Biography
Juan Fernandez was a member of La Casa de Carnalismo, a Chicano community organization in East Los Angeles that worked to drive heroin dealers out of the barrio. In 1971 Juan Fernandez, with two others known together as Los Tres del Barrio, shot and robbed a man at the Estrada Courts housing project who proved to be an undercover federal narcotics agent; the agent was left paralyzed. Charged in federal court, the three were convicted and given sentences of forty, twenty-five, and ten years. The Committee to Free Los Tres made them a major cause of the Chicano movement, which argued they had been entrapped and targeted for their anti-drug community organizing.
Workers Vanguard’s February 1, 1974 report states that Los Tres del Barrio were physically released on bail during November 7–9, 1973, pending appeal of the sentences imposed by Judge Lawrence Lydick. The report does not identify which of those three dates applies to each man. The shared release window is preserved without assigning an invented individual day.
