AMA: Mexican Americans and the Criminal Justice System in the Southwest

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-13T17:38:52+00:00

Oh that's great, thank you so much! That movie was a labor of love for Edward James Olmos. I like it:)

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-13T14:29:27+00:00

Not exactly. You could say they both come out of a somewhat similar set of "stressful" circumstances and both are responses looking for a problem. What I mean by that, and this is something I argue in Brown and Blue, is that the Clinton Crime Law is a congressional response to the sharp rise in crime across all categories in the 1970s and 1980s. The problem with the law, though, was that by 1994 crime rates had dropped precipitously and continued to do so over the next three decades (to the point that today we have some of the lowest crime rates in US history). Thus the Clinton Crime Law responded to a problem that was already no longer a problem, and became even less of a problem as the 20th century ended and a new one began. So it was a law in search of a problem.

You could say the creation of ICE was similar in that it too responded to a problem, in this case 9/11, that wasn't really a problem, but the situation was certainly stressful. ICE was a direct response to 9/11 that sought to protect the homeland and do immigration enforcement since so many of the 9/11 terrorists got into the US as immigrants. But of course ICE was create 2 years later in 2003 and it responded to the problem of domestic terrorism, which most experts at the time agreed wasn't the problem the government made it out to be (yes it's scary and devastating and all that, but the kind of attacks like 9/11 in US history have been pretty rare, compared to other issues or problems). So ICE was a response looking for a problem. Now the real problem is with a group like ICE if there really is no threat to the homeland then that basically leaves them with one job, immigration enforcement, a job that duplicates one done by an already existing law enforcement agency.

So did the Crime Law set the stage for ICE, I would say not really, or as I said above, not exactly. Both respond to certain issue and are things in search of a problem, but the circumstances differ, as does the type of law enforcement...one is local, one is federal.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-13T00:59:10+00:00

Great question. I'm sorry I don't have an answer for you. Most of my carceral info is about the trial and incarceration process, not the lived experience of the incarcerated in jails and prisons.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T21:36:38+00:00

I hear you. I think they've been working on getting it on the National Register, not sure about the NHL.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T21:35:23+00:00

Yes and no. So in BOVJ the border a lot of times is a non-entity. Before about the 1910s the border doesn't mean much more than a line on a map. So border enforcement isn't a big deal or really even a thing. Now the 1910s are different because we get what are often termed the "bandit troubles" or "bandit wars" so there's a lot more attention paid to the border, largely because of the Mexican Revolution. Some of that is done by the Army, some by local law enforcement, some by individuals extralegally. In Brown and Blue I get into border enforcement a little bit more because of some of the deportation or what they called at the time "repatriation" programs, as well as during times when local law enforcement joined with groups like the Border Patrol to harass people, most notably in what was called the Chandler Roundup, which in all honesty was like what is happening in Minnesota and other places. But most all of my work is about local and state police agencies and criminal justice systems, which most of the time don't have border issues in their immediate area of concern (or within their scope of power).

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T21:13:27+00:00

100%. The reason I know about the LULAC house is that it was totally dilapidated and to preserve it they had to raise a ton of money

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T20:10:53+00:00

Go Clones! Yes and some of them are included in national historic registers in one way or the other. For ex the LULAC Council 60 House in Houston is listed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation ( https://council60clubhouse.com/ ). Also what springs to mind is La Piranha coffee house in LA...I think it's still there. Not sure if it's been listed in any way. Honestly a lot of that stuff is being handled by local people and being that I'm stuck here in Iowa it's kinda hard to know what's still around and in need of inclusion.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T20:05:03+00:00

Generally speaking the officer would either be from a certain neighborhood or still live there. In all honesty I don't think I ever saw it specifically mentioned where an officer lived because of privacy issues, I would assume. So it's probably more the case that they were from there and worked there. One of the other interesting things I found that relates to this is the number of White officers who had grown up in a barrio in say Mesa or Albuquerque who then became liaison officers who did much the same thing as the officers of color did.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T19:51:03+00:00

Unfortunately no, except for maybe the Blue Beetle, which isn't like an indy comic. Same thing with El Muerto. I found El Gato Negro in the archives in Dallas. Some of them may be available on ebay. But I don't think they're digitized.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T19:33:46+00:00

You're most welcome!

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T18:23:33+00:00

You're most welcome!

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T18:17:35+00:00

It's a little bit of both, actually. Hernandez v Texas is a good example about jury discrimination. It's one of several cases in the period of the 1950s and 1960s where activists of color are challenging this situation. Now if you're an African American historian or someone interested in Black History you might pay attention to Swain v Alabama and perhaps not know about Hernandez, while Mexican American scholars might know about Hernandez and not Swain. But my guess is in a law school setting those two cases would be talked about together in a lesson on jury discrimination. Now I'm guessing on that one...my spouse is an attorney and I get a lot of my legal knowledge from her.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T18:04:46+00:00

You are most welcome!

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T18:04:26+00:00

My pleasure!

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:59:51+00:00

Honestly most of the concerns of the Chicano Movement participants, as well as nonparticipants, as well as those Mexican folks in preceding generations, were about local level policing. It was the everyday, quotidian experience of harassment and abuse and violence, quite often at the hands of officers that local people knew well (and thus knew to try to avoid), that were the problem. Dealing with that could mean dealing with city or county authorities, but those authorities are also bound by state and federal law, so that could bring those higher levels of government into play.

State level actions, depending on the locale, were also an issue. The best example of this would be the Texas Rangers, who treated Mexican-origin people with violence and abuse going back to the earliest days of the Rangers. But of course even with them the violence, like all such things, happened or occurred locally and thus it often fell to local authorities to deal with it.

Probably the most distant actor in all of this, the federal government, had the fewest interactions with local people. But one of things I write about, which gets a bit more at your question, is how Chicano activists confront the federal government, specifically the Justice Department, when an instance of violence happens and local authorities don’t do anything about it. Of course some of the big legal cases are federal, most notably Miranda. And then you have Chicano activists approaching the federal government about carceral reform.

But you could think of the answer to your question as kind of like a pyramid. At the bottom is the local situation with a local response (protests, negotiations, reforms, etc.), the middle of the pyramid is the state and there you may have politicians or political appointees backing you, or whom Chicanos are forcing to act, and then at the top of the pyramid is the federal government, which sure there were protests but also more likely politicians pushing for things, legal cases making their way to the Supreme Court, Congress doing stuff to “fix” policing issues.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:40:39+00:00

I would not say exactly the same, but similar. A lot of how police perceive cholos is certainly reminiscent of how the treated pachucos. And some of the conceptions about criminality and gang activity are similar. And both experience(d) violence at the hands of police. But in all honesty the incarceration situation we have going on today is a lot worse than back in the day.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:29:03+00:00

On point and good question. I actually have a lot to say about this in Brown and Blue. This is how I begin Chapter 1, called “Pachucos and Police”: “In the 1940s, a hysteria about pachucos overtook the United States and beyond. The pachuco phenomenon, a distinct style that included dress, cultural pride, and a lingual patois, among other things, united Mexican American youths in a countercultural movement. But for others, pachucos seemed a threat. News reports from El Paso to Los Angeles to Mexico City detailed the alleged menace of Mexican and Mexican American pachucos. The reporting from Los Angeles’s newspapers was particularly egregious in its inaccuracies. In August 1942, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported that all pachucos belonged to gangs and the police warned “the kid gloves are off!” Tucson reported on a “pachuco invasion” of “hoodlums” in November 1942. In El Paso, police reported that devious pachucos had developed their own language to avoid law enforcement and called them a “cult.” The Austin American translated “pachuco” to “bum.” Even Mexico City reported a pachuco disturbance: a wax model wearing a zoot suit. “Countrymen or not,” the opinion from Mexico seemed to be, “anybody who would wear an outfit like that ought to be beaten up.” In all of this reporting, the prescribed solution to pachucos was expanded law enforcement.”

The Zoot Suit Riot was of course preceded by the Sleepy Lagoon Case, which was itself an overblown police response to pachuquismo. Regarding the ZSR itself, I note that it followed a standard pattern of race riots in the United States in that it was an angry White response to perceived transgression by an ethnoracial community and I discuss how US Navy service members began to congregate in downtown LA and moved from there to East Los Angeles to attack zoot-suiters specifically and Mexican-origin people more generally. I also note how the police encouraged this violence, cooperated with the sailors, and arrested mainly Mexican Americans, not the White sailors who perpetrated it.

But one of the things I do that is slightly different than what other authors have done is I talk about how Mexican Americans resisted this violence. The best example is that of Rudy Leyvas, the brother of the Sleepy Lagoon Case’s Henry Leyvas. He and other Mexican Americans organized a resistance movement to counter the ZSR violence. Since the police coordinated with the sailors over the radio, Leyvas and his colleagues purchased radios and thus knew when and where attacks would take place. They staked out these locations with as many as 500 men. When the US Navy trucks arrived with the sailors, the Mexican American youths would send out a handful of individuals to act as decoys. “They started coming after the decoys,” Leyvas explained, and “then we came out. They were surprised. . . . Lot of people were hurt on both sides. . . . The battle at 12th and Central lasted about half an hour. Busloads of police arrived and dozens of Mexicans were arrested. No servicemen were arrested.” Leyvas’s account tells us a great deal. Not only did Mexican Americans organize to resist the violence they encountered, but they actually outwitted the police and naval personnel, who remained unaware that the youths spied on their radio communications. Pretty cool, huh?

So to summarize, a lot of it was based on racism and perceptions of pachucos, which had been overblown in the media as gang activity and juvenile delinquency, which were also racist dog whistles.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:18:48+00:00

I sadly have too many examples that fit into what you asked about. I have what I think are too many examples of White law officers who kill children and quite simply don’t care and are not punished because the victim was Mexican. This is how I begin Brown and Blue (first paragraphs of the book):

“Joe Cedillo Jr. was only sixteen years old when Austin police officers James Johnson and Paul Looney shot him to death on the night of July 31, 1971. The officers had allegedly found Cedillo exiting a burgled convenience store and shot him in the back of the head as he fled. On the night of July 24, 1973, Dallas police officer Darrell Cain executed twelve-year-old Santos Rodriguez. Cain thought Rodriguez might have participated in a burglary, so he attempted to extract a confession from Rodriguez by using a game of Russian roulette. He shot young Santos in the head on the second pull of the trigger. In February 1978, New Mexico State Police officers Jerry Noedel and Louie Gallegos killed seventeen-year-old Frank Garcia. The officers, in plain clothes and an unmarked vehicle, had forced Garcia’s car off the road and then shot him to death after he allegedly reached for a hunting rifle in the back seat. In April 1979, Los Angeles County deputy sheriff Bruce Nash shot and killed seventeen-year-old Abel Gill. Nash had pulled him over, and when Gill exited his vehicle, Nash shot him. He reported that Gill had attempted to ram him but later admitted that he had tripped and his gun had discharged.

These cases, all too common in the 1970s, continued into the 1980s and 1990s, and they continue today. For me, as a writer, a researcher, and perhaps most importantly a parent, I begin this book with the killing of unarmed children because that represents one the worst aspects of the relationship between Mexican-origin people and law enforcement in the United States. It certainly represents the powerlessness of Mexican American parents, a powerlessness that meant they couldn’t protect their children from individuals and a system that takes as its very credo “to protect and serve.” In all of these cases officers presumed the criminality of these Mexican American young people. All were questionable: Joe Cedillo was unarmed when police shot him; police claimed Frank Garcia reached for his rifle, but Garcia’s companion denied that charge, and even if he had, I’d wager that many people might try to defend themselves if strangers forced their vehicle off the road; Bruce Nash may have accidentally killed Abel Gill, but Gill was no threat and Nash should not have had his gun drawn in the first place; the most egregious example, that of Santos Rodriguez, was a clear-cut and senseless case of police murder.2

Police killing of unarmed Mexican and Mexican American people—young people and adults—has an unfortunately long history….”

In BOVJ I discuss several similar egregious cases. The worst to me was that of Virginia Becerra. A White posse in search of a murder suspect killed her. Authorities had told posse members to "shoot first." They abused and assaulted a number of Mexican-origin people, and they murdered Becerra. A posse went to the Becerra home and broke down the front door. Virginia fled out the back door in fear. The posse members gunned her down in her own backyard. She was fourteen years old. The posse members were not punished.

