Citizen Primitivo

Primitive Garcia was that folkloric figure, the bright-eyed young idealist who migrates to the U.S. and turns visions into realities. In the nine months following his arrival in Kansas City, Mo., the handsome young Mexican held a steady job as a shipping clerk, be came engaged, and helped his brother put down $500 on a three-room home for themselves, their mother and their 15-year-old sister.

Modest as it was, his life was probably beyond dreams he might have entertained as a boy in his native Chihuahua, where his parents and their ten children earned a bare subsistence with a vegetable and fruit stand in the market. As any good script would have it, Primitivo, 23, along with his younger brother Alfredo, began a naturalization course at night at Kansas City's Westport High School, the first step to ward his cherished goal of becoming a U.S. citizen. If Primitivo Garcia had been like the U.S. citizens who were around Westport one cold night last month, he would be alive today.

After Class. Talking with his brother and a couple of other Mexicans after class, Primitivo was approached from behind by a young tough -- one of a group of Negro youths who had paused after molesting people down the road --and struck in the face. He started to lash back, but others from both groups prevented a full-scale fight. A few minutes later, Primitivo and Mrs. Margaret Kindermann, 25, his naturalization teacher, were in more serious trouble.

Two of the young hoods accosted Mrs. Kindermann -- who was 5 1/2 months pregnant -- as she stood on the school steps waiting for her ride home. When they got no reaction to random obscenities and a pat on her back, one grabbed her purse, running with it to the opposite side of the street where Primitivo and the others were gathered. Mrs. Kindermann followed. With so many ordinary respectable people around, she could not believe that she was in danger. But the caper had just begun.

"Shoot Him! Shoot Him!" The punks with her purse joined those who had tackled the Mexicans, and all of them danced around her. One pulled her legs from under her; the others lifted up her skirt and fondled her. Primitivo was outraged. Plunging into the group, he knocked down the youth with the purse and punched another in the face. "Shoot him! Shoot him!" they yelled. The purse snatcher did just that.

The first two shots went astray, but the third ripped into Primitivo's stomach. He staggered to the school, where Mrs. Kindermann, who had escaped while the fight was going on, called an ambulance that took him to the General Hospital. Not one of the respectable people around the school bothered to call the police or interfere in any way during the ten minutes it took for the grisly scene to play itself out. Three of the attackers were in jail last week, a fourth was in a boys' camp, and the fifth was released to his family.

Though both Kansas City papers virtually ignored the affair, it did not go unnoticed by Mrs. Helen Dow, 61, and her friend Mrs. Virginia McCray, 45. Hoping to raise a few hundred dollars to help the Garcias with hospital and funeral expenses, the two women, at last count, had collected $14,200 from more than 1,500 donors. Mrs. Kindermann's fifth-grade class needed no prompting to write Primitivo in the hospital. "I am thanking you for saving Mrs. Kindermann's life and her baby," wrote one girl. "Our room is learning Spanish. Our city is not that bad, but the main thing is, get well. I hope you pass all your tests so that you can become an American." Three operations failed to save him, however, and 13 days after the incident at Westport he died of blood poisoning and complications brought about by the bullet that had pierced his pancreas.

A few hours before Primitivo died, Missouri Governor Warren Hearnes made him an honorary citizen of the state. He had been in Kansas City long enough to know the good of America --and the bad.

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