Latino Newcomers Are Changing Face of Iowa Towns : Communities are gradually making adjustments to welcome families lured by jobs, rural lifestyle.

The Venegas family left Los Angeles two years ago for jobs in a slaughterhouse and life in a mobile home surrounded by Iowa farms.

They followed a path well worn in recent years. Latino families streaming from California and Texas into the Midwest are permanently changing scores of communities in Iowa and neighboring states.

As the newcomers continue to arrive, this bastion of white, ethnically static traditions is being forced to deal with another language and with cultural diversity. But Iowans are gradually accepting the changes, putting bilingual teachers in schools and hiring translators for hospitals and factories.

“When I came here, it was hard because they didn’t speak Spanish at my job,” said Jose Venegas, 29, who lives with six relatives in Conesville. “But now it’s better. More people will help you, and you can find somebody who speaks both languages.”

Interpreters have been hired at the IBP Inc. meatpacking plant where Venegas works. A local newspaper recently started a Spanish edition. Mexican restaurants have popped up in a larger town nearby. And Conesville, once a dying farm village, has been revived by the new families.

The 1990 census counted 32,647 Latinos in Iowa--seven times the number tallied a decade earlier. The Latino population increased fourfold in South Dakota and tenfold in Minnesota during that period. There are also some undocumented workers from Mexico, but the number is believed to be small.

Iowa officials say the recent census vastly undercounted Latinos because many live in extended families and do not speak English. They also say that thousands more have moved to the area since the census.

Many Latinos were recruited to Iowa for $6-an-hour jobs at meatpacking plants. Others put down roots in the rural counties where they originally arrived as migrant farm workers.

Every summer, about 4,000 migrant workers come to Iowa from southern Texas to detassle corn on seed farms. And every fall, encouraged by steady work and a quiet lifestyle, hundreds decide to stay.

“I like it here because it’s pacific--not too much trouble,” said Venegas’ sister, Marcela, who says she prefers Conesville to her former home in Paramount, Calif.

The influx has prompted Sylvia Tijerina, director of the Iowa Division of Latino Affairs, to begin forming regional committees to address educational, legal and health needs for the newcomers, many of whom bring children and earn marginal incomes. She says she hopes to see that every government agency in the state has a bilingual staffer. Government and charitable groups have set up programs even in small towns to help Latino families become assimilated.

Still, the language gap can contribute to cultural misunderstandings and racial tension.

In Sioux City “there was a lot of resentment” among longtime residents when Latinos started arriving to take meatpacking jobs five years ago, said Charlene Stevens, director of La Casa Latino, a social services agency. “People in the community were not prepared.”

But Stevens said Sioux City is changing. Now banks have bilingual staffers, stores sell Spanish greeting cards and a hospital recently started a system for coordinating interpreters.

Rosie Rodriguez is a former migrant worker who runs a social services center for Latinos in Muscatine. She moved to the Mississippi River town from Texas in 1988 after her husband found work at a furniture factory. They have three children.

The Rodriguezes still have relatives in Texas, but they decided to stay in Iowa because of the year-round work, good schools and a sense of belonging.

“It’s not glamorous here--it’s country, but it’s a good place to raise a family,” Rodriguez said. “The values are different. Here you care about your home and education, while in South Texas you care about how you look.”