[Clipping: Revolutionary Times] Part: 1 of 2
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7 I/ L 1
SAN DIEGO'S WEEKLY
VOLUME 12. NO. 38. SEPT. 29, 19834 - d
g~
Pedro Gonzales, 1914Revolutionary
Times
The year was 1934, the place
was Los Angeles, and for Pedro
Gonzalez, life was good. He had
an attractive and devoted wife
and five children he was proud
of. He was about 38, an age
when careers take shape for
better or worse, and his was
shaping for the best. He was a
singer and the leading .
personality on Spanish-language
radio. His early-morning show
on L.A.'s KMPC radio was a
staple in Spanish-speaking
households in the southwest
United States, and his
popularity was as great in thosehouseholds as the Puerto Rican
group Menudo is among
Hispanic teenagers today. And
while the country was still in the
throes of an economic
depression, Gonzalez's hard work
and popularity had spared him
from the worst of its direct
effects. Spared him, that is,
until some Los Angeles officials
decided to get revenge.
As a young man Gonzalez had
worked at the side of Mexican
revolutionary leader Pancho
Villa as his telegraph operator,
accompanying Villa for seven
years in and out of battle as Villa
moved in and out of favor with
the ruling governments.
Gonzalez had seen bloody battles
and barely escaped execution by
firing squad. He was not one to
choose a quiet life over
controversy when he feltsomething was wrong that he
could right. So when state,
federal, and local officials
combined during the Depression
to deport half a million
Mexicans living in the United
States, including American
citizens of Mexican descent,
Gonzalez broadcast his protest
on his radio show. When a
Mexican did not get justice in a
Los Angeles courtroom,
Gonzalez protested with song.
When volunteers were needed
for some community project, an
announcement by Gonzalez
would bring hundreds of
Mexicans and Mexican-
Americans to the project.
His influence frightened
officials in Los Angeles. Buren
Fitts, the notorious District
Attorney for Los Angeles at the
time who had an apparent
proclivity for generating mass
hysteria, charged that Gonzalez
was a threat to Los Angeles.
Fitts claimed that Gonzalez
could at any time incite the Los
Angeles Mexican community to
riot.
In 1933, Los Angeles officials
began a campaign to destroy
Gonzalez's influence. They
unsuccessfully tried to cancel his.
broadcasting license. They
repeatedly arrested him on
minor charges and then released
him for lack of evidence. Then,
in 1934, the officials found their
key to Gonzalez's end as a Los
Angeles broadcaster: a teenager
who would charge that Gonzalez
had raped her. In exchange she
would receive leniency from the
Los Angeles prosecutors for
some juvenile crimes she had
committed. After a widely
publicized trial, Gonzalez was
sentenced to fifty years in San
Quentin, even after the teenager
signed an affidavit
acknowledging that her charges
against the radio personality
were false. While Gonzalez sat
in San Quentin, his supporters
throughout the Southwest
organized defense committees to
win his freedom. In 1940,
Gonzalez was paroled and
deported to Mexico.
From 1940 until the early
1970s, Gonzalez lived in Tijuana
and became a pioneer of that
city's radio broadcast industry.
About twelve years ago he_ moved back to the United States
and settled in San Ysidro. Today,
at eighty-eight, he lives in a
small house with his wife of
sixty-six years, Maria. The walls
of his living room are covered
with photographs of his days as a
Mexican revolutionary, as a
singer in Los Angeles, and as a
major radio personality.
Last year, while some San
Diego filmmakers were
researching a project about the
Mexican revolution, they came
across Gonzalez and interviewed
him. They decided the old man,
a still-aaie vdice inthe
Mexican-American community,
had a story that should be told.
They made a biographical
documentary, and that
documentary, a joint project by
KPBS-TV and CineWest, will
air Thursday, October 6, at 8:30
p.m. on KPBS Channel 15. It
will repeat on Thursday,
October 13, at 1:30 p.m. and
Friday, October 14, at 12:30
p.m. The half-hour
documentary is cut from nine
hours of tape 4nd includes rare
historical footage and
photographs of the Mexican
revolution and Los Angeles of
the 1930s. It also shows a robust
Gonzale: and his wife telling
their remarkable story, dubbed
by the documentary's makers as
the Ballad of an Unsung Hero.
- Kathryn Phillips
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Reference the current part of this Clipping.
Parlee, Lorena, 1945-2006 & Phillips, Kathryn. [Clipping: Revolutionary Times], clipping, September 29, 1983; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2016024/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.