Zacatecans Feel Right at Home : Mexican State Has Following in Southland

Since J. Jesus de la Riva arrived in Southern California for a visit nearly two weeks ago, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

The visiting schoolteacher from the Mexican state of Zacatecas has received a nonstop barrage of invitations to outings and to the homes of friends and relatives, all of them immigrants from his hometown of Luis Moya.

“It’s like I never left home,” said De la Riva, 40, who is staying with a sister in Orange County. “It turns out I’m related to half of Santa Ana.”

Nine schoolchildren, escorted by De la Riva on the trip sponsored by a club of former Zacatecans in Los Angeles, have had a similar reception. Most are staying with relatives and friends in Los Angeles while being treated to such Southland attractions as Disneyland and Dodger Stadium.

31 Clubs in County

The sponsoring group is one of 31 Zacatecan clubs in Los Angeles County. Each represents a different municipality or county in Zacatecas, a largely agricultural and mining state in Central Mexico.

Club members like to boast that half of their home state’s population--about 600,000 former Zacatecans--now reside in Southern California. Mexican Consulate officials in Los Angeles say that, while this may be an exaggeration, the number could be as high as 400,000. There are no precise counts.

Mexican states such as Michoacan, Jalisco and Guanajuato may rival Zacatecas in the size of their expatriate communities in the Los Angeles area, but none match Zacatecans’ level of community organization.

“They display a high degree of mobilization and a greater consistency than the others,” said Mexican Deputy Consul Mario Nunez Mariel.

Club leaders meet regularly as part of the Federacion de Clubs Zacatecanos Unidos (Federation of United Zacatecan Clubs) and sponsor joint fund-raising events. Individual clubs, like Club San Pedro, which raised money for the all-expenses-paid trip of De la Riva and his students, also regularly hold dances, raffles and other fund-raisers for public improvements back home.

In the municipality of Jalpa, for instance, the town’s only public ambulance has lettering on its side that reads: “Donated by Club Jalpa of Los Angeles, Ca.” Other clubs have contributed funds for road construction and have brought electricity and running water to isolated villages. Another has helped build a high school. Still others have landscaped plazas, restored churches, developed athletic fields, and provided medicine and meals for the elderly.

The continuous flow of people and goods between the towns in Zacatecas and Zacatecan enclaves in Southern California goes back generations, in an exchange that distinguishes the Mexican immigrant experience from that of other immigrants farther from their home countries.

“We help because we haven’t forgotten the necessity we saw when we lived there,” said Julian Estrada, president of the clubs’ federation, who immigrated to the United States four decades ago but still regularly visits Zacatecas.

‘There Is Work’

“Life is harder there,” added Estrada, who lives in Long Beach and is a partner in a construction firm. “Here, life can be good and bad, but at least there is work.”

That is why, when Alfredo Menchaca received a letter asking for help from the municipal president of Morelos, Zacatecas, he did “what every Zacatecano would do,” he said. Turning to his family, which includes six brothers living in Los Angeles, Menchaca took up a collection for their hometown.

“You don’t forget your roots just because you are far away,” said Menchaca, 43, who left Zacatecas 12 years ago but returns about once a year to visit. Menchaca, a building maintenance manager who spends a lot of his time traveling the freeways responding to beeper calls, laughs when he thinks of the contrast to his previous life. Like many of his Zacatecas compatriots, Menchaca grew up on horseback and became expert in the care of animals and the operation of farm equipment.

Also like most Mexican immigrants, Menchaca has regularly sent money to relatives in Mexico, and the idea of combining forces with others to help finance improvements back home made sense to him.

“It’s important to organize ourselves, unite our people and nurture our culture,” said Menchaca, president of Club Morelos, which he founded three years ago. Like most of the clubs, Club Morelos has a core group of fewer than 100 active members who organize fund-raising events that draw from a few hundred to 1,000 supporters.

Most of the clubs in the Zacatecan federation have been formed within the last three years, according to Estrada, the federation president, who gives much of the credit to Zacatecan Gov. Genaro Borrego Estrada.

While governors from various Mexican states occasionally visit the Los Angeles area, Borrego has visited annually since his election three years ago. He plans to return again this year for the Nov. 26 celebration of “Zacatecan Day,” officially designated by the city last year, Estrada said. More than a dozen municipal presidents from the state are also expected.

The Mexican governor has worked closely with the clubs, approving their projects, matching their contributions with state funds and encouraging municipal authorities to do the same, Estrada said.

“This governor has opened his arms to us,” he said.

The importance of large communities of former compatriots in Los Angeles is not lost on Mexican state governors, according to Nunez of the Mexican Consulate.

“They are keenly aware of the important role our workers play here”--and of the dollars they send back to Mexico, he said. “Governors don’t just come here to play.”

Ties with the home country are not only political. Next month, the clubs are expecting a big turnout to welcome the bishop of Zacatecas, who has promised to bring the Santo Nino de Atocha, a statue of the Christ Child, revered across Mexico and particularly in its home state of Zacatecas.

The clubs also plan a celebration this year for Antonio Aguilar, Mexico’s premier singing charro and a folk hero in his native Zacatecas.

Judging from the men at a recent meeting of the Zacatecan federation, the entertainer, who commands sell-out performances whenever he visits Southern California, remains a role model to his compatriots in Los Angeles. Almost to a man, the club members sport neatly trimmed mustaches and long sideburns, and some still wear the pointed cowboy boots of their Mexican rural roots.

At one point during the federation meeting, the discussion turned to the use of hats at federation events. President Estrada “respectfully” requested that, for the sake of appearances, the men doff their Western-style hats whenever they attend indoor events.

But Roman Cabral, president of Club Valparaiso, garnered the loudest applause when he walked up to the podium and objected: “Most of us are rancheros (country folk). If you take away our hats, you take away our identity and then we’re not Zacatecanos anymore.”

Hat or no hat, Southern California Zacatecans remain appreciated patrons of their compatriots back home.

In De la Riva’s hometown, the children look forward to club members’ visits each Christmas when they distribute thousands of dollars in toys and candies, he said. And the three-week Los Angeles trips that Club San Pedro awards to the top students in the municipality have made his job easier, he said.

“They all want to come, so they study harder,” De la Riva added.

ZACATECAS AT A GLANCE

Where: Bordered by Coahuila on the north, San Luis Potosi on the east, Aguascalientes and Jalisco on the south and Durango on the west.

Size: 28,283 square miles.

Population: 1,136,830 (1980).

Capital: Zacatecas,

founded 1548.

Average elevation: 7,700 feet; city of Zacatecas, 8,189.

Climate: Rainfall about 20 inches per year. Warm in valleys, temperate in mountains.

Mining: Silver, gold, mercury, copper, iron and zinc.

Agriculture: Only 6% of farmland is irrigated. Crops include cereals, alfalfa, sugar cane and maguey (from which beer called pulque is made).

Origin of name: “Place where zacate grass grows.”

Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica