Coexistence, Not Violence, Is the Rule at Area Projects : Pacoima: Race relations aren’t perfect at San Fernando Gardens and Van Nuys Pierce Park. But despite recent ethnic shifts, blacks and Latinos have found a way to live in relative peace.

Neighbors Patricia Berry and Delfina Martinez have spent many afternoons sitting together outside their homes at the Van Nuys Pierce Park Apartments in Pacoima, their 20-year friendship a symbol of racial harmony amid ethnic change.

From their vantage point in one of the San Fernando Valley’s two major low-income housing projects, they have watched a population that was predominantly black two decades ago become 75% Latino.

“All of my neighbors around me now are Hispanics,” Berry said. “We get along good together. Our kids went to school together. They are grown up now, and they are still friends.”

The same population shift has occurred at the San Fernando Gardens housing project a few blocks west on Van Nuys Boulevard. Like the privately owned, federally subsidized Van Nuys Pierce Park Apartments, San Fernando Gardens, which is owned by the city of Los Angeles, has about 2,000 residents. Its population has gone from a slight black majority in the 1970s to about 90% Latino today.

Ethnic change and black-Latino relations have received widespread attention recently because of an incident at the predominantly black Jordan Downs housing project in Watts a week ago. Five members of a Mexican immigrant family died in an arson fire at an apartment, which was allegedly set by black drug dealers. Police are still investigating.

Although some of the crime- and poverty-related problems at Jordan Downs are evident at San Fernando Gardens and the Van Nuys Pierce Park Apartments, a central point emerges in conversations with residents, police and social-service workers: In Pacoima, those problems generally do not include conflict between blacks and Latinos.

Ethnic change in Pacoima has produced tension in past years, and race relations today are by no means perfect. But many of those interviewed said they were struck by the extent to which blacks and Latinos coexist peacefully in the two Pacoima projects.

“Before, there were many problems,” said Rosario Castaneda, a 20-year resident of San Fernando Gardens. “Now, there aren’t many problems between the races. On the contrary, the neighbors take care of each other. We tell each other if we see somebody suspicious near the apartment or something like that.”

The reduction in racial tension results from the fact that the Pacoima housing projects have completed the transition that has recently begun, and created resentment of newcomers, at places such as Jordan Downs, residents said.

The dynamics are also different, because although the percentages have changed, blacks and Latinos both have a longtime presence in Pacoima, residents said. Poverty and other social problems are not as intense as in other minority communities, and well-established leadership in both ethnic groups helps maintain the peace, they said.

“There’s more leadership here,” said Richard Packard, a field deputy to Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who serves the area including San Fernando Gardens and Van Nuys Pierce Park. “We have those safety valves.”

The northeast Valley is partially buffered from the kind of conflicts that have taken place at Jordan Downs, Packard said.

Al Ortiz, who runs a community services center at San Fernando Gardens, said ethnic conflict in neighborhoods and schools has occurred when communities experience recent and rapid influxes of new ethnic groups, such as Latinos in South Los Angeles and adjoining areas, including Compton and Hawthorne.

“Look at the map,” he said. “The newer the community, the greater the chance of the explosion occurring there. . . . This is an old community, and that’s a plus. The established values are what keep things under control.”

Longtime residents such as Jean Miller of San Fernando Gardens personify those values. Miller, a 24-year resident and counselor for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said she remains in the project by choice rather than necessity. She said she walks the grounds without fear and treats everyone, including gang members and drug dealers, as she would treat her own children.

In return, according to those who know her, young people of both races respect her, and they behave themselves around the homes of such longtime residents.

“This is a proud place to be,” Miller said of San Fernando Gardens. “There is a lot of talent here. There’s a sense of respect that has remained throughout. If the crime problems existed at San Fernando Gardens to the extent alluded to in the papers, I could not be here. . . . I don’t have an English-speaking family in the area around me. I’m talking about 75 houses I can see. And they take care of me.”

The 1990 census showed that Pacoima’s Latino population rose from 52% to 71% in the 1980s, as the black population fell from 20% to 10%. The change was more dramatic east of San Fernando Road, the traditionally black area where both housing projects are located.

