The Consul : Mexico’s New Top Diplomat in L.A. Discovers It’s Hardly a Quiet Outpost

When he returns from today’s inauguration of Mexico’s new president, Romeo R. Flores Caballero will be coming back to offices that don’t look like an important outpost of a long-established government.

The hallways are dark, narrow and shabby. The elevator apparently can be summoned only by telepathy. Most of the rooms are too small and the furniture nondescript, at best. Even Flores thinks it’s humorous that there is only one official car, even though there are more than 60 employees.

Serenaded by a Dissident

Every workday morning, the place is besieged by throngs lined up in the square outside, where they often are serenaded by a dissident wielding a bullhorn. “He’s one of the inheritances I have,” Flores remarked wryly the other day.

This is Mexico’s consulate in Los Angeles, a warren spread through three floors of an adobe building in the historic Olvera Street area, where Latino settlers planted the seeds of the megalopolis. (Largely because of the current building’s shortcomings, there are plans to move the consulate offices downtown relatively soon.)

And Flores, the son of migrant workers and a scholar, educator, author and politician who is expert in Mexican-U.S. relations and has close ties to the new president, is the new consul general.

The business of diplomacy at the consulate and its sub-offices around Southern California involves issuing identification cards and other papers, visiting prisoners in jails and detention centers, giving speeches and promoting tourism and economic development. All are routines that partake little of showy state ritual, yet they may prove crucial to protecting a flank of the ruling powers.

And despite appearances, what goes on at the consulate also reflects the complex relationship between the United States and Mexico--mirroring larger-scale developments in politics, immigration, diplomacy, drug policy and economic and social transformations.

Higher Profile Now

The consulate did not always loom quite so large on the horizon. But that was before last July’s controversial Mexican presidential election, which was won by the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s Carlos Salinas de Gortari, but with a far narrower margin than in previous elections. Opponents of the PRI charge that the election was stolen through vote fraud.

Since the election, there have been frequent, though usually small, demonstrations against the PRI in downtown Los Angeles and in front of the consulate. Those standing in line at the consulate are frequently leafleted.

One result of this turmoil was the arrival here in September of Flores, 53, to a post considered second only to the Mexican ambassador in Washington.

The new consul general seems well aware that his duties encompass a broad range of eggshell topics, made even more delicate by current events in Mexico. In particular, Flores said, agitation by opposition political factions in Los Angeles has taken more of his time and care than he expected.

Even before Flores arrived, consular officials said they received letters threatening the new consul’s life because “he was coming as a representative of the corrupt and illegitimate government of Mexico.”

These threats have not been taken seriously, at least overtly. There is only one unarmed security guard at the consulate entrance and the atmosphere in the offices is informal and relaxed.

“We want to keep it that way,” Flores said, noting that the guard is “mainly to direct people to this floor or that floor.”

He also said he has an aversion to squelching free speech. “We respect the freedom of those who want to protest and the right they have to protest,” he said. “. . . I don’t want to be judged as someone who is canceling the right to protest of any citizen in the world.”

In the last few weeks, Flores said he has met with opposition groups in sometimes stormy sessions.

“They want me to change the political system in favor of them,” he said. Protesters frequently overestimate his powers and his role as a diplomat, he added. “I cannot change the PRI, either. I am only a member of the PRI.”

He does not argue, however, that his party or his government is perfect.

“I am critical also of some of the things that are (happening) to some institutions in Mexico, among them the PRI,” he said. “I feel that we have to better our democratic system and we have to better our structures within the PRI. . . . We have to make a better party.”

While he downplays the strength of the opposition here to the PRI, Flores conceded that opposition politicians in Mexico have found it useful to orchestrate protests in this country. One consequence has been to raise the profile of the consulate, perhaps inadvertently, he said.

Flores seems committed to a high personal profile. Since his arrival, the new consul has led a whirlwind existence, starting early to wade through the voluminous paper work and stopping late, often at a social event such as a beauty pageant or charity dinner. His wife, Maria Elena Quiroga Trevino, whom he married in 1962, has remained in Mexico, where she is a social security official. Their two children are studying in a university in Mexico.

Flores apparently has lived by iron discipline and at a frenetic pace much of his life. As a child he traveled with his parents to work the farm fields of Texas, where he still has relatives. From those beginnings, he became a high school teacher, putting himself through the University of Texas by washing dishes and working as a groundskeeper. He eventually earned a doctorate in Latin American history from the university.

Flores has held a number of prestigious positions in education, including heading the Department of Education in his home state of Nuevo Leon and as a top administrator at the Colegio de Mexico. In addition, he has represented Mexico on an assortment of international commissions and groups, including one on the North-South dialogue. In 1985 he was elected to the Mexican congress.

