Skip to main content

When a Tejano star is a rapist


Que bueno que Tejano star Joe Lopez, 56, the former lead singer of Grupo Mazz, and now lead singer of the band Joe Lopez y La Nueva Imagen Mazz, got convicted and sentenced to twenty years for raping his then-13 year-old niece.

I know there are men out there - and some women - who will say that this young girl
deserved it, that she must have seduced him, that she wanted money, that she's pura slut, etc. etc. etc.

Bullshit. No woman deserves getting raped, I know so many who have. One of four women is raped - at some time in our lives.

We get raped by our fathers, brothers, cousins. On a first date in high school, or college. Or by a complete stranger walking home from work or school.

And yes, it almost happened to me in college. I fought my date off, a guy I'd been seeing for about a month and trusted.

Understand something. A woman's desire is healthy and vital. It is
not an invitation to be raped, to be touched in any way without her permission. There are women who do stupid things, like getting drunk at a party, or provocatively flaunting their bodies. These are women who are idiotas but innocent about what men will do to them if they get a chance. They don't deserve to get raped, either.

My father used to warn me not to get in a car with boys. And generally, I didn't. But even at eighteen years old, I couldn't figure out
why. We women don't think about hurting men, while many of them need to hurt us. And if our mothers or fathers don't teach us this lesson, we remain naive about what a man - or men - will do to us if given a chance.

And a thirteen year-old girl, no matter how much cuerpo she has, is especially innocent. It doesn't matter whether she's a virgen or not, she doesn't want to be raped by an uncle.

I don't know if Joe Lopez is a pedophile, though raping such a muchachita is awfully borderline, but I've seen the fun musicians have backstage with women of all ages. These women
don't deserve to be raped either.

I blame
los musicos and the groupies equally. These men believe they're desirable because we women are seduced by their power and money and celebrity. Remember: men run the television stations and newspapers and magazines that profit from treating us as pieces.... Ridiculous. One woman has more power in her heart, hands and mente than any disgusting Joe Lopez.

Claim that power, girlfriends. Don't let Joe Lopez take it from you.


And my
aplauso goes to that young girl who told on her uncle Joe Lopez. No matter what happens next, whether or not he appeals, or what people call you - you did the right thing.

Because he's not the only one out there, just the most famous.

Photocredit:
Self-Portrait, after Frida, 1990, oil on canvas, copyright 1990 by Pilar Aguero

Comments

brownfemipower said…
this is a really great post--and a really great comment, juana. I agree, men in power will rape--and since men are in power generally, generally, men of all shapes sizes and occupations will rape.

I do think it's interesting, tho, to point out that the ones doing the raping here were musicians--i live up in michigan, so we aren't connected to the tejano scene at all--and I always have this image of tex mex and tejano stars as being "good"--clean, polite, etc. I mean, at one of my friend's weddings, the only music she would play is texmex, because there were tons of really religious people there and she didn't want to offend them. So I always associate tejano with upstanding. clearly, that's just not so.
I agree, too, that the little muchacha that got raped must have a huge heart to be so strong and tell on her tio. Good for her, and I hope she stands tall against anybody who would try to denigrate her.

~bfp

Popular posts from this blog

Mary Alice, wife of Henry Cisneros, finds her voice in San Antonio as women battle for Free Speech in the Streets

She's a delicate bird of a woman, petite and beautifully apparelled. I know her husband, and she looks up to her supremely intelligent, charismatic, but scared of the status-quo husband. I suspect that she became a San Antonio councilwoman as a result of his lanky shadow. No matter. Yesterday, la Mary Alice stood up to the Man along with Councilwoman Lourdes Galvan and voted on the side of the Constitution and women's rights as one of two women on the San Antonio City Council who recognizes that anti-war or anti-immigrant protestors should be able to march on the streets without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. While the city-wide Fiesta! bacchanal takes over the streets for weeks. With a vote of 9-2, the San Antonio City Council overwhelmingly voted to pass a new "Parade" Ordinance yesterday despite the organized protest of free speech advocates - mostly women - who believe that the City Council is violating the First Amendment of its citiz

Jerry Pittman: The Worst Cop, but there's more in San Antonio

Part II of the Pittman Story ( click here for Part I of the story of San Antonio's badddddest cop) But let’s go back to the beginning of Pittman’s triumphant arc as a black role model, endorsed by white leaders and officially commended by the state’s black legislators. If you were a black nobody cop in the seventies, well, what would it take for you to get promoted? You’d have to be Superman, wouldn’t you? And in a city that sells itself on a myth of cultural fusion, then who would you arrest if you wanted a chance at getting promoted? Hmmmmm? His name was Big House. Real name, Willis Sterling, and he was one of those benevolent drug-dealer types, who’d get arrested, make bond, then go home to the Eastside in the 1980s. A non-violent man. “He was like a modern-day Robin Hood,” says T.C. Calvert, a well-known community activist who doesn’t do drugs himself, only hamburgers. He was so well-liked, say my elder sources, that all sorts of politicians liked hanging out a

A battered woman from San Antonio loses her reporting job

Gina Galaviz , 43, KSAT-TV's I-love-the-police reporter, "has been fired" from the television station , according to the San Antonio Express-News, and I'm quoting verbatim here from Jeanne Jakle's byline, "after she was charged with assault following a fight with her boyfriend," Ronald Aguillen, 46. Ok, so we in San Antonio know about the time in 2004 when Gina filed charges against another boyfriend, the former SWAT cop, who was a councilman at-the-time, Ron Segovia . There were allegations of an apple being thrown at her nalgas, which humiliated her, and that he also pointed a gun at her. It was not the first time, she told me. Tough-guy Segovia got off - I think he had three attorneys representing him if I remember correctly, and in this city, like too many, the cops are in bed with the grand jury - they need and depend on each other, and this grand jury decided there "wasn't enough evidence to pursue a criminal case against him." Seg