Seeking a Share of Rebuilding : Forum: Latino residents in Pico-Union demand that they not be forgotten in the efforts.

His voice booming, janitor Francisco Suazo demanded justice. Shop owner Lucrecia Garcia pleaded for help for Latino businesses. And Hilda Palafox, a slight, soft-spoken immigrant from Puebla, Mexico, said she just wanted an honest job.

The three were among 500 people of Mexican, Central and South American descent who gathered at a muggy brick church in Los Angeles’ Pico-Union neighborhood Saturday to demand that their community, which struggled with unemployment and inadequate housing before the riots, is not forgotten as the city attempts to rebuild.

Sponsored by El Rescate and the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN), the community forum at Angelica Lutheran Church was the first in a series of meetings aimed at ensuring that residents and businesses in one of Los Angeles’ poorest and most densely populated communities are represented in the reconstruction efforts.

“We can’t accept that the city continues to act as if immigrants aren’t here,” said City Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents the district. “They’re creating and perpetuating an underclass.”

Oscar Andrade, executive director of El Rescate, said: “The sense is that we have been forgotten.”

To change that, the two Central American refugee agencies hope to show that the growing community has a post-riot agenda that must be addressed by city leaders, several of whom attended the forum. They included Deputy Mayor Linda Griego, Police Commission President Stanley K. Sheinbaum and staff members for Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) and Supervisor Gloria Molina.

Carlos Vaquerano, director of community relations and communications for CARECEN, said the meetings show that Pico-Union’s residents and businesses are united in their demands for more jobs, adequate housing, safer streets and better schools.

“The most important thing is that we all got together as a community . . . with a message that Pico-Union should not be forgotten and should be included in Rebuild L.A.,” said Vaquerano, the only Central American on the 67-member Rebuild L.A. board.

Even before the riots, community organizers say, the Pico-Union area was an impoverished, overcrowded and crime-ridden pocket ignored too long by government leaders.

Population statistics show that about half a million people live in the neighborhood. Although the area’s population has grown in the last decade, it has lost about 2,400 housing units to commercial development, and another 175 units were burned during the riots, community leaders say.

The scores of businesses destroyed during the riots have aggravated unemployment problems in a community where, according to the 1990 census, 30% of the residents live below the poverty line, forum organizers say.

“The disturbances were the last straw,” Andrade said. “No one has ever paid attention to this overpopulated area, and no one has ever presented solutions to the problems in this area. The roots of the problems just keep getting deeper.”

The tragedy, neighborhood activists say, is that most Pico-Union residents came to the area to escape the poverty and repression of El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Pico-Union community is only the latest group to demand a role in Rebuild L.A. Amid the battle for reconstruction funds, African- and Korean-American communities, as well as other Latino areas, have demanded their share.

Hernandez, Councilman Richard Alatorre and a dozen other Latino officials recently wrote a letter to Mayor Tom Bradley complaining that Latinos were being ignored.

Some community members believe that the key to long-term solutions in the Pico-Union area lies is creating a strong base among Latinos. Others say that cooperation must be fostered with different minority communities so that each gets a proportionate share of reconstruction funds.

“We feel that the black community is getting organized and the Korean community is getting organized but the Latino community hasn’t done the same thing,” said Carlos Ardon, an administrator at CARECEN.

“We don’t feel like it’s a competition for money, we just feel like if we don’t speak up loudly nobody is going to hear us,” he said. “We’ve got to start rebuilding our own community.”

Next week, the demands raised at Saturday’s forum are to be presented to Rebuild L.A., Bradley and the City Council. And later this month, CARECEN and El Rescate plan to sponsor community meetings in Compton and South-Central Los Angeles.