Inez Garcia (born 1941) is a Hispanic woman who became a cause célèbre of the feminist movement when she was charged with the 1974 murder of a man who had raped her.

Background

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Garcia was born in New York and raised in Spanish Harlem. Her ethnic heritage is mixed Puerto Rican and Cuban. She married the Cuban exile and Anti-Castro activist Juan Cardenas, and the two of them had a son in 1980. Cardenas was imprisoned in Soledad, California, after being convicted of involvement in a political bombing. In 1971 Garcia moved to Soledad to be nearer to her husband. She worked in the lettuce fields and supplemented her income with welfare. She earned a reputation in the small, mostly Chicano community as a devout and chaste Catholic. She shared an apartment with Fred Medrano, a Texan who was involved in the illegal drug trade.

The Rape and Murder

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On March 17, 1974, Garcia was visiting with some friends in her apartment. Medrano also had a guest, with whom he was smoking marijuana. Louie Castillo and Miguel Jimenez, Soledad locals and acquaintances of Medrano, arrived in a state of inebriation to purchase heroin from Medrano. They began harassing Garcia and her friends, who left Garcia and the others at the apartment. Soon an argument arose between Medrano and Castillo, who was envious of Medrano's status as the primary drug connection in Soledad and was resentful that an "outsider" had become so successful. The argument became physical, and Medrano was winning the fight (Castillo was a wiry seventeen year old) until the 300-pound Jimenez intervened, beating Medrano and threatening him with a knife. Jimenez and Castillo took Garcia to an alley behind the building where Jimenez restrained and Castillo raped her, according to Garcia's testimony, "to show me what a hometown boy was." The two men left the scene for a neighbor's house. Shortly after arriving, they (or someone else) called the Garcia-Medrano residence, laughing, taunting, and threatening Garcia's life if she did not leave town. Garcia armed herself with her son's .22 rifle and she and Medrano drove the six blocks to the residence where Castillo and Jimenez were located. Accounts vary as to precisely what occurred next, but by most of them, Jimenez again brandished his knife and Garcia shot him. Castillo, meanwhile, escaped into a nearby park. Medrano and Garcia continued to the home of the two friends that had visited her earlier, and when police arrived, she surrendered to them without incident.

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