Where Two Heads Are Better Than None

No one embroiled in the bitter internal squabble that has weakened the nation’s premier Latino civil-rights organization, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is blameless. Mistakes and misjudgments have been made on both sides.

By the same token, no one involved in the MALDEF controversy can be accused of wanting to hurt the organization. Both sides want it to remain a strong and effective voice for the legal and political rights of Latinos and other minority groups in this country.

That is why, for all the angry charges and countercharges that have been exchanged in the last few days in press conferences and courtrooms from Texas to California, there is still room for compromise.

The controversy became public last week when the executive committee of MALDEF’s board of directors fired the organization’s chief executive officer, Los Angeles attorney Antonia Hernandez, and hired the former governor of New Mexico, Toney Anaya, to replace her--all within two days.

The rapid turn of events stunned people who have regarded MALDEF as a model of institutional stability among Chicano organizations. Founded in Texas in 1967, it rapidly became one of the most visible and effective advocates for Latino rights, taking legal challenges all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lobbying Congress and Presidents on issues like immigration reform and education. The organization’s leadership training program has also helped educate community leaders from East Los Angeles to San Antonio’s West Side.

But, as in any organization that deals with complex and controversial issues, there have been internal tensions at MALDEF. In the last year there has been a distinct coolness between Hernandez, an outspoken and strong-willed woman, and some key members of MALDEF’s board, which includes some of the most successful (and, not surprisingly, also strong-willed and outspoken) Latino men and women in the nation.

The coolness became an open estrangement when Hernandez wrote a letter supporting the sale of several Spanish-language television stations to Hallmark, Inc. The Anglo company’s success in outbidding Latino groups has stirred serious controversy. Hernandez now admits that it was a mistake for her to suggest that MALDEF was on Hallmark’s side.

But if Hernandez mishandled that issue, her critics misjudged how she would react to being fired; more important, they misjudged how the public would react. Hernandez decided to fight back, and she has obtained a court order that allows her to stay on the job until a meeting of the full MALDEF board can be held to discuss her future, probably next month. The community reaction is slowly changing from shock to unease--a fearful sense among Latinos that both sides may become so deeply embroiled in this dispute that they will fail to see how it could undermine confidence in MALDEF. And that will hurt MALDEF, not just among Latinos but also with the organization’s funders--an auspicious group that includes the Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations and several major corporations.

If the community’s uneasiness is not quelled, it could turn to anger as resentful Latinos ponder MALDEF’s preoccupation when it has important things to do--especially monitoring the new immigration law under which thousands of Latino immigrants could legalize their status.

Sadly, MALDEF staff members in cities like Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago contributed to the impression that their organization is in disarray by publicly denouncing the dismissal of Hernandez. The MALDEF staff should stay out of this mess, if for no other reason than that the more people inject themselves into the controversy now, the harder it will be to resolve later.

That is why I refuse to take sides in the dispute, and modestly suggest this compromise: Retain Hernandez as MALDEF’s chief counsel (even her critics concede that she is an effective attorney), and make Anaya the group’s top administrator and public spokesman (as a former governor, he is ideally suited to both tasks). A compromise along these lines might even help MALDEF get around an institutional problem that has developed in recent years. It is all but impossible for the board to find one person who can handle all the responsibilities that being head of MALDEF demands: legal skills, administrative abilities, political insight, the glibness to be an effective public spokesman.

Anaya and Hernandez, by all accounts, bear no personal ill will toward each other. There are no ideological differences between them on the issues that MALDEF must deal with. As a team they would give MALDEF stronger leadership than either of them could furnish alone once the current impasse ends--as it must, and soon, if the organization is to reassert the community leadership that it has provided in the past and that is needed today perhaps more than ever.