Rudy
“Most folks think it’s the guilt or rage that destroys us, but I know from experience that it’s the shame that eats us away until we disappear” (Sweat 2017).
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people judge others, write them off as evil, and shun them. Personally knowing someone before they commit a questionable action changes our perceptions of these people. We might then conclude that the person is not evil, that they just performed an evil action. People do terrible things; to expect any better is unrealistic, and to hope for more and weigh our own actions is all we can do.
In Der Vorleser (The Reader), a novel written by Bernhard Schlink in the 1990s, a young boy and a woman fall in love but are separated. As with perhaps all first loves, the boy becomes obsessed, constantly comparing his other lovers with her and dreaming about her house wherever he travels. As the boy moves through life, he studies law and comes across a case in which the woman is the defendant. The case debates her past as a Nazi concentration camp worker and her direct actions that lead to the death of thousands of people. The shame of loving her consumes him, yet he never stops loving her. Her fantasy moves throughout his entire life.
The process of coming to terms with the past, or Vergangenheitsbewältigung, is represented by the evolution of German poetics and politics across the 20th century. After the devastation of World War Two, the 1950s placed a gag on the sins of the Nazi movement. Not only were tragedies such as the bombing war and the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff ignored, but the Holocaust topic was banned. Ignorance gave an illusion of bliss. The 1960s, defined by the 68ers generation, represented a movement to uncover the damages done by the German people in an attempt to blame someone, often one’s own parents. Der Vorleser was written in 1995, an era of Vergangenheitsbewältigung where people started to learn not to judge people wholeheartedly, but to learn to understand and love them with their evils.
The thought of loving people who helped Hitler purge minorities sounds abhorrent. On the scale of understanding versus judgment, pure judgment is probably the easiest to conclude. After that, pure understanding. The most difficult option is balancing the two reactions.
Every single culture, ethnicity, or religion has done terrible things. Religious wars, ethnic wars, genocides, and democides are common, and most people identify with some bigger power. Even legal acts of war, such as killing soldiers on the opposite side of the field, are terrible. Regardless of the likelihood that a significant number of soldiers are children or women, the life of an adult male is nothing to brush aside. Somehow, society justifies war.
Society also finds pride in war. The glorious victories of the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Empire, both World Wars; someone always celebrates war. Everyone except for the people who died, were tortured, raped, starved. How dare we celebrate war.
Society celebrates war because people love winning. We love being the best, the most powerful. And most often than not, we will do anything to get there. Because if we are not the best, our existence is threatened; the world is seen as a zero-sum game.
When people lose, they are required to take responsibility for their actions. In this way, war crimes are prosecuted. Upon being ruled guilty, societies have to bear the consequences of their actions and determine how to move forward. How do individuals accept their actions and grow from them? What is the right way to pay retribution?
Rudy Martinez (b. 1965) grew up in Uptown Chicago, a neighborhood that encapsulates the “melting-pot” stereotype associated with America. Uptown had an especially diverse range of ethnicities, from Native American to Puerto Rican to Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Appalachian, Ecuadorian, and more. Most people lived under the weight of poverty, but they accepted it as a simple fact of life. Uptown Chicago was consolidated after the expansion of the Northwestern Elevated Railroad in 1900, nicknamed the “L.” Uptown became known for its entertainment business, specifically for the Aragon Ballroom—originally called the Cheetah Lounge, the Riviera Theater, the Uptown Theatre, and Green Mill Jazz Club.
Rudy, his older brother, and his younger sister were raised by his mother. From the age of five to the age of fourteen, Rudy went to Goudy Elementary School—declared the “worst school in America” in 1988 by Secretary of Education William Bennett. His family did not have a lot of money, but that was meaningless to Rudy. He and his brother were happy Boy Scouts; they played basketball at school; and they were kids, unburdened by the realities of the economy.
The economy, however, had its roots buried in Rudy’s childhood. The oil shock of 1973 negatively affected all parts of the economy, preventing many people from getting enough fuel to provide any heat in their homes, not to mention the difficulty it took to fuel a car. Many families lived in an overcrowded and extremely minimal apartment. Rent prices were devastating, and building codes were rarely enforced. Residents complained of a lack of consistent plumbing, heat, and hot water and the proliferation of rats, holes, odors, and littering.