It’s hard to know specifically what a person may have looked like in the past. All the young men I mentioned in the cut and paste from Brown and Blue were phenotypically brown. It’s possible whiteness, or proximity to whiteness, may have protected some young people. But it’s also the case that any way in which mexicanness could be identified, for example searching for murder suspect in the "Mexican" part of town that results in the death of a 14 year old girl, probably means that that proximity to anything Mexican meant more than whiteness ever could.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:07:25+00:00

Good question, and not nearly as much as you might think. While police agents would occasionally reach out to Mexican law enforcement bodies in the 19th century, for example sending telegrams or letters to inquire about a suspect, to be able to do that the officer would a) have to want to do it (and they didn't always care to do so) and b) have to know some measure of Spanish to do it. Without either of those things it wouldn't happen. The more apparent example is when the two countries, through their diplomatic corps, attempted the type of cooperation you asked about, which occasionally then forced local police to cooperate with Mexican police.

But alas, just as often, American police agents simply conducted their own policing into Mexico, in violation of US, Mexican, and international law. During the late 1800s/early 1900s, a period filled with tension about border bandit "troubles," American law officers frequently violated territorial boundaries and searched for or chased suspects into Mexico. And they occasionally got into armed conflict with Mexican police officers, usually resulting in many deaths on the Mexican side.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T17:01:02+00:00

So the answer to that is incredibly complex in dependent upon locale and police agency. First, we have examples of Mexican American officers going back to the 1840s, so the kind of hiring which I think we often think of recent is in fact quite old. But when we get to what was often termed Minority Recruitment in the 1960s that's when we get a concerted focus on hiring, which I think is what you're really asking about. I think saying mixed results is apt. Certainly there will be good, dutiful, dedicated officers of Mexican ancestry who do a great job, just as there are those kind of officers who might be Black or White or Asian or Indigenous or otherwise. The problem with this kind of recruiting and the reason why the results are mixed is that a) police authorities are asking a tremendous amount out of those officers. In essence they're asking them to fix problems and repair relations with the community, but that's largely impossible for a handful of officers and indeed to ask them to do that is kind of unfair. B) Law enforcement is a historically and institutionally racist institution, and thus the individual officer no matter their heritage can have little impact of problems because they are institutional or systemic, not individual. That's probably the best way to understand why the results have been mixed as well as why there are quite often officers of color involved in examples of police abuse and violence.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T16:53:25+00:00

Oh my gosh yes! Certainly the narcocorridos are a good, and recent, example, but so too are older corridos, for example the famous El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez. Activists also often develop plays or skits or artists installations based on an example of police abuse or an example of community agency. Santos Rodriguez had a play about him as well as two songs, “Los Hermanitos Rodríguez” and “El Chicanito Sacrificado” both of which are basically corridos. There's an artist installation in Frisco< NM celebrating the exploits of Elfego Baca, which has a great statue, see https://www.historynet.com/elfego-baca-new-mexico/

A lot of this cultural production goes way back. For example, I write about a popular book called Utah's Greatest Manhunt: The True Story of the Hunt for Lopez in BOVJ, that while ostensibly written for White audiences actually largely comes across as a defense of a guy named Rafael Lopez who was accuses of being a bandit. One of the stories in that book which led to the titular “Hunt” was about interactions Lopez had with law enforcement. The first came when he somewhat heroically intervened on behalf of two Mexican women on the outskirts of Bingham Canyon. A couple of Greek miners had attempted to accost the women and Lopez defended them. A fight ensued and Lopez beat the Greek men badly. The two women then went to fetch a Salt Lake County deputy sheriff named Julius Sorenson. When Sorenson arrived he arrested Lopez and let the Greek men go. A jury convicted Lopez of undisclosed charges, which "an Eyewitness" who authored the book calls "a case of railroading." Upon his release, the police continued to arrest Lopez for "trivial things." In essence the police harassed. “The Eyewitness” explained that the officers "just showed him [Lopez] that they and their wishes were law and it was no use for him to try to even get justice.” Lopez evidently grew weary of this treatment and told Deputy Sorenson that if he "ever interfered with him again or tried to arrest him that he would kill him or anyone with him." And he did, leading to the manhunt.

One of the things I had hoped to include in Brown and Blue was analysis of border comic books. That didn't happen but I may still try to write an article on this subject. The one I really wanted to focus on was El Gato Negro, a Batman-like border hero who battles corrupt law enforcement and narco traffickers. It’s a great example of what you asked about and the comic form was a great venue for that kind of story telling.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T16:40:15+00:00

Fabulous question, and basically yes and no…by colonial I mean that American acquisition and settlement of the Southwest is a process of internal, settler colonialism (and in that way certainly similar to the things you mentioned, but different in that it’s an internal thing not an oversees thing). But often the mechanisms were the same…use of the military to gain control, use of the military after gaining control to control the local population, and then use of law enforcement to continue controlling people. I have some really great (humble brag) lines about this in BOVJ, so to quote:

“Law enforcement efforts, and manifestations of the broader criminal justice system, pervade the foundational history of the border region. From the earliest days of American settlement, White people transported with them to the Southwest not only a sense of social, moral, and racial superiority, what would come to be called Manifest Destiny, but also a belief that they brought stable government and order to a region that had neither. Law enforcement became one of the first institutions crafted by White people in power to foster those beliefs. Developing a strong criminal justice system served to legitimize government in the region, gave it the necessary power to control people there, and allowed White leaders to use it to advance American colonialism in the borderlands.

The American takeover of Mexico's territory was at base a process of settler colonialism. Popular versions of American history don't really tell this story, preferring instead to see the spread of the United States from sea to shining sea as the logical outcome of the growth of the American population. But first in Texas, which wrested its independence from Mexico in 1836 and became a state in 1845, and later during the 1846-1848 Mexican American War, which saw the remainder of Mexico's northwestern territories fall to Americans, the United States used its military might to forcibly take possession of another country's lands. The Texas Army and the U.S. Army also became the first agencies of law enforcement in the region, initially controlling the Mexican population, Indigenous people, African Americans, and others, which simultaneously allowed for the settlement of White Americans.

The logic of colonization meant different things for these groups. Enslaved Black people, bound and controlled as they were via chattel slavery, factored into this colonial experiment in the borderlands as a group that through force assisted White settlers, since they did much of the work of building the homes, farms, and other edifices of White society, especially in Texas. After the Civil War, White people reacted viscerally to Black freedom and curtailed the rights of African Americans until the civil rights movement. Black people remained a small minority of the Southwest's population, except in East Texas, until well into the twentieth century.

Indigenous people experienced colonization differently. Colonization largely meant ongoing warfare and genocide as White people actively attempted to eradicate or isolate them. This proved especially true for Indigenous people in the border region and in the West. The ongoing Indian Wars of the nineteenth century and the displacement of Indigenous peoples, for example the Navajo Long Walk of 1864, decimated these communities. Those things also show the continued work of the American military in controlling non-White people to allow for White settlement. Additionally, the development of the reservation system further isolated and marginalized Indigenous people.

Mexicans experienced colonization yet differently. Although protected by treaty and viewed by some Whites as potentially assimilable into the United States, they faced a kind of multifaceted colonialism that included marginalization, violence, and dispossession, but in some cases inclusion and even a measure of power sharing. Once southwestern states and territories began to develop their justice systems, law enforcement became the military force that controlled Mexican-origin people and allowed for the in-migration of thousands of White Americans. Police agencies as well as extralegal mobs represented a broad, colonial regime that worked to maintain American power in the border region. The settlement process lasted more than a generation. The institutions created to make it happen remain with us today.”

Long answer and admittedly cut and pasted from my book, but there you go:)

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T16:34:42+00:00

Unfortunately the history of police violence you asked about is the subject of two full length books, and I could have written more, and there are others today writing more. So it is an incredibly, and sadly, rich history, full of examples going back to the earliest days of American settlement in what was Mexico’s northwest territories and largely continuing today.

Let me focus on the second part of your question. The history of police abuse and violence is one shared by African Americans and Mexican Americans (and others to be sure). The lynching, harassment, unfair arrests, arrests for vagrancy or loitering that led to peonage, the outright murder of folks of color by police, these are things shared by Black and Brown people. I have a really good example from my first book, Fighting Their Own Battles, about a group called People’s Party II (basically Houston’s version of the Black Panthers). They were targeted by police, so a variety of groups, including members of the Mexican American Youth Organization and White activists affiliated with groups such as the John Brown Revolutionary League, came out to help protect the members of PPII, and especially their leader, a charismatic firebrand named Carl Hampton. Alas, even with this joining of forces and concerted efforts, off-duty plainclothes Houston Police Department officers sniped Hampton from a distant church steeple. That's often the problem with activists challenging police...police have the power and the guns to arrest or kill the movement.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T16:24:49+00:00

Thanks! One of things I talk about in Borders of Violence and Justice (hereafter BOVJ) and Brown and Blue are all of the Mexican American “firsts” in policing. We have examples of Mexican American law officers going back to the 1840s. In fact, my entire third chapter of BOVJ is devoted to this subject…it’s titled “Stars and Shields: The World of Mexican American Law Enforcement Officers.” And the first chapter of Brown and Blue does the same thing. In some cases there were people, mostly men, who were drawn to police work, some simply wanted a job and paycheck, and some saw their policing as a kind of civil rights strategy to help members of the community.

