Busy 4th Street Greets Visitor : Mexican Consul Seeks More Ties

In his first official trip to Orange County, Mexico’s consul general in Los Angeles toured a booming commercial strip, strolling past the Ruiz Salon de Belleza, a Mexicana Airlines ticket office and the Teatro Fiesta, which was showing the movie “Tequila Sunrise” with Spanish subtitles.

The consul general, Romeo Flores Caballero, was in Santa Ana, the heart of the Latino community in Orange County. And there is no bigger symbol of that presence than 4th Street in downtown, which is lined with a variety of shops with Spanish-language signs.

“This is like Miami’s Calle Ocho,” Ray Rangel, owner of R&R; Sportswear, told him, referring to 8th Street in Miami, which has become that city’s center of Latino commerce and enterprise.

Flores Caballero, who was named Mexican consul general in Los Angeles in August, was in Orange County to talk with members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce about a new law that will open the Mexican economy to more foreign investment.

But his visit served more to underscore the growing importance of the Mexico-Southern California connection, not just because of business but because of the large number of Mexican citizens who have come to this area seeking jobs and new homes.

Signs of Importance

“This will become the nucleus of the Mexican community here,” Al Amezcua, vice president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told Flores Caballero, referring to Santa Ana’s 4th Street.

As another sign of Orange County’s importance in Mexican affairs, the consulate has had an office on 4th Street for two years. It is only one of two branch offices in the Los Angeles area. A new consul for that branch will take office in July, but Flores Caballero has not yet announced who that will be.

The chamber invited Flores Caballero to address it because business leaders here have been clamoring to know more about how to do business in Mexico under the new law, Amezcua said.

The law, adopted last month, is viewed by American business leaders as a dramatic step toward modernizing Mexico’s economy. Businesses in Mexico may now be entirely foreign-owned; before, they were required to have 51% Mexican ownership, a rule that had discouraged some American investment in Mexico.

“There are a lot of businesses, and a lot of business people, very interested in investing in Mexico, and now that the laws have changed, that will make a difference,” Amezcua said. “We wanted to take the lead--we the Santa Ana Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.”

‘Good for Both’

Amezcua said that some of those who will be taking advantage of the new opening in Mexico’s investments law include owners of import-export businesses, manufacturers, and even restaurants and hotels.

“It’s good for both countries,” Flores Caballero said.

“It’s very important as an escape valve for investors in California who wanted to and want to invest in Baja California,” he said. “I think the opportunity of a more open border comes at a time when there is a favorable climate for foreign investments in our country.”

He said it was one plank in a more “global plan” by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari--elected last July--to liberalize the nation’s economy and to modify relations between the United States and Mexico.

“We have moved from a passive attitude to a more active one,” he said. “From an attitude of defensiveness to one of offense--in politics, in our economy, in foreign relations.”

The new attitude will mean, for example, that Mexico may take a more active role in defending the rights of its own citizens

in the United States, said Flores Caballero, who grew up in a family that traveled the Southwest as undocumented farm laborers.

The consulate’s department of protection handles 1,000 cases a month that involve Mexican citizens and their legal rights, he said, and there are plans to increase the staff.

Flores Caballero was interested in learning more about cities in Orange County that have taken steps to control the number of dayworkers, usually Mexican nationals, who congregate in public places waiting for employers to hire them on a daily basis.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve known of discrimination based on color,” he said. “That could be a violation of human rights, and if that is the case, we want to know more about these instances.”

He said the consular office has worked to help dayworkers in the Los Angeles area recover wages from employers who refused to pay. He said he would welcome inquiries from dayworkers in Orange County who felt that local ordinances were violating their rights.

In downtown Santa Ana, he walked past shops and other establishments whose signs were mostly in Spanish. Flores Caballero was told that Fiesta Marketplace, a new commercial redevelopment that takes up part of 4th Street, was the idea of Latino entrepreneurs and that the development was financed partially with government money.

“This area had gone, as they say, to the dogs,” said Jose Vargas, the officer in charge of Hispanic Affairs for the Santa Ana Police Department. “This was an eternal problem for police.”

But now, the street bustles with lunchtime crowds or shoppers browsing in shops, many of them in buildings with pastel pink adobe walls and tile trimming reminiscent of Mexican architecture.

“I like the colors,” Flores Caballero said. “It gives one the impression of being in a commercial center that is not unfamiliar. It’s very pretty.”

Consul Office Mexican Consulate (serving Orange County) 406 W. 4th St. Santa Ana 835-3069 Hours 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday Services available: Passports to Mexico; documents for importing household items, pets or other belongings into Mexico; information for Mexican citizens regarding their rights in the United States.