ustxtxb_obs_1969_01_24_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

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We also invite requests from instructors for sample copies of recent issues, as a method of introducing the Observer to your students. wasn’t as high as a named adult thought it should be, so he “hit me in the stomach until I could hardly breathe.” For talking, the same man hit him in the stomach and behind the neck and kicked him several times when he fell to the floor. Ciulla names the boys on his right and left as witnesses; he says about 200 boys in all saw this. For talking while working out, an adult Ciulla names had him put his hands in his pockets and beat him with his fists, bruising his chest and stomach. On April 8 or 15, 1968, a race gang fight broke out and continued about ten minutes. Thirteen boys were taken to the office, and two named guards, Ciulla said, started hitting the boys in the stomach and face with fists. It was then that Ciulla’s tooth was knocked through his lip. During the gang fight one of the white boys had got his head cut. Ciulla said that during the punishment work which the boys in the fight had to do, this injured boy fell to the ground, and a named adult kicked him in the side and stomped on his chest with a cowboy boot. The boy got up, but finally passed out and was taken to the hospital after lying in the sun about an hour. Ciulla also complained that his 20-yearold sister, a college student, had not been let visit him because the rules say visitors must be 21. He said the academic teachers refuse to do anything to help stop the rackings. Frank Vargas FRANK VARGAS is an older brother of Richard Vargas, one of the boys involved in the run from Gatesville and the lie detector testing pursuant to legislators’ airplane visits to Gatesville reported last issue. Richard Vargas is still at Mountain View. His brother Frank has been in Gatesville, too. Frank is now doing tree servicing work in Houston. Mr. and Mrs. Cruz Vargas, parents of 16 children, including Frank and Richard, went with Frank to investigate the situation on behalf of their son after the legislators’ and then-Speaker Barnes’ visits to Gatesville. The Vargases live in a sparsely furnished house in Houston; they have adopted one child, in addition to their sixteen natural children. Mrs. Vargas said that every time she went to see Richard over a period of months, he had bruises from the top of his chest down to his stomach and around his back, “todo, todo, todo.” Five or six months ago, she says, tear gas was fired into Richard’s cell and he was taken to the hospital in Waco. She says she complained to the FBI about six months ago and understands they investigated, but never heard from them’ further. She says Richard fell off a truck while working three years ago and took a hard rap on the back of his head. She says he complains of very sharp stings that “shut 10 The Texas Observer something off,” and she believes he needs examination for possible disability. She has told authorities at Gatesville this, but thinks they have done nothing to inquire into it. When, early in January, they went to see Richard, Mrs. Vargas and her son Frank say, they found him with a black eye, blood in his eye, and bruises all over, including one on his neck that looked to Mrs. Vargas like a footprint. This is the case in which Barnes exhibited hand-made weapons escapees had fashioned. One of the boys’ statements contained an expression of intention to kill a guard if only one caught them. They ran but did not get beyond the fences. Mrs. Vargas says Richard vigorously denies they intended to hurt a guard, although they did have the weapons. Frank said Richard told him that on one occasion, one of the guards was beating up a little boy, and Richard broke a leg off a table and ran a bunch of people out of the dorm with it. Frank Vargas was in Gatesville about two and a half years, from 1962 to 1964. He was not asked if he would testify but spoke for quotation. He recalled being required to run for a full hour, with a coach kicking and hitting you if you falter. He named three supervisors who he said do most of the racking. He says he has seen a belt they use on the horses’ saddlery used to hit boys with. One day, he says, his mother gave him cigarettes to give to another boy, but when he delivered them, he was taken to the office and beaten for doing it. Beaten in the stomach, he developed a hernia, and his stomach swelled out about the size, he demonstrated, of a cantaloupe. He was operated on at Gatesville. He was about 17 then. Mrs. Vargas and Frank, after seeing Richard in Gatesville earlier this month, went to Austin and told Turman, director of the Texas Youth Council, that the guards had no right to beat Richard up that way. They said Turman said the guards don’t beat the boys up. “You in Austin and we’re down there. You don’t know anything about it,” Frank Vargas said he told Turman. “I know more than you do,” Vargas said Turman replied. Turman, Mrs. Vargas said, promised her the guards would not touch Richard again, and she told him, “You can’t promise me nothin’ because you don’t see nothin’.” Frank Vargas said that he saw boys beaten at Gatesville when he was an inmate there about once or twice a day. “A boy, he gets meaner that way. You. hit him again and again . . I learned to hate. I wasn’t that way.” Joe Vargas Another member of the Vargas family, 18-year-old Joe, served one and a half years in Gatesville, 1965-1967, in connec