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A Day of Beer and Candles

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It’s an odd kind of shrine under any circumstance: candles, flowers, a cigarette, matches and a couple of cans of Budweiser beer surrounded by a miniature white fence.

You’ll find it on a lawn where 19-year-old Arturo Jimenez was killed a few days ago by a frightened sheriff’s deputy. On the side of a nearby wall in letters three feet high someone has spray-painted Arturo’s name, with the notation “Smokey. R.I.P.”

Smokey was his nickname. Accounts of how he was killed vary. Two deputies say they were under attack. Others say Smokey was only shouting his protest at their presence when he was shot dead.

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The homeboys can be seen almost any time of the day paying homage to him. They come alone or in twos and threes to sit on a slope that faces the shrine. Most just stare, others talk quietly among themselves.

Death is a heavy presence among the homeboys. It deserves respect.

The Ramona Gardens housing project, about 500 units sprawled over hilly land above the San Bernardino Freeway, is mostly quiet now. The media feed prompted by Smokey’s death is over.

Children play in the street, a fruit vendor sells his wares along Crusado Lane and young Communists distribute revolutionary pamphlets door to door.

“It’s about as peaceful as it ever gets,” says Fred Babinski, manager of the project. “When you have low-income families living on top of each other like this, it’s never completely quiet.”

There aren’t many complaints to police out of Ramona Gardens, but that isn’t because it’s heaven on earth. People are afraid to complain, Babinski says. They fear retaliation.

No complaints, no police. And the project simmers in discontent.

Up until Saturday, no one much gave a damn about Ramona Gardens, built a half-century ago to fill a wartime need. Its population of 2,140 is composed mostly of Latinos just getting by.

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But because of Smokey’s death, coming as it did in the wake of a public aroused by police brutality, suddenly everyone cares.

“That’s strange,” says Vicente Valdez, sitting near the beer-can shrine to Smokey. “Someone gets killed and now all the downtown people are demanding justice. Why weren’t they demanding justice before the killing?”

He talks specifically of the visit by City Councilman Richard Alatorre two days after the shooting. Valdez believes that like most politicians, Hispanic or otherwise, Alatorre plays cynical games with the needs of his constituents.

“He didn’t even want to be in the Gardens,” Valdez says. “You could read his body language. He couldn’t wait to get out. Now he promises justice for the project. I ask you, Mr. Alatorre: Where and when?”

Valdez, 22, doesn’t fit anyone’s image of a project cholo. He’s had a couple of years at the University of Arizona, where he studied political science. It shows.

“Animals are treated better than people in Los Angeles,” he says, referring to the endless campaigns for animal rights. “Where are the crusades for our rights?”

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Valdez and others say Alatorre never set foot in Ramona Gardens until a media army marched in, guaranteeing him maximum exposure.

Not true, says his press secretary, Luisa Campano. “He’s been there many times. Every Christmas he does a toy giveaway.”

About those young Communists. Like teen-agers trapped in a time warp, they seem dramatically out of place with their hammers and sickles, their red flags and a Marxist manifesto discredited even by those who were once its most vocal adherents.

No one takes them seriously anymore, except the cops who bust their heads occasionally when they get out of hand, the way they did one May Day around MacArthur Park.

But to say Ramona Gardens isn’t ready for some kind of change would be to ignore a glaring reality. Smokey’s death has done more than just send another Chicano to his grave. It has, in an eerie juxtaposition of violence and awareness, awakened a barrio to its own sense of pride.

“We’re not animals out here,” Valdez said that day by the shrine. “We’re not drunks and we’re not killers. We’re decent people trying to make a living.”

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If Smokey’s death is to mean anything at all, its meaning will have to be shaped by the decent people of whom Valdez speaks. Neither cops, Alatorre nor a whole herd of young Communists are going to make a hell of a big difference in Ramona Gardens.

Without effort from within, that odd little shrine of beer, cigarettes and candles will be Smokey’s only legacy. And any way you look at it, it isn’t worth dying for.

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