BALLAD OF AN UNSUNG HERO
USA 1984 | 27 Min. | BetaSP, OF
Pedro J. Gonzalez’ story, symbolic of the history of people of Mexican descent in the United States, begins in 1910 during the Mexican Revolution against the dictator Porfirio Diaz. Pedro, a teenager, worked as a telegraph operator for the General Pancho Villa until 1922. After the revolution ended, Gonzalez, his wife and children joined thousands of Mexicans who migrated north to the United States. In booming Los Angeles, Pedro eventually became a recording star and in 1928 one of the first Spanish-speaking radio broadcasters in the U.S. Throughout the Southwest, thousands of Mexicans, up at the crack of dawn to go to work in the canneries, factories, and fields, tuned in their radios to hear their favorite announcer and recording star. As the Great Depression hit Los Angeles, Mexican Americans increasingly became the target of racial fear and prejudice. González believes his tremendous popularity and his outspoken protest against discrimination led to his arrest in 1934 on a trumped-up charge of rape. In spite of the recantation of the »victim«, González was sentenced to 50 years in San Quentin. He was paroled after six years and deported to Tijuana, Mexico, where he was instrumental in the development of radio in the border region. In 1971, González was allowed to re-enter the U.S. to be near his seven children. The old balladeer and his wife Maria settled in San Diego.
»Seeing how badly they treated Mexicans back in the days of my youth I could have started a rebellion. But now there could be a cultural understanding, so that without firing one bullet, we might understand each other. We were here before they were, and we are not, as they still say, ‘undesirables’ or ‘wetbacks’. They say we come to this land and it’s not our home. Actually, it’s the other way round.« (Pedro J. González)
