While the small Latino youth movement
takes to the streets, community-based organizations
are focusing on political empowerment through
more traditional channels.
Political passions are
inflamed (literally) at the
Peace and Justice Center,
a quasi-underground youth
hangout just west of downtown
Los Angeles. In the August
heat, as skateboarding daredev-
ils go airborne in the parking
lot outside, about 20 activists in
their late teens and early twen-
ties plot pyromaniacal political
theater in a meeting room dec-
orated with posters of revolu-
tionaries including Malcolm,
Martin, Che and Marcos. The
group approximates a politi-
cized version of the forlorn
inner-city waifs of Larry
Clark’s film Kids-a multieth-
nic (though majority Latino)
crew of youth who are creative,
angry, idealistic, and
unabashedly radical.
The young activists are plan-
ning a demonstration set to take
place at the federal courthouse A student protester holds
where the fate of Proposition California Governor Pete V
187 will be determined by Judge Mariana Pfaelzer on
September 10. “We have to be there so that they will
feel a serious presence,” says C6sar Cruz, a Chicano
student at the University of California at Irvine who is
sporting the latest in ’90s Chicano revolutionary chic: a
dramatic black tejana (Stetson-style cowboy hat worn
by Mexican banda music aficionados), a bandanna
forming an inverted triangle from chin to chest, and a
up a placard lambasting lilson.
large leather medallion carved
with the Aztec Sun Calendar
hanging from his neck.
Nods around the room.
“Yeah, I think we should
fuckin’ take the streets!” says a
blond, blue-eyed teenager with
a Chicago accent who-
through one of those California
transcultural miracles-is now
a Chicana who goes by the
name of “Lucha” (in Spanish,
“Struggle”).
“Logistics!” C6sar cries out,
furiously scribbling notes on
loose-leaf yellow sheets that lie
on the floor next to his copy of
The Diary of Che Guevara.
“Who’s going to bring the bull-
horn?”
They will take to the streets.
There will be civil disobedi-
ence. And, they hope, there will
be massive media coverage
because of the happy coinci-
dence that the federal court
building is across the street
from the county court building, where every media
organization in the country is camped out covering the
Trial of the Century.
The all-important discussion of march aesthetics
begins. The members of the Four Winds Student
Movement, La Resistencia (a wing of the
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA), Youth
Breaking Borders, the Affirmative Action Coalition
of the University of California at Irvine and the
Women’s Action Coalition share one vision in com-
mon: they want to burn something.
VOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995
Rubbn Martinez is an editor at Pacific News Service and author
of The Other Side: Notes from the New L.A., Mexico City, and
Beyond (Vintage).
29REPORT ON IMMIGRATION
“Let’s burn those snitch forms!” someone proposes, ovember, 1995 marks the first anniversary of
referring to a draft from the California Attorney the California election that placed the issue of
General’s office of a form to be used-should 187 ever immigration on the national agenda with the re-
actually become law-to turn in “suspected illegal election of Gov. Pete Wilson and his all-out crusade for
aliens.” Proposition 187. It also marks the anniversary of the
The representative from the Women’s Action biggest student mobilization in Los Angeles since the
Coalition (WAC) offers, “I could make a big doll of late 1960s. Though they have yet to replicate the mas-
Pete Wilson, cover him with those forms, and then burn sive student walkouts and marches of 1994, this small
but vocal and potentially galvanizing
force represents, for Latinos, the most
politicized generation since the Chicano
movement born 30 years ago in the pick-
ing fields of California.
Most of the activists at the Peace and
Justice Center are veterans of last year’s
protests-high school and college stu-
dents who led walkouts, organized
teach-ins, and volunteered for get-out-
the-vote efforts. Many were present at
the pre-election October 16 march in
Los Angeles which drew over 100,000
people onto the streets, one of the largest
demonstrations in modern California
history.
“Proposition 187 affects me in every
way,” says Ana Vdsquez, a 20-year-old
student at the University of Southern
California. “My family is half docu-
mented and half undocumented. My
mother’s a citizen, my tfos came across
the river.”
Most of the advocates for the undocu-
mented are young Chicano and Central
American citizens like Ana who feel A thousand high school students in Porterville, California participate in an election- that 187 paints all Latinos, regardless of day student walkout. immigration status, as welfare freeload-
him.” The idea is received with much laughter and ers, criminals, and the cause of the worst economic
immediate approval, downturn in California since the Depression. In this,
But Angel Cervantes, a student at the Claremont the activists of the 1990s differ from their 1960s fore-
Graduate School and one of the most prominent youth runners. Latinos were once clearly and bitterly divided
leaders during last year’s massive school walkouts between native-born, mostly English-speaking
against 187, is concerned about timing. “If you burn Chicanos and immigrant, Spanish-speaking Mexicans.
Wilson first, the cops might arrest you and then the Cultural differences and at times the appearance, if not
media won’t get to hear any speakers. How about the the fact, of economic competition contributed to this
speakers first, then burn Wilson?” rift.
Several more proposals are tossed out; it’s getting Today, activists decry the line between San Diego
hard to follow exactly what is being burned when. “So and Tijuana. The new thinking-reflected in the popu-
what’s it going to be?” asks Olga Miranda, a Belmont lar slogan, “We didn’t cross the border, the border
High School student leader. “Snitch forms burning, crossed us”-re-imagines the old Mexico that gov-
speaker, Wilson burning, or speaker, speaker, burning, erned the Southwest before the Mexican-American
burning?” War. A growing Central American population, already
The WAC representative can’t resist: “Speaker burn! politicized from the experience of the anti-intervention
Speaker burn! Speaker burn!” and sanctuary efforts of the 1980s, has also informed
After more deliberations, the group comes up with a and influenced what was once purely “Chicano”
slogan: “Wilson, you liar, we’ll set your ass on fire!” activism.
30 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON IMMIGRATION
These activists want to reach out beyond the Latino
community. “We’re trying to break down the image that
this is the ‘Chicano movement’ of the nineties,” says
Angel Cervantes, a founding member of the Four
Winds Student Movement (the group’s name hints at
Native American spirituality and a multiethnic world
view). “We want to bring in anyone who’s been mar-
ginalized. A lot of organizers are moving away from
race and ethnicity towards issues of class.”
This post-nationalist rhetoric has yet to translate into
political reality, however. While the crew at the Peace
and Justice Center may indeed be a sign of a new coali-
tion politics, the turnout at last year’s marches was
practically 99% Latino. And the election results once
again confirmed California’s political and cultural frag-
mentation. According to a Los Angeles Times exit poll,
the divide between Anglo, middle-class California and
the soon-to-be-majority Latino population has become
an unbreachable chasm. White Californians voted near-
ly three-to-one in favor of 187, while Latinos voted
nearly four-to-one against. Asians and
African-Americans wound up in the
middle, nearly splitting even-a hopeful
sign for coalition-minded activists.
The problem is that demographics
don’t match up with actual voter turnout,
a situation that Mexican political scien-
tist Jorge Castaileda has called
California’s “electoral apartheid.” Had
Latinos voted proportionate to their pop-
ulation numbers (approximately one-
third statewide), 187 may well have
been defeated. But low voter-registra-
tion and turn-out rates-along with the
fact that a substantial number of Latinos,
both documented and undocumented,
are not citizens-have historically held
back not only a possible swing vote, but
a bloc that could, theoretically, become
the dominant force in California politics.
Not all the grassroots organizing
going on around the issue of 187
is as visionary or radical as the
admittedly fringe youth movement at the
Peace and Justice Center. Many Latino
institutions-energized by 187, like the
students-are focusing on politicalA get
empowerment through more traditional channels.
Last year, community-based organizations such as
the Central American Resource Center, One Stop
Immigration, and the Catholic Church-based United
Neighborhoods Organization recruited people for
marches, conducted letter-writing campaigns, and coor-
dinated media-outreach efforts. Latino newspapers, TV,
and radio stations went on an unabashed crusade. La
Opinion, the country’s largest Spanish-language daily,
still regularly lists hotline numbers in stories about
post-187 discrimination.
Nevertheless, the deep divisions over strategy that
emerged a year ago remain intact today. Before the
election, some elected officials counseled against mas-
sive demonstrations. “All those angry brown faces on
TV, the Mexican flags being waved, it was exactly the
wrong image to be sending out,” says one political con-
sultant. “It played right into whites’ fears about being
overwhelmed by Latins.”
Others question this thinking. “It was a waste of time
to pander to the angry white voter,” says Gilbert
Cedillo, general manager of the Service Employees
International Union Local 660, which represents over
40,000 County of Los Angeles workers currently facing
unprecedented lay-offs due to massive budget cuts.
