CALIFORNIA ALBUM : On Hostile Ground, a Community Grows : Hundreds of migrants call Rancho de los Diablos home. But officials and neighbors want the illegal encampment razed.

Do not look for it on any map, but Rancho de los Diablos definitely exists, much to the chagrin of some of its upscale neighbors.

Rancho de los Diablos is at ground zero in the debate in California over whether recent immigrants--legal and illegal--are a resource to be nurtured or an intolerable drag on an economically depressed state.

Sprawling over the scrubby, dusty hills 20 miles north of downtown San Diego, Los Diablos is the largest, most established and most controversial of the dozens of illegal encampments that dot the valleys, hills and other open spaces of northern San Diego County.

An estimated 500 to 600 men, women and children live at Los Diablos in several hundred ramshackle dwellings and even a few battered trailers and campers. Despite its size and stubborn vitality, or maybe because of it, Los Diablos’ future is uncertain.

Today, San Diego’s municipal housing commission will consider two competing requests to provide migrant housing, the most ambitious of which comes from two activists seeking $518,000 to help them buy 12 nearby acres and build housing for 500 migrants.

But even if the commission approves the request from Stephen Feher and Lou Adamo, there is no certainty the two can leverage the federal government for the $10 million it would take for construction and infrastructure.

Also today, a city work crew is set to arrive at Los Diablos with a bulldozer and a skip-loader to tear down some of the vacant structures. More “abatement” visits are planned, and the city wants Los Diablos cleared in 12 months.

“It’s reached a point where we think it has to be phased out,” said Bill Nelson, director of neighborhood code compliance. “We’ve been waiting for the advocates to find alternative housing, but that just doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.”

The landowners and some neighbors in the planned community of Rancho Penasquitos a few miles away have demanded that Los Diablos be razed as a blight, a fire hazard, a nuisance and a drag on property values.

“Unfortunately, because the landowners have been tolerant of the situation, it has gone from being a migrant workers’ camp to a village that has a great number of amenities,” said David Goodell, one of the landowners.

“They are very, very hard workers,” Goodell said of the migrants. “They have a tremendous work ethic and a very strong sense of family. But this situation has to be dealt with now or it will be totally out of control.”

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Located beside a small stream in McGonigle Canyon, Rancho de los Diablos has existed for a generation or longer as an unofficial encampment for workers in the vegetable and flower fields and nurseries. Local legend holds that the camp’s name (translated as Ranch of the Devils) derives from the harsh treatment migrants once received from a major grower.

As agricultural work has waned, migrants have taken to standing on street corners of Rancho Penasquitos and even the exclusive Fairbanks Ranch--home to McDonald’s owner Joan Kroc and singer Janet Jackson--in hopes of finding a day’s labor in landscaping or construction.

About two years ago, the size and nature of the camp began to change dramatically, as a result of the razing of other large camps and of immigration laws that permit the unification of families.

In contrast to other camps, which are almost exclusively male, Los Diablos has begun to attract families. About 100 residents are children, compared to less than half a dozen a few years ago.

The total population has doubled in three years and reached a high of 700 during the spring growing season. Ninety percent of the migrants are from Mexico, although there are Guatemalans and Salvadorans.

The camp has two makeshift dining halls, a volleyball court, a tiny general store, a beauty parlor, a car repair shop and a governing council. There are a good number of cars, trucks and bicycles using the rutted and bumpy roads.

“I like it here because we are safe,” said Pablo Avila, 42, who came to Los Diablos after pressure from homeowners and the county Health Department led to the demolition of the Valle Verde camp in Carlsbad. He says he walks 45 minutes each morning to the gates of Fairbanks Ranch to compete for work.

The camp recently had its first election, mediated by the Mexican Consulate, which included opposing factions and charges of vote finagling. Camp life has its ups and downs, like any other community. A few weeks ago, there was a fatal shooting in a drunken argument over a woman, and last weekend there was a joyous wedding to which the whole camp was invited.

“Most of the time it’s so peaceful and quiet,” said Manuel Vasquez, 19, who lives in a one-room cardboard-and-tar paper dwelling with five other members of his family.

“On Saturdays and Sundays, there is some partying and drinking but very little trouble,” said Vasquez as he washed the 1985 Chevrolet his mother just bought. “We try to get along.”

Even as political pressure has mounted in recent years for the city to clear the property and send the migrants packing, ministers and social activists have banded together to provide trash service, portable toilets, church services, English language classes, tutoring for children, legal advice, and a part-time health clinic and visiting doctor.

“It’s OK here, but when I get $250 saved I will join some others and get my own apartment,” said Mario Aguirre, 39. “Someday I hope to get enough money to join the rest of my family in North Hollywood.”

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The only city government service provided to Los Diablos is an occasional visit by a patrol car.

Carlos Ronquillo, one of the Police Department’s migrant liaison officers, stopped by recently to talk to residents and ask if there had been any recent problems. Nothing serious, he was told.

Ronquillo, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico when he was a teen-ager, is no stranger to Los Diablos. His father-in-law lived in the camp during the bracero program, which allowed laborers to enter the United States temporarily to harvest crops.

He said he is pained to see people living in such squalor. “I feel the worst for the children,” he said. “There’s no way out for them.”

Kevin McNamara, chairman of the city’s migrant housing task force and past president of the Rancho Penasquito planning group, notes efforts made by the local elementary school to provide breakfast and English-immersion classes for Los Diablos children. But he backs the city’s plan to tear down Los Diablos within a year.

“Next year we’ll have 2,000 migrants and 200 kids,” he said. “When do you say we’re not going to accept Third World conditions in this city?”

Feher, executive director of the newly-formed RANCHO (Rural Area Nonprofit Community Housing Organization), agrees that Los Diablos must change. Still, he hopes that the city’s patience will last a bit longer.

“I think it’s an eyesore and an abomination that it even exists in San Diego,” Feher said. “But bulldozing these guys and their families out of the canyon is not the answer.”