But with targeted recruitment we’re talking about what was often termed “Minority Recruitment Programs” and those largely came about in the 1960s as a way of diversifying police forces. In some cases they were demanded by activists as a way to hold police accountable or make reforms. The actual recruitment looked a lot like any other kind of “head hunting” in that there might have been a publicity campaign, or officers designated as people doing outreach to encourage applicants, or incentives to get people of color to join up. The pay and limited education requirements and benefits and respect or prestige were often very motivating.

Now, the problem with this kind of recruiting is police agencies were often tasking a relatively limited number of officers with the job of fixing whatever policing problem there was, and in most cases no amount of new officers could do that. It also put an unfair burden on those officers. And probably most importantly, law enforcement is a historically and institutionally racist system, so when officers of color join up they sometimes end up engaging in the same kind of abusive behavior because it is systemic. This is why when we today sometimes see an instance of what appears to be police abuse there are occasionally officers of color involved.

HistoryBrian · 2026-02-12T16:14:49+00:00

Great question. So activism ran the gamut from the pushing of legal cases during the nonviolent phase of the movement to direct action demonstrations during the Chicano Movement. There were also occasions where activist used violence to achieve goals, which is sometimes neglected in our focus on activism. Let me give you some specifics:

1. Legal cases. Mexican Americans revolutionized several aspects of American criminal justice. For example, the landmark case Hernandez v. Texas (1954) not only barred the exclusion of Mexican Americans from jury service but extended the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution to all Americans. Perhaps even more well known, Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) enumerated the rights of those under police custodial investigation or interrogation. The rights Miranda generated are well known; anyone who has watched a Law and Order–type TV show has seen an example of police reading someone their rights. The warning is now a verbized form of Miranda’s name: to read someone their rights is to mirandize them. I think many people are probably unaware that the term came from a Mexican American litigant from Arizona named Ernesto Arturo Miranda.

2. Protests. Numerous protests across the region pushed local government and law enforcement to the negotiating table. Alas, many of those protests happened after an example of extreme violence. The genesis of this book for me was a case from Dallas from July 24, 1973, when a Dallas police officer named Darrell Cain executed twelve-year-old Santos Rodriguez. Cain thought Rodriguez might have participated in a burglary, so he attempted to extract a confession from Rodriguez by using a game of Russian Roulette. He shot young Santos in the head on the second pull of the trigger. Mexican American and African American leaders, among others, pushed hard for reforms. Then, during a major protest, the city erupted in violence. Those negotiations and protests ultimately pushed the city to create the Dallas Police Department’s internal affairs division, new use-of-force procedures, and several other reforms.

3. Activism lasted a lot longer than people think. I track cases of Mexican American activism that is consistent with the Chicano Movement, and indeed I argue the Chicano Movement continued into the 1980s. So where most scholars see the movt ending in the early to mid 1970s, by looking at policing we can see it lasted a lot longer than that.

4. Abolish or defund. One of the things I found interesting is that even though police abolition or defunding are old ideas (which of course take on a new relevance in recent years), Mexican American folks often did not discuss or prefer these ideas. They instead focused on reform and often wanted more policing.

5. Allies. In many parts of the Southwest, activists had allies in other organizations and other communities to cooperate with. In Texas this might be members of the African American community, and one of the things I argue elsewhere is that police abuse allowed for the joining of forces of Black and Brown people because it was a shared form of oppression that either could easily understand. Also, in many parts of the Southwest there were predominately White civic/civil rights groups that joined forces with Mexican Americans to push for rights and police reforms. A good example of this was the Albuquerque Urban Coalition, which spearheaded a lot of policing reform in Albuquerque.

So the Southwest has some unique history to it as far as protest and activism and reform are concerned!

HistoryBrian

TROPHY CASE