest United States [protest sounds] is occupied territory, stolen from the Mexican people in the US Mexican War.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  23:30

The chant, "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us," was on posters, T-shirts, and in Chicano rap lyrics. For a people who are told to go back from where they came from, this was a powerful idea. Because where we came from, is right here. Oscar's friend, Judith Segura-Mora, says that as Oscar was getting deeper into Chicano politics, his look changed too.

Judith Segura-Mora  23:57

If you watch him around campus, walking around campus, he would, he looked like a cholo that didn't belong [laughs] on the UC Davis campus because he had his, his Pendleton on, he had his cap. What's the saying like, judge, judge the book by the cover? He wanted that. He wanted people to judge him so that he can disrupt the thinking around, intellectual people can come from all backgrounds, because he was a educated Chicano and he didn't, he didn't um, distinguish himself from the uneducated.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  24:34

I have to admit, my own bias against cholo-looking dudes kicked in when I first met Oscar. I was still holding on to buttoned-down beliefs about respectability. But for Oscar, the look worked.

Ricardo Tapia  24:51

Oscar would walk around at the events. He'd walk around with a cassette and a microphone and he would walk around interviewing people. Hey, what do you think about the march? Why are you here? What, you know, what are you protesting? He would take that material and take it back to his radio show.

Judith Segura-Mora  25:06

[radio show music] It's like a comfort to hear that smooth intro all the time. And he always started with that. D- d-, d-, d-, d-, d-.

Oscar Gomez  25:23

****[radio audio clip] Chemo Matsukaze learned that she can Masika the value of key nomas will underpin steroids to servidor Elburn Lizo accumass and many point three KB vs noventa punto Tres, got a fetal mindset, he finally put that toy in California...

Judith Segura-Mora  25:40

I just remember being in my room and having that connection without physically being there but tuning in to the campus radio station and, and there was a trust, a level of trust, kind of like, you know, when you when you open up a book of, of, of an author, you already know it's a good author, and you're just like, can't wait. Part of it, it was educating, educating the, the, the public. The other part was his own political agenda. And then it's also like an enjoyment of just the pure art of being on the radio and the grabbing people's attention.

Oscar Gomez  26:21

***[radio audio clip] giving you a program and we're gonna be here you know, talking a little bit more about la musica I know Tron simulators out there Sunday. Kassian is the you know, Namaste gulaman book informacion de la historia. Talk a little bit more the Luciana street or the joven two. As we talk a little bit more about the issues affecting the hand delta in the skies and why they are slanted to synchronize both co2 co2 co2 or liquid.***

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  26:47

Man, Oscar was good, which makes it even harder for me to admit that I was also doing college radio at the same time. 500 miles south, at the UC San Diego campus, I got behind the mic to join the Chicano resistance.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:05

[on UCSD radio show] This is your companero Chintolas. Welcome to another Sunday edition of Radio Califas here on KSDT 95.7 FM Cable from the University of Califas here in La Jolla.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:27

That is me. Yes, it is. Doesn't my voice sound about two octaves higher?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:35

[UCSD radio show] The goal of Radio Califas is to provide information and entertainment on issues pertinent to the Chicano Latino community in San Diego. Radio Califas provides an alternative to the inaccurate and unbalanced portrayal of Chicanos and Latinos in mainstream media, and also provides a forum for debate on Chicano Latino politics. We welcome community input to make the program... [duck under]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  27:59

Chintolas was my microphone name. I was trying so hard. I had in my mind the Mexico City TV news anchors I grew up watching: suit and tie, formal language, members of the elite class. Maybe that's why I sounded so stiff. Oscar was smooth and melodic.

Oscar Gomez  28:20

***[on his radio show]...pa to la gente out there got all kinds of llamadas coming out there from Vacaville, Dixon, Woodland, Sacramento, Knights Landing, everywhere man, all kinds of raza. They're in tune and they're listening and just want to throw a special ***que vas for all the gente out there. All you people out there on your colonias kicking back there on the campus, whatever you may be doing, you know, after a hard day's work, just kicking back, looking at estrellas as a big old kibaso out there. So after coming from a control quiubole...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  28:46

My college radio station had a very limited reach. But Oscar's radio signal broadcast far across the wide farmlands of Sacramento, into the nearby prison and into the suburbs.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  28:58

[audio clip] All right. Good old woodland California. Suburbs of Sacramento.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  28:59

Woodland is where I meet Rosanna Polanco-Fierro.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  29:08

[audio clip] How are you doing?

Rosanna Polanco-Fierro  29:10

Good! How are you?

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  29:11

My name's Adolfo. I'm the uh, host and writer of the podcast.

Rosanna Polanco-Fierro  29:15

Oh, right! I'm Rosanna...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  29:16

She brings out a giant box filled with 30-year-old recorded cassettes of La Onda Chicana, Oscar's show.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  29:24

[audio clip] Wow, look at that. You got- There, there's a lot in there, huh?