The 1920s boom allowed for the construction of these luxurious buildings and the expansion of this industry. In the 1950s, renovation in Uptown tore down old buildings that housed low-income people, usually minority groups. By the 1970s, gentrification was beginning to occur in Uptown. Income inequality was extremely high in the 1970s as lower-class minorities and upper-class professionals simultaneously existed in the same 2.35 square miles. Currently, Uptown has one of the most wealthy and white populations in Chicago, but in the 1970s as Rudy was growing up, it was one of the most culturally diverse, and the majority of people lived in poverty.
British Marxist sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term “gentrification” in 1964 to describe the displacement of people as a result of upgrading neighborhoods. Until recently, this process had several other names, such as ‘brownstoning,’ ‘homesteading,’ ‘whitepainting,’ ‘red-brick chic,’ back-to-the-city movement,’and ‘neighborhood revitalization.’
In 1979, Clay created a model to describe the different stages of gentrification. Stage 1 described upper-class people who chose to buy and renovate cheap property in historic, lower-class neighborhoods. This stage results in little to no displacement and is seen as beneficial to the community because of the jobs it provides. Stage 2 illustrates the pattern where other upper-class people chose to follow the lightly tread path and continue to buy cheap property to renovate, causing more displacement and often leading to a change in the name of the neighborhood. Stage 3 results in official, popularized interest in the area which leads to high commitment by developers and further displacement. Correlated with this action is the minimization of the historic community’s identity and its people. Stage 4 describes the stabilization of the upper-middle to upper class in the neighborhood, the proliferation of businesses, the rising price of rent, and the permanent displacement of its original culture.
As this practice became more popular, the government became more involved in its process. In a public report, US policy makers believed in gentrification’s power to mix the lower and upper classes.
New more affluent residents will rub shoulders with poorer existing residents on the streets, in shops, and within local institutions, such as public schools. Such newcomers may exhibit possibilities of social mobility and a determination to secure adequate public services that provide existing residents with the kind of role models and contacts the absence of which [are] debilitating in the ghetto. (Lees 49)
Lees's research, however, shows that this is not the effect of gentrification. Rather, gentrification causes hostility and discrimination between the classes. Discrimination becomes more common because the lower class feels disenfranchised and threatened, and the upper class lack an understanding of the lower class’ culture and lifestyle. Both classes are alienated from each other, and economic growth becomes counterproductive. Inequality becomes more prevalent and punishing for people being pushed out of their homes.
Rudy experienced inequality first hand. When he was 15 years old, his brother went to prison for drug dealing. His mom worked for $45 a week cleaning in the local laundromat, a tedious and grueling job. On $45 a week, his mom, depressed and alcoholic, could hardly support herself and her three children. When his mom got sick and had to be hospitalized, Rudy took over her shifts. Rudy learned from his mom the degradation one faced in order to earn enough for a family on minimum wage. He believed that if he did not change anything, he would end up living the same life his mom lived. So when Rudy was sixteen, he took the job José Rodriguez offered him and made $10,000 a month. He took it because he could not see another way out of poverty.
Rudy Martinez made $10,000 a month when he was sixteen-years-old selling cocaine as a part of the Latin Kings. His career as a drug dealer started to form when he was eleven and had a job as a stock/delivery boy for the local drugstore. His brother, who was thirteen, started teaching Rudy to pull out certain pills, such as Valium, from the deliveries and sell them separately. Rudy got paid $14 a week for this job. When his boss went on vacation, Rudy got paid $25 a week by a different pharmacist. When he asked why, he was told that his boss was taking taxes out of his paycheck.
Selling drugs in Uptown Chicago was anything but unheard of. The Almighty Latin King Nation under the rule of King Papo was founded in 1954 by Puerto Rican youths who felt threatened by local police and ‘greasers,’ a derogatory slang term used to describe bullying gang members. When Rudy started school in the early 1970s, the Latin Kings was already one of the most powerful gangs in the country. The average age of recruitment was 12 and a half, and it is likely that this is when Rudy became doing little tasks for the gang.
