Posted on 03/01/2007 1:55:59 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
THREE RIVERS — Thirteen years in federal lockups, most of them in maximum security at Leavenworth in Kansas, have left Ramsey Muñiz with a creaky hip and a Web site that proclaims him to be a "Mexicano political prisoner."
The former Raza Unida Party gubernatorial candidate, whose strong third-place showing in 1972 denied Democrat Dolph Briscoe a majority, recently was transferred to the medium-security prison here.
Muñiz, 64, is doing life without parole for three convictions for dealing large amounts of drugs. In a Monday interview, he continued to vaguely assert his innocence — but he won't talk about his cases, two of which ended in guilty pleas.
"There are certain things a man can say in my position, and certain things that cannot be said. I sacrificed myself for my people and pleaded guilty, and I would do it again today," he said, looking fit and tanned in sharply pressed khakis.
Having repeated versions of this refrain for three decades, Muñiz declines to explain his catastrophic fall from grace, which also helped finish off the Raza Unida Party. A few remaining loyalists still believe he was framed.
"The pattern is there. The government is against people who speak out against social policy. They wind up either in jail or prison, or they are beaten up or assassinated," said Raul Garcia, 66, a Beaumont professor and former head of the Ramsey Muñiz Defense Committee.
A native of Corpus Christi who played football on the state's first integrated championship high school team, Muñiz went to Baylor University on a football scholarship and later attended law school.
A natural politician, he burst into the state political spotlight in 1972 when, in his first bid for elected office, he tallied more than 214,000 votes for the Raza Unida ticket, ensuring the party's place on the 1974 ballot.
"Endowed with brawny good looks, a quick mind and talent for flashy rhetoric, Muñiz is also probably the bluntest, most direct man in this year's gubernatorial race," read a 1974 profile in the San Antonio Express-News.
His early 1970s platform was ahead of its time, calling for a state tax on corporate profits, greater state funding of public schools, ceilings on campaign spending and prison reform.
"Everyone loved him. He was hell on wheels. He had boundless energy and stamina. Had he applied those talents to politics, he could be in elective office right now," said Jose Angel Gutierrez, a Raza Unida Party founder.
But Muñiz fell as quickly as he had risen. When he ran again in 1974, he got less than half the votes from two years earlier. Then came the stunning 1976 drug smuggling charge where he was accused of being part of a group that imported hundreds of pounds of marijuana.
Smelling a frame-up, his Raza Unida colleagues rallied around him, raising money and preparing to do battle in court.
"We had already gotten a good lawyer from New York. We were ready to go to trial. It was going to be a political trial, and then he jumps bond. That was it for me," said Gutierrez, now a college professor in Arlington.
Muñiz was captured in Mexico and returned to Texas where he pleaded guilty to two sets of federal marijuana smuggling indictments.
He lost his law license, did some federal time and fell out of sight after his release, working in South Texas as a paralegal.
Other drug arrests followed, the last coming 13 years ago in Sherman, where he was caught with 88 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of a rented car and the car key in his sock.
Muñiz had an explanation: He said Monday that an earlier stint in prison wearing clothes with holes in the pockets taught him to carry important items in his socks. The jury didn't buy the story, and Muñiz was sent away for life.
Now little more than the answer to a history trivia question, Muñiz is seen by some of his former colleagues as delusional, in deep denial or just plain dishonest.
"He claims he was set up and is a political prisoner. I'd like to believe him, but I can't," Gutierrez said. "What's wrong with him? I don't know."
Muñiz, who spoke forcefully but without anger, brushed off such barbs, saying he loses no sleep over his legacy.
"History is going to place every one of us. I'll be where I was supposed to be from the beginning, leading my people into a realm of liberation, justice and spirituality," he said.
Lawyer William Bonilla, 76, who knew Muñiz when he played high school and college football and who encouraged him to attend Baylor, recalled him as one of the most promising of his generation.
"He became a lawyer just when Mexican Americans were beginning to break the ice in Corpus Christi," Bonilla said.
"If he had stayed clean, I have no doubt he was in line to be a leader in the community. A state rep, maybe a state senator, certainly a judge," he said.
Instead, because of federal prison guidelines, he acknowledged, Muñiz likely will die in prison.
"Ramsey is in the trouble he's in because he violated the law. If he got carried away, it was because of greed. He let us all down," Bonilla said.
Muñiz said Monday steps are being taken to reopen his l994 drug conviction, but again offered few details. He declined to name the lawyer involved, or even explain how the case, already appealed, might be revived.
At the close of the interview, Muñiz was pressed once again to explain what went so wrong more than 30 years ago, setting his life on a course to disaster in a way that hurt so many others.
While he did not admit any personal involvement in drug smuggling, his cryptic account left little to the imagination.
"In my practice of law at the time, the majority of my clients were criminals. I represented a lot of drug dealers. I became close friends with them, and they are still my friends," he said.
"I came too close to them. Things did happen. Some of them decided to take the easy way out and say I did this or I did that. I knew better than to tell because I wanted to stay alive, so I pleaded guilty. I could have said a lot of things."
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jmaccormack@express-news.net
"Munez will likely die in prison." Egads, my heart. It's, it's breaking. Burp! Nope, just gas.
That's where "natural politicians" belong, but we rarely send them.
How far would a white guy get running on the United Race Party platform? I bet the state wouldn't even let him file with that name.
In Texas, the candidates file with the party to run in a primary.
"political prisoner" ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
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