Rosanna Polanco-Fierro  29:29

Yeah. [laughs] So, most of them are labeled and I know that they're his.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  29:34

Rosanna recorded Oscar's show almost every week for years.

Oscar Gomez  29:48

[audio clip from radio] [Oscar talking to Rosanna] ***From woodland, what was happening, we'll know what our labels take us out because you won't hear Rola. Yeah. All right. We want to hear though we'll throw Jim out there for who this calling. Anyway, turns out Have Rosanna oralia who was going down two days today Your birthday is more or less Bertola hint that it was with escuchando complaint is going down here before people tripping up was we do a little live lucky linear in vivo is why everything squeak into science bro cancer forget we'll get this thing down to fat so literally data for your homegrown Orion this patola Intel trick is canon complaint Allah has complained us in front of people out there because big bulky vessel usually hungry***

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  30:31

[music] [laughing] Hey, as someone born in Mexico, I listen to that ***North Daniel and it taps into something inside of me. [music out] Rosanna is a fifth generation Mexican American. Her grandmother is the last person she remembers speaking Spanish to her. She met Oscar when she was 12 during a school field trip to UC Davis. That's how she learned about his show. And from there, she became a devoted listener.

Rosanna Polanco-Fierro  31:09

I was listening every week. Like our family would go on vacation, I'd be like, no, like, I want to listen because it's on Sunday. And my mom was excited to hear his, you know, show because she liked the oldies. And um, that's how I was introduced more so to the culture, like I mean, Mexican music, oldies, like, um, more like Latin rock type music, um and then the history. I mean, he was talking about, you know, Governor Pete Wilson and Prop 187. And I'm- the three quotes I always remember that he said a lot were um, "Aqui estamos y no nos vamos." You know, we're here, um, and we're not going anywhere. And then there was, um, we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us. And he called like, Fourth of July, like Fourth of "You Lie." [laughs] So um, and we would talk about it at school like oh, did you listen? [Adolfo: Wow.] Yeah.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  32:07

Sounds like what you're saying, sounds like what I'm hearing is that he tapped into something inside of you culturally, what was that?

Rosanna Polanco-Fierro  32:14

So I think it was kind of like, a piece of me that I didn't know, like a piece of my culture that I didn't know, that I wasn't being taught by family. You know, I didn't really know the odds were really against, you know, people that look like me- brown, you know, had the Spanish last names, like I just didn't know. Um, even the Spanish part like, I didn't really know Spanish but I learned. I learned through him. I would ask my grandma like, what does this mean? Or what is he saying? Or even my friends at school like, you know, and so I got a little familiar with it.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  32:45

[music in] Rosanna says she still channels Oscar sometimes, when she's explaining difficult current events to her sons, or in her job as a social worker. Oscar's friend Ricardo Tapia says Oscar was inspired by the outlaw archetype like El Bandito Joaquin Murrieta, the 19th century Mexican outlaw who evaded white cowboy vigilantes in California. El Bandito became Oscar's radio moniker. But Oscar wasn't just an educator either. He was a mobilizer. Here's Ricardo...

Ricardo Tapia  33:20

He was mass media before there was what we have today. Because one phone call from him, Hey, there's a march on San Diego over here. We're going to be there. Can you guys be there? Can you back us up? All right. If, if Bandido said, Hey, this is what's gonna happen. Hey, I'm gonna be there. We were all, Hey, are we invited? Hey, can we go? Can we report? It opened doors.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  33:41

Did somebody say something, or were you in an environment where like, they were talking about him and you realize, oh, this guy's famous.

Ricardo Tapia  33:47

We went to uh, Self-help Graphics, graphics in East LA, and it wasn't- he wasn't even there. But people that knew him said, Hey, say hi to Bandito for me. Where do you guys go to school? Oh, New York. Like, Oh wow, that's a, that's a long way. How'd you guys meet him? Yeah, we, we went to march over there. And then we heard his radio show. We're like whoa, all the way from New York? You went over there and you heard him? He's all, yeah man, that guy's, he's somethin' else.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  34:13

Oscar, you're taking that inner fire that you brought to sports and academics in high school and bringing it to the Chicano movement, to your radio show. [breath] But I'm looking at your grades, and I'm thinking of your death. I'm also thinking about the amount of alcohol found in your blood during your autopsy. Oscar, who were you in your last year of life? That, is after the break. [music out] [break]

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  34:55

Oscar Gomez is rising through the ranks of the Chicano student movement. But there's a consequence to devoting so much time and headspace to activism. Here's Oscar's college friend Judith Segura-Mora.

Judith Segura-Mora  35:08

Like I know that drive to create an ideal utopia also marginalized us, because we no longer wanted to participate in the facade of a society that was- diverse, and that was, including us, but not respecting us for who we were. Which, in retrospect, I know that's very isolationist.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  35:39

Oscar had come to UC Davis to earn a degree, but Judith says his activism took over his life.

