Chicano Cinema
Ballad of an Unsung Hero
1985
by Gary Keller
Ballad of an Unsung Hero, produced by Paul Espinosa and directed by Isaac Artenstein, is, like the notable feature film The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, a revelation of odious racial discrimination. This production by San Diego public television KPBS TV-l5 has many additional attributes as well. The "unsung hero" is a genuinely fascinating personage, Pedro J. Gonzalez, who during the course of his rich, varied, and, in part, tragic life filled the role of villista revolutionary, immigrant, "Latin lover" star of radio, and victim of the racially motivated connivance of the Los Angeles district attorney. Having been through it all, Pedro, currently almost 90 years old and living since 1971 in San Ysidro, California, after having been permitted to return from exile to the United States, comports himself on screen with the dignity, grace, honor, and vergüenza of an authentic, self-made, mature, and wise seer. He is a worthy model for us all to emulate.
Pedro Gonzalez' public life began with the Mexican Revolution. Working as a telegraph operator in Chihuahua, Pedro was only a teenager when Pancho Villa's men arrested him, suspecting that he had informed on their troop movements to the enemy. Villa gave him one of his drastic either ors: join up or be executed. Pues, ¡Vámanos con Pancho Villa!
When the followers of Villa fell out of favor in 1917, Pedro joined thousands of others who immigrated north to the United States. It is in the treatment of the Los Angeles milieu of the 1920s and 1930s into which Pedro was immersed that heretofore unrecognized aspects of Chicano life emerge on screen. Eventually Pedro became one of the most popular radio announcers, writers, singers in the Southwest during a period that witnessed an explosion of Spanish-language recording broadcasting. Pedro's show, commercially backed by Folger's coffee, was broadcast on major radio stations KMPC and KELW, which normally transmitted in the English language. But Pedro broadcast live from the heart of the Chicano community from 4 to 6 in the morning. Throughout the Southwest, thousands of Mexicans, up at the crack of dawn to go to work in the canneries, factories, and fields, tuned in their radios to hear their favorite announcer and recording star.
Pedro's radio show was to provide a vehicle for many young singers and musicians, who got their first breaks with him. Out of this confluence of talent emerged a unique style of music associated with Los Angeles. However, apparently no group proved as popular as Pedro's own. The group called themselves, aptly for the broadcast time, "Los Madrugadores," and they recorded over 100 songs on Columbia, OKEM, Victor, and other labels. Pedro himself wrote many famous songs during that period including "Maiñanitas tapatías," "Sonora querida," "¿Por qué te fuiste?" and "Lavaplatos."
Pedro's troubles with the Los Angeles authorities were a reflection of the bigotry and cruelty that emerged during the economic hard times of the 1930s. With the onset of the Great Depression, Mexicans in Los Angeles, discriminated against in the first place, became the scapegoats for a stagnant economy. Pedro used his radio show and music to protest the discrimination and mass deportations of the period. It is well established that over half a million people of Mexican descent, including many United States citizens, were deported to Mexico. In his ballad, "The Corrido of Juan Reyna," Pedro defended a young Mexican unjustly convicted of killing a policeman. As the film narrates, on one occasion Pedro announced on his radio show that many workers were needed at a specific location to clear land. Two hours later hundreds of Mexican workers arrived in downtown Los Angeles carrying picks and axes, ready for work. Misapprehending that the workers were armed for some kind of rebellion, the police, under the supervision of Buron Fitts, the district attorney, threw them into the paddywagon. Fitts is quoted as having stated the following against Pedro:
How do you like this! What if this madman, troublesome as he is, and on top of that a villista, what if he tells all Mexicans-here, in Arizona, New Mexico, and other states, or wherever they can hear his program-every Mexican rise up with a bottle of gasoline and start burning all the American's houses! What conflict could occur just because of that despicable madman!
In 1934 Pedro was framed by Los Angeles officials on patently false charges on raping a minor. An all-white jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to 50 years in San Quentin penitentiary. The defense appealed the case and Pedro was immediately offered probation by, the trial judge if he would acquiesce in guilt. "Probation is for someone who is guilty," Pedro replied.
Despite the outrage of the community, the establishment of Pedro J. Gonzalez Defense Committees all over the Southwest to which workers contributed hard-earned coins, and the fact that the accuser signed an affidavit eight months after the trial certifying that she had lied under duress because she was threatened with reform school by the Los Angeles police, Pedro was sent to San Quentin where he served six long years under brutal conditions, perhaps reserved for "troublemakers" and/or "un-Americans." In December 1940 he was paroled and immediately deported to Mexico.
Pedro, who fought hard for prison reform even as he was incarcerated and tortured by being forced into a tank filled to his neck with sewage and excrement, who was a leading figure in the development of radio on the border from his exile in Tijuana, is a personage of truly heroic proportions. He deserves his ballad of admiration, albeit 40 years or so late. His is a story of the triumph of a Chicano, naked of resources except for spirit, resolve, honor, and the support of his community, over the philistines and sociopaths in municipal government who unjustly feared and framed him. This work is a story that demanded to be told, one that uncovers the maggots living under the rock of Los Angeles civic pride.
KPBS TV-I5, San Diego, and those who produced this work are to be congratulated for the painstaking research they conducted to ensure the authenticity of this startling story. Much of the visual material comes from stills in the possession of the Gonzalez family or laboriously gathered by the KPBS team from files. Above all, the producers are to be commended for their courage in bringing to light the facts of this case and its aftermath and in conducting a thorough and enlightened investigation and oral history of the life of not only an unsung but a profoundly wronged Chicano hero.
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON