Latino Activists Outline Agenda, Stress Coalitions

Latino leaders throughout the country united in Los Angeles this week to promote a wide-ranging agenda of issues, including affordable housing, political empowerment and fair media representation.

Propelled by a sense of urgency to take control of Latino issues in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, approximately 8,000 people attended the National Council of La Raza convention to find ways to build local and national coalitions to turn up the heat on government and business.

“The most powerful message here is the coming together, the ethnic pride that permeated the conference,” said Raul Yzaguirre, president of the Latino rights group, one of the largest such organizations in the country. “There is a sense of urgency that all levels of government are simply not paying enough attention to these smoldering problems that just need a little bit of oil to erupt into flames.”

The La Raza council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, serves as an advocacy center for 142 community-based organizations throughout the country, providing grants, organizing projects and analyzing public policy issues. Each year, La Raza member organizations help about 2 million Latinos with housing, education, employment, immigration and social service needs.

The conference, which concluded Thursday morning at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton, provided a forum for debate on Latino issues such as community response to gangs, housing affordability, voter registration and race relations.

Specifically, the council unveiled a federal loan program to help low- and moderate-income Latinos own homes and a multi-pronged campaign to improve the image of Latinos on television and in the media.

The home loan program--an 18-month, $20-million pilot effort--will make it easier for families to qualify for mortgage loans by offering flexible terms, with the guarantee that the Federal National Mortgage Assn. will buy the loans from banks that offer the program.

Loans initially will be available through Latino organizations in four cities, including Los Angeles, but La Raza officials hope the program will be expanded, with several hundred million dollars available through federal loan commitments over the next several years.

The program is a response to mortgage lending practices that make it difficult for low-income working families--who pay a high percentage of income for housing--to qualify for loans.

“We are saying the criteria for qualifying for loans doesn’t work. . . ,” Yzaguirre said. “Instead, what needs to be looked at is their credit history; not if they have a Visa card, but whether they pay their bills on time.”

In another initiative announced, the group has undertaken a campaign to promote more positive media images of Latinos on television and in films, and increase hiring in news organizations.

The council will push for greater employment opportunities by funding a Latino production company and sponsoring programs to train Latinos to work in entertainment industry jobs.

“For a number of groups, particularly blacks, the number of positive images has dramatically increased,” Yzaguirre said. “But research shows that Latinos are portrayed in more negative terms.” This barrage of portrayals of Latinos as gangsters, maids and busboys contributes to the image that Latinos have less social prestige than other minorities, he said.

During one seminar at the conference, a panel of educators and civil rights activists said the nation’s leaders can no longer view racial and ethnic tensions in terms of blacks and whites. The way this city’s minority groups deal with the remarkable demographic shifts in the 1980s can be viewed as the trend for the rest of the nation.

“Los Angeles is a metaphor for the America of the future,” said Manuel Pastor Jr., chairman of the Economics Department at Occidental College and co-founder of an inter-ethnic group called the New Majority Task Force. “The riots made us aware of how fragile race relations are and how inadequate are our human relations structures.”

He said that the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission has two staff members--a black and Korean-American--working in South Los Angeles.

In another seminar, political and civic leaders took up the cause of increasing voter registration among Latinos.

“The most important theme I came away with was Latinos across the country came together and there was more unity in our numbers than ever before,” said conference participant Luisa Perez-Ortega, who works for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.