U.S. Latinos Divided Over Free Trade Pact

In a plush ballroom at a downtown Los Angeles hotel, members of the Latino business elite assembled before the glare of television lights and cameras last week in an impressive show of support for the recently signed U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.

“If we stand behind this . . . we are going to be the beneficiaries,” said Latin American business consultant Lucia De Garcia after the news conference, where a coalition of 50 business leaders pledged to lobby for congressional support of the free trade treaty.

But a few miles away in the working-class community of Bell, Latinos were less enthusiastic about the trade pact.

“You don’t know who will benefit. Opinion is split,” said printer Carlos Mendoza. His own analysis: “The ones who will benefit the most are the big factories that pay workers $5 (an hour) here but can pay only $1 in Mexico.”

Despite expectations of ethnic solidarity, many Latinos in Southern California and throughout the nation remain ambivalent and divided over the North American Free Trade Agreement. They are torn between a desire to help revitalize the Mexican economy and fear for their own economic futures north of the border.

Overall in the United States, many Latino entrepreneurs and business leaders support the pact, while labor officials oppose it. Sentiment also varies among Latinos according to class and income level. And although some believe the trade agreement will lead to an era of heightened political clout for Latinos in the United States, the Latino congressional contingent is split over the issue.

“The feeling is that Latinos want to support some measure that helps the economy of Mexico,” said Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at UCLA who has studied the trade pact’s impact on employment. “But they don’t want it to be done at their expense. All people in California are afraid about their jobs.”

The lack of unconditional support from Latinos--especially those with ties to Mexico--for the trade accord may undermine efforts in what is expected to be a tough fight to win congressional approval. Both the Salinas and Bush administrations have wooed Latinos to back the trade pact, which also must be ratified by legislators in Mexico and Canada.

“The Latino community is not a monolith,” said Marco Firebaugh, a consultant to the state Senate Committee on California-Mexico Affairs. “If you think you would need a cross-section of Latino communities (to support free trade) I don’t think it’s there.”

The knife that has undercut Latino support for the trade agreement has been the fear of job losses. Many economists expect the agreement, which would create the world’s largest trading bloc, eventually will generate thousands of high-skill, high-paying jobs in the United States after a short-term reduction in low-skilled, low-paying employment.

But such a scenario poses a double threat for Latinos. Hinojo- sa-Ojeda points out that Latinos, compared to the population as a whole, are overrepresented in the low-paying, low-skill jobs that are prime candidates for being relocated to Mexico. Meanwhile, Latinos are less likely to reap the benefits of free trade because they are underrepresented in high-paying fields that stand to gain the most under the trade pact.

Turmoil in Mexican agriculture could send more immigrants north, further intensifying competition for low-paying U.S. jobs. The trade pact would probably hasten the exportation of labor-intensive jobs in electronic equipment, food processing, rubber and plastics, fabricated metal products and furniture to Mexico, said Hinojosa-Ojeda.

“The closer you are to Mexico generationally, the more likely you are to be an unskilled, under-educated worker in . . . a vulnerable” sector of the economy, said Antonio Gonzalez, California director of the Southwest Voter Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Latino support for the trade agreement has faded as the recession gained strength and layoffs spread. “Every working person in this country and this state has grown more wary about potential job losses,” said Firebaugh. “If Latinos were predisposed to support a free trade agreement, I think you have seen that level out a bit.”

But Latinos also stand to benefit from the closer economic and cultural ties a free trade agreement would bring. The large Latino populations in Southern California and other border areas also would gain from increased trade with Mexico, trade pact supporters point out.

The Latino middle and upper classes with bilingual, bicultural skills “are well positioned to serve as the cultural bridges between the two countries,” said Manuel Pastor, professor of economics at the International Public Affairs Center at Occidental College. Latinos could play a major role in developing the policies and programs to speed the integration of both economies, said Hinojosa-Ojeda.

Courted by both Latin American and U.S. officials, Latino business and political leaders in the United States stand to gain additional clout, said Tony Bonilla, chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference in Corpus Christi, Tex.

“There has long been a desire on the part of Latinos in this country to have a greater impact on U.S.-Latin American relations,” said Bonilla. “We have been shut out to a large extent in the past.”

“We know the language. We know the culture,” said De Garcia, the Latin American investment and marketing consultant. “We are the ones who are going to reap the benefits.”

But such expectations may never be realized, said Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), a trade pact opponent.

“Latino business leaders are mistaken,” said Torres. “They have been courted and wooed to believe that they will be large participants in this process. But by and large this is designed to impact and effect large scale, multinational industry.”

The contradictory feelings generated by the trade agreement are reflected in the Latino workers and small-business people along Gage Avenue in Bell, a patch of modest homes and businesses amid the swath of huge factories and industrial parks that straddle the Long Beach Freeway.

Melvin Lopez, a 25-year-old real estate agent, said he does not support the trade agreement because he knows too many people who have lost their jobs. Five of his acquaintances were laid off when their container factory moved to Mexico.

“People here should be making these things,” said Lopez. “We’ve already lost jobs--not just to Mexico, but to Japan and everybody else.”

At a corner auto upholstery shop, Mario Garcia trimmed off excess material from the interior roof of a car as he wondered whether Mexican companies could effectively compete against corporate America.

“I didn’t think it would happen,” said Garcia, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico 25 years ago. “Maybe Mexico is not ready for this.”

When customers settle into the peach-colored chairs at Carol’s Beauty salon, some talk about ways their small businesses could capitalize on free trade, said owner Irma C. Pacheco, who is from Guatemala. Most of her clients, however, rattle off names of family members and friends in the United States who have lost jobs in recent months.

“I just hope this works out for the best,” said Pacheco, who said she is not taking sides.