Corrido for Don Pedro, An Unsung Hero
Sunday, December 9, 1984
by Matt Damsker
The old man, now 90, is affectionately known as "Don Pedro,"
and as
he tells his life story for the umpteenth time-in rapid, rambling Spanish-one falls under
the spell of a great oral history. He seems almost blithe about it, but Pedro J. Gonzalez
has lived, and suffered, and survived so much that he now stands as a symbol of the
Mexican-American experience.
A large, ruddy man with an intensity that belies his age, Gonzalez
lives quietly with his wife of 68 years, Maria, in nearby San Ysidro. To most Americans,
he wouldn't even qualify as a trivia question, but to Mexicans with any sense of their
heritage, Gonzalez is a folk hero, a kind of Latino Davy Crockett-cum-Woody Guthrie.
Only recently has some overdue recognition come his way, including an
upcoming PBS documentary on his life. While still a boy during the Mexican Revolution, Don
Pedro as Pancho Villa's telegraph operator. After the revolution, he immigrated to El
Norte, where he first worked as a longshoreman and later pioneered Spanish-language
radio at Los Angeles' KMPC and KEWL in the 1920s and '3Os.
As a singer of corridos (Mexican ballads), a commercial
announcer and an outspoken commentator on U.S. discrimination against Mexicans, Gonzalez
and his band of troubadours, "Los Madrugadores (The Early Risers), radioed a daily
wake-up call to LA's growing Latino community. Gonzalez wrote and popularized such
Spanish-language songs as "Sonora Querida" (which he recorded on the Columbia
label).
But with the onset of the Great Depression in the 193Os, he began to
use his radio show more and more to protest such events as the deportation to Mexico of a
half-million Latinos, many of them U.S. citizens who had become scapegoats to a stagnant
economy. Gonzalez wielded instant power over his Latino listeners. When, for example, he
announced on the radio that workers were needed to clear some land, hundreds of Latino
workers arrived two hours later in downtown Los Angeles with picks and axes, ready for
work.
Police, assuming they were armed for some kind of uprising, responding
by throwing many of them in paddy wagons. Anglo establishment fears were noticed about
Gonzalez' potential as a rabble-rouser and attempts were made to cancel his broadcasting
license.
Finally, at the height of his popularity in 1934, he was sentenced to
from one to 50 years in San Quentin on trumped-up charges of raping a young girl. Soon
after the trial, the girl admitted she had been induced by authorities to lie under oath,
but a judge refused to admit the new evidence on a technicality, and Gonzalez wound up
serving six years.
After a steady stream of Latino protest-including appeals by two
Mexican presidents-and support orchestrated and sustained largely by his wife, Gonzalez
was paroled and deported to Mexico in 1940, and eventually readmitted to the United States
In San Diego and neighboring Tijuana Don Pedro is a familiar, beloved
presence, and his reputation keeps growing. South Bay Assemblyman Pete Chacon is
attempting to arrange an official pardon from Gov. George Deukmejian. Recently, Luis
Valdez honored Gonzalez at a San Diego performance of Valdez' hit Latino folk musical,
"Corridos," which is now running at Los Angeles' Variety Arts Theater.
On Dec. 16. an ambitious five panel mural celebrating Gonzalez' life
and times will be installed on a 60-foot support pillar of the Coronado Bridge, at a spot
known as Chicano Park Also, Gonzalez will enjoy some major exposure when a half-hour TV
documentary about his life, "Ballad of an Unsung Hero," airs nationally on PBS
stations (Dec. 22. 9:30 p.m. on KCET in Los Angeles, and 1:30 p.m. on KOCE-TV, Orange
County).
On Dec.18 at KCET, Gonzalez "Break of Dawn" honored with a
pre-broadcast screening of the program, at which Valdez will speak and a representative of
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley will proclaim Dec. 22 "Pedro J. Gonzalez Day" in
the city.
Co-produced by KPBS-TV and a San Diego film-making firm, Cinewest, the
documentary has won several awards, including a blue ribbon at the last American Film
Festival in Washington, and will represent the United States in film festivals in Europe
and, Latin America and Asia. According to director Isaac Artenstein, the documentary grew
from a more general project about the Mexican Revolution, its veterans, and its impact on
California. Once Artenstein and company discovered Gonzalez living in San Diego, however,
the focus narrowed.
"We saw Pedro as an archetypal figure, symbolic of a lot of
Mexican people," said Artenstein. "There was his participation in the
Revolution, his immigration to the U.S., his cultural expression through the music and
radio, and then in the 1930s, his encounter with racial repression. It was like finding a
whole history book in one man. And because he's such a magnetic personality, we sensed he
could carry the whole documentary."
Gonzalez' saga has galvanized Artenstein and his colleagues. Lorena
Parlee, co-writer and associate producer (with Paul Espinosa) of "Ballad of an Unsung
Hero," is at work on Gonzalez official biography. And Artenstein is trying to realize
a joint venture between Cinewest and CONACHINE (The National Film Production Corp. of
Mexico) to produce a feature film, "Break of Dawn," based on Gonzalez life.
Already, said Artenstein, top Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa and Mexican film
stars Fernando Allende and Ofelia Medina have expressed interest in the project.
By agreement with the Institute, Cinewest must raise half of the
project's $1.4-million budget, and shoot most of the film in Mexico, where production
costs are relatively low. But despite the U.S. success of such recent film's as Gregory
Nava's "El Norte" and Luis Valdez' "Zoot Suit," Artenstein admits it
hasn't been easy to raise money for "Break of Dawn" on this side of the border.
"I have spoken with some pay-TV people and some Hollywood studio
executives, and I have met with resistance," said Artenstein. "The minute it
becomes apparent that you won't have an Anglo actor in the lead role, it's a stumbling
block. But we believe in the appeal Of Don Pedro's story."
Don Pedro himself doesn't lobby for fame-he grants interviews and poses
for photos happily enough but he seems past the gratifications of the spotlight. For him
the countless memories are vivid, their lessons timeless. Far from bitter, he give thanks
for the progress made since his dark prison days and professes his faith in the young
generations who respond to his story.
That story, in its incidental details, must also be taken on faith,
when Gonzales asserts that "I loved Villa like a father': I would have died for
him," it makes, at least, dramatic sense. For Don Pedro also recalls how, as a
teenager in the tiny Mexican viilage of Chuauatemoc, he secretly telegraphed Villa's
movements to Mexican government officials when Villa discovered Gonzalez, at first he
threatened to kill him, then offered him the choice of joining the revolution. Gonzalez
joined eagerly, he recalls, and soon he was standing before a government firing squad-an
execution averted, he claims, when several village children were instructed to interpose
themselves between Gonzalez and the line of fire. Years later, at a fiesta, recounts
Gonzalez, he was introduced to one of the tykes who had helped to saved his life that day.
They danced-and not long after they were wedded.
Like a nine-lived cat with a few to go, Gonzalez' eyes widen and his
pride swells with sly good humor as he recalls the tortures and humiliations of San
Quentin- the solitary confinement in a "hole" too tiny to stand in, the dunkings
in the prison sewer tank, and also the prisoner strikes he led. Risking summary execution
and making headway in the struggle for prison reform. On the day in 1940 that he was freed
and deported to Mexico. Los Angeles Union Station was filled with Latino supporters who
cheered his train.
"They announced over the radio that the car which carried Pedro J.
Gonzales would remain all day at Union Station," Gonzales remembered. "Everybody
came to see me, all day from 7 a.m. They said 'Pedro, sing a song.' But the guard 'No.'
'What can you do,' I said, 'Send me back to jail? I just came from prison. Do what you
want, but I'm going to sing!'"
Once across the border, the song grew strong again, as Gonzalez formed
a new band of Madrugadores and began broadcasting over XERU in Tijuana. Thirty years
later, in 1971, he was allowed to return to the United states to be close to his seven
children-all U.S. citizens.
"Seeing how badly they treated Mexicans back in the days of my youth I could have
started a rebellion," he reflected. "But now there would be a cultural
understanding, so that without firing one bullet we might understand, each other. We were
here before they were, and we are not as they still say, 'undesirables' or 'wetbacks.'
They say we come to this land and it's not our home. Actually, it's the other way
around."