The Latin Kings live under five mantras: Love, Honor, Obedience, Sacrifice, and Righteousness. These are symbolized in their emblem—The Crown. Their colors are black and gold.
Black represents the solid dominant color of the universe, the brave and the bold, the darkness of the immense night. It represents People of one idea, one body, mind, and soul, the Alpha and the Omega. Gold represents the fabulous, brilliant Sin at its highest peak; the splendoring glow of hope in oppressed People, the brill[i]ance of the mind and the solid unity in strength, love, and sacrifice. (Latin King Manifesto 11)
Latin Kings would solute each other with a fist upon their heart and greet each other with a revered handshake.
As they grew, they began to accept black members, then white members, then members of all ethnicities. The late 1960s marked a period of reform for the gang as they began to branch out from protection and focus on community growth. Members were required to invest in the community with volunteer projects. A copy of their manifesto reads,
Our purpose was and is for the progress, upliftment, and freedom of our people—the Third World people. Out duty is to learn so that we may teach, to seek liberation of our oppressed brothers and sisters, to unite and stand up against those who seek to deny our rightful existence, not only in the level of economic progress, but also cultural acceptance. (Latin King Manifesto 6)
As well as opening their diversity, the gang implemented stricter laws on drug use. In the 1970s, several key members had become addicted to heroine and had used their power to exploit the gang’s power. The new constitution pushed out these members and forbid personal drug use with the exception of marijuana.
Nonetheless, the gang made their money from sales of cocaine, heroine, and marijuana. In 1981, the average price of cocaine if it was purchased in quantities between ten and 100 grams, typically by dealers, was 400 dollars per gram. Quantities under ten grams cost about 750 dollars per gram. That price has since leveled out; in 2000, the price of cocaine for larger quantities was on average 200 dollars per gram. The price for smaller quantities was slightly less than a hundred dollars per gram. If a single dose of cocaine is somewhere between 30 and 70 milligrams, that means per dose of 50 mg, a cocaine addict spent $400 every 20 days for their high in the early 1980s, considering that number gets higher as one uses more and their tolerance increases. As the price of cocaine decreased, dealers consistently sell cocaine at twice the price they paid for it.
The Latin Kings required that their dealers donate 15% of their profits to the nation. Drug dealing was an extremely profitable endeavor, and many Latin Kings used it to break the chains of working multiple minimum wage jobs and live more sophisticated lives. Money, however, is only a portion of what one needs to move up the social ladder. Education is another important step.
In 1981, when he was sixteen, Rudy was expelled from high school and moved out of his house. Over the course of seven years, Rudy and Rodrigues, the man who introduced cocaine dealing to Rudy, formed a relaxed partnership. They co-owned a nightclub where they would spend a decent amount of time in. They had separate buyers because Rudy refused to associate himself with the violence drug dealing usually incurred; business was irregular, but they made a lot of money. Rudy’s main customer was Christopher Evans who consistently purchased one kilogram a month of cocaine. In 1981, Evans paid $750,000 a month for one kilogram of cocaine.
In 1986, Rodriguez began dating Cynthia Pluff, and when Rodriguez died in 1988, Pluff started occasionally turning to Rudy when she ran out of suppliers. As Rudy grew up, he got married and had two beautiful sons—Julian and Edwin—who went to school in clean clothes, with aspirations to go to college. They still lived in Uptown, but on the weekends, Rudy could take his sons out on the family sailboat to Lake Michigan and watch the beach grow smaller and smaller. He went to fancy restaurants and nightclubs, had free time, and enjoyed a life of luxury.
In early 1991, Rudy personally orchestrated a sale and delivery of twenty kilograms of cocaine, 10 kilograms each to Pluff and Christopher. Christopher Evans turned out to be a confidential informant for the DEA, so the scheme unraveled, and Pluff and her associates were arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. On January 20, 1991, Rudy Martinez kissed his wife, Madeline, and two sons, Julian and Edwin, goodbye and turned himself in to DEA agents. He was arrested and charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 20 kilos of cocaine. A Chicago Tribune article published three days later called Rudy an “alleged street gang leader”.
Rudy was born a Mexican-American in Uptown Chicago, an area starved by crippling rent prices, oil prices, and quality of education. There are a few individuals who get the opportunity to leave poverty and make a living, but it was much more likely to be shot, imprisoned, or afflicted with a mental disorder such as depression or alcoholism. Rudy found solace in his trade, and it gave his children the opportunity to get an education. Who are we as a society to judge his actions without understanding his past, present, and future?
Did he sell hundreds of kilos of cocaine? Without a doubt. Assuming this action is perceived as not only criminal but devilish, the easy reaction is to shut Rudy away forever and not deal with problems society has as a whole. The easy choice is to paint Rudy as a ruthless gang leader who shoots children for fun or gets them addicted to cocaine. Dehumanizing a person makes it easier to sentence them to life in prison. Dehumanization is, however, a vicious cycle; once you start defining what makes someone human, it is extremely easy to define what makes someone not human and use it to enforce discrimination.
Aimé Césaire calls this the boomerang effect. His book, Discourse on Colonialism, discusses how European society spent decades dehumanizing millions of people from the African continent and how the same tool was used against Europeans in the Holocaust. Dehumanization is the process of removing individuality from a person and treating them apathetically, like an object. Historic examples of dehumanization led to the Native American genocide, the Armenian genocide, slavery, the Holocaust, and gender violence. Wars are filled with dehumanization because it is easier to kill animals than humans. Dehumanization is a two bladed sword—using it means you are likely to dehumanize yourself in the process.
According to Freud in his publication, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), the struggle of humankind is to choose between fear and desire or libido and thanatos. Libido is the “life instinct” that draws humans toward love, cooperation, and a happy survival. Thanatos, or the “death instinct,” leads to aggression and trauma. Dehumanization is an outcome of fear, and it ignores the inherent part of humans that yearns for love.
Rudy acted out of fear and desire. Fear of living a life controlled by poverty; fear that his sons would meet his same fate. Desire to raise a loving family; desire to reject the societal norm. This should help the world empathize with him, yet the world dehumanizes him and reduces him to a savage, a filthy Mexican drug dealer who would give cocaine to little kids just for the fun of it. The War on Drugs taught us to imprison the people who sell drugs, that is their justice. Society tells me that I should be ashamed to care about Rudy.
Drugs are older than laws; had Rudy been born a hundred years earlier, his occupation would have been legal and normal. The criminalization of drugs began in the 20th century. Beforehands, opioids and cocaine were frequently used as painkillers, and the lack of knowledge about addiction lead to dangerous levels of addiction. As a response, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 declared that the mistreatment of drugs has a negative effect on society thus must be limited. The drug market was shutdown, and a black market sprang up, closely tied to that of alcohol during the Prohibition. The Marihuana Tax Act in 1937 banned the use of marijuana, and further strict legislation followed into the 1960s.
The 1960s took a different view on drug usage. Rather than enforce a zero-tolerance policy, legislation started to veer towards the acceptance of drug use and its treatment as a disease, rather than a crime. Rehabilitation centers opened, and incarceration was seen as backwards. The Presidential Commission on Narcotic and Drug Abuse started funding research, enforcing fewer offences, and dismantling the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
When President Nixon was elected in the 1970s, he ran on the position that drugs were corrupting every part of society. His strict posture lead to the establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the creation of the Controlled Substances Act which began the War on Drugs. The 1990s represent an era that strengthened drug enforcement, with a minimal effect on drug usage but a significant impact on diverse communities in the United States. The War on Drugs negatively impacted minorities, and Rudy became caught up in this conflict.
The war between classes and ethnicities is exemplified in the play Sweat (2017) by Lynn Nottage. Two friends, who come from a long generation of line-workers in the Iron Belt and were locked out of the factory because of economic turmoil, attack a scab, Oscar, and their old friend protecting him. They play goes into the folds of their life and paints the American middle-class as human, scarred with ignorance, loyalty, racism, and truth.
