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May 16, 2011
Without Fear
The Ballad of Alvaro Luna Hernandez

By MAX B. KANTAR

    "I will never surrender my pride and dignity nor allow the system
to 'cut my tongue' and I will always, without fear, speak out against
these war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter if I spend the
rest of my life in a prison cage, and draw my last breath of air
laying down in this steel bed surrounded by razor-wire fences and
cages, and its prison policies that are designed to destroy one's
humanity…."

    —Alvaro Luna Hernandez, October 18, 2010, Hughes Unit Prison,
Gatesville, Texas.

Locked in solitary confinement in a tiny cage inside one of the most
notorious control units in the Texas state prison system, Alvaro Luna
Hernandez is immersed in a stack of old law texts, his eyes glancing
back and forth between court transcripts and a thick legal book every
few moments. The streaks of gray in his full, and otherwise dark,
beard betray his age in spite of his healthy, powerful frame as he
reaches towards the ledge of the sink for a lone Styrofoam cup to take
a sip of the stale, lukewarm commissary-bought coffee he drinks every
morning, when he can afford it.

Just fifteen months shy of 60 years old, Alvaro has a remarkable
amount of energy and routinely gets more work done before noon than
most attorneys do in an entire day. Today he's putting together the
documents to get a new trial on a writ of habeas corpus proceeding for
another prisoner who is both indigent and illiterate and feels he has
been wrongly imprisoned. After that, it's on to the cases of two other
inmates Alvaro is helping out who are each facing several decades
behind bars if their appeals fall through before the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals in Austin. Other prisoners know to go to Alvaro for
legal help; he has a well-known reputation throughout the state—indeed
nationwide, as highlighted in the recent book Jailhouse Lawyers (City
Lights: 2009) by Mumia Abu-Jamal—as a tenacious and effective
"jailhouse lawyer" who has filed and won no small number of civil
rights suits over the past four decades.

* * *

Alvaro Luna Hernandez is a political prisoner of the State of Texas
and the U.S. government. He is nearly 15 years into a 50 year prison
sentence for an "aggravated assault" conviction stemming from a July
1996 incident in which he disarmed a Brewster County Sheriff
attempting to shoot him. Alvaro vehemently denies the charge that he
assaulted the Sheriff. To Mexican-Americans in the cities, slums,
plains, deserts, and prison cages of the Southwest, he is a civil
rights hero, a Chicano freedom fighter true to his barrio roots and
eternally fearless in the face of injustice. For years, he has been
internationally recognized by amnesty movements and human rights
lawyers and experts as a U.S. political prisoner, yet inside the
United States, the name Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains largely elusive
on the lips of progressives and social justice advocates.

* * *

A high-school dropout with no formal education, Alvaro hasn't always
been such a capable, and indeed, brilliant, litigator. It was during
the late 1970s that he transformed himself from a rebellious, zoot
suit-wearing "pachuco" hustler in his youth into a prominent leader in
the struggle for racial justice and human rights in the Southwest
United States. While serving hard time for a crime he didn't commit,
Alvaro educated himself about Chicano history, the prison system, and
revolutionary political theory. He founded and headed up prisoners'
study groups designed to rehabilitate and politicize other inmates.

With Alvaro in the lead, a powerful prison reform movement swept
across Texas' criminal justice system and through the state's federal
courthouses in the late 1970s and early '80s. Alvaro diligently
studied the law and used his newly found skills to file an impressive
array of constitutional and civil rights lawsuits against Texas
police, judges, and prison officials. He and other prisoners utilized
hunger strikes, work stoppages, yard takeovers, and federal civil
rights lawsuits in a concerted effort to compel the brutal Texas
prison machine to respect the human rights of its exploding prison
population, made up almost entirely of poor men of color. Along with a
handful of other prisoner-plaintiffs, Alvaro won a landmark federal
civil rights lawsuit against the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC)
after a trial that lasted 159 days in 1978 and '79 (Ruiz v. Estelle).
The court ruled, in a scathing denunciation of the widespread abuse of
inmates by the prison system, that the practices of the TDC
constituted "cruel and unusual punishment," and ordered a number of
substantial reforms.

"Unfortunately," Alvaro says, "most of these 'reforms' were merely
cosmetic….Despite these 'prisoner victories' in reforming the system,
the federal-nation-state will only go so far because in Texas, the
super profits of the state policy of mass incarceration has replaced
oil, cotton, and cattle [as the biggest industry in the state]."

Alvaro's principled work to rehabilitate prisoners and enforce human
rights standards in Texas prisons earned him the disdain and contempt
of prison officials who locked him in administrative segregation,
forcing Alvaro to spend almost the entire decade of the 1980s in
solitary confinement as part of a campaign of repression aimed at
political prisoners and jailhouse lawyers who threatened to expose
abuses in U.S. prisons—including torture, killings, and beatings at
the hands, or directions, of prison guards and administrators—and
unite inmates under a banner of revolutionary change.

* * *

In March 1991, one year after he was moved out of solitary and back
into the general prison population, Alvaro was freed from prison,
having served over 15 years, after an investigative journalist for the
Houston Post, Paul Harasim, uncovered a gross pattern of systematic
prosecutorial misconduct and abuse (which included paying off the lead
witness and suppressing physical evidence) in the murder case in which
Alvaro was wrongfully convicted, narrowly escaping the electric chair.
Certainly no bleeding heart liberal, Harasim nonetheless told readers
that "What I learned about the prosecutorial behavior in the trial of
Alvaro Hernandez in West Texas made my stomach turn….I wonder if I can
support state sanctioned executions any longer."

Settling in Houston with his wife following his release, Alvaro wasted
no time throwing himself into community organizing and political
activism. He founded, and became National Executive Director of, the
National Movement of La Raza, a civil and human rights group dedicated
to empowering Mexican-Americans and struggling for social justice.
Alvaro also helped organize and form committees to support the
families of prisoners and bring about "truces" between Chicano street
gangs in Pasadena, Texas following a number of tragic shootings.
Spearheading the campaign to stop the execution of Mexican national,
Ricardo Aldape Guerra, Alvaro founded and headed up Guerra's defense
committee. Following years of tireless campaigning and legal battles,
his frame-up conviction for killing a Houston cop in 1982 was
overturned and Guerra was freed from Texas' Death Row in 1997.

Alvaro's impassioned and successful activism in the Houston area
earned him international recognition. In the spring of 1993, serving
as a delegate for an NGO, Alvaro addressed the United Nations General
Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, criticizing the U.S. government for
its record of human rights abuses of political prisoners and Mexicans
in the Southwest. Alvaro's delegation was headed by Rigoberta Menchu
of Guatemala who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her
courageous human rights activism during the U.S.-backed genocide
against Mayan peasants in Guatemala during the 1980s. Upon returning
from Europe, Alvaro was invited to speak on national television in
connection with the Ricardo Aldape Guerra defense case and began
hosting Houston-area radio talk shows to spread a message of racial
equality and Chicano empowerment. In the following years, Alvaro
worked to inspire and educate young people across the United States,
speaking not only at universities and conferences, but also at
elementary and high schools, lecturing on an array of social and
political issues ranging from human rights and grassroots activism, to
American history, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty.

* * *

Following his divorce in August 1995, Alvaro moved back to his
hometown of Alpine, Texas, located just 80 miles from the Mexican
border. In spite of the fact that Alvaro had virtually zero
interactions or confrontations with police in the five and a half
years that he lived in Houston, almost immediately the local police
forces in Alpine were all over him—arbitrary searches day and night,
K-9 drug dogs, and frequent "traffic violation" vehicle stops
resulting in no citations.

The police hatred of Alvaro in West Texas, especially in Alpine, is
fierce, both personal and political, and decades old. Alvaro has
always refused to submit to police authority and abuse; sort of like a
rebellious slave in the spirit of Fredrick Douglas, but more like a
modern-day Gregorio Cortez. When he was 17 he smashed up some police
squad cars as well as the personal vehicle of a racist Sheriff
following a police confrontation, a stunt which landed him three years
in prison. Years later, in 1976 following an escape from county jail—
at which he was awaiting transfer to state prison for the wrongful
murder conviction—and subsequent shootout with law enforcement, Alvaro
was taken to a windowless "conference room" in the jail where he was
beaten within an inch of his life by several on-duty police officers.
The cops took turns beating and stomping their handcuffed captive,
causing him to lose consciousness, his face, eyes, and lips swollen
and bloodied beyond recognition, his scalp ripped open with blood
pouring from his head onto the cold concrete floor. Once the police
were finished, they dragged a bloodied and unconscious Alvaro across
the jail and threw him in a cell, leaving him for dead. The near fatal
beating meted out to Alvaro resulted in federal criminal civil rights
indictments of Pecos County Chief Deputy Sheriff Mike Hill and Deputy
Sheriff Bill Mabe, culminating in misdemeanor convictions and
probation for the officers. For his part, Alvaro was awarded
substantial monetary compensation for damages following a civil suit.
The convictions of the officers, however mild, ultimately destroyed
their careers as policemen, thus earning Alvaro a special animosity in
local law enforcement circles for daring to fight back against police
on their own terms, both in the streets and in the courts.

Alvaro's persistent defiance against oppression has always stemmed
from a deep-rooted thirst for the freedom so cruelly denied to him and
millions of other Chicanos in the Southwest United States since the
colonization and annexation of the Mexican territories north of the
Rio Grande following what is commonly known as the U.S.-Mexico War
(1846-1848). In a very real sense, the rural West Texas community of
Alpine is like a microcosm of race-relations in the region. Like all
of Alpine's Chicano residents, Alvaro grew up on the south side of the
Southern Pacific railroad tracks which served as the de facto racial
dividing line between Mexican-Americans and whites. Much like the Jim
Crow South at the time, the parallel social universe of rural West
Texas manifested harsh economic and political means of control to
ensure the subordinate position of Mexicans in an Anglo-dominated
society. The town's Mexican population was largely impoverished,
locked into a near-permanent state of economic subservience to white
business interests while the gross disparity in social services and
infrastructure served as a very visible reminder of the prevailing
racial hierarchy, not only in Alpine, but in the American Southwest in
general.

The Alpine police and the Brewster County Sheriff's office were, of
course, all white and patrolled the Chicano barrio south of the tracks
daily and nightly with a brutality usually reserved only for the
town's "meskins."

"People were scared of them," Alvaro writes in a letter from his
prison cell, recalling how as a young boy he would go looking for his
father or grandfather in the local bars, the Sheriff would often barge
in, gun on his hip, to intimidate, arrest, and humiliate Chicano men
and elders simply as a means of letting them know "who was boss."

Whether at the pool hall or walking the streets, Chicano youth were
routinely singled out for arbitrary beatings and harassment by the
cops. Alvaro was a tough kid, a self-proclaimed "vato loco" and
product of the "pachuco" subculture. He was often getting into trouble
for drinking beer or fighting, and had many violent confrontations
with police as a teenager. Once at a high school football game some
policemen were trying to arrest another Mexican kid and started
beating the young man; Alvaro intervened to stop the assault and the
cops turned their attention, and rage, to him, beating and pistol
whipping young Alvaro as a hostile crowd gathered around, throwing
garbage at the officers. The police busted open his skull, requiring
several stitches, but not before taking him to jail, charging Alvaro
with "assault on a peace officer." Alvaro's run-ins with the police
landed him, at the age of 15, in a juvenile prison run by the Texas
Youth Council (TYC) for a year. The juvenile detention centers in
Texas had reputations for being extremely brutal and abusive—so much
so that the Texas Youth Council was ultimately shut down by federal
courts in 1983 following over a decade of lawsuits.

