Mexican American progress tallied

In 1992, construction workers retrofitting UCLA’s undergraduate library discovered many dusty boxes hidden behind a bookshelf in the basement. The boxes contained research materials and questionnaires from a pioneering 1965 study on Mexican Americans.

Sociology professors Vilma Ortiz and Edward Telles skimmed the surveys, which included names and addresses. That’s when they decided to embark on an ambitious project: re-interviewing the families and assessing the integration of Mexican Americans over time.

“We stumbled onto something,” Ortiz said. “That was the beginning.”

The professors had a simple hypothesis: that there would be improvement over generations and time, much as with other immigrant groups that settled in the U.S.

The UCLA professors re-interviewed about 700 of the original participants and about 800 of their children, in Los Angeles and San Antonio. Participants constituted about 60% of the original families.

Some of the findings were encouraging. For example, nearly all Mexican Americans spoke English proficiently by the second generation. And many Mexican immigrants who came to the U.S. as children -- as well as the children of immigrants -- showed economic and educational progress, in part because of their belief in the American dream.

But some of the conclusions -- published last month in a book titled “Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race” -- were disappointing.

For example, a disproportionately high percentage of third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans did not graduate from high school or seek higher education. And income levels in these later generations were not as high as the authors expected.

“At the same time there are people clearly reaching middle class and having successful careers, there is also a high proportion who have low levels of education,” Telles said. “The low education determines just about everything else, including integration into American society.”

The authors offered several explanations for the lack of assimilation over time, including racial discrimination and continued immigration. But most important, they cited an underfunded public education system that has placed low expectations on Mexican Americans and failed to effectively educate them.

“Public education is the greatest source of Mexican American exclusion, in that low education impedes their economic prospects,” they wrote.

Joe and Theresa Nevarez, who were interviewed for the original study and again for the follow-up, both said they faced the low expectations and discrimination that the UCLA professors described.

Joe Nevarez, 96, came to the U.S. with his parents when he was a baby and later became a citizen. Theresa, 85, was born in the U.S., as was her mother. Both said they were funneled into trade programs during high school -- Joe into the print shop and Theresa into beautician classes. While in school, Joe wrote about sports for the campus’ daily newspaper.

Despite expectations otherwise, both graduated from high school. But nobody suggested college to either one.

Joe became a copy boy and then a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he worked for more than 50 years. When he started, Nevarez said, he was one of “few Hispanic names in the press.” He later joined the Chicano News Media Assn.

He also served briefly in the Army Air Forces, working as a clerk and an assistant to a chaplain. In a photograph of his squadron of dozens of men, he said, “I’m the only dark face.”

The couple married in 1944 at La Placita Church near Olvera Street and moved to East Los Angeles.

“They wouldn’t sell us a house because we were Hispanic,” Theresa said, even with her husband in uniform. After agreeing to put up one-third of the price as a down payment, the couple were able to purchase a home. They paid it off in 10 years and moved to Monterey Park because the schools had a good reputation. At the time, all of their neighbors were white.

“They didn’t look too kindly at us until it got around I was a newspaperman,” he said. “Then it was all OK.”

They raised three children, who all went to college.

“I told them, ‘You have to have an education,’ ” Theresa Nevarez said. “Because of our color and our name, you have to struggle a little bit harder.”

The couple also made it a point to expose their children to museums, beaches, libraries and amusement parks. But the children, too, encountered difficulties because of their ethnicity. One of their sons was beaten up while he was in grade school and denied entrance to the local Scout troop.

One of their daughters, Margaret Nevarez, 61, is a high school counselor. Her sister works as a vice principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and her brother has retired from the Internal Revenue Service.

Margaret said she was always aware of the challenges her parents faced because they were Mexican American.

“I didn’t want that kind of circumstance for my life,” she said. “I wanted my kids to have choices.”

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, said that he had not read the UCLA study but that his own research has shown an economic mobility among Latinos, who are moving into the middle class in large numbers and penetrating every level of California’s political culture.

Significant numbers of Latinos make more than $100,000 a year and they are buying homes in neighborhoods from San Marino to Bel-Air, he said.

“Those are not nannies and housekeepers,” he said. “There are Latinos who have made economic and sociopolitical progress.”

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anna.gorman@latimes.com