Diversity Not Adversity at O.C. Complex : Sociology: Latinos, Vietnamese coexist in a living lab of race relations.

Sugar cane flourishes in one back yard; in others, fragrant Vietnamese spices bloom. On any given afternoon, visitors to the Rose Garden Apartments might hear mariachi music coming from one corner of the complex while Vietnamese heartbreak songs waft from another. In the air, the spicy smell of menudo sometimes combines with the rich aroma of pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup.

These sights, sounds and scents of diversity reflect the people who occupy this sprawling Garden Grove complex. Latino families, mostly of Mexican descent, live in 83 of the 144 units; Vietnamese, many of them newcomers, live in 54. Many of these residents speak little or no English.

In an area where billboards hawk McDonald’s in Spanish and deliver anti-smoking messages in Vietnamese, where some homeless people carry “Will Work for Food” signs in three languages, the bustling Rose Garden complex offers a glimpse into the lives of some of Orange County’s newest immigrants, and perhaps into the future of the Southland.

With the Asian and Latino populations the fastest growing in the county, the Rose Garden complex offers a living sociological laboratory of interracial relations. Residents, landlords and police agree that the Latino and Vietnamese residents here, for the most part, get along well.

Newcomers always find it difficult to fit into the existing population, and it is harder when they are competing with other ethnic groups for the same jobs and services.

“The relationship between Hispanic groups and Vietnamese has varied over time,” said John Liu, a professor of cross-cultural studies at UC Irvine. “When the Vietnamese first came (in the mid-’70s), they encountered some hostility from Hispanic groups. . . . There was a belief that the refugees were taking benefits from other American minorities.”

But immigrants also tend to understand and empathize with one other, having shared the immigrant experience, Liu said.

Although they came from nations thousands of miles apart, and share little in the way of culture or language, they do have at least these things in common: They are immigrants, they have little money and they speak little or no English.

Many of the immigrants come to “melting pot” places like Rose Garden, where tenants can cramp into one apartment--sometimes two families in one unit--and pool their resources to afford the rent. A two-bedroom apartment here goes for $700 a month, a three-bedroom for $850.

For the most part, it is a well-kept complex. Graffiti is painted over quickly. Groundskeepers try to revive patches of damaged lawn.

Some tenants are on welfare; some hold minimum-wage jobs, such as in restaurants.

Do Van Nghi’s family came to Rose Garden in April, straight from Vietnam. Nghi had been a soldier and was sent to political prison for almost seven years after the communist takeover of South Vietnam. After his release, the 54-year-old veteran farmed a little before he, his wife and four children left for the United States.

His family shares a three-bedroom apartment with another family of five, also recently arrived from Vietnam. Nghi doesn’t venture far from the apartment, just to a supermarket in nearby Little Saigon. “I’m afraid of getting lost,” he said.

The Vietnamese call the United States “Hiep Chung Quoc,” a nation of many races, and Nghi quickly learned why. He met a Latino for the first time at Rose Garden.

He gets along with his Latino neighbors, he said, but it is a cordial relationship restricted by language. Nghi smiles and nods his head in greeting when he sees them. “But our languages are not compatible,” he said, “so we don’t interact, communicate with them.”

A neighbor, Marciar Orduno, agrees.

“I have a few Asian friends who live here,” said the 23-year-old native of Mexico. “We communicate by using our hands and pointing at things. There is never fighting here between Vietnamese and Mexicans. . . . There are problems here in the apartments, but not with Asians.”

Theirs is an attempt to communicate without a common language.

“I don’t understand how they can understand each other,” said apartment manager Rafaela Cervantes, who immigrated from Mexico in 1985. “But they talk. And they laugh.”

Cervantes is trying to learn Vietnamese. She keeps a list of Vietnamese words in her office, among them ones for house, door and father.

She is not alone.

“I know a few words in Vietnamese,” said Rudolfo Gavilan, who sells groceries from a truck in the complex parking lot. “I use a lot of signs to speak with them. Many are my friends. They come here to my mini-market to buy things. A few of them always come and we try to speak to each other. One taught me a few Vietnamese words, and I taught him some Spanish words.”

Sometimes, language is not needed. Human kindness is understood universally.

When Nguyen Quyet Hoa’s family came to Rose Garden in March, straight from Vietnam with barely more than the clothes on their backs, their Mexican neighbor gave them blankets and sheets.

The two families quickly forged a friendship, albeit a nonverbal one.

