Biography
Carlos Montes was a Brown Beret organizer and editor of La Vida Nueva at East Los Angeles College. He was prosecuted after the April 1969 Biltmore Hotel protests and fires, and was one of four defendants facing a direct arson charge. He left for Mexico in 1970 before his trial concluded. After returning in 1979, he faced trial and was acquitted. His exact detention periods have not been verified.
Photo: Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library Special Collections, 1968. Original-image crop; identified by the source (third from left; placement corroborated by KQED, The Forgotten Occupation of Catalina Island). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFour_Brown_Berets_leaders%2C_Fred_Lopez%2C_David_Sanchez_%2C_Carlos_Montes_and_Ralph_Ramirez_in_Los_Angeles%2C_Calif.%2C_1968.jpg . CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ ; original-image crop.
Biltmore prosecution
On April 24, 1969, protests interrupted Governor Ronald Reagan's appearance at the Nuevas Vistas education conference at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where fires also broke out. A grand jury indicted ten people. The July 1969 La Raza report, written by their defense attorney, described their June 24 arraignment, bail difficulties and the political consequences of the prosecution.
The indictment did not charge everyone with the same offenses. Contemporary El Gallo reporting identifies Carlos Montes, Ralph Ramirez, Esmeralda Bernal and Ernesto Cebada as facing direct arson and burning-property charges, as well as conspiracy, burglary and damage to electrical lines. The six other defendants faced related conspiracy and property charges, without the direct arson count. Entering the hotel with an alleged intent to commit a felony was the prosecution's basis for burglary; the defense report did not describe theft.
The prosecution relied on undercover LAPD officer Fernando Sumaya. Defense witnesses alleged he instigated or set the fires; that allegation is distinguished here from established conduct. The proceedings later ended in dismissals or acquittals, but available sources do not establish every defendant's exact disposition date or custody interval. The 1970 appellate decision required a further hearing on alleged discrimination in grand-jury selection; it was not an acquittal or an order finding every allegation of discrimination proven.
Carlos Montes was a Brown Beret organizer and editor of La Vida Nueva at East Los Angeles College. He was prosecuted after the April 1969 Biltmore Hotel protests and fires, and was one of four defendants facing a direct arson charge. He left for Mexico in 1970 before his trial concluded. After returning in 1979, he faced trial and was acquitted. His exact detention periods have not been verified.
These records concern a historical prosecution. No current custody is verified. Unknown imprisonment durations, release dates and personal details are left blank.
Sources
- La Raza, July 1969, Nuevas Vistas 10
- El Gallo, June–July 1969, LA indictment of 10 Chicanos
- Montez v. Superior Court, 10 Cal. App. 3d 343 (1970)
- Jennifer G. Correa, Chicano Nationalism: The Brown Berets and Legal Social Control, pp. 71–73
- Edward J. Escobar, The Dialectics of Repression, Journal of American History (1993)
Reporting from June 19, 1968 reprinted in the Congressional Record names Carlos Montes among demonstrators arrested the previous day near the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., while attempting to join a welfare-rights march associated with the Poor People's Campaign. The report identifies Montes (printed Montez) and Ramirez together as Los Angeles participants and says both remained in jail late that night. They were charged with disorderly conduct. This was a separate episode from the 1969 Biltmore prosecution; no release date or total custody duration is established.
Jennifer Correa’s 2006 thesis identifies Carlos Montes among the East L.A. Thirteen prosecuted over the 1968 school walkouts. It reports that Montes and Ramirez were away with the Poor People’s Campaign during the initial Los Angeles arrests and were arrested after returning to Los Angeles. Its discussion of FBI reports also records their subsequent apprehension and arraignment, with bail set at $1,000 each. This is a separate Los Angeles prosecution from the already recorded June 18, 1968 Washington, D.C. detention and the 1969 Biltmore case. Because the thesis gives inconsistent chronology, no exact admission or release day, or custody total, is inferred.
Los Angeles magazine reported Montes’s May 17, 2011 arrest during a raid on his Alhambra home, followed by overnight detention at Twin Towers jail and release early the next morning. This is separate from the Biltmore prosecution.
