The Smog of Race War in LA

These days, Chris Bowers wakes up every morning to a vivid reminder that crossing borders can get you killed in South LA's Harbor Gateway area. Just outside the fence in front of his rented stucco house on Harvard Boulevard is a silver scooter, an assortment of dried flowers and a dozen candles bearing religious messages written in Spanish and English--a makeshift memorial to Cheryl Green, the 14-year-old whose murder last December by members of the 204th Street Gang sparked accusations of Latino "ethnic cleansing" of African-Americans. "There were two of them," says Bowers, a 22-year-old college student and high school football coach. "They came up and shot off one shot. They looked confused, and then shot off the rest of the rounds." Jonathan Fajardo, 18, and Ernesto Alcarez, 20, members of 204th Street, have been charged with gunning down Green as she stood with her scooter talking to friends. Police say they had been seeking a black person to kill.

After greeting a friend who drives by in a beat-up suburban, Bowers, whose dreads and ready smile give him a Marleyesque air, looks south and says, "From 207th down, blacks and Latinos get along; people drink beer together, kids skate and play with other kids. You see black and Latino interracial kids. People kick it together. It's a real community."

Then he looks up the street toward the ramshackle Del Amo Market--one of the few stores on the twelve-block strip that is Harbor Gateway--an establishment that 204th Streeters forbid black people to enter. "But over there, that way, no," he says. "You don't really see many black people over there."

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