Letters to the Editor: Cudahy vice mayor’s gang comments ‘are not misunderstood. They are unacceptable’

To the editor: Gustavo Arellano’s recent column in the Los Angeles Times attempting to soften Cynthia Gonzalez’s remarks about gang members “protecting [their] turf” is more than disappointing (“What an L.A. County politician meant when she hit up ‘cholos’ to fight ICE,” June 26). It’s dangerous.

Let’s be clear: Gonzalez, in her role as vice mayor of Cudahy, did not call for peaceful resistance. She explicitly invoked violent street gangs — with long histories of murder, extortion and drug trafficking — to take up space and power against federal agents. That’s not protest. That’s incitement.

My parents owned a 7-Eleven on the corner of Figueroa and Avenue 52 for 35 years and had direct experience in dealing with the avenue’s gangs. It was a terrifying problem for them, and gang culture is not something to be glorified.

Instead of holding Gonzalez accountable, Arellano chose to romanticize her rhetoric, casting it as part of a misunderstood barrio tradition. That’s not analysis. That’s complicity. He reframes her language as nostalgic, as if calling on groups like Florencia 13 and 18th Street to “protect” their neighborhoods is somehow a cultural rallying cry instead of what it is: reckless and inflammatory.

What’s equally troubling is UCLA’s silence. Gonzalez was recently named director of a program there that trains educators. If she continues to hold that title it would send a chilling message: that incendiary, dangerous rhetoric is excusable if it’s cloaked in the right cultural language — and that’s a standard no institution of integrity should stand behind.

If Arellano wants to champion communities like mine, he should stop filtering them through sentimentality and start confronting what’s real: Gonzalez’s words are not misunderstood. They are unacceptable. And his spin only makes them more so.

Migdia Chinea, Glendale