Plan to Name Street for Cesar Chavez Irks Latino Leaders : Memorial: Councilman Warren Harwood suggests change for two-mile stretch of Market Street. Opponents say they will form their own proposal to honor labor leader.

A proposal by an Anglo councilman to rename a Long Beach street in memory of the late Cesar Chavez has angered Latino leaders, who have spurned the plan and begun working on one of their own.

It is a matter of self-determination and ethnic pride, said Ray Rodriguez, a free-lance writer who is leading the effort to come up with an alternative plan for Long Beach to honor Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers Union.

Latino leaders are upset because Councilman Warren Harwood proposed changing the name of Market Street to Cesar Chavez Street without consulting them. Rodriguez said he found out about the proposal in a local business newspaper.

“Let the Latino community decide when and where they want to honor one of their great folk heroes,” Rodriguez said last week in an interview.

Harwood said he had good intentions in making the proposal, and has been frozen out unfairly by the Latino leaders, who include members of the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Latino Entrepreneurial Assn.

“I don’t think a few individuals, because of their ethnic background, ought to say nay or yea on something like this,” said Harwood, adding that Chavez was one of his heroes. “This is for the whole community.”

Chavez died in his sleep April 22 at age 66. He became a hero to Latinos and others during the 1960s when he founded the United Farm Workers Union and led it in a series of successful fights against agribusiness.

His death spawned several proposals in Southern California to change the names of streets and buildings in his memory. The Los Angeles City Council and the County Board of Supervisors, for example, have approved a proposal to name a seven-mile stretch of Brooklyn Avenue and Macy Street after Chavez. The proposal is now pending before a committee of government agencies and the county’s Street Naming Commission.

In Long Beach, Harwood was the first to make such a proposal. The two-mile-long Market Street, lined by small businesses and residences, runs east-west through parts of the northern council districts represented by Harwood and Vice Mayor Jeffrey A. Kellogg.

Harwood enlisted the support of Kellogg, and they sent letters to residents and business owners announcing the proposal and asking for comment.

The response was mixed, the councilmen said. Some respondents favored the idea, saying Chavez deserved to be memorialized. Some business owners were opposed because they would have to change their addresses on stationery. Other respondents said Chavez did not represent their interests and did not deserve to be honored.

It would have cost the city about $13,000 to make the change, Kellogg said.

But by then the Latino leaders caught wind of the plan. In telephone conversations, they asked Harwood and Kellogg to back off.

“The Latino community made it very clear to me,” Kellogg said. “They would not appreciate having Market Street renamed without input from their leaders.”

Kellogg dropped his support of Harwood’s plan.

But Harwood, who has a reputation as a maverick on the City Council, dug in his heels. Harwood maintains that renaming Market Street would be ideal. The street is reasonably large, suitable for honoring a great man and its name has no historical value to Long Beach.

“It’s not a street of the wealthy and it’s not a street of the impoverished,” Harwood said. “It’s a typical Long Beach street in many ways.”

But Latino leaders balked. They maintain that the street is too small to do honor to Chavez.

And they question the motives of Harwood, who faces reelection next year.

“I think he may have realized that this was a good opportunity to gain some attention from the Latino community,” said Gladys Gutierrez, a city recreation commissioner who plans to seek Harwood’s council seat in 1994. Gutierrez also is LULAC’s district director for the Long Beach area.

Harwood denies he was trying to woo the Latino vote.

“This is a man who’s accomplished so much and I’m inspired by him,” Harwood said. “That’s why I proceeded.”

Harwood said he has asked to meet with the Latino leaders, an offer that has not been accepted.

Rodriguez said Latino leaders will soon meet to agree on a proposal, but they appear to favor naming a park, a school, a square or some other gathering area after Chavez. They also prefer that the site be in Evan Anderson Braude’s district, the only district where Latinos--at 56%--make up a majority of the population.

A proposal should be presented to the City Council for consideration within a month, Rodriguez said.

Harwood said he still hopes Market Street will be a monument to Chavez.

“I’m not opposing any proposals,” Harwood said. “I would support a park. I would support a public building. There really isn’t any limit to it . . . I think we ought to name a street for Cesar Chavez.”