“The course we should have been following is to
expand our base and create a social movement.”
-out-the-vote drive organized by opponents of Prop 187.
Many community-based organizations are focusing
on increasing the ranks of eligible Latino voters. The
Southwest Voter Research and Education Project pro-
jects that some 100,000 people will apply for citizen-
ship in California in 1995 alone. Nationally, applica-
tions for citizenship rose 250% from 1992 to 1995. This
rate is proving untenable for the Immigration and
VOL XXIX, No 3 Nov/DEC 1995
C
C
0
s
31REPORT ON IMMIGRATION
Naturalization Service (INS), an agency primarily
funded these days to “hold the line” at the southern U.S.
border. At a recent INS swearing-in ceremony for new
citizens at a football field-sized room in the Los
Angeles Convention Center, it was evident that 187 was
the driving force behind the increased interest in citi-
zenship.
“With the new laws that they’re passing, I was afraid
I’d be left defenseless,” says Adelaido Vdsquez, a
Mexican immigrant who has lived over a dozen years in
the United States and had heretofore resisted natural-
ization-an often painful process for Mexicans whose
Many
community-based
organizations are
focusing on
increasing the ranks
of Latino voters.
It is projected that
some 100,000 people
will apply for
citizenship in
California in 1995
alone.
cultural ambiva-
lence, given the
history of conflict
and discrimination
in the Southwest,
is legendary.
As the newest cit-
izens exit the con-
vention center,
they are immedi-
ately accosted by
partisan voter-reg-
istration activists.
“Republicans!
Republicans regis-
ter here!” shouts
Yarda Scudder, a
middle-aged blond
woman wearing
jeans and a red
kerchief tied
around her neck,
attempting perhaps
to approximate the
Ronald Reagan
pastoral look. But
the table that does
the brisker busi-
ness is presided over by the portly, Zapata-mustachioed
Democrat Rudy Montalvo of the Los Angeles County
Federation of Labor. “Make your vote known!” he
shouts in Spanish. “Let Pete Wilson hear the voice of the
immigrants, of the workers, of the humble!”
The Catholic Church is active in the citizenship drive
as well. There are 187 (eerie coincidence) Latino-
majority parishes out of a total of 290 in the most pop-
ulous archdiocese in the country. According to
Assistant Director of Hispanic Ministry Louis
Velisquez, half of these parishes are helping the immi-
grant faithful naturalize. Sounding a clear liberation-
theology line, Veldsquez says that the Church is “com-
mitted to the mandate of the gospel, which is less a mat-
ter of eternal life after death than living life here and
now with justice, peace and love.”
Interestingly, the Protestant evangelical churches are
equally involved in a grassroots effort to, at the very
least, keep their brethren from being deported. At
Iglesia Evang61lica Latina in the Silver Lake district of
Los Angeles, the church boasts an immigration office
with several counselors and new computers. Over a 100
people a week seek immigration services here, a young
Salvadoran clerk poring over one family’s paperwork
tells me. “People are worried that they’re going to be
kicked out of the country at any moment,” she says. “If
they have some kind of papers, we do the best we can,
but if they’re completely undocumented, there’s noth-
ing we can do.”
Some evangelical churches have taken a more radical
stance on the issue of immigration. Dan Ramirez, a
laymember of the Apostolic Assembly, a Pentecostal
church, notes that his religious community sees biblical
law as taking precedence over the laws of the state.
When undocumented brethren are deported, an elabo-
rate network of contacts are often able to return the
deportees to the flock in a kind of Pentecostal sanctuary
movement. “As politicians preach communal values
while accentuating the divisions in society [through
laws like 187], these Latino Pentecostals bear witness
to the true meaning of communal life,” says Ramfrez,
who, in his secular life, is an administrator at Stanford
University.
Nonetheless, the citizenship drive is seen as the
principal vehicle for Latino empowerment. “We
expect to have 2.1 million people registered by next
year,” says Antonio Gonzilez, director of the
Southwest Voter Research and Education Project.
“The ’96 election will be hot. California will be at the
center of the country politically because of issues like
immigration-and the Latino vote will increasingly be
heard.”
