Homeboys and Heroes : Ritchie Valens Wasn’t the Only Pacoima Kid to Die Too Soon

This is my last column for a while. My plan was to go back to my old neighborhood in Pacoima and write about the place. It’s a run-down part of town, but it’s getting more positive attention these days than it usually does, because it was also home to Ritchie Valens, a Chicano rock-and-roll idol whose brief stardom is the subject of a new movie.

That film, “La Bamba,” named after a hit record that Valens made by adapting a Mexican folk tune to a ‘50s rock beat, appears to be a mainstream success. Even if it isn’t, it will be eagerly devoured by Latino audiences, ever hungry for entertainment that positively portrays their community or features Latino heroes and role-models.

Valens, whose real name was Ricardo Valenzuela, was only 17 when he died in 1959 in an airplane crash that also killed Buddy Holly, another rising young rock star. As with many public figures who die young, the lingering interest in Valens’ life stems not just from what he achieved; we wonder what might have been had he lived.

So, after seeing the movie, I thought that I’d return to the old barrio and write something about the homeboy who made good, and maybe even some upbeat things about Pacoima itself.

But then they killed Alejandro Salazar.

Alejandro was only 10 when he died last week, hit by a stray bullet fired by a gang member. As I read news accounts of the incident, I could see it precisely.

Alejandro was walking home from Pacoima Recreation Center, the city park where I played every day as a child. It’s right across the street from San Fernando Gardens, the housing project where I grew up, and where Alejandro lived with his parents, a sister and a brother.

He was standing just outside the park fence, a few yards down from Pacoima Elementary School, where he was in fourth grade. Across the street is Guardian Angel, the Roman Catholic parish school. I attended both as a youngster.

Alejandro’s friends said that he was trying to come up with enough change to buy an ice cream from a street vendor when a scuffle broke out between a local Latino punk who deals drugs and some would-be customers, who were black. Also nearby were members of a street gang that have claimed the housing project as their turf. Seeing a homeboy hassled by blacks, one of the gang members pulled a gun and started spraying shots about wildly. Alejandro fell to the ground, blood spurting from his head. He died in a hospital a few hours later.

Alejandro Salazar was the seventh child to be killed or wounded by stray gang bullets this month in the Los Angeles area.

The homeboys are being quiet about it. “They’re going around with their heads low right now,” according to Manuel Velasquez, a local gang worker. “But I wonder how long it will last.”

Velasquez has good reason to be dubious. For six years he has been a street worker for the Community Youth Gang Services Project, the county agency that tries to intervene to stop gang violence before it happens. He’s a courageous, caring young man, but he knows the gang mentality all too well.

Chilling as it sounds, the cretins who contributed to Alejandro’s death are trying to rationalize what happened.

“Now that one of their friends has been arrested,” Velasquez told me, “some of them are saying it wasn’t his fault, but the blacks’ (fault) for buying drugs, or the guy who was dealing.”

Right, fellas. You were just defending the barrio against interlopers. What asinine, macho stupidity!

I remember . . . .

Growing up in Pacoima 30 years ago, I was supposed to hate guys from San Fernando just because they were from San Fer and I was from Pacas. It makes no more sense now than it did then. And I don’t know what makes me angrier about it--the fact that such a backward mentality is still there after all these years, or the fact that Chicanos like me who grew up in places like Pacoima, but moved away, haven’t done more to help snuff it out.

Oh, I know all the reasons youth gangs exist--poverty and unemployment, fed by racism and discrimination. I try to struggle against those problems whenever I can, and maybe someday we’ll have them licked. But, damn it, in the meantime we must do more to protect innocents like Alejandro Salazar.

More gang workers like Velasquez would sure help. Right now he and the important program that he works for don’t get nearly enough money. The gang project’s budget is so tight that Velasquez and one other street worker must cover the entire San Fernando Valley, keeping track of more than 80 gangs--a dozen in Pacoima alone. And you can multiply his problems by the hundreds in South-Central Los Angeles and East L.A., in Santa Ana and Riverside.

I’m grateful that people like Velasquez are out there trying to keep a lid on the insanity that lurks on some of our meaner streets. If we need either role-models or unsung heroes, there they are, right under our noses. But we don’t do nearly enough to help them control the punks like the one who killed Alejandro. As long as there are losers like that around, the many winners that the Latino barrios produce will never get the attention that they deserve.

Alejandro Salazar was just an average student, according to the staff at Pacoima Elementary School--but he was also a popular kid who “had everything going for him,” in the words of Principal Robert Owens. He might not have been another Albert Einstein, but maybe he could have been another Ritchie Valens. And until those of us who presume to lead, or speak for, the Latino community do more to abolish gangs, the achievements of Chicanos like Valens will seem shallow in the eyes of society at large.