The murder of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez by a Dallas police officer in 1973 had faded from much of the city's memory. Activists and a documentary maker aim to change that with Santos Vive.
David Rodriguez, 13 , and his brother, Santos, 12, in 1973, only months before Santos was murdered by a Dallas police officer.On July 24, 1973, 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez and his 13-year-old brother David sat in the backseat of a Dallas police patrol car in their neighborhood, Little Mexico. One of the two officers who detained them, Darrell Lee Cain, wanted to extract a confession from the kids over a small-time burglary at a nearby gas station.
The Mexican community has been a part of Dallas since the city’s earliest times, with the first groups coming in the 1870s to help build the railroad. Little Mexico was settled in 1910 and existed until the 1980s. “Putting everything in perspective, my family, we integrated Oak Cliff,” Hunter says. “When we moved in 1968, there were no people of color in Oak Cliff. Period. I'm the only young African American male in my neighborhood within 2 or 3 miles and then you have a Mexican kid who gets shot in the head down the way.”
When Halpern and Jawad approached Hunter in April 2018, they originally set out to complete a 5- or 10-minute documentary that could be aired on TV in time to honor the 45th anniversary of Santos' death on July 24. “Prior to doing the film, I said I need to talk to [his mother] Bessie: 'I need to sit down with Bessie Rodriguez myself,'" Hunter says.
So his work began. A month late, Hunter took to the streets, asking people attending a local Cinco de Mayo celebration about Santos.
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