Under the Influence : Cultural Traditions Hamper War on Latina Alcohol Abuse

Her first reaction was to walk out of the Al-Anon meeting. But Juana Mora, the only Latina in a roomful of Anglo women in tennis outfits, needed help that she simply couldn’t find in her own community.

So Mora attended meetings of the support group for the friends and families of alcoholics for two years with the hope of solving a family member’s drinking problem. And she resolved to help other Latinas facing similar crises--or drinking problems of their own.

Eight years later, with a doctorate in sociolinguistics, a background in counseling women, and years of Chicano studies and alcoholism research to her credit, Mora is entrenched in a study of the drinking attitudes and habits of 300 Los Angeles Latinas.

Her research, though preliminary, shows that many women, from highly educated U.S.-born Latinas to newly arrived immigrants, need help for drinking problems but are too embarrassed to get it. “ ‘How could our women be alcoholics?’ Latino families ask. ‘They can’t be. They are our mothers and our abuelitas (grandmothers) and they have to be the pillars of the family,’ ” Mora says of the denial that masks the drinking.

Mora and health experts agree that drinking among Latinas is increasing--for reasons ranging from culture shock and isolation to the stress of high-pressure jobs--and that current prevention and recovery programs in Los Angeles County do not come close to meeting the needs of the Latina community.

Mora is especially concerned about, and concentrating on, second- and third-generation Latinas who, she says, are typically bombarded with messages from the media and their peers that drinking is socially acceptable and, as a result, indulge--many to the point of becoming alcoholics.

She says there is little data to document the extent of alcohol abuse in the Latino community (and even less on Latinas) and hopes her study “will give us more specific information about where Latinas drink, how they are provided access to alcohol and how their occupational status either inhibits or promotes greater alcohol consumption.”

Thus far, Mora, who will leave UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center this month to join the Chicano studies department at Cal State Northridge, has interviewed 100 Latina businesswomen--among them lawyers, doctors, reporters and bankers--randomly selected from a Latina professional organization. She plans to interview 100 blue-collar workers and 100 homemakers by this time next year. When Mora’s work is completed, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is funding the two-year study, will publish and distribute her findings.

Three months ago, Mora met with institute officials, who report that, according to recent research, national alcohol consumption by Anglos is decreasing, while consumption by Latinos, African-Americans and American Indians is increasing.

Already, Mora says her hourlong sessions with Latinas--which involve filling out lengthy questionnaires on the quantity, frequency and context of alcohol use--show that several of the women, most second- and third-generation daughters of immigrants, do not realize they are “co-alcoholics” or have a potential drinking problem themselves. A co-alcoholic, she explains, is a person who believes he or she is the cause of someone else’s drinking problem. Frequently, she says, a co-alcoholic also becomes a drinker.

She says several of the Latinas she has interviewed classify themselves as moderate drinkers. But she suspects that “some of these women would fall within the (heavy drinking) category. They just don’t know that yet.

“Once in a while a research assistant will report, ‘I was interviewing this one woman and she kept insisting that she didn’t drink, and there were a lot of beer cans and beer bottles all over the house.’ Those women are more than likely drinkers themselves, but, like most Latinas and their families, they deny the problem exists because for people outside the family to know that a Latina is a drinker is a shameful thing.”

Mora says it is this kind of denial that keeps Latinas from getting help, and it is why the problem remains hidden and continues to increase.

In some cases, she says, the drinking and its secrecy is passed from generation to generation, so the “cycle is never broken.” A case in point is a woman she interviewed whose mother and grandmother were alcoholics.

“Whenever the grandmother would come to visit from Mexico she would bring her jarrito (little jug) and she would sip liquor from it morning, noon and night. Maybe that was culturally OK because she wasn’t drinking it from a bottle and she was sprinkling it with cinnamon. Everyone in the family figured it was cute because ‘It’s grandmother and it’s OK.’

“There is a lot of that kind of thinking going on, but that’s just as bad as assuming that it’s OK for a Latino to drink because it’s the macho thing to do, which it isn’t, of course. It’s destructive and it is destroying lives.”

What has Mora learned from interviews with professional Latinas?

“They are drinking in much more varied contexts and situations than other Latinas. Why? Because their jobs are stressful and they tend to be more involved with work-related or after-work-related activities that involve drinking.”

She says the Latinas--many new to high-pressure and fast-paced jobs--find themselves surrounded by free liquor at conferences, political rallies and fund-raisers. And because professional Latinas belong to professional organizations, alcohol is almost always accessible--and in large quantities.

“All of these factors converge and create a high-risk situation for them personally,” Mora says. “They are much more part of the mainstream so they are bombarded with the mainstream messages about drinking.”

She says her study also shows that professional Latinas “tend to marry more highly educated men and therefore tend to drink with their partners in different settings--at home, restaurants, nightclubs and with other groups of professionals.”

Mora suspects that the blue-collar Latinas and homemakers, whom she has just begun to interview, drink mostly at family celebrations, such as quinceaneras, weddings, baptisms, even church carnivals and bazaars.

“In a lot of the cases the husband has been the drinker and that’s how the woman began her drinking career, by either sipping a little drink with the husband just to keep him company. Then they’ll drink alone when no one is around,” Mora says.

Jean Gilbert, an anthropologist who has studied Latino drinking patterns for almost 10 years, collaborated with Mora on the study questionnaire. Five years ago, Gilbert, while a researcher at UCLA, conducted a study on Latinos and their drinking behavior. In a smaller sampling of Los Angeles women, she found that U.S.-born Latinas were 10 times as likely to consider themselves “high-frequency” drinkers as immigrant Latinas.

As the language barrier comes down for Latinas and education and economic levels rise, she says, so will drinking. But she is encouraged by Mora’s work and determination to educate Latinas about the hazards of drinking.

Gilbert and Mora say that many Latinas, because of language and cultural barriers, don’t know where to go for help or how. Mora also cites the lack of qualified bilingual and bicultural staff at county programs as an obstacle to Latinas getting help.

“We need to bring about a better understanding and awareness of the problem because our community is in need of increased public funding for services and prevention,” Mora says.

Rochelle Ventura, chief of the Los Angeles County Alcohol and Drug Program Administration, counters: “All of our programs are open to everybody--that is a requirement for county contracts--and we do fund some programs that are designed for the Hispanic community.

“We have a variety of programs we feel are important. Of course, we fund Hispanic agencies and several of our agencies have competent Spanish-speaking staff,” she says.

Ventura says her office helps fund two Latina recovery homes.

Elaine Coronado, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for five years, is project director of Latinas Recovery Home in East Los Angeles. The six-bed home, which opened last month, is operated by the California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, a state-funded program. The commission also receives some county funding, Ventura says.

“The fact that we have a home for Latinas in recovery says that we are no longer going to hide this problem,” Coronado says. “But still there is just so much more that needs to be done. We need to tell Latinas that this is a disease and that most of all drinking promotes a dysfunctional home and environment.

“We had one participant come in and say she never drank until she came to the United States. She started drinking with her husband in order to be accepted socially and it destroyed her marriage and her family,” Coronado says.

“But it took her children to bring their mother in here. They couldn’t live with hiding their mother’s drinking any more and that was encouraging news to hear.”

Maria Verdugo-Oakes, director of Mujeres Recovery Home, a residential center for Latinas that opened in Highland Park six years ago, says more homes for Latinas and family support groups are desperately needed.

Verdugo-Oakes, a self-described “recovering alcoholic and recovering adult child of an alcoholic” has been sober for eight years.

“I am committed to this work because I have seen the need for it,” she says. Verdugo-Oakes also oversees separate Latino boys and girls (ages 12 to 18) alcohol and drug recovery homes in Highland Park, in northeast Los Angeles.

“There are too many other Latinas out there who need this help and getting them here is part of the problem,” she says.

Mora agrees. She is thinking back on her family’s struggle with drinking.

“I was able to get out of my situation,” she says of the support she received from Al-Anon. “Many Latinas today don’t have those choices. Many don’t speak English, many have a lot of kids and they are pretty much tied to a husband’s paycheck, his drinking, his alcohol-induced beatings or (they) drink themselves as a form of escape from that kind of life, and so the denial and shame perpetuates itself.”

She says Latino leaders--and the community as a whole--have a responsibility to make alcohol abuse their No. 1 issue. Mora has taken a step in that direction not only with her study, but also with the founding six months ago of the Los Angeles County Latino Alcohol Coalition. And she would like to follow up her study with another, either on Latinas in recovery or on the Latina co-alcoholic.

But more important, Mora says, “As Latinas we need to talk about the problem. We need to unmask it and we must do it now. To wait another day might be too late.”

ALCOHOL SERVICES

For more information on bilingual alcohol prevention and recovery services, consult these agencies:

* Project INFO, operates prevention centers in El Monte, La Puente and Glendora. Call (213) 698-9436, or write to 9401 S. Painter Ave., Whittier, 90605.

* AASUL, Assistance with Alcohol and Sobriety Uniting Latinas, a Project INFO program, has bilingual brochures and materials. Call (818) 968-8016.

* Mujeres Recovery Home, 530 N. Avenue 54, Los Angeles, 90042; (213) 254-2423.

* Latinas Recovery Home, 327 N. St. Louis St., Los Angeles, 90033; (213) 261-7810.

* Hispanic Alcohol Recovery Community Center, 4754 E. Brooklyn St., Los Angeles, 90022; (213) 780-0630.

* El Centro del Pueblo Community Prevention Recovery Program, 840 Echo Park Ave., Los Angeles, 90026; (213) 250-1120. El Centro also hosts monthly meetings of the Los Angeles County Latino Alcohol Coalition. Call for information.

* Northeast Valley Health Corporation’s Community Prevention Recovery Program, 1038 N. Maclay Ave., No. 5, San Fernando, 91340; (818) 361-1212.

* Casa Libre, 6635 Florence Ave., Suite 101, Bell Gardens, 90201; (213) 927-1656.

* The East Los Angeles Health Task Force, 630 S. St. Louis St., Los Angeles, 90023. (213) 261-2171.

* California Hispanic Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, 2400 O St., Sacramento, 95816; (916) 443-5473.