A Class Apart Film

The class of Constitution and Criminal Law was very appealing to me because, I would like to know more of my rights as an individual, apart from needing the class for my minor. The PowerPoint slides are very informational and during class lecture and discussion opens up an array of ideas and discussion, which keeps me attentive to lean and absorb more of the subject at hand. What I am going to discuss is the film we saw in which in my opinion is a very great film because we rarely hear about Mexican/Hispanic history, ironically it was shown during National Hispanic Heritage Month. The film discusses about the Hispanic people of Mexican descent to be rated as second class citizens, non-intelligent and invisible. Basically, Hispanics and Blacks were segregated from many places and this was enforced by laws, even where you were buried was separate from the Anglo-Saxons. World War II came about and more than 200,000 served in the military, many Hispanics thought that after this happened, when they got home, they felt that they earned their rights. But still nothing has changed when they came back, one of the Hispanic soldiers that served came back in a coffin and the morgues did not accept the soldier because he was brown and the whites did not accept it. This was a turning point where enough was enough, Mexican-American lawyers stepped in and would fight for their 14th amendment rights, and they had won in the state but still did not enforce it because the Hispanics were still second class citizens. Hispanic Lawyers had to find a case that would be appealing, Gus Garcia a very prominent lawyer received a case where a Hispanic was being tried for murder. Mr. Garcia objected that the Hispanic defendant did not have a jury of his peers because they were all white, the lawyers had proof of all the statistics that no Hispanic individual served in any type of jury. Garcia reached out to Cadena for additional help because the man who was on trial for murder was found guilty in a jury of only white people. Cadena wrote a theory on the ‘class apart’ because Hispanics were legally white but still treated as second class citizens. The drawback from this is that Mr. Garcia was an alcoholic and this was a huge problem for the others lawyers because Garcia would argue the case before the Supreme Court. The night before he went out and in the morning when he got back, Garcia was extremely drunk. The lawyers have to sober him up with coffee and breakfast to get him ready for the case. When the lawyers opened for the Supreme Court mentioned that the Mexican-Americans in south Texas were treated as second class, one of the judges said what is that and one of the others said, “aren’t they the greasers down there.” Mr. Garcia had eloquently argued his case; the justices were intrigued with his case and argument that Mr. Garcia ‘stole’ sixteen minutes extra of the Supreme Court justice explaining his case. This had never happened before in history, after their case they would go back to Texas awaiting the justices’ results. When the results came in the justices ruled that the Texas courts were biased, the convicted murder was reversed and now needed a new trail among his own peers. On a sad note Mr. Garcia’s life spun out of control due to alcoholism and tragically died before his time, but on a good note is that Mr. Cadena became a chief justice at the court of appeals.