Internal Squabble Divides Latino Civil Rights Group at Crucial Time

The internal power struggle over who is in charge of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund could not have come at a worse time for the respected civil rights organization.

Instead of being showered with acclaim as it observes its 20th anniversary, a dispute over the surprise firing of the group’s president and general counsel, Antonia Hernandez, has divided loyalties among activists and others who support MALDEF’s work.

The dispute has so inflamed passions that few MALDEF supporters are willing to speak publicly about it, explaining that they have friends on both sides. “I dearly love Antonia. I just hope she and these people who say they don’t like her can settle this thing quickly,” one East Los Angeles activist said.

The squabble over whether former New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya can legally take over from Hernandez comes at a crucial time for MALDEF, which is involved in several important cases that could have far-reaching implications for Latinos.

The group, for example, is monitoring the implementation of a law that it originally opposed--the new immigration reform act and its amnesty provision for millions of illegal immigrants.

It also is suing the Northern California town of Watsonville because of its at-large election process, alleging that the system effectively precludes Latinos, who make up about 48% of the city’s population, from political power there. The case in San Jose federal court is seen as a test of many California cities’ preference of electing officials in at-large elections.

The organization, which in the past has concentrated on trying to reform the political process, has also broadened its attack against job discrimination, aggressively pushing grocery chains in California, for example, to hire and promote more Latinos.

The internal power struggle is just the latest in a series of challenges that has faced the civil rights group since it was formed in San Antonio by Chicano activist attorneys in 1967. Among them were Pete Tijerina, a Texas appellate court judge who many consider to be the group’s founder; Mario Obledo, a quiet lawyer who later became California’s health and welfare secretary, and Gregory Luna, a longtime MALDEF board member who is now a Texas state representative.

Also there in the beginning was Vilma Martinez, a Los Angeles lawyer who was MALDEF’s top executive for nine years and was later appointed to the UC Board of Regents and the board of the parent company of Anheuser Busch.

National Latino groups such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American GI Forum had championed the rights of Latinos for many years. But up to that time, litigation on behalf of minority rights was spearheaded by the legal defense fund of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union and individual lawyers who sympathized with the plight of the underprivileged.

“A lot of Chicano (membership) groups would pass resolutions complaining about adverse things, like poor education, no political power and other things,” Tijerina said. “But those resolutions went into the waste basket. Nothing happened.”

In the late 1960s, many Chicano activists took to the streets, hoping to bring about changes. But many lawyers like Tijerina saw another route for change.

“Hell, the remedies weren’t in the streets,” he said. “They were in the courts.”

It took the case of a Mexican-American grandmother from Atascosa County, Tex., to convince Tijerina that a Latino civil rights organization was needed.

In 1965, Mrs. Francisco Munoz lost a leg in a traffic accident in rural Texas and sued for damages. But when the case came to trial in Atascosa County, which had a substantial Latino population, there were no Hispanics in the first pool of 60 prospective jurors. A second list was drawn up, but it included only two people of Mexican descent.

“But one of them had been dead for 10 years,” Tijerina recalled, “and the other couldn’t speak English.”

The case was eventually settled out of court for $37,000, but it prompted Tijerina to found a civil rights group with the aid of $2.2 million from the Ford Foundation.

The Ford Foundation remains MALDEF’s single biggest donor, giving the group about $200,000 a year. Contributions from other private foundations, such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Levi Strauss, and high-profile companies such as McDonald’s, constitute the bulk of the group’s nearly $3-million annual budget.

Several years after its founding, MALDEF moved its national headquarters from Texas to San Francisco. Last summer, the head offices were moved into a modest building that also houses the Salvadoran consulate on South Spring Street in Los Angeles. Regional offices for a predominantly youthful staff of about 60 are also maintained in Chicago, Denver, Washington and San Francisco.

The organization has won some signal victories. It successfully fought for the inclusion of Latinos in the 1975 extension of the U.S. Voting Rights Act. It won a 1972 decision in New Mexico that established the right of Spanish-speaking children to bilingual education. And recently, it has won important concessions from large grocery chains, including Ralphs, that have promised to hire and promote more Latinos.

In fact, MALDEF has become so aggressive in the area of job discrimination that, in one instance, it sued the Lucky grocery chain just a few months after honoring its vice president for personnel at a dinner.

Perhaps its biggest victory in court was a 1972 decision in Texas that prohibited the at-large election system, which does not require a person to be elected from a specific geographical area. Such a system, MALDEF attorneys argued, deprived Latinos for all practical purposes of political power. It allowed only a few Latino politicians, “anointed” by the Anglo establishment, to run for public office, Luna said.

The decision opened up politics for Latinos. Today, 22 members of the 150-member Texas Legislature are Latinos. There were only five at the time of the ruling. In San Antonio, Latinos now hold half of the city’s 10 council seats. Even one Republican sits on that body, something once unheard of in that Democratic stronghold.

“It changed a lot of things, even helped me,” said Luna, who was elected six years ago.

The Texas case, White vs. Register, is the basis for a strategy that MALDEF is using in other states, particularly in California.

“In areas like San Benito County, we could elect three Hispanics and control the county Board of Supervisors,” said one activist from Hollister, the county seat. “Boy, that could change a lot of things around here.”

Now, one Latino sits on the five-member board there even though Latinos make up nearly half of the rural county’s 29,000 residents.

But change isn’t likely to come easily.

MALDEF and the San Antonio-based Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project sued the City of Pomona, alleging that the at-large system dilutes the political power of the town’s minorities, who make up about half of the city’s 112,000 residents.

But after several weeks of testimony, a Los Angeles federal judge threw out the case last November, ruling that it was not demonstrated that Pomona voters are “racially polarized.” (Polarized voting occurs when voters choose candidates of their own ethnic group regardless of whether the candidates and voters agree on the issues.)

But so far, the key case against Watsonville has been overshadowed by the internal struggle over Antonia Hernandez’s decision last week to fight for her job as the group’s chief executive and legal advocate. The executive board said a change of leadership was needed, but several insiders said the dismissal was the result of unhappiness with Hernandez’s fund-raising abilities and some of her staff promotions.

Hernandez said she is confident that the Watsonville case, being tried by Joaquin Avila, Hernandez’s predecessor at MALDEF, will be unaffected by the dispute.

Others aren’t so sure. Said one source who has worked closely with MALDEF: “Some staff energy, especially in Los Angeles, has gone into helping her try to keep her job. Rightly or wrongly, those are decisions for staff members to make. But any energy diverted away from that case won’t help. Our focus must be on our work, not on things that divide us.”

Staff members in all of MALDEF’s offices have signed statements in favor of Hernandez, who was hired in August, 1985.

Also lost in the shuffle was the start last Tuesday of MALDEF’s statewide toll-free hot line for people with questions about the new immigration law. The hot line, according to associate counsel Linda J. Wong, will provide the organization with crucial information that will help it monitor the conduct of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, empowered to carry out the new law. The hot line’s number is (800) 553-2555.

The fight over Hernandez’s surprise firing last weekend in Dallas isn’t over yet. The 38-year-old Hernandez, who argues that only MALDEF’s full board of directors can fire her, won a court order from a Texas judge, temporarily holding up the appointment of Anaya. Another court hearing is scheduled Friday.

A Feb. 21 board meeting is being planned to try and settle the matter.

Meanwhile, supporters who regard MALDEF as the premiere Latino defender of civil liberties are hoping the squabble can be mediated quickly and fairly.

“Anything that would undermine (MALDEF’s) viability would be tragic because I think the organization has been at the forefront of civil liberties that affect us all,” said Jess Haro, chairman of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, an advocacy and social services group.