Orange County in Business Week

“What you won’t see on fantasy TV shows: a cratered real estate industry, few jobs, foreclosed homes, and empty office space.” The Other Orange County

Happy New Year

So here we are heading into 2008.

Within the next three months we may have both the Democratic and Republican nominations locked up – and perhaps a clearer vision of what type of immigration policy we can expect from the next Administration.

When we started Orange County Latino, way back in October, 2001 – we had only a vague notion of how 9/11 was going to impact the immigration reform that George W. Bush and Vicente Fox signaled they were working on in the summer of ‘01.

Since then we’ve seen a backlash in the United States against globalization, immigration – making it politically impossible to find a real answer to try to manage the flood of immigrants from Mexico and beyond.

And from what the candidates have said so far – it seems that will continue to be the case.

We’ll watch this issue – and share any insights gleaned on this website.

Happy New Year.

Latino Facts

These are out of date and I do not have the source. But think about the social, economic and political implications of the following facts about Latinos:

1. ½ total population growth in US from 2003 to 2004
2. 85% speak some Spanish at home and will continue to do so
3. From 1990 to 2000 the number of Latinos who speak Spanish at home grew 61% while the Hispanic population grew 58%
4. Spending is project to more than double over the next 10 years, 1.5 trillion in 2015
5. Consumer spending for 2005 was estimated to be 715 billion
6. Households spend more on groceries, clothing and footwear, gasoline and motor oil, cell phone usage and going to the movies
7. Since 1990 the Hispanic population has increased in every state
8. There are 41.3 million Hispanics in the US (2005)
9. 83% is under age 50, 63% are under age 30

Gustavo Arellano in the New York Times

Gustavo Arellano’s Ask A Mexican is reviewed in the Fashion & Style section in today’s New York Times.

My favorite part:

 “Part of the joke is the assumption that the reader doesn’t know any Mexicans,” said Ted Kissell, editor of The OC Weekly. Mr. Arellano, he noted, “is a surrogate Mexican for our English-speaking readership.”

Mr. Arellano, born in Anaheim to Mexican immigrants, one of them a father who crossed the border illegally several times starting in the 1960s, doesn’t deny that his satire is not for everyone. “I use the column to give the straight dope but also be as rude as possible to people who deserve it,” he explained. Accordingly, his responses often cite studies and statistics in a flurry of profanity. And he tackles some questions with the gusto of someone who not only wants to set the record straight but also wants to settle scores.

“Gracias for illustrating the great double standard in America’s immigration policy,” Mr. Arellano wrote in response to a reader who suggested that Mexicans stay in Mexico to improve their own country. “Centuries of immigrant waves chose not to improve their homelands and to try their luck in a new land, and we rightfully celebrate their pluck as pioneers. Yet when Mexicans follow in the footsteps of our gabacho forefathers, we accuse them of lacking self-motivation and want to shut down the border.”

Then, in typical fashion, he used an epithet to refer to the reader and challenged him to give up his cheap labor and “taco-and-enchilada combos.”

Here is is some video I took with my Treo at Gustavo’s book tour stop in Pico Rivera, California:

Camilo Romero on KPFK 90.7 FM’s Informativo Pacifico

Camilo Romero was discussing homelessness issues on Informativo Pacifico today. Listen to the mp3 file and the segment begins at 12:30.

Giving Orange County a Brown Face

by Yolanda Morelos Álvarez
contributor

Note: This is an article from 2002. Since the publishinig of this article Ms.  Álvarez has become the inspiring force behind the founding of the Orange County Mexican American Historical Society (OCMAHS) which has a growing digital collection of historic photographs of Mexicans in Orange County. The collection strength is in twentieth century images. Of which, undoubtedly contains her collection “Fire in the Morning”. Ms. Alvarez has been featured in National Public Radio. Her writing contributions to Orange County Latino in 2002 are republished here as we prepare for our June, 2007 relaunch.

I used to be good at minding my own business, but not anymore.

