SEATTLE — Among swing sets and a community garden in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, a plaque reminds parkgoers of a young boy whose life was taken by a police officer half a century ago.
In July of 1973, Santos Rodriguez was killed by a police officer in Dallas, Texas. The 12-year-old boy was shot while handcuffed in the back of a squad car.
Estela Ortega a long-time community advocate in Seattle, said the news of the 1973 killing spread across the country by word of mouth and newspaper clippings, arriving in Seattle at a time when the city had a growing Latino population that was still finding its footing.
According to Ortega, Santos Rodriguez could have been any of them, any of us.
“You can have solidarity, if you will, with things that just don’t happen in your backyard,” Ortega said. “The importance is to show that when we’re talking about police accountability and how the police treat people It’s a reminder of how bad that they can be."
Shortly after the killing, they named a park in Rodriguez’s honor, a park in front of an old schoolhouse, near 16th and Lander on Seattle’s Beacon Hill, that just before Santo’s murder was part of an occupation.
In 1972 an ESL teacher, Robert Maestas, and his students took over this once-abandoned school building to draw the city’s attention to the Hispanic community he believed was being left behind. Three months later, their demands were met and El Centro de La Raza was born.
Rodriguez’s death at the hands of police was a reminder of what they were fighting for. In 2015, Santos Rodriguez Memorial Park was officially dedicated in his honor in front of a Bessie Rodriguez, Santos Rodriguez’ mother.
Now, nearly half a century later, Rodriguez is forever memorialized in a city he never visited.
“She (Santos Rodriguez’s mother couldn’t believe that, here, there was an organization three thousand miles away that had done something for Santos immediately after that happened. To remember him and not forget you know how race and racism impact our communities,” Ortega said.