MIAMI — Diana Rosa Lopez isn’t sure exactly what started the fight between her son and an ex-white supremacist canvassing for Sen. Marco Rubio outside her home in Hialeah on Sunday.
But Lopez, a registered Republican, says it wasn’t about politics — despite a viral tweet from Rubio claiming that his canvasser was attacked because he worked for the GOP.
“My son doesn’t know anything about politics. He likes fishing,” Lopez told the Miami Herald in a Tuesday interview at her house. “My son has never voted.”
Lopez said she is a private person scared of losing her job for speaking publicly. She said she votes only in presidential elections. Rubio’s reelection campaign meant little to her until the Republican called her son an “animal” on Twitter.
Her son, Javier Jesus Lopez, 25, was arrested Sunday on charges of aggravated battery after a fight with Christopher Monzon, 27, a former candidate for the Hialeah City Council with his own history of violent arrest. Photos show Monzon being taken to the hospital wearing a bloody Rubio for Senate campaign T-shirt. The photos, shared by the senator on Twitter, show Monzon on a stretcher with cuts on his face and swelling around his eyes. Another person involved has not been identified, police say.
Diana Lopez said she refuses to bail her son out of jail, and wants him to take responsibility for what he did wrong, which to her was getting involved in a needless fight between two hot-headed young men. Then Rubio called the incident a politically motivated attack, turning her son’s actions into a national headline — the latest alleged instance of politics turning violent — and putting her family in the middle of a maelstrom two weeks before Election Day.
After Rubio’s tweet, Democrats and Republicans both rushed to condemn political violence.
“He deserves whatever he deserves for getting in a fight,” Diana Lopez said. But she was clear: “This has nothing to do with politics.”
Diana Lopez said she heard a commotion outside her family home in Hialeah on Sunday evening. She said she remembers her son yelling, “I don’t know you” as he scuffled with Monzon. She and her husband broke up the fight, which she said lasted less than a minute. She said Monzon walked away from the fight. The two men briefly resumed fighting but were again separated, she said.
Police were called and EMTs attended to Monzon. But it was hours before either man was taken away, she said. Javier Lopez, who is on probation for other crimes, was booked into county jail. Monzon was taken to HCA Florida Kendall Hospital. He has since returned home to recover.
A police report made no mention of politics, saying Lopez told Monzon, “You can’t pass by here, this is my neighborhood,” before rushing the canvasser and attacking him.
“From the initial findings, we haven’t been able to determine if it’s politically motivated or not,” Hialeah Police Department Sgt. Jose Torres told the Herald on Tuesday. “He was wearing a political shirt and passing out political items.”
Torres said detectives would interview Monzon again.
Diana Lopez said she is talking to her son in jail.
“He says he regrets what happened. He wishes that he could have controlled himself,” Diana Lopez said. “And he says he doesn’t understand why they are saying what they are saying (about political motivations).”
“ ‘I hope that kid is OK,’ those are his words,” she recounted her son saying.
The Miami-Dade public defender’s office, which is representing Lopez, declined to comment, according to Richard De Maria, the office’s chief executive assistant public defender. Monzon did not immediately return a request for comment.
Javier Lopez is not registered to vote in Florida. Hialeah is a Republican stronghold in deep-blue South Florida. Trump won roughly 2/3 of the vote in the heavily Cuban American city in 2020.
In his tweet, Rubio claimed that Monzon was told “Republicans weren’t allowed in (the) neighborhood.”
While Rubio said “four animals” beat Monzon, Hialeah police say there were actually two assailants. Diana Lopez said she didn’t know the name of the other person, but identified him as a friend of her son. She said she didn’t see the other person throw any punches.
Rubio, who is running against U.S. Rep. Val Demings, also said in his tweet that Monzon was one of “our canvassers.” But Lizzie Gregory, a spokeswoman for Rubio’s campaign, said Tuesday that Monzon was working for the Republican Party of Florida.
She did not answer when asked who told Rubio that the attack was politically motivated or whether the campaign was aware of Monzon's white supremacist ties. The Republican Party of Florida — which has paid Monzon more than $10,000, according to the Huffington Post — did not respond to requests for comment.
Monzon has a long history of advocating for white supremacy.
Known as the “Cuban Confederate,” he was once a member of a white nationalist organization called the League of the South. In 2017, he attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. At that event, a young woman was killed when a far-right demonstrator ran her over with a car. That same year, he was arrested in Hollywood, Florida, after allegedly charging with a flagpole at protesters who wanted the city to rename streets that bore the names of Confederate generals.
“They are communists,” he said of the demonstrators at the time. “My message is that they are not going to win and we are not going to leave without a fight.”
Monzon ended up on probation. He ran for Hialeah City Council in 2021, losing badly, and now says he is on a “path to de-radicalization,” according to The New York Times.
Monzon’s documented links to extremist groups and events are not unique in the Miami-Dade Republican Party. The New York Times reported that at least six current or former Proud Boys have secured seats on the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee. Among them were two people facing criminal charges for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Before Monzon was sent home from the hospital, reporters with the Miami New Times were denied entry to his room by members of the Proud Boys.
He now serves as vice president of the Miami Springs Republican Club. The club president, Vince Medel, told the Herald his organization would not comment until police conclude their investigation. However, Medel said he disagreed with a police report that did not mention any political motivation.
“They got it totally incorrect,” he said, although he declined to explain why.
Rubio, in line to become chairman of the influential Senate Intelligence Committee if he wins reelection and Republicans take control of the chamber, modified his description of the beating later Monday, although he still maintained there were four attackers.
“Sadly, we get the news and we’re still waiting for details,” he said at a rally at the John F. Kennedy Library in Hialeah. “It’s always important to have details. We’re not like these other people that always jump to conclusions, but we know this: Someone wearing a Rubio T-shirt and a DeSantis hat was walking in a neighborhood not far from here yesterday when four individuals assaulted him, broke his nose, broke his jaw, and gave him internal bleeding.”
Lopez appeared in court Tuesday and was ordered held with no bond on a probation violation.
He’d been involved in two earlier felony cases in Miami-Dade.
The first case happened in 2017, when police pulled over Lopez in Hialeah Gardens while he was driving a stolen car. Lopez claimed he’d bought the car at a flea market for $1,500 and never received a bill of sale or title, according to a police report.
He was charged with grand theft and burglary.
In the second case, Lopez was arrested in 2018 after a fingerprint tied him to the burglary of a Hialeah restaurant. He was accused of breaking into the business and stealing $200 worth of beer boxes. Because he grabbed a kitchen knife during the burglary, which was caught on surveillance video, Lopez was charged with armed burglary.
He eventually accepted a plea deal and probation for both cases.
“He is a great son, but he’s not perfect,” Diana Lopez said. “He’s trying to turn his life around. He’s working in warehouses.”
She added: “He hasn’t been in trouble in a very long time.”
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(Miami Herald staff writers David Ovalle, Charles Rabin and Alyssa Johnson and El Nuevo Herald staff writer Veronica Egui Brito contributed to this report.)
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