I have driven all over Orange County in search of historic Mexican neighborhoods with names like La Conga, Alta Vista, La Jolla, Colonia Juarez, Logan, Delhi, La Manzanilla, La Colonia Independencia, Hollywood.  Sometimes I find them and sometimes I am too late; they have disappeared.

What remains of the life of these Mexican-Americans communities plowed under the never-ending Orange County development project are the stories and photographs, intact in the hearts and minds of elderly citizens who have lived through times I can only imagine.

My own attempt at reconstructing this history is assembled in a traveling historical photographic exhibit called “Fire in the Morning.”  A portrayal of the lives of Mexican-Americans raised and—contrary to popular thought—often born in this county, it reveals a way of life that was simultaneously rich and poor, joyous and tragic.  Stories are included that explain briefly the agricultural strike of 1936, the mass deportation of American citizens of Mexican descent during the Depression, trips over the Grapevine to work in Fresno and Bakersfield, riverside dancing and picnics at Sycamore Flats (by Green River) and Jamaicas, some colonias famous for their grand festivities.  These stories add to the historical vision presented.

The photographs, in varying shades of browns and blacks are full of people of all ages, and tell stories waiting to be told.  Beaming faces adorn barefoot children standing tall and proud for a class photograph taken in the 1930s, classmates who attended a “Mexican” school, one of fifteen segregated schools operating in Orange County…Segregation here?  In the Deep South, something we know of course… but here?  In Orange County?

After doing some research on my own, I learned that the immigrants from the Midwest and South brought to Southern California their institutionalized ways of treating the cheap labor force, which included a segregated and unequal education.  If someone takes a Chicano Studies course at college, they might learn of this ignominious history.  Yet ask a typical grade schooler—high schooler, even—and most likely they would have never heard about this.

Why not?  All students learn of the injustices of slavery, the segregated water fountains for example.  But why haven’t students been taught that we “Mexicans” (what all of us of Mexican heritage are called, born here or not) were not allowed to use the pool except the last day of use before it was cleaned?  Or that “we” were permitted to see movies at the theater as long as “we” sat in the balcony?  Or that certain restaurants would not serve us because we were “Mexicans”?

The history of our region becomes so much more interesting when I learned that four school districts were taken to court to end segregation March 2, 1945. The parents of students from the cities of El Modena, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and Westminster joined forces to end what was an educational system that relegated “Mexican” students to what amounted to a vocational education instead of studies that would have prepared the children for high school.  Gonzalo Méndez, William Guzmán, Frank Palomino, Thomas Estrada and Lorenzo Ramírez filed suit against the exclusion of Mexican children solely because they were of Mexican or Latin descent.

These parents, who were represented by Los Angeles attorney, David C. Marcus were victorious in February 1946 when Judge Paul McCormick ruled that the segregation of Mexican pupils was a violation of California state law and of the Fourteenth Amendment.  McCormick pointed out that in El Modena, seventh graders scored higher than their contemporaries did in the “white” school in standardized achievement tests.  The argument that “Mexicans” would hold back the white students was simply not true.  But predictably the school districts appealed the decision.

Many organizations submitted amicus curiae briefs (Friend of the Court) in support of desegregation: Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP, the American Jewish Congress, the Japanese American Citizens League, National Lawyer’s Guild, and ACLU combined to write a third, and California Attorney General sponsored a fourth.

April 14, 1947 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld McCormick’s decision.  This was truly a victory for the Mexican Americans in the state of California.  (Although examples exist in California in which school districts did nothing to change the status quo.)  It was also an important precedent to the Brown v Board of Education case in 1954 and deserves national recognition.

And yet this story isn’t told in Orange County, much less the nation.  Intrigued by such gaping omissions in my own education, I am determined that my children will learn a fuller truth about the existence of Mexican-Americans in Orange County.  I do not accept the view of us as docile Mexicans, but it is a stubborn perception that continues to exist among some of the population.  It is important that examples in our history highlight a courageous people who fought the dominant majority for justice and won.