In the census tract encompassing Van Nuys Pierce Park, for example, the Latino population went from 39% in 1980 to 59% in 1990. The black population dropped from 46% to 21%. Part of that exodus can be attributed to upward economic mobility, with newer, poorer arrivals tending to be Latino immigrants, experts said.

Interrelated drug-dealing and gang violence at the projects, some attributed to outsiders, have been a continuing priority of law enforcement and of management. Officials say crime peaked in recent years and has declined somewhat because of aggressive police patrols and the introduction of private security guards at Van Nuys Pierce Park.

Despite the theoretically volatile presence of black and Latino gang members in close proximity in the housing projects, an unwritten code has largely prevented interracial gang violence, experts said.

“They leave each other alone,” said Officer Isaac Galvan, of the Los Angeles Police Department. Galvan grew up in San Fernando Gardens and works in the Jeopardy program, a gang-prevention effort at Foothill Division. He said racial tension in the area subsided after the late 1960s and 1970s.

Murderous gang rivalries in the area are geographical rather than racial. Latino gangs from Pacoima fight Latino gangs from San Fernando and North Hollywood; Crips fight Bloods among black gangs, which are numerically fewer than Latinos in the northeast Valley and more dispersed.

Project-based gang members respect each other’s turf, experts said. For example, black gang members at Van Nuys Pierce Park tend to congregate near Van Nuys Boulevard, while Latinos hold court at the Pierce Street entrance on the opposite side of the complex. A few black youths have even joined Latino gangs.

In San Fernando Gardens, several streets and alleys notorious for drug sales have traditionally been divided according to the race and merchandise of the dealers, said Manuel Velazquez, a counselor for Community Youth Gang Services.

“Everybody makes equal money,” he said.

The most recent interracial incident of note involving gangs in the projects was in 1986, when a black gang member shot and killed a Latino gang member after an argument, Velazquez said. He described the confrontation as more personal than racial.

“It was basically two hardheads bumping heads,” he said. “Neither of them was going to back down. And one of them had a gun.”

Regardless of gang membership, teen-agers from both projects who attend Charles Maclay Junior High School, across the street from Van Nuys Pierce Park, date interracially and have picked up one another’s slang, Vice Principal Don Ryan said. Last year, when interracial squabbles at the school flared up, they were resolved through a series of meetings with students and parents, officials said.

According to those interviewed, the friction that does exist between blacks and Latinos in the Pacoima housing projects stems in part from the perception among blacks that they are being displaced and dominated by Latinos. For example, some black residents believe Latinos receive preferential treatment in getting apartments and staff jobs, and some blacks resent the fact that tenant organizations at both projects often conduct meetings in Spanish, providing interpreters for non-Spanish speakers.

“I think there is a resentment among some people,” said Dorothy Williams, a teacher at a bilingual Head Start program at Van Nuys Pierce Park. “I hear some say that these people come over here from another country and get better treatment.”

But Williams and Keith Reed, the manager of the complex, said the staff takes great pains to serve both ethnic groups and maintain a harmonious atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ortiz said he has had trouble getting black residents at San Fernando Gardens involved in programs at the community center because of the erroneous perception that the programs are geared to Latinos.

“The same is true with Latinos,” he said. “They’ll see black applicants and ask if this is a black-oriented program. There is a reluctance to participate.”

Some Latinos still see the Boys and Girls Club of Pacoima, which serves many youngsters from both projects, as a black-oriented institution, residents and others said. Executive Director LeRoy Chase rejects that as a myth propagated by Latino activists for political reasons.

“That comes from a handful of people who say that standing outside the club without coming inside and looking,” he said. He said the membership is approximately 45% black and 45% Latino, and that Latino membership is expected to grow.

The danger of confrontation always exists when people from different races live together, particularly with the additional element of poverty, according to residents and social workers.

But overall, for people such as Martinez and Berry, the distinct history and personality of their neighborhood make the far-off conflict at Jordan Downs seem even farther away.

“I came here from a town in Texas where I had known very few black people,” Martinez said in Spanish. “And here, they never bothered me. I have never had any problems. We are still friends.”

Berry said that, in the future, when Berry and Martinez have long since passed away, her children have told her they expect to see the ghosts of the two friends “still sitting out on the steps together, like we always have.”