Small Paper Kicks Up a Big Outcry : Journalism: Detractors say the Calexico Chronicle’s muckraking is irresponsible. But the female publishers see sexism at the root of Establishment criticism.

It is a story of gender clash, inbred politics and a woebegone little hospital on the critical list.

And standing at the center of the real-life soap opera are Lupe and Hildy.

“It’s been difficult and time-consuming, but we’re having a hell of a good time,” Lupe says.

“We’ve become infamous in the last two years,” Hildy says.

Lupe Acuna, 38, and Hildy Carrillo-Rivera, 41, are using the Calexico Chronicle, a 1,500-circulation weekly, to kick the Establishment of this Imperial Valley border town in the seat of the pants.

The Establishment is kicking back.

The administrator of Calexico Hospital is suing Lupe and Hildy for libel, the mayor accuses them of harming the good name of Calexico, and the manager of the Greyhound depot is fuming over the paper’s criticism of his station.

The school superintendent briefly banned the Calexico Chronicle from Calexico High School on the grounds that it was too political. The Chamber of Commerce is unhappy that the newspaper made a fuss about a chamber-sponsored map that shows caricatures of illegal immigrants climbing over the fence from Mexicali.

Lupe and Hildy--who are known to friend and foe alike by their first names, in keeping with the informality of the town--receive occasional poison-pen letters, mostly anonymous.

One letter was addressed to “Hildy, you ignorant and racist slut.” Another accused the newspaper of printing “sleaze” because it dared to run a story about an art exhibit of renditions of the human penis.

Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera say there would be far less fuss among Calexico’s mostly male officialdom if the newspaper was being run by two men.

“They just think we’re two hysterical Mexican American women,” said Carrillo-Rivera, the paper’s managing editor, reporter and columnist.

“To them, we’re just Little Lupe and Little Hildy,” said Acuna, the owner and publisher. “They can’t accept the fact we’ve grown up and we’re their equals.”

Hospital administrator Robert Trautman and others say the problem is not gender but rather the Chronicle’s brand of shoot-from-the-hip journalism that blends fact, analysis and occasional insult.

Acuna and her sister, Dolores Lepe, bought the paper two years ago when its longtime editor decided to move to Julian in northern San Diego County. Carrillo-Rivera was fresh from a failed bid for the City Council and looking for a way to stay active in politics.

The paper has given her and Acuna a forum to do just that. When a city housing authority member was replaced, the Chronicle headline read: “Bertha Rosas Replaced On Housing Board. And The Political Bull. . . Continues.”

The paper printed a list of how much money certain contractors with alleged political pull were receiving for doing housing authority work. After the story ran, Carrillo-Rivera said, one of the contractors angrily told her: “If you were a man, I’d slug you.”

Councilman Pat Hashem, who also runs the Greyhound depot, said the rabble-rousing is an innate tendency of Carrillo-Rivera, who played with Hashem’s sisters when they all were youngsters.

“Hildy has always liked to mix it up,” Hashem said. “People have a right to know the truth, but do Lupe and Hildy have to hammer on it week after week after week?”

The biggest pique belongs to Trautman, an outsider who was hired in 1992 to rescue Calexico Hospital, the only hospital in this low-income, predominantly Latino community of 20,000 where many of those involved in political life have known one another for decades.

After initially being hailed as the public hospital’s savior, Trautman is suing the newspaper for running a steady stream of critical and belittling references about him and his female companion, whom he hired as marketing director. Trautman has been called a “nincompoop” and “rat” in print.

To make matters stickier, Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera are on the hospital’s Board of Directors. Trautman said Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera have used the newspaper’s clout to protect their friends and cronies on the hospital payroll and thwart his efforts to recruit employees with medical specialties and greater competency.

“The reason our intensive care unit is not open today is that the newspaper makes it impossible to recruit employees,” said Trautman, 44, who has 18 years of experience in hospital management in Los Angeles, Fresno and Orange County.

In one Viewpoint column, Carrillo-Rivera wrote: “Bobby has managed to rid the hospital of many Calexicans who have worked there for years and replaced them with white faces of people who do not know anything about this area.”

Trautman denied this and added that new employees he has hired have received threatening phone calls at home. Carrillo-Rivera responded that she has been stalked by a mysterious man in a pickup truck.

“Mr. Trautman is suffering from short-man’s syndrome: He has trouble with women,” Carrillo-Rivera said. Trautman’s response: “That’s ridiculous.”

Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera are chronically on the short end of a 3-2 split in board votes. Despite that, they managed to persuade the board late last year to drop a $96,000-a-year contract with Trautman’s management firm, which was run by his live-in companion from Diamond Bar, Debbie Martinez Bell.

If the journalists could get another vote, they said they would fire Trautman from his $90,000-a-year job.

Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera said Trautman and Bell have let romantic disputes carry over to shouting arguments at the workplace. Trautman said such reports, although not entirely untrue, are overblown.

“There is a tremendous amount of tension between Trautman and Lupe and Hildy,” said board member Robert Noble, 65, a regional sales manager for Western Auto.

Noble has tried to play peacemaker between the two muckrakers and the two other members of the board: a biologist and a clerk of a pornographic bookstore. But even those efforts have run afoul of changing social etiquette between men and women.

Last week the soft-spoken Noble dropped by Norm’s Liquor & Deli, which Acuna owns and runs with her brothers and sisters. The Chronicle office is a windowless storage room at the back of Norm’s.

After giving Acuna and Carrillo-Rivera an update on the prospect of the hospital’s declaring bankruptcy, Noble turned to leave. He said goodby and gave Carrillo-Rivera a gentle pat on the head.

“Did you see that?” Carrillo-Rivera said later. “You don’t pat women on the head like they’re children. The men in Calexico just don’t understand.”

Noble, in a telephone interview, said he did not remember patting Carrillo-Rivera on the head and was chagrined to learn that the gesture had upset her. “If she feels that way, I’ll never do it again,” he said sheepishly.

While the board feuds, the 34-bed hospital, which for 40 years has lurched from one crisis to another, lingers near death.

State health inspectors, who have the power to revoke the hospital’s license, are dismayed over the chaotic management. On Feb. 25 the hospital had only five patients; local doctors prefer to send their patients to hospitals in Brawley and El Centro.

Hospital board President James Donnelly, an agricultural biologist for Imperial County, blames the newspaper. “We’ve told Lupe and Hildy over and over again” to tone down the newspaper, he said. “But all we can do is admonish them.”

Despite the criticism, do not look for the Chronicle to change.

“My style is to be very blunt and to the point,” Hildy said. “That’s just how I am.”