In a sense, the exhibit, “Fire in the Morning,” attempts to present a fuller picture of Mexican Americans and the challenges the communities had to face.  There is something special about having lived in the scattered Mexican neighborhoods or “colonias” of the county that makes people say with fondness and pride that they are from Santa Anita, or La Paloma, Travelers, or Campo Colorado.  In spite of the poverty from very low wages, the richness is in the heritage, the close-knit nature of the people who lived the joys and tragedies life had to offer.

The stories of our elderly can open up an understanding that helps us to appreciate their and our own strength, intelligence and determination.  From the story about the second grader (now in his 70s) who gets kicked in the shins by a teacher for speaking Spanish, to the big wedding at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Santa Ana, there are thousands more stories waiting to be shared.

No book or file exists in any Orange County library history room that named all or most of the Mexican colonias of Orange County.  Because of this, I continue to go about the county to interview Mexican-Americans who have the stories of Orange County to tell from their own viewpoint.

The exhibit has been touring the county for one and a half years and is currently at the Bryant Ranch Museum in Yorba Linda.  It then moves to the Orange Library and will continue on to Irvine City Hall which will host it in September.  A portable exhibit visits schools and special events.
Of the various comments in the guest book, many are revealing.  “I never realized there were Mexicans back in the early years”… “I cried to see the familiar faces …” “it’s about time”…”reminds me of East Los Angeles” and finally from a Vietnamese woman, “nice to see other immigrant stories told, it’s important for us all to stick together.”  And one person wrote, “this is only the ‘tip of the iceberg.’”

I Sing the Nation Brown: Richard Rodriguez and Latinos as the End of Race

by Gustavo Arellano
Editor-in-chief, emeritus

W.E.B Dubois famously predicted at the dawn of the 20th century that its most urgent concern would be “the problem of the color line.” There’s been little progress in solving it a century later, the dissolution of colonial empires and scientific theories on race notwithstanding. But Richard Rodriguez thinks he has the answer to Dubois’ prophecy: Latinos.

In his latest book Brown: The Last Discovery of America, Rodriguez doesn’t examine real-life Latino lives so much as take Latinos and their most associated skin tone as a metaphor to show how race can be overcome in this country. To Rodriguez, the sanguinary diversity of Latinos—“la raza cósmica” (the cosmic race) as the Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos called them—makes them the ultimate solution to the ingrained racial vista of the United States. Heavy in ideas, outlandish in its arrogance, yet ultimately vindicated by its radical hypothesis, Brown has the potential to serve as a starting point for a much-needed racial dialogue for the coming century.

Throughout Brown, Rodriguez interchanges “Latino” and “brown” as metaphors with dazzling results. “Brown as impurity. I write of a color that is not a singular color, not a strict recipe, not an expected result, but a color produced by careless desire, even by accident; by two or several,” he writes in the preface to the book. He then proceeds to tell in the next nine chapters’ different ways in which Latino/brown has influenced the United States, changing everything from America’s relation to the world to its imperialistic outlook of East/West to North/South to-most importantly to Rodriguez-the racial divide.

The book is strongest when Rodriguez-emulating Whitman and Baldwin with his lyrical, introspective prose-expands on his Latinos-as-the-eradicators-of race thesis. When he actually speaks about what the Latino community is as opposed to what it represents, though, the book falters. Brown’s one chapter exclusively devoted to Latinos drowns in self-righteousness and snootiness as Rodriguez abandons intellectual dissemination and comes off sounding like Barbara Coe with lines like “I marvel at the middle-class American willingness to take Spanish up.”

But Brown is saved when Rodriguez finds his thesis of the Latino/brown promise amongst-of all the people on Earth, how weird is this?-Richard Nixon. Walking around the lame Nixon Library (“The guards are spooky, their walkie-talkie vigilance suggests only crackpots visit this tomb,” Rodriguez wryly notes), Rodriguez finds in the young Nixon the tragic truth of the American racial life. He remembers that when Nixon fumbled and sweated his way through his 1960 debate with John Kennedy, “I saw what many other Americans saw that night: Harvard College will always beat Whittier College in America. The game is fixed and there is nothing to be done about it.”

