A Bridge to the Past and Future for L.A. Latinos

Joaquin Vega, who moved to Los Angeles 58 years ago from Mexico, woke up in a new city Wednesday. Antonio Villaraigosa was mayor-elect, and Vega headed over to Jim’s, a Boyle Heights fast-food joint at 1st and State, to see what the gang had to say.

Nick Saldivar was there, and Bill Hernandez, too, along with six or eight others, most of them retirees.

“Everyone here voted for Antonio,” Saldivar said after taking a quick tally. If anyone had actually voted for Mayor Jim Hahn, he was too shy to raise a hand.

Vega, 80, had already been up to the window for his Baja special -- eggs, potatoes and frijoles. When I arrived, he was at an outdoor table talking with his pals about an event none of them would have predicted a half-century ago.

“Do you know the history of California?” asked Vega, a retired mechanic. “This used to be Mexico. But when we came, we were the minority. Now we’re the majority, and there’s a Latino mayor. He knows the Eastside, too. He grew up here.”

Across the street, a Villaraigosa banner the size of a movie screen was draped from the winner’s campaign headquarters. And the old-timers were acting like proud uncles.

“It’s something you have in your blood, and you feel better,” Saldivar said of his identification with Villaraigosa.

Hernandez, a retired landscaper, offered an observation.

“It’s the evolution of time,” he said. Villaraigosa’s election, as he sees it, is just part of the slow and inevitable transformation of Los Angeles.

“Look at this,” Saldivar said as he opened a copy of the Spanish-language newspaper Hoy to Page 3. “That’s the last Latino mayor of Los Angeles.”

He pointed to Cristobal Aguilar, whose final term ended in 1872, when the population of Los Angeles was less than 6,000. Aguilar, who got around town on a horse. One of the guys said that back in Aguilar’s day, it was a bigger deal to be the city water czar, and Aguilar had held that job, too.

Aguilar served two terms as mayor. He finally lost to an Anglo who made an issue of Aguilar’s poor English. More than 130 years later, Villaraigosa took some heat because his Spanish wasn’t up to snuff.

In a strange way, that makes him the right mayor at the right time. The city is the world capital of melded cultures, and as a former street urchin who turned himself into a success, Villaraigosa is a symbol of unity and hope in a city of resettled lives -- at least until the honeymoon is over and he actually has to do something.

When Vega arrived in Los Angeles in 1947, he recalls “maybe one or two” Latino police officers in the city.

“They treat us better now, and it’s very different with the police,” he said. “The whole city is different.”

For all their enthusiasm, the band of regulars at Jim’s doesn’t expect Villaraigosa to multiply fishes and loaves. They’ve lived long enough to recall hundreds of broken promises from countless politicians, including Latinos.

Saldivar hopes Villaraigosa will follow through on his promise and shake up the schools. And the police will need help battling the gangs that have terrorized the neighborhood for decades, others chimed in.

“We have to wait to see what he can do,” Saldivar said, cautioning that there’s no telling whether Villaraigosa can fix problems no one else could. “I hope he doesn’t raise taxes.”

“The house is too dirty to be swept quickly,” Vega agreed, adding that no mayor can lead a city without people pitching in.

Problems and all, Vega said as he scanned the intersection of State and 1st streets on a warm spring day, “This is paradise here.”

He retired from the auto shop across the street after 38 years, but visits Jim’s regularly because all his friends and former customers hang around the place. You can get a cup of coffee, chew the fat, add a few more pages to stories that span the city’s modern history.

“I have two daughters who went to university,” said Vega, who never finished high school. “Before, it was enough to get a job and survive, but we think differently now. I see this for my family in the second and third generation, with everyone going to college. It’s different.”

Vega, his tan cardigan buttoned and his white hair neatly cropped and brushed straight back, lingered at the table after the others had gone their way. A newspaper lay on the table with Villaraigosa’s picture on the cover.

“We have all these opportunities today,” Vega said. “My children and grandchildren can be mayor. They can be governor. They can be anything.”

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.