In fact, Flores has moved at one time or another in such high circles that some wonder why he accepted the consul’s job, which might appear to be a step down from rarefied places.

He shrugs this off. “In public service, any foxhole is good enough to serve your country,” he said.

Prolific Author

Flores also has written eight books, including one on public administration and politics in Mexican history that was recently reprinted. Another, “Counterrevolution: The Role of the Spaniards in the Independence of Mexico (1804-1838),” was published in English by the University of Nebraska, where he taught for a time.

He says somewhat proudly that by resolving to write “three pages a day regardless of what I was doing” he once completed a book in seven months. Betraying his academic background, he also noted, “There has not been one semester in the last 20 years that I haven’t published a major article, essay or book.”

By now, the need to be busy is deeply embedded in his character. “I cannot be without work or something to do,” he said. “Only those who do not have imagination get bored.”

Paradoxically, Flores is a low-key, unhurried man who seems immune to the pressures of time. He never seems to move very fast, although appointments may be stacking up outside his office door. And he is deliberate in answering questions, frequently pausing to think before speaking.

Drive for Resolution

But in his relaxed way he makes it clear that for him sloth is at least the root of all indigestion.

Gesturing at his clean desktop, he said, “I have made a point--nothing is going to wait for manana. Everything is going to be solved today. . . . I want to go home to eat my supper in calm and tranquility.”

In the same vein, Flores said that his first priority in his new post was to cut down on the long lines and long waits for people seeking consular services. The lines stem mainly from newly legalized immigrants seeking “consular registry” cards permitting them to travel to their native country.

Noting that the wait was as much as six hours, Flores said he moved immediately to speed up work for the 1,000 people who show up daily “because it was a source of friction, bad humor and protest.” As a result of changes made in consultation with the staff, Flores said that everyone who shows up is generally taken care of in less than two hours. His claim seems to be borne out by the evidence that, on several occasions, the long lines of early morning had disappeared by 10 a.m.

To handle the holiday crunch, Flores said five workers would be added to the staff.

While the addition of workers is a step forward, some observers believe that the consulate is extremely understaffed and underfunded.

For instance, UCLA history professor James Wilkie, who knows Flores from a stint at UCLA, said that any initiatives taken by Flores might be hampered or crippled by a lack of resources. At best, it will take two to three years to reorganize the consulate, he said. Soothing dissatisfaction among the local Mexican population over consular services would be politically valuable in Mexico, Wilkie said. Such a move might reduce hostility toward the Mexican government here and diminish fund raising by opposition Mexican political parties here as well as votes from the millions of Mexicans who divide their time between the Los Angeles region and Mexico, Wilkie said.

“Every issue that’s before the two countries has local ramifications,” said Wilkie, a specialist in modern Latin America and Mexico.

Realistically, the U.S.-Mexican border now runs through Los Angeles, Wilkie said, and the area has “a floating population” of Mexicans that he estimated at 2 million to 5 million, “depending on the month of the year.”

Consular officials themselves estimate that in the five-county area they serve--Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo--the population of Mexicans or those of Mexican origin numbers about 3.5 million, which they note is larger than the population of Nicaragua or El Salvador.

To reach and serve this vast and often disparate population, the consulate has two main avenues: cultural events and programs, and its protection services for Mexican nationals who run afoul of the law or other U.S. institutions or simply need some kind of assistance.

Source of Struggle

The never-ending struggle at the consulate is in its protection services office, which receives at least 1,000 cases a month, and frequently more. The requests are varied--checking on allegations of abuse of Mexican prisoners by U.S. authorities, dealing with the aftermath of immigration arrests, searching for lost relatives, resolving family problems and a host of others.

Jose Antonio Ortiz, who heads the protection services section, said that the cases he handles make him feel that he’s “taking a crash course in life.” He added: “Sometimes I put myself in the place of the person I am going to visit in jail. How would I feel if my consul came to visit me in jail?”

Meanwhile, Flores wishes that more people in the United States, including politicians, would drop the stereotypes they hold of Mexico and its people. For instance, Mexico is doing its fair share to fight drug trafficking, he contended, and it is unfair to judge the country on the basis of a case such as the murder of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena. The widely publicized case has overshadowed the fact that Mexico has lost about 300 policemen and soldiers in the war against drugs, he said.

The U.S. penchant for making unilateral decisions about issues affecting both countries is also a problem that bedevils his office, particularly in the area of immigration, he said.

In recent years U.S.-Mexico relations have been hurt by “too much emphasis on differences,” he said.

“What we have to do is remember that we are friends and neighbors forever and ever, and you cannot blame your neighbor for your evils.”