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Hernandez / Ramon Arroyos, Los Tres, and Raíces

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Hernandez: Came to find out he was one of Los Tres the chuco. You know about Los Tres, right? Los Tres were the three guys that got convicted, or they got charged with setting a bomb off at one of the stores downtown, blowing up a police car, things of that nature- those kids of things. They said the evidence pointed to them. That is why they called them los tres because there was always letters sprayed with those spray cans on the walls “Free Los Tres.” Ramon Arroyos was one of Los Tres. Ramon Arroyos he represented himself and- I am not too familiar with what happened with those cases because that was a different world. He was in El Paso when that happened. We he came to Odessa. Raul told me about his background. He was a very quiet guy,man. He was not radical. I never seen him carry a gun, or a knife, or talk real pachuco, or dress real pachuco. He was just a guy from El Paso, from the barrio. He was very intelligent, very smart. He came and did that shoe Raices. We use to carry those cameras and we use to go into the- I used to take him in – like I would take him to the bakery- take him to do an interview with the owner. We would go everywhere. Back then, I started doing-I turned into a promoter. I started doing dances. I had a big, big band from Houston, La Mafia – Oscar y Leonard La Mafia they were called. They are a big international group, now. Now days they are big, but when they were youngsters, 15-16, I used to book them. I became friends with their older brother and we used to take them to El Paso with Ramon. We took them to Lubbock. We just took them to different places. We just got into that. He use to bring the camera with him and document everything. His show was called Raices. He would show one of our cars just rolling in front of the church when the program started. It was a real cool program and he did it for a lot of years. Pero, Ramon spent a lot of time here in Odessa. My son ended up marrying his daughter. Then he moved back. We ended up doing a radio show. The reason I said that we did it was because he was the first Deejay to do it. Hen when he left for El Paso, I took it over. But we had a radio show, a TV show. This guy had a TV guide that he printed. He had a lot of talents. I think his house burned down and everything burned. I do not know how it happened. He had a lot of footage, a lot of video, and it all burned. He wrote a book. It never got published. I do not know who has it, but someone in El Paso has it. I do not know what was in his book, but he wrote it, and he told me it was going to get published, but he passed away. He and Raul were something else. They would fight like crazy. They would fight like two brothers, just the silliest thing. But when it came to business they were on the same track.

Interview Interview with Nick Hernandez
Subjects Family › Children
Media
Media › Spanish-Language Radio
Chicano Power › Brown Berets
Ideology › Radicalism
Tags Arroyos, Ramon
Pachuco
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Interview date 2016-07-08
Interview source CRBB Summer 2016
Interviewees Hernandez, Nick
Duration 00:04:40
Citation "Ramon Arroyos, Los Tres, and Raíces," from Nick Hernandez oral history interview with ,  July 08, 2016, Odessa, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/2996/ramon-arroyos-los-tres-and-raices, accessed April 26, 2024