Stepping out of the federal court elevator on the way to his sentencing hearing, José Huizar was relaxed enough to joke with his lawyers.
The former Los Angeles City Councilman would soon find out how much prison time he would serve after pleading guilty last year to racketeering and tax evasion.
As I walked down the hallway wearing black glasses, a blue suit, and a brown purse, he saw me. I have written columns criticizing him not only for disgracing his position but also for shaming Latinos. He could have frowned at me, yelled at me, or just ignored me.
Instead, the Eastside politician offered me a greetings — a greeting, steeped in our rural Mexican roots, reserved for people who command respect.
“Whats up bro?” He said with a smile as we shook hands and headed to the courtroom together. I asked her how she felt. He looked as mischievous as Alfred E. Neuman as he shrugged and spread his hands.
His public defenders, looking young enough to have been fresh out of law school, tried to drag him away, but he wanted to catch up.
“I was in your Ranch Recently,” he said: El Cargadero, the town in the mountains of Jerez, Zacatecas, where my mother was born, next to Huizar’s birthplace, Los Morales.
At the end of October, Huizar traveled back to Ranch after United States District Court Judge John F. Walter allowed him to “attend religious ceremonies [in Zacatecas] that are important to their Catholic faith.”
In Spanish, I asked him if he had attended the October 24 festival of San Rafael Arcángel, the patron saint of El Cargadero, marked with processions and parties that attract thousands of people from all over Jerez and the American diaspora. Huizar smiled again and entered the room without saying anything else.
You'd think we were cousins catching up at a family party. In a way, we were.
His parents knew my parents. My older cousins know their brothers. He and his family spent summers picking strawberries in the same Orange County fields as my friend. Mommy and aunts. We follow his rise with pride: from Boyle Heights to Berkeley, from Princeton to UCLA Law, from the Los Angeles Unified school board to City Hall. At family parties where we would catch up on who had done good and who had done bad, my cousins told their children that they, too, could be like Huizar.
He wasn't just the American dream. He was our American dream. He represented a zenith for the Zacatecans, who in Southern California number almost half a million. Tens of thousands of them are Jerez, They live primarily in Anaheim, the San Fernando Valley and the East Side.
When Huizar was arrested in 2020, I not only shook my head in disgust, but sighed in deep disappointment. Prosecutors alleged that Huizar monetized his government position for years, reaping more than $1.5 million in cash bribes, gambling chips, luxury hotel stays, political contributions, prostitution services, expensive meals and other benefits. financing of developers with projects at their center. district.
Our elders, meanwhile, shouted conspiracy.
I almost took my father to the sentencing so he could spot any of the Ranch. More than 50 people had written letters of support to Huizar: his mother, his children, childhood friends and people from Jerez. But few, if any, attended. Huizar would answer only for his crimes.
After prosecutors asked for 13 years in prison and Huizar's lawyers asked for nine, Walter spoke. Huizar was loved by his family and even his constituents, the judge said, and his rags-to-riches story was praiseworthy.
But Walter's sympathy soon turned to anger. He criticized Huizar in a didactic, monotone tone for “selling out his constituents,” an “unusually widespread and rampant pattern of misconduct” that was in “a league of his own,” for showing “little remorse,” and for making people distrust him. public officials.
Huizar, 55, raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips as Walter indulged him. He spoke only briefly to “reiterate” the letter of apology he had submitted to the court the previous day.
I nodded as Walter continued. When Walter said, “It's hard to understand why he decided to throw it all away,” any empathy he had for Huizar disappeared, despite our shared background.
Our parents bought houses, became American citizens, and raised children (my generation) who became teachers, professors, white-collar professionals, or blue-collar entrepreneurs. Some of us are famous. sherry Highlights include cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; the Chicana novelist Helena María Viramontes; Maywood Councilman Heber Márquez; and actress Jessica Alba, who is my third cousin and a descendant of civil rights pioneers in Pomona.
so many sherry They became success stories without defrauding the public. Why couldn't Huizar?
Walter gave him the 13 years prosecutors had requested, and also ordered him to pay nearly $444,000 in restitution to the city of Los Angeles and nearly $39,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. He must surrender to federal authorities on April 30.
Reporters later gathered outside the courtroom. He ignored them all…except me. He gave me a greetings once again, this time with a punch and a smile no less radiant than the one two hours before.
I asked him again how he felt.
“You know I can't talk, brother,” Huizar responded. “But when the time is right…” He paused as people surrounded him on the way to the elevator.
“Did the Holy Child of Atocha hear your prayers?” I answered: a reference to the patron saint of Zacatecas, an image Huizar had posted on Instagram hours before federal agents arrested him at his Boyle Heights home. After, zacatecanos From here to the homeland they ridiculed him for hiding behind the Mexican baby Jesus.
This time his smile was one of disbelief, as if he couldn't believe I would go there.
He entered an elevator with his legal team. Court security guards shoved my colleague Dakota Smith back into the hallway. Journalists and protesters fired questions and insults at him.
Huizar, however, only listened to me.
“What do you say to those from Jerez? What is your message to your countrymen?” I screamed.
What do you say to those from Jerez? What is your message to your compatriots?
This time Huizar laughed. His smile grew so wide I thought he was going to open the doors that closed as he rode into the rest of his life.