Rather than attempt to help his kind (the working class, not “whites”), though, Nixon apparently betrayed his “people” by classifying people in five racial groups in 1973 (of which “Hispanic” was the most prominent) because it was politically expedient at the time to allow affirmative action to flourish under race rather than class. Within this bureaucratic decree (O.M.B. Statistical Directive 15, to be exact), Rodriguez argues, Nixon also unwittingly laid the seeds of race’s destruction because there was no way such narrow classifications could survive America’s ensuing multicultural madness. Especially that of “Hispanic”: “Mayan Indians from the Yucatán were directed to the Hispanic pavilion which they must share with Argentine tangoistas, Colombian drug dealers, and Russian Jews who remember Cuba from the viewpoint of Miami.” All of this thanks to whom Rodriguez only half-jokingly refers to as “the dark father of hispanicity” and who might ultimately turn out to be our greatest civil rights reformer.

Brown embraces Latinos not for who they are but what they symbolize: the impurity in America’s traditional black/white dichotomy that will probably do away with the country’s most pernicious problem. The book makes a convincing case that America can no longer afford to think of itself in racial terms-all thanks to a people/color that the United States set its eyes on subjugating but is now the other way around. “And I am left”, Rodriguez writes from his home in San Francisco, “sitting inside, deconstructing the American English word for myself-Hispanic [<sic>]-by which I celebrate my own deliverance from <cultura>; the deliverance of the United States of America from race.”

BROWN: THE LAST DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, VIKING PRESS, 231 PAGES, $24.95

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Gustavo Arellano is the Editor in Chief for OC Latino. He is also a contributing writer for the OC Weekly.

 

Getting to the Truth of MECHA

Sometimes call it for what it is and Get Spat Upon

by Benjamín Escobedo
Editor, emeritus

I‘m sitting in front of my computer staring hypnotically as the icon blinks repeatedly at my sullen face, reminding me of how I went wrong as a writer. I was supposed to do a story on MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), the Chicano student organization that has chapters in high schools, colleges and universities throughout the country. I was supposed to do an article on the history of MEChA in OC and how it differs (if it does) from anywhere else in the country. I was supposed to do something, anything, regarding this group.

Then some individuals at Berkeley MEChA (the militant chapter-more on that later) went and stole an entire press run of a newspaper by some conservative students simply because they dared to criticize MEChA. Now all MEChA’s have been instructed not to talk to any media, even if the media member is a proud MEChista who got his butt whipped during the heyday of the Pete Wilson resistance. This same organization that I once put my ass on the line for failed to return my numerous phone calls or e-mails. I can understand giving people some time, but one month, come on!

So here begins my story, so here begins my confession.

Mechistas have been wreaking havoc all over the U.S. ever since that fateful year of 1969 when MECHA was founded amongst the rise of the Chicano movement. Ever since then it has been a blur, from the beginning of the La Raza Unida Party to the stealing of newspapers on a university campus. In between these events, we can find some accomplishments. The rallies and protests of Proposition 187 and Proposition 209 made a great impact on the community. Although both propositions passed, MECHA’s vigorous opposition to the propositions brought something to the state of California that the Republicans are combating futilely to this day: the Latino Democratic electorate. MECHA has also shed light on the inherent inequity in the present American system regarding its treatment of minorities and its imperialistic bent. We can also talk of the many hunger strikes, fundraisers, and mentorship programs that day by day, MECHA has accomplished.