* * *

Just months after getting released from the custody of the TYC,
something happened that would change Alvaro's life forever. It was
June 12, 1968. Alvaro was hanging out with his best friend, Ervay
Ramos. The two buddies were cruising around Alpine in Ervay's
brother's car when red police lights started flashing in the rear view
mirror. Ervay was, like Alvaro, 16 years old, but didn't have a valid
driver's license. He sped off and the police car gave chase.
Fishtailing through a back alley with the wail of the siren growing
louder in the distance, Ervay quickly stopped and told Alvaro to jump
out of the car. He drove off and struck a nearby fence next to the
football practice fields and landed in a ditch. With the cop car
getting closer, Ramos jumped out of the car and ran down the alleyway
hoping to escape. Alvaro was just feet away and saw with his own eyes
what transpired next.

"The police car, driven by Bud Powers, a well-known cop with a
reputation in the barrio for being racist and brutal, pulled up and
stopped [behind] the Ramos car," Alvaro vividly recalls. "[Powers]
stepped outside, pulled his revolver and shot the fleeing Ramos in the
back with his .357 magnum pistol killing him instantly."

The murder of Ervay Ramos was one of a number of similar killings of
Chicano youth by police in the Southwest at the time. Officer Bud
Powers received a proverbial slap on the wrist—five years' probation—
and never served a day in jail. The killing of Ervay Ramos was cited
by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in their 1970 report to the
President entitled "Mexican Americans and the Administration of
Justice in the Southwest" as one of several examples of what the
Commission referred to as a pattern of "serious police brutality" and
"widespread discrimination" suffered by Mexican-Americans at the hands
of law enforcement officers and the U.S. judicial system in the
Southwest United States.

* * *

So when Alvaro moved back to Alpine in 1995 with political struggle
and courtroom justice for his slain childhood friend on his mind, he
was met with considerable police opposition. He was working as a
freelance paralegal for attorneys throughout the state when Alpine
community members began approaching him for help regarding police
brutality and other injustices in town. They had seen Alvaro on
television when he was in Houston, working against the death penalty
and police oppression. They knew about his impressive record of civil
rights activism and how he had litigated a number of successful
federal and state civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges,
and prison officials. Moreover, citizens sought out Alvaro for help
because, in addition to being a prominent public critic of racial and
social inequalities in Alpine, it was well known—both by the general
public, as well as by law enforcement—that he was working on re-
opening the 1968 Ervay Ramos murder case with the intention of
bringing his killer, policeman Bud Powers, into federal court on
murder charges.

The response of the Alpine police to all of this was to organize and
carry out a sophisticated campaign, in the spirit of the F.B.I.'s
"counter intelligence program" (COINTELPRO) of the 1960s and '70s, of
surveillance, harassment, and repression against Alvaro. They hired a
local heroin addict, Mary Valencia, to work as a police informant,
ransacking his legal files and personal belongings while working as a
maid at the motel he was staying at. Police followed him around,
subjecting him to unjustified searches and harassment.

Worse yet, the police convinced the father-in-law of an Alpine Police
Sergeant—a man who was known around Alpine as a local town drunk—to
falsely accuse Alvaro of armed robbery—a ridiculous frame-up charge
which Alvaro ultimately ended up getting dismissed in court while
acting as his own attorney. In the meantime, however, Alvaro bonded
out of jail by selling his car to the bail bondsman, but just weeks
later the bondsman "withdrew" from the bond, unbeknownst to Alvaro at
the time.

* * *

On July 18, 1996 Sheriff Jack McDaniel showed up on Alvaro's doorstep
looking to re-arrest him. Brewster County's new sheriff was far from
an anonymous cop just "doing his job." McDaniel had been cited in a
victorious civil rights lawsuit filed by Alvaro against then-Sheriff
Jim Skinner a few years back. Moreover, it was no secret around town
that Alvaro was investigating Sheriff McDaniel for corruption and
embezzlement of funds from the county treasury—funds that Alvaro
alleged were being used at McDaniel's private ranch in West Alpine.
Coupled with his work on re-opening the Ramos case and his long
history of resistance to local police power, Alvaro argues that the
prerogative of the cops was clear: "The police all knew what I was up
to and they were determined to stop me at all costs."

