OUR NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL

Gonzales was confirmed today. I worked with Professor Carlos Munoz, Jr. from Berkeley on the piece below. His folks were working on getting it published, but I'm not sure that it ever was.

Alberto Gonzales would be poor role model for Latinos
By Carlos Villarreal and Carlos Munoz (tilde over n) Jr.

Ethnic pride should not overwhelm the commitment of Latinos to human rights. But in the case of the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for U.S. Attorney General, it is doing just that.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, has followed the lead of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in endorsing Gonzales. The two organizations have rationalized their decision on the basis that Gonzales is a compelling American success story. They seem to believe that it's more important to have Gonzalez become the first Latino in history to hold the position of attorney general than to oppose torture.

We strongly disagree with the NCLR and LULAC organizations. Gonzales' confirmation will be tragic because of his ethnicity. As strong proponents of human and civil rights, we believe he would be a poor role model for Latinos and a truly dangerous influence.

Supporters of Gonzales have made much of his humble beginnings. He grew up poor, his parents were migrant farm workers. His success is, in part, the result of hard work and intelligence.

For some, that puts him in the pantheon of Latino role models along with Delores Huerta or Cesar Chavez. But Huerta and Chavez didn't move past their humble beginnings to serve Bushes, Cheneys and Enrons.

Formerly a public school teacher, Huerta returned to the fields and began teaching the workers to read and write.

Chavez left a well-paying job to help build a farm-workers union and lead a boycott of California table grapes. He did not parlay his success in leading his union to victory in the agricultural fields of California into an upwardly mobile career in government.

President Johnson wanted Chavez to serve as his Secretary of Labor. He would have become the first Latino to serve in that capacity, but he turned it down to continue to serve the most oppressed workers in the nation.

Gonzales, on the other hand, has moved beyond his modest beginnings to counsel Bush the governor about imposing the death penalty and to act as a cheerleader for the Bush presidency, which is hostile to human rights and that does the bidding of corporate interests. He may have grown up in poverty but now, as he said to a graduating class at Rice University, he can enjoy "steak dinners or rides on Air Force One or weekends at Camp David."

His supporters have worked hard to explain away the torture memos, but his opinion on the subject of torture may have played some role in the conduct of soldiers at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests by the American Civil Liberties Union, we are learning about some of the abuses occurring at these detainment camps. Some of the documents describe seeing prisoners left for 18 to 24 hours without food or water, chained hand and foot in the fetal position. Soldiers shocked some prisoners with electricity, put out lit cigarettes in their ears, urinated on them or sodomized them. Remember these inmates have never been convicted of anything.

Some emails from the FBI made reference to an executive order, which would mean one that came from Bush, presumably with Gonzales' advice laying the groundwork.

Gonzales has hedged his answers to a number of simple questions, including whether water-boarding -- a torture technique where the victim is made to believe he will drown -- should be banned. We would prefer our next attorney general or any future Supreme Court justice to answer no to this question -- and to do so quickly and without hesitation.

Against the odds, Gonzales' confirmation as attorney general has been delayed longer than expected. Still most politicians and pundits say his confirmation is likely. But that should not make him a role model for the Latino community. For those of us who care about human and civil rights for all people, he is more a villain than a hero.

Carlos Villareal is the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. Carlos Munoz Jr. is an award-winning author, LONG TIME HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, and professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

© Carlos Villareal and Carlos Munoz Jr.