Rudy Lozano

By Ellerese Topacio

As a social activist serving to advance the interests of the Latinx community in Chicago, Rudy Lozano forged relations with a number of allies—and enemies. On June 8, 1983, Lozano was assassinated in his home at 4035 West Twenty-Fifth Street in the Southwest Side of Chicago. The FBI and Chicago Police immediately began an investigation. Lozano was only thirty-one years old when he was gruesomely shot with a revolver three times—twice in the chest and one in the head—by an eighteen-year-old assailant named Gregory Escobar.^[1]

Escobar was no stranger to the dangerous side of Chicago, for he had a relationship with his cousin Alfredo Olvera, who sold cocaine.^[2] Police speculated that Lozano was already acquainted with Escobar, because based on Lozano’s wife’s testimony, the day was killed, he had allowed Escobar to enter their home and use the bathroom.^[3] Lozano’s wife, Lupe, and their young toddler, Todd, were home during the time of his murder. According to Mrs. Lozano’s testimony, she heard her husband answer a phone call around 9:00 a.m.; someone had inquired if he was home and instantly hung up after Lozano responded yes. Minutes later, Lozano was slain on the kitchen floor.^[4] According to other witnesses, the assailant was a Hispanic man in his 20s wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. He purportedly fled out the back door and pedaled away on a blue bicycle.^[5]

After undergoing two trials, Gregory Escobar was convicted of murdering Lozano and was sentenced to forty years in prison.^[6] The first trial was declared a mistrial in the Cook County Circuit Court because the jury deliberated for fourteen hours without reaching a conclusive verdict. They found witness reports, especially Mrs. Lozano’s testimony, to be not entirely persuasive because although she was in the home at the time of Lozano’s murder, she could not positively identify Escobar as the killer.^[7] According to the jury, the prosecution failed to provide sufficient proof that Escobar was beyond a reasonable doubt the person who murdered Lozano. In the second trial, the jury deliberated for nearly five hours before conclusively pronouncing Escobar guilty.^[8]

There was no conclusive proof as to Escobar’s motive to assassinate Lozano. Some Harrison area detectives believed the murder was politically motivated. Lozano’s political activism elevated the presence of Latinx Chicagoans, but his altruism inadvertently provoked the wrath of local gangs as well. Police speculated that Escobar developed anger toward Lozano when he aided a rival gang by using its members as advisors of his aldermanic campaign in 1982.^[9] Moreover, many investigators believed that Lozano’s decisive role in union activity, particularly when he helped mobilize the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, earned him some political adversaries.^[10] A third theory was the possibility that Lozano owed a particular drug dealer money for cocaine, leading the drug dealer to offer $5,000 for Lozano’s murder, which Escobar presumably accepted.^[11]

What motivated Escobar to cut Lozano’s life short remains a mystery; however, the Chicago community has undeniably expressed their appreciation for Lozano’s role in ushering in the first generation of young Latinx activists. Though cut short, Lozano’s legacy is marked with Latinx pride against a backdrop of increasing racial diversity in the political landscape of Chicago in the 1970s–80s.