70,000 March Through L.A. Against Prop. 187 : Immigration: Protesters condemn the initiative and burn an effigy of Gov. Wilson.

In one of the largest mass protests in the city’s history, a more than mile-long column of nearly 70,000 demonstrators marched from the Eastside to Downtown on Sunday in boisterous condemnation of Proposition 187, the immigration initiative, and its principal advocate, Gov. Pete Wilson.

“This proposition is not against the illegal (immigrant), it’s against children,” declared Salvador Alendar, a 32-year-old textile factory worker and Mexican native who carried his 2-year-old daughter, Lisbeth, on his shoulders throughout the march’s almost four-mile route.

It was a sentiment repeated by other outraged marchers and by the dozens of speakers who took to the elevated podium set up at Spring and First streets, just across from City Hall, and addressed the multitudes assembled beneath an azure sky.

“We decided as a family that we needed to come and express our feelings on this 187,” said Samuel G. Perez, 60, a retired auto worker from San Fernando, who marched with his children. “They are playing games with us and that’s not right. Politically, it’s wrong and it’s racist.”

The march was the latest in a series of anti-187 demonstrations, but polls have shown continued strong support for the initiative. By contrast, proposition backers have run a near-invisible campaign from their Orange County base, mostly responding to news media inquiries and appearing at forums.

Proposition 187, among other things, would bar illegal immigrants from receiving public school educations and a range of other state and county-funded benefits, including non-emergency health care and a variety of social services.

March organizers said more than 100,000 participated Sunday, but police estimated that 60,000 to 70,000 took part. The crowd included nearly 100 Cal State Northridge students and instructors.

It was the largest protest gathering here in decades, surpassing Vietnam War-era demonstrations including the historic 1970 Eastside march for Chicano rights that turned violent and left three dead.

Police reported no serious injuries and no arrests on Sunday. Hundreds of volunteers helped to guide the orderly, regimented crowd, which formed a column more than a mile long, a roiling river of banners, flags and placards moving triumphantly down Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, renamed for the late United Farmworkers Union founder. Eastside sidewalks were packed and impromptu vendors set up shop selling “No on 187” T-shirts. Another design declared “No Re-pete,” a reference to Gov. Wilson’s reelection bid.

The governor’s image was burned in effigy near City Hall during the speeches, placed in a coffin and depicted on placards, T-shirts and elsewhere with a noose around his neck, as a pig, and in other pejorative images.

Daniel Antonio Rosales, 21, of Burbank, and Alberto Ibarra, 28, of Granada Hills, vented their anger at Wilson through a bit of street theater, depicting Wilson as a man on a short leash who is controlled by others.

“It’s a good way to bring out the crowd spirit and berate Wilson in a humorous way,” Ibarra said.

Jorge Garcia, dean of the school of humanities at CSUN who took part in the march, said the turnout was a response borne of the frustration of “being dumped on” for too long. “It’s time to challenge them openly and publicly. And this is just a little town meeting among a few people,” he said as he marched with another educator from Cal State Los Angeles.

Garcia said the practice of blaming illegal immigrants for economic woes isn’t new in the United States. Latinos, he said, are the latest targets of a cycle of scapegoating that has been around since the 1880s.

“First, it was the Chinese, then the Okies,” he said. “Now it’s us.”

Despite participants’ anger, the mood on Sunday was mostly exuberant, leavened with ethnic pride. Flags of Mexico, El Salvador and other Latin American nations were everywhere. The event had been heavily promoted in the Spanish-language media and at community organizations statewide.

Marchers converged across from City Hall where, before speakers addressed the throng, three horn players performed a mariachi riff of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to thunderous applause.

Though the vast majority of participants were Latinos, reflecting the region’s large immigrant population from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, non-Latino whites, Asian Americans, African Americans and others also took part.

“Anyone who says the immigrants of California are not working and are on welfare is lying,” Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made a spirited bid against Wilson in the Republican gubernatorial primary race, told the crowd.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents a portion of the east San Fernando Valley, dressed in crisp white shirt, walked arm in arm with event organizers and other politicians in the first row of the procession. He joined Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) and City Councilman Mike Hernandez as a speaker on the podium at the end of the march.

Organizers called the protest part of a multiethnic campaign to reject growing anti-immigrant “hysteria” nationwide.

“This is a not a parade, this is a social movement,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, an Eastside activist and leading march strategist, who noted planