Chicanonautica: Sheriffs Amok

by Ernest Hogan

I was sure that, by now, Arizona would be ablaze with weird politics of concern to the La Bloga audience, but I was wrong. It’s kinda quiet. A certain ex-president seems to be losing his mojo. A certain election denier keeps losing court cases and blaming bizarro conspiracies.

Then I found out about the constitutional sheriffs movement, where Arizona is ground zero.

NPR did a good job of explaining the movement. In short, it consists of sheriffs across the country who believe that a county sheriff’s authority should supersede that of the federal government, including the president. They have an organization, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Eight Arizona sheriffs are members, along with 300 of the nation’s 3,000 sheriffs. Resistance to mandates to stop the spread of Covid-19 gave them a boost, and they side with the election deniers and have white supremacist connections.

Their name is misleading. There is nothing in the constitution saying that sheriffs have such powers. They also are required by law to take an oath to support the constitution, like the one I had to take–the words include “preserve, protect, and defend”--to become a school janitor and work for the public library.

Yeah, the upcoming election is gonna be messy.

A problem I see is that sheriffs are go-to heroes in pop culture, not just westerns both period and contemporary, but horror, and science fiction. 

Yeah, reality is often quite different, here in Maricopa County, Az, we had Sheriff Joe Arpaio “America’s Toughest Sheriff” who ran on talking like John Wayne, and bragged about defending the border, even though it’s 30 miles away as the crow flies, and 79 to 48 depending on the route you take. 

These “constitutionals” are following his example.

To be fair, the likes of Oscar Zeta Acosta, and Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff with left/radical political ambitions. I also remember a guy named Tank Barbera, in L.A. County, who said he’d abolish the Sheriff's Department if elected. None of them won. Probably didn’t fit the stereotype.

This was in the Watergate years, when one of my college teachers said, “I keep expecting to see people wearing crossed ammunition belts.”

In open-carryArizona, I wouldn’t be surprised if ammo belts became fashionable.

Meanwhile, other elected officials are using unenforced, unconstitutional English Only laws to get rid of bilingual education.  

There is also a reversal of the pop culture trope, where the sheriff is a bad guy, usually backed by corrupt, rich landowners. Hmm . . .

Is the country becoming a spaghetti western? In real life you don’t get the entertaining shootout where, by the grace of the writer, the right people get killed. 

And now, the writers are on strike.

Ernest Hogan, the Father of Chicano Science Fiction, author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter has written a lot of stories this year. Stay tuned for news of where and when you will be able to read them.