Busy Oxnard Consulate Is a Help Depot

It’s not embassy row, but the Oxnard transportation center is the home of one of the busiest Mexican consulates in California.

Up well-worn stairs from the Greyhound bus station, above the Amtrak concession, Consul Zoila Arroyo de Rodriguez and a staff of six tend to the needs of many of the tens of thousands of Mexicans who live in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

An estimated 400 people will file through the small consulate each day during peak summer and Christmas seasons, seeking help of many kinds. About 150 will come even on the slow days.

A few are farm workers abused by employers. Others, legal residents of the United States, want documents so they can visit relatives in their native land.

Many are newcomers, streaming in on buses and at a loss for how to cope in a strange world that offers not only promise but also the deception of con artists and the prospect of arrest by the Border Patrol.

“Our most important job is to protect our people when they have a problem, a labor problem or any kind of problem,” said Arroyo, a veteran diplomat who for 21 years was in charge of cultural and student exchange programs at a large consulate in Montreal.

Under her control since July, the Oxnard consulate today is known as much for the consul’s aggressiveness and visibility as for its central location at the downtown bus station on 4th Street.

“She’s a pretty dynamic character,” said Marco Antonio Abarca, attorney for the nearby California Rural Legal Assistance office. “In Montreal, she mainly worked with diplomats and upper-class Mexicans. She says she likes it here because she deals with the real thing.”

Arroyo has repeatedly brought farm workers with legal problems to Abarca’s Oxnard office for assistance, Abarca said.

“She’s visible, very accessible. Her office covers everything,” he said. “If somebody dies and the family wants the body shipped back, they’ll take care of it. If a Mexican citizen is jailed, she’ll go over to help him. She has even taken us out to the fields sometimes, to different farm worker camps. She wants to see how people are living.”

Arroyo, thin, bespectacled and soft-spoken, has made a name for herself locally among prosecutors, politicians, arts groups and the wide range of agencies that deal with immigration.

Dist. Atty. Michael Bradbury said his office is working with her to gain financial support for children of Mexican nationals both here and in Mexico and to crack down on businesses that defraud immigrants by selling shoddy products.

“For the first time, the consul’s presence is being clearly recognized here,” Bradbury said.

Armando Garcia, an immigration specialist at El Concilio de Condado de Ventura, said his nonprofit agency fields about 30 telephone calls a week from the consulate and receives about one referral a day from it. Problems range from youth violence, to preparation of legal documents to family and mental health counseling.

Cooperation from the consulate is new, Garcia said. Not long before Arroyo arrived last year, El Concilio offered its services to the former consul. “He wrote back and said they only do passports,” Garcia said. “But Zoila takes seriously her job as a true representative of Mexico. It is a drastic change.”

Arroyo is a regular on a Spanish-language talk show broadcast here and in Santa Barbara County.

She supported a recent Spanish-language play at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium and arranged for the renowned Ballet Folklorico of Mexico City to perform there in the group’s first Southland visit in 11 years, said Andres Herrera, aide to county Supervisor John K. Flynn.

Herrera said he could not even remember the name of Arroyo’s predecessor, but has heard from Arroyo at least two dozen times. “I see her everywhere,” he said.

“Oxnard is a very active city, very important,” Arroyo said. “All consuls should have this experience.”

The Mexican government opened its ninth California consulate in Oxnard in 1987 because of the local influx of Mexican nationals in recent years. The increased demand for consular assistance helped create the only real controversy of Arroyo’s brief tenure.

One late-November day, the line into the consulate was so long that it wound down the stairs and out the front door of the transportation center. Shop entrances were obstructed and the Border Patrol was apparently called. Agents arrested three Mexican nationals waiting to get into her office, Arroyo said.

Top patrol administrators assured her that no more arrests would be made at the consulate, Arroyo said. And none have been.