This play humanizes Oscar, making him the victim. It is not his fault that he needs to find work for his family, and the best work out there is ripping off the main characters’ jobs. Simultaneously, the play humanizes the stereotypical, generational residents of Reading, Pennsylvania. They lack knowledge about the outside world, but their knowledge of the community and their work is robust. Despite their ignorant racism, xenophobia, and territorial behaviors, the audience loves them. These characters—including Oscar—are the backbone of American society.
The play falls apart when they appear turn their backs on one another and harm each other in the process. Acting out of fear led to the destruction of everyone’s world. As a result, the two friends are judged, determined guilty, and punished to eight years in prison with parole. They were stuck between two difficult choices and tried to cope. Their decision harmed others, and they were judged and sentenced.
Unbeknownst to Rudy, Pluff and her family had been running drug deals between Chicago and St. Paul. She was charged separately in the different cities—for 20 kilos in Chicago and for 10 kilos in St. Paul. The prosecutors pressured her to provided testimony against the defendants in St. Paul and Chicago, promising that her charges in Chicago would be dropped. On May 13, Pluff sold out 39 of her customers and suppliers, including Rudy. She later said about the incriminating evidence she gave for Rudy’s trial, “There was no way [the amount of cocaine] was that much… besides, it wasn’t all you. There were other people… [t]hey wanted us to focus on you” (ACLU Foundation 64).
The United States government is unique in the way it set presidents and used its personal history to personalize the Constitution. Certain laws, such as the Third Amendment which prevents the forced quartering of soldiers, were specifically made to protect people from crimes the people felt they suffered at the hands of the British Army. Just so, today’s laws that determine how crimes are sentenced developed after years of judicial experimentation.
In the early colonies, crimes were heard by juries of white, male property owners who were generally more educated. Juries’ sentences were binary: guilt meant death and innocence had no punishment. If juries thought capital punishment was unfit, they would simply declare the person not guilty. Government as a whole was less powerful; the true authority was nature and its unpredictable moods.
As society developed, a larger need for the government to protect its citizens’ rights emerged, and the judicial system flourished. Judges, prosecutors, defenders, and juries balanced each other in an attempt to enforce justice, but the system was extremely nonuniform. Sentencing was not taught in law schools because there was no literature on the subject and the norm of subjective sentencing was accepted. Judges’ sentences were random, personal, and irregular.
Many people saw this as unfair, so in 1984, Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act which created the US Sentencing Commission whose job was to write a uniform sentencing guide for judges to follow. Nonetheless, these were simply guidelines, and judges could chose whether or not to follow them. Judges’ decisions were rarely appealed under the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause, so their actions went unchecked.
The 1980s brought about a focus on crime, specifically through political campaigns’ proposed solutions. Congress became more transparent in attempting to eliminate judicial discretion, and public trust in judges evaporated. This led to numerous, severe mandatory minimum statues, undermining the Sentencing Commission and enforcing political goals over objective research. This resulted in a significant increase in incarceration rates.
Nancy Gertner, a judge of the District of Massachusetts and a professor at the Yale Law School wrote, “The Guidelines are simply a complication of administrative diktats. A set of unexplained directives may warrant unquestioning obedience if they are thought to constitute divine revelation or its equivalent (the Ten Commandments come to mind), but this is not a common occurrence in human affairs—at least not in democratic societies… the Commission’s reluctance to explain itself to the public thus leaves us with a set of rules promulgated and enforced ipse dixit—because the Commission says so” (702).
Congress further implemented stricter policies by enacting the “real offense” system, allowing judges to look at the defendant through a lense exempt from the “innocent until proven guilty” sentiment. Defendants were forced to uphold acquitted conduct, uncharged conduct and more. Prosecutors received the power to determine what crimes they would charge, thus which sentence would be implemented. In objectifying the sentencing system and attempting to maintain equality, the humanity a judge possesses and their ability to be merciful and give the defendant an opportunity to change for the better was demolished.
Rudy received a life sentence because in 1992 federal law had established a mandatory minimum sentence for cocaine dealers. Rudy’s judge said that he simply does not have discretion in sentencing him to life without parole and was troubled by the federal sentencing guidelines, which evidence more trust in prosecutors than in federal judges. Judges have lost the ability to attach discrepancy to each individual case. Reverting to the old system, however, is not necessarily the answer; society moved away from it because it allowed for too much bias. The current system is also imperfect. No person, no situation is the same, and attempting to make the system fair has taken empathy out of the judicial system. Justice must find a balance.
Judges are trained to interpret the law and determine a fair sentence. Rudy Martinez was a first-time offender of a non-violent crime, and his life was stolen away at the age of 25. Prosecutors, not judges, had the power to determine the length and type of his sentence by charging him how they saw fit. In this instance, the prosecution took up the role of both the executive and judiciary, undermining the separation of the three branches of government. In 1992, the laws were stricter than they are now, but mandatory sentences are still extremely common. In 2016, 49.8% of all federal inmates were drug offenders, and 72.3% of those offenders were convicted of a drug offense carrying a mandatory minimum. Congress has chosen to remove the compassion and mercy of humans from the judicial system in an attempt to make the process more fair and discourage the proliferation of drugs.
The main argument presented by the prosecution that led to Rudy’s ruling of guilt was defended by numerous confessions given by other defendants. Pluff was only one of a few arrested people, including Rudy’s supplier, who were coerced to present Rudy as the ringleader of a drug gang. Unfortunately for Rudy, his situation kept worsening. In November of 1991, Rudy was offered a blind plea, which meant he could plead guilty, accept full responsibility for the 20 kilos, and receive no more than 20 years and no less than 15 years in prison. He took the deal. Three days later, he was charged in a superseding indictment for selling over 150 kilos of cocaine. If found guilty, this sentence meant he would face life in prison without parole. Because of the large amount of testimony against him given by the Pluff family, Rudy was found guilty.
Because she cooperated, Cindy Pluff served less than three years. Other members of the drug deal served less than five. The main supplier received a ten-year sentence. Only Rudy Martinez received a life sentence.
The justice system was built to give justice, to ensure that people who did bad things received the consequences for them. However, justice is subjective. As shown in the history of sentencing, something morally irreprensible now might not have been fifty years ago. This has a positive and negative effect on society, but either way, society must learn to understand why norms change and further work to positively change norms by understanding them. Schlink writes about the dichotomy between understanding and judgement. Judgement is easily made if we do not understand the other person, but once we understand, we are unlikely to judge them. The courtroom is designed to be a place of equality and truth, where fear and desire are left outside. That was simply not done, and people judged without trying to understand. Dehumanization resulted in the pain of Rudy and his family in this case, and it continues to pick on people who have been chosen to represent society’s problems, in this case, poverty and drug addiction.
The justice system will never be perfect. However, it has the capacity to change for the better and for the worse, and attempting to improve it is necessary for society. If society values life, it must also value change and improvement. This is why today’s actions matter, and Rudy’s story has the potential to inspire people to reject the repetition of the past.
After 25 years in prison, Rudy’s sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2016 (Bryant). Rudy lost 25 years helping his sons grow up because of a distorted case propelled by a few determined prosecutors. In that time, he earned his GED and spent hours reading and working. Rudy recognizes that the cocaine business is toxic, and he is proud to be a part of the community geared to help incarcerated drug dealers rebuild their lives. Rudy now lives alone near his childhood home, although he spends a lot of time with his sons. When he passes by the same restaurants that he used to be welcomed into and seated at the window, he is reminded that he may no longer go inside. After his imprisonment, Rudy said, “It’s not the suit that makes the man, as some people may say. Some people may say it’s the man that makes the suit. Because it’s obvious now I don’t have my suit on today, I am still the same person, but people don’t look at you that way.” He is surrounded by luxury and poverty, daily reminders of both lives he used to live, and the dichotomy of the futures he could have.
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