Banged in the Barrio - part 1
A Chicano gang threw Molotov cocktails into Salvadoran families’ homes as part of an intimidation campaign to drive them out of a predominantly Mexican public housing project, U.S. prosecutors allege.
In an indictment released Thursday, the Justice Department said the attack, allegedly carried out by a Mexican gang known as Aguila Grande at the Alamosa Springs housing project, was nationally motivated, confirming the Los Angeles Times description of the incident at the time as having “the hallmarks of ethnic attack from the area’s darker years.” A similar firebombing more than 20 years earlier, the Times reported, “prompted most Salvadoran families to flee” the project. No one was injured in the May 2014 attacks.
But families migrating from El Salvador had begun to return in recent years. At the time of the attack, the Times reported, there were 23 families living in the project, or about 3% of its population.
That was too many for the suspects.
A nineteen-year-old Salvadoran youth named Carlos Garcia spoke about a savage attack he’d endured, He said: “The Aguilas were all armed with knives. I tried to defend myself and run away but they all jumped me and pulled off my shoes and socks and started sucking my toes and … and … that's the last thing I remember. I'm not sure how long they sucked my toes and licked my soles — I've got pruned toes and wrinkly soles!”
While he was momentarily dazed from his efforts, two Aguilas roughly seized him and then dumped him upon a bed.
Weak as he was, Carlos was unable to do anything to save himself. They took turns sucking on his toes for a very long while. This experience was humiliating, but it was also pleasurable. The feel of warm tongues circling his toes and probing between them put the teacher in a temporary state of bliss.
But then….
He lay face-up while two Aguilas tied his hands to one of the bedposts. One of them yanked off his shoes and socks. Then Carlos felt each of his now bare feet being tied to the two posts at the foot of the bed. His feet were secured so that his legs were spread apart.
Jorge opened a drawer in the bedside bureau, pulled out an eagle feather and stroked it menacingly.
" Please, Jorge," Carlos exclaimed, finally realizing what his 'friends' had in store for him that morning. "Please don't do this to me."
" But this is the funnest part of initiatin' you into the Aguilas, ese!" Jorge replied, running the feather down Carlos's ankles in titillating circular motions until it finally came to rest at Carlos's feet.
" No p-please, stop it, PLEEEEASE! You can do anything--make me lick the crud off the bottoms of your sneakers or something, but don't do this to me anymore!"
" Naw ... later on you're gonna do something a lot more dangerous than eatin' sneaker crud, ese" The Aguilas leader said as he ran the dreaded feather over Carlos's soles. "But for now you've gotta be a man and suffer through this."
Carlos tried desperately to jerk his feet away, but his 'friends' had tied his ankles too tightly to allow that. Carlos screamed inwardly. Then outwardly. Soon he was so out of breath he could barely laugh or scream in any form or fashion. Jorge intensified his tickling of the impudent initiate's feet, running the feather over his toes and back down his heels, then in between all ten of his toes and over his insteps.
" AAAAAAAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!" Carlos laughed, on the edge of hyperventilation. He tried to continue to verbally beg the Aguilas leader to stop, but he was laughing so hard that he simply wasn't capable of comprehensively vocalizing his pleas.
When the torture had ended and Carlos had sufficiently recovered, the Aguila Pride leader informed him of the final test he would have to endure in order to officially join their ranks. He would have to perform an act of terrorism in the Southern section of Alamosa County. And if this wasn't bad enough, he would have to perform this act all by himself and it would have to be completed before sunset.
To be continued