“I just talk by signs,” explained neighbor Leticia Perez, who speaks little English and even less Vietnamese. “We talk about (Hoa’s) daughter. We talk about her family. I know that they are from Vietnam. I know that she’s 44, that her girl is 12. She’s teaching me how to say things in Vietnamese.”

Added Hoa: “Sometimes I get homesick, thinking about the parents I left behind and about my situation here, with no jobs. I cry. They’d motion to me, using sign language, and say not to cry.”

Hoa reciprocates her neighbor’s generosity and gestures.

“When I sweep my front porch, I’d sweep theirs too,” she said. “But I don’t know how to tell them ‘thank you.’ ”

For the most part, the two ethnic groups don’t seem to know much about each other.

“I know (Vietnam) is in Asia somewhere,” said 24-year-old Jose Bustamante, who is from Mexico. “But I couldn’t point it out on a map. There was a war there in the past.”

Living closely together, however, has helped dispel some stereotypes.

“I thought that all Asians are rich,” said one tenant, Maria Aguilar. “But I think not. If we are living together, then they must not be rich. They must be like us, struggling for more, trying to move out of here.”

Hoang Trung Dinh, who arrived from Vietnam about a year and a half ago, said that he had some apprehensions about his Latino neighbors based on stereotypes relayed by acquaintances.

“But when I go to school with them and live with them,” the 35-year-old Dinh said, “they are just like the Vietnamese. They are very kind; they help people. . . . The only thing they have different from us is the language.”

Some tenants marvel at the similarities between the two groups.

Cervantes once saw a Vietnamese child chewing on sugar cane and thought to herself: “They eat just like us.”

Dinh, who has been at Rose Garden about nine months, has had a chance to observe his Latino neighbors.

“Their lifestyle is simple, just like the Vietnamese,” Dinh said. “I don’t know how the Latinos who are better off live elsewhere, but here, we are poor and we live pretty much the same.”

“Sometimes in the early evening, the (Latino) women get together in front of each other’s doorstep and talk,” Dinh said. “That reminds me of the village atmosphere in Vietnam. . . . And the way they eat is similar to us. Everything has to be a little bit spicy.”

Cervantes, who is also a Rose Garden resident, shops at a Vietnamese supermarket. “The Vietnamese eat like us,” she said. “They like seafood.”

She also frequents Vietnamese noodle soup places and said that her Latino neighbors often exchange homemade tamales and enchiladas for Vietnamese tenants’ egg rolls.

Most problems at the complex involve “minor offenses” such as drinking in public, said Garden Grove Police Lt. Scott Hamilton, the central city commander.

No racial incident has ever been reported at the complex, he said.

That is not to say that the county is a melting pot of racial harmony.

Rusty Kennedy of the Orange County Human Relations Commission said that there is some tension among different racial groups in low-income neighborhoods.

“There are fears, exacerbated by language difficulties, that make communicating difficult,” Kennedy said.

He recalled a neighborhood meeting after the shooting of a reputed Latino gang member by a Vietnamese gang member in Fullerton. The talking was done in Spanish, English and Vietnamese.

“There were these neighbors who evidently had never spoken to each other,” Kennedy said. “They were neighbors who had fears of one another. Most were afraid that their kids were going to be hurt by shooting in the streets.”

David Hayes-Bautista, a professor and researcher at UCLA, said that in 50 years the population of California will be predominantly Asian and Latino, with a combined population of 25 million. He said that the projected Asian population could be 5 million to 10 million, depending on political factors, but that the Latino population should definitely hit 18 million.

In Orange County, he said, those numbers will be 10% of the state totals, meaning a combined population of more than 2 million, which would make Asians and Latinos the majority in Orange County in five decades.

Vietnamese-Americans and Latinos already have the fastest growth rate in the county. From 1980 to 1990, according to the census, the Vietnamese-American population increased 271%, while Latinos jumped 97%.

Said Hayes-Bautista, director of UCLA’s Latino health department: “In 50 years, there will be a large number of Latino and Asian intermarriages. Orange County will be one of the melting-pot areas.”

Studies have suggested that groups staying close together tend to intermarry, Hayes-Bautista said.

To Rose Garden’s owner, the tenants tell the story of America--but it is a tale that is not at all new.

“This is how it’s going to be for the rest of our life,” said Marge Shillington, who was born in Ireland and grew up in Chicago. “Here, it’s Vietnamese and Hispanic. Back in Chicago, it was German, Italian and Irish.

“Everybody will have to work and live together,” she said.

Resident Dinh already sees that at the complex’s pool.

When parents take their children swimming, the Latino and Vietnamese adults tend to stay separate. But the children, Dinh said, share their toys and candies and communicate in a language that children know.