Open Letter to the San Diego Police Chief

La Voz de Aztlan
Los Angeles, Alta California

February 19, 2004

Police Chief William M. Lansdowne
San Diego Police Department
202 C Street
San Diego, CA 92101

Dear Chief William M. Lansdowne:

RE: Dragging Murder of Mexican Migrant Worker on July 2, 2000

Prior to you taking command of the police department there was a horrific dragging murder of an undocumented migrant worker from Oaxaca, Mexico in the tomato fields of North San Diego County and within the jurisdiction of your police department. The prior police chief did an extremely incompetent investigation leading many in our Mexican-American community to believe that he may have "covered up" the murder to protect certain youths of very influential families that live in the area where the murder took place. The prior chief swept the entire gruesome incident under the rug and we are now asking you to re-open the investigation.

The horrific dragging death, possibly using a vehicle, occurred on July 2, 2000, just 3 days before 5 other Mexican migrant workers were brutally beaten by 8 youths who live adjacent to the farming area. The 8 youths were subsequently arrested and indicted for the savage beatings but they were never charged for the murder. Our publication has a report on the sentencing by Judge James Milliken of El Cajon Superior Court at http://www.aztlan.net/vigilantethugs.htm

The official autopsy report of the murdered Mexican migrant worker, Venancio Juarez-Medina, by the Department of the Medical Examiner was quite clear as to the cause of death. Deputy Medical Examiner, Dr. Christina Stanley, M.D., writes in the autopsy report, "Large amounts of sandy dirt filled the mouth and extended down into the airways further than would have been expected from being dragged face down only after death, and this finding is suggestive of an asphyxial mechanism of death." In other words, Dr. Stanley is suggesting that Venancio Juarez-Medina was dragged to death along a dirt road in the same area where the 8 youths terrorized for hours the Mexican migrant workers who slept in encampments adjacent to the tomato fields.

We must not let people get away with these types of racially motivated murders, otherwise all of us could suffer dire consequences. On the 1st of this month, there was a brutal clubbing to death of an undocumented Mexican mother and daughter on a street in Fremont, California. The police there is saying that this bludgeoning may be a hate crime. The Spanish speaking media is reporting that it may have been committed by anti-Mexican vigilantes. Presently, a public school teacher from the Lodi Unified School District is advocating violence against Mexican immigrants in the open and at anti-Mexican rallys throughout the state. Police departments in California must enforce the law equally before all hell breaks loose.

Respectfully,

Ernesto Cienfuegos
Editor-in-Chief
La Voz de Aztlan
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