But the question remains: what has MECHA accomplished in Orange County? Better yet, what have they accomplished in general? As far as I have seen and experienced, almost nothing at all. All of Orange County MEChA’s accomplishments, if any, have come within their respective campuses and benefit only themselves. They preach community every chance they get but they are seldom seen in the community. For example, Cal State Fullerton’s chapter has a reputation of being self-serving and openly hostile towards those that it deems not “Chicano enough” for them. One individual, Ron Gomez, was once kicked out of a MEChA meeting at Fullerton for mentioning the name of a local Chicano activist with whom the chapter had a history of enmity. “I went there to ask them to help out in a community issue and someone noticed that the man was part of the issue”, Gomez recalls. “They immediately started accusing me of being evil just because I associated with him. We really needed their help and they lagged on us only because of our involvement with the activist. That’s not a community organization; that’s a good ol’ boys club.”

Like many organizations, MEChA has had its share of internal problems since its inception. Santa Ana College’s chapter fell to pieces after another organization, ILSA (Independent Latino Student Association), started recruiting heavily. ILSA can also be found at Cal State Fullerton where this same problem happened 10 years ago. A Santa Ana college alumni and former MEChA member, Elva Plana, states that ILSA came at the right time. “ILSA recruited heavily”, Plana said. “They took three quarters of our members.” Plana also added that the campus and the community were ready to embrace something new and fresh, due mostly to perceptions of an intolerant MEChA.

Santa Ana College is also the place which gave me the most trouble. I spoke to a member there and they informed me that they would get back to me in a couple of days; it has been two weeks since then. I even tried to speak with the Chicano studies professor, Angelina Veyna. Once again, no response (see a pattern developing?).

This is at the local level; at the national level, it is worse. MEChA as a national organization is one of the worst bureaucracies in the Third World. Every chapter has its own version of a big brother. They start with local chapters and then grow to county level, regional level, state level, and the national level. That is where the power lies to be able to write position papers against certain individuals and to bar a certain chapter to be recognized by the different levels.

This is also where a MEChA media blackout usually originates. MEChA has always been wary of dealing with the media and with good reason; historically, MEChA has been viewed as racist, either by the media, people in general, and in some cases by Chicanos themselves. It all goes back to the Plan de Aztlán (the founding document of MEChA) in which it states the intention of taking back the lands that were annexed by the United States in 1869. The document written in the 1960’s refers, “…the brutal “gringo” invasion of our territories…foreigner ‘gabacho’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture.” The history reference, which happened in the 1500’s, is true but the times have changed. We have gained rights and accessibility because someone fought and bled for these rights. It should also send a message to MEChA that they should update their documents because we are in a different time.

I cannot sympathize with MEChA on this subject; they need to revise their documents to be able to move forward. While some members have openly called for a revision of the offending language, the old guard steadfastly refuses. A classic case of the struggle between revising the racist documents and staying with them is in the Berkeley chapters up north. UC Berkeley has two MEChA chapters, both recognized but one is more militant than the next. Internal struggle all over again. The two chapters went through ideology strife and decided to break into two. The story mentioned at the beginning is some of the latest problems facing MEChA. The latest reports have them completely denying the story. I hope it turns out for the better because that is the last thing they need.

In trying to get interviews with people, certain people have told me that maybe they think I am not ‘Chicano’ enough and therefore not worthy of an interview. I know that is not the case: I was involved with MEChA at Pasadena City College and at Orange County’s Chapman University. Or they’ll say something along the line of not wanting to talk to an individual who writes for a ‘Latino’ publication. I seriously doubt that also. Or they say that they are students and are very busy.

Now you must think, if they are so busy, how do they find time to argue with one another at their meetings? Anyone can take fifteen minutes out of his or her day to answer some of OC Latino’s elaborate questions. Thank God that I wasn’t the Orange County Register or the Times; they probably would have thought they would be burned at the stake. It is not often that a fellow member who writes for a publication has the opportunity to interview you. I have never encountered that, my fellow members were too busy complaining about the media. They had their reasons for that. For example, during my time at Pasadena we had invited a Chicano band recommended to us by a member. The groups’ rapper would go out on a tangent and would speak in between songs. During his ’so called’ inspirational words to the high school students in the audience, he managed to throw in some racial slurs against people of European descent. That led to us being glorified in our school newspaper, if you catch my drift.

As we go back to the notion that they only accomplish things affecting their campus is very true. The documents and members scream community but their screams only go as far as inside its campus. As chapters they do not accomplish many things in the community, but as individuals with an education who can make a difference in the future. In the end, MEChA fails and the community wins.

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Benjamin Escobedo is an Associate Editor, Online for OC Latino.

 

The Ultimate Worthlessness of Cinco de Mayo

by Gustavo Arellano
Editor-in-chief, emeritus

Cinco de Mayo is worthless. There, I said it.

It’s not pointless because it serves the nationalist project of promoting pride in one’s country and its heritage. And for this reason, it’s not stupid since it has worked like a charm of making Mexicans out of all of us come May 5, even if the extent of commitment for México lindo y querido is drinking Corona instead of Budweiser.

But it is worthless.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo is worthless because it commemorates a supposedly grand victory that ultimately meant and did nothing. Sure, Zaragosa and his troops held off the French that glorious day in Puebla in 1862 but it didn’t drive the frogs away for good; indeed, this humiliating defeat convinced them that they needed more troops. The next time the French and Mexicans fought (a year later), the French whipped some Mexican ass and ushered in the era of the French occupation under the Hapsburg Maximillian.

I do not mean to diminish the actual event itself, since the ragtag Mexican army crushed what was considered the finest military in the world at the time. Nevertheless, celebrating Cinco de Mayo is like remembering Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” for the charging part while conveniently forgetting the massacre at the end. It’s like celebrating <los niños héroes> for jumping off the tower at Chapultepec Castle while forgetting the reason why (and btw, counter-legend has it that it was American troops who threw those boys from the tower). Call it bravery, call it resistance; I call it ignorance and self-defeatism.

To celebrate the blip of Cinco de May in the ultimate struggle that didn’t do much to stop the French onslaught is to continue the peculiarly Mexican fixation of harping over our losses.

We bemoan the Conquest nearly 500 years after the fact, simultaneously outraged that the Spaniards slaughtered and raped the inhabitants of Anahuac and angry that Montezuma acquiesced so quickly to Cortes. The outright theft of half of Mexico 150 years ago because of Santa Anna’s moronicies gets Chicanos so caught up in misery they actually start comparing themselves to Palestinians (Palestinians! As if someone who speaks horrid Spanish, has parents born in Jalisco that are descended from Europeans and Mexican Indians, and who hasn’t lived a day without potable water can logically compare themselves to people who have lived in the same parched spot since the time of Christ). The PRI bilked us dry year after year. Díaz sold us out to the Americans. That pretty-boy vendido De la Hoya beat our national hero Chávez—twice. Loss is in all Mexicans’ mind in one way or another, as is the bitter thought that there was nothing we were able to do about it and we can’t change it even if we tried.

Cinco de Mayo merely continues that. Cinco de Mayo isn’t a victory at all, as much as we try to tell ourselves and others that it is. The French occupation of Mexico was successful even if we did drive them out. We taste it every morning in our pan dulce, listlessly practice it in our quinceañera waltzes, and praise it to high heaven in whenever the mariachi violins begin their pizzicato coda. Cinco de Mayo is a painful reminder of our failings in trying to confront those who would colonize Mexico and our constant carping over it.

Let’s start getting rid of this fatalistic streak by stopping the Cinco de Mayo celebration. Napoleon III was an egomaniac who during his lifetime began France’s imperialism in Indochina and Africa in the hopes of emulating his uncle (for a great portrayal of how loony the Third really was, check out Claude Rains’ hammy performance in 1939’s Juarez). The Maximillian-Carlota duo that ruled Mexico with a velvet glove is best remembered as two pitiful royals desperate for the adoration of their subjects. Yet we celebrate the memory of their conquest every fifth of May by claiming that we defeated them. If only that were truly the case.

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Gustavo Arellano is the senior editor of OC Latino and didn’t even get to Cinco de Mayo’s takeover by American beer companies, though he made a slight allusion to it (last sentence of second paragraph).