Judith Segura-Mora  35:46

This is my opinion, my opinion alone, that Oscar was on a wrong path at the end of his life. He was no longer focused on his academics. He was kind of lost in that, in the rage. Like wanting so badly to do something about it, that it's like blindsided, that you start to lose sense of your own responsibilities to yourself, to your future.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  36:13

These days, students who feel overwhelmed by their activism, often post on social media about self care. After actions and protests, people check in with themselves. They talk about stepping back.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  36:27

Did you have self-care back then?

Judith Segura-Mora  36:29

I would say not.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  36:32

Did you need it?

Judith Segura-Mora  36:35

I did need it. I did need it. Because there were many times that I wouldn't, I wouldn't get out of bed. I wouldn't have- I mean, it was depression- probably, you know, clinically depressed. But I didn't know that those were, that that was the language to call it. I didn't know. I just realize that it was an overwhelming emotional uh, burden that I felt. And I didn't...

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  37:01

As a result, as a result of...

Judith Segura-Mora  37:04

I think it's wanting to do so much.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  37:08

Judith says she and Oscar were spending days on end every week on the movement. And there were victories. Judith says MEChA pushed for a multicultural center at the UC Davis campus, and they got it. But for students with a full course load, even the victories are exhausting. I remember that too. Pulling all nighters when we had to finish designing and laying out an issue of Voz Fronteriza, my Chicano college newspaper, and going to marches out of town. The cost was that for multiple years, I was subject for academic disqualification.

Judith Segura-Mora  37:47

It's just the personal strain that you go through to- The conflict also, as an academic student, like you, all of that protesting and organizing takes time away from your academic work.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  38:02

You gave me examples of um, you know, not not getting out of bed and and you give me examples for yourself. What are some examples of Oscar going through something like that?

Judith Segura-Mora  38:12

You know, the jolly kid that came up to me that freshman year, he became very serious, like, angry. You know, people, people who weren't for the Chicano movement, were technically against you. We became more marginalized, because everything was so serious. Everything, like someone would make a comment and you had to call them out on it. It was like a dogma to it. That was, that was not healthy. It was not healthy, because then you always were on defense mode. You became like this, you know, everything was problematic because it was all part of the system. It creates anxiety, it creates like this overwhelming burden, that then you're always on guard. Like how do we get, how do we survive? And the unfortunate part is that he didn't. That's the, that's the, that's um- [long pause] That's the hardest part- for me- because I think it could have happened to, to any of us that were involved in that period.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  39:29

It's so easy to lose yourself in a cause, but also in trying to escape from its pressures. Sometimes substance abuse was a part of student activist culture. Judith says she tried to check Oscar- once.

Judith Segura-Mora  39:46

Uh, just once. It was just a college party like the, like stop drinking, stop smoking marijuana.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  39:55

What'd he say to you?

Judith Segura-Mora  39:56

I can handle it.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  39:56

They always say that.

Judith Segura-Mora  40:03

And, and, you know, marijuana back then was part of the, the red road, they called it. [laughs] Part of the native roots. It comes from the earth, you know, expands your mind.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  40:18

But wait a second, was Oscar just smoking just here, a little bit here and there?

Judith Segura-Mora  40:23

No, it was a lot.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  40:24

[ambient cemetery sounds] When was his drinking a real problem? When did you notice it to be a problem?

Ricardo Tapia  40:30

Um, when he, uh, when he got an accident in Davis.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  40:38

That's Ricardo Tapia again.

Ricardo Tapia  40:39

He rolled the tangerine. He rolled it off- country road. And and I remember him telling me, he says, like, I saw the owls. And if you don't know what the owls in, in, in Native American, and even in in in uh, Central American Mesoamerican cultures, the owl is a messenger of death. And he says, I don't have a lot of time. He knew. I said, brother, you just, it was just an owl. They're common up there. Whether they're common or not, I don't know. I just told him that just to calm him down. And I want to say that was uh, like maybe a month and a half before he died.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  41:19

We don't know for sure if Oscar was drinking the night he rolled the tangerine. And I want to say that me raising these questions isn't about alcohol shaming, or saying what happened to Oscar is his fault. Drinking and smoking in college is what a lot of young people do. [pause] But Oscar, I do wonder if you felt you were on the wrong track? If that's why you fixated on the owl.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  41:49

What's your theory about how Oscar died?

Judith Segura-Mora  41:52

It's definitely not a suicide. Because I imagine that that's not something I would do if I were walking in his shoes. Given that I walked the many paths that he walked, suicide was not one of those options. And he loved his mom and his dad, he would never do that to them. A very real possibility that makes me feel like more at ease is that it was an accident, that he was disoriented. But there were characteristics that were not consistent with an accidental fall. Blunt trauma to the head, no broken bone, no other scrape.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  42:36

[music in] So if it wasn't an accidental fall, what happened? Next, we try to get close to the last person to see Oscar Gomez alive.

Ricardo Tapia  42:45

Nene know who killed him. Nene know who killed Oscar. It was his buddies from Hazard.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  42:56

Who is Nene? What did he know about what happened to Oscar? That's where our investigation takes us in the next episode.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez  43:19

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 Studios 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 part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. [music out]