When questioned on the legality of the arrest—for which no warrant was
presented—an enraged McDaniel pulled his gun on Alvaro. Fearing quite
literally for his life, Alvaro disarmed the Sheriff in self-defense
before he could shoot, told McDaniel to leave, and then fled the
scene. Nobody was injured. For three days Alvaro was able to evade law
enforcement in the rugged countryside of Brewster County during the
course of what was one of the most massive manhunts in recent West
Texas history. Following a shootout with police at his mother's house,
Alvaro was captured and charged with two counts of aggravated assault;
one for allegedly pointing the gun at Sheriff McDaniel after disarming
him, and another count for allegedly shooting an officer, Curtis
Hines, in the hand during the shootout.

At the trial, witnesses testified that Alvaro never pointed the gun at
McDaniel. McDaniel accused Alvaro of pointing the gun at his chest—
threatening him with a deadly weapon—but Alvaro swears this is a lie.
In a live interview on local television on July 18th following the
confrontation at Alvaro's house, McDaniel told viewers that Alvaro had
only disarmed him and neither threatened nor shot him.

"Days later," Alvaro explains, "when the Sheriff met with the District
Attorney he changed his story to say that I had not only disarmed him
but had pointed the gun at him—the difference between a minor
misdemeanor and a first degree felony offense." The videotape was
ultimately kept out of court proceedings; Alvaro's lawyer Tony Chavez
is rumored to have potentially struck a backdoor deal with the
prosecution. At the time, Chavez was under investigation himself for
drug trafficking and was facing many years in prison under a plethora
of forthcoming RICO charges. In fact, just months after Alvaro's
trial, Chavez immediately took a plea bargain and was sent to federal
prison for 30 months and disbarred from the practice of law.

Throughout the trial numerous witnesses, including former law
enforcement officers, also testified to the intense, longstanding
police hatred of Alvaro. Alvaro was found not guilty on the second
count of shooting Officer Hines in the hand (it was determined that
Hines was hit by a ricocheting police bullet). Despite considerable
public protest, however, the nearly-all-white jury found Alvaro guilty
of "aggravated assault" for allegedly pointing the gun at McDaniel's
chest—an accusation which Alvaro vociferously and consistently denies
to this day.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in state prison in the
summer of 1997. He will not be officially "eligible" for parole until
2021.

* * *

Though his appeals have all been exhausted, options still remain
within the legal system to bring about Alvaro's release. The KOSA TV
videotape interview with McDaniel may still exist, and a full review
of federal, state, and local files pertaining to Alvaro, and his ex-
lawyer Chavez, is likely to shed light on Alvaro's conviction and
political imprisonment. Obtaining the pro bono assistance of one or
more bright legal minds to help pursue other existing, and very
promising, legal avenues to reenter the courts continues to be a top
priority and a potential source of hope.

There is one thing, however, that remains clear and undisputed: absent
a substantial popular mobilization and grassroots campaign pushing for
his freedom, Alvaro faces a virtual life sentence of incarceration in
the brutal control units of Texas' state prisons. Yet in the meantime,
although buried deep beneath the razor-wire fences, uncounted tons of
cold steel, and the rows of soul-destroying concrete cages of Hughes
Unit Prison, Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains among America's most
fearless political prisoners, incessantly struggling for freedom,
locked up but never defeated.

Max Kantar is a Michigan-based independent writer and the Midwest
representative for the Committee to Free Alvaro Luna Hernandez. For
more information on Alvaro's case, visit www.freealvaro.net. Max can
be reached at maxkantar@gmail.com.

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Courtesy Crosspost by Hal Womack 3-dan