But, warns David Hayes-Bautista, director of the
Alta California Research Center, Latinos will not be
able to achieve much alone. “The vast majority of
the electorate will still be largely older and Anglo,”
he says. “Latinos must forge ties with African
Americans, Asians and progressive whites.”
bsent from the discourse of most mainstream
institutions (and elected officials) is word on
Jthe fate of the undocumented, who are, at least
ostensibly, the direct target of 187. While most com-
munity organizations speak sympathetically of the
undocumented, the practical and political upshot of this
solidarity is conspicuous in its lack of definition. When
asked about the undocumented population (it is esti-
mated that between 3% and 10% of California’s
Latinos may lack papers), one Catholic Church official
said that the Church continues to provide health care
and education through its hospitals and parochial
schools to anyone regardless of immigration status.
While such social services
are invaluable, the Church
has not yet taken up a more
forceful advocacy role on
behalf of the undocumented.
Admittedly, proposals
such as a new amnesty sim-
ilar to that implemented
under the Immigration
Reform and Control Act of
1986 are a political long
shot in the current jingoistic
climate. Many activists,
however, think that main-
stream institutions have all
but abandoned the undocu-
mented. “The definition of
political power only through
voting is too narrow,” says
Leonardo Vilchis, a lay
worker at Dolores Mission
Church in East Los Angeles,
a parish that serves some
150 undocumented people
through refugee and shelter
services. “With that defini-
tion, you’re ignoring the
biggest problem-the
undocumented.” Vilchis
notes that the undocument-
ed have begun advocating
A Latino student protests Prop 187 during a rally in support of
immigrant hotel workers in Lafayette, California this spring.
on their own behalf-form-
ing, for instance, street-vending cooperatives and inde-
pendent day-laborer unions.
Despite the recent high-profile crackdown at the bor-
der, the incessant sweeps of la migra in the cities, and
the increasingly ill political winds blowing not only in
California but in Washington, D.C. as well, many of the
undocumented appear unfazed by the political storm. A
visit to a day-laborer site on the corner of Sunset and
Alvarado reveals the eternal hope of the immigrant. By
mid-morning, when the possibility of a day’s work has
all but evaporated, a handful of men wearing paint-
flecked T-shirts, jeans and workboots respond to the sit-
uation with a shrug of the shoulders.
Yes, times are tough, several of the men say. “Work’s
less easy to come by,” says Macario Moctezuma, a 28-
year-old native of Mexico City who lost a job with a
construction company when the boss came around ask-
ing for “good papers.” Still, there’s no going back, he
says, prompting several men to nod in agreement.
“We’re still better off here.”
Ricardo Martinez, a 21-year-old man from rural
Jalisco, still believes in the promise of California. “I’m
hopeful that all this will change,” he says, “and that one
day the politicians here are 100% Latino, so that we can
be treated better in
California. Why do they
put us down so much when
they’re practically living
off of the work we do for
them?” As I’m getting into
my car, Ricardo comes up
to me out of earshot of the
others. He asks me if I
know of a good journalism
school. “I know I have to
learn English, and I’m tak-
ing classes at night, plus I
bought one of those home-
study classes with the cas-
settes….”
Still, the psychological
impact of 187 politics has
taken its toll on the undoc-
umented. Whether children
in classrooms distracted by
fears that their families
may be torn apart by la
migra or working mothers
nervous about sending their
children to school or to
public hospitals when they
are ill, a climate of fear has
dampened some of the
immigrants’ stubborn opti-
mism.
Meanwhile, the political
temperature in California continues to heat up.
Everything from O.J.-inspired racial tension (prompted
by Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark
Fuhrman’s racist descriptions of African Americans and
Mexicans), to continuing chafing between inner-city
youth and law enforcement, to Governor Pete Wilson’s
dismantling of affirmative action has contributed to the
growing distance between rich and poor, immigrant and
non-immigrant.
There will certainly be plenty of rhetorical heat in
U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer’s courtroom
downtown-and perhaps out on the streets with Peace
and Justice Center activists gleefully burning things.
Whatever the decision in court about Prop 187’s consti-
tutionality, the battle over the referendum will answer
many questions about California’s, and by extension the
country’s, future. The immigration debate, after all,
includes issues of race relations, class disparity and the
global economy. Three decades after the civil rights
movement brought us both fire on the streets and major
change to our public lives, a new and perhaps just as
momentous struggle is upon us. At the center of the con-
troversy are the newest Americans-and their blood rel-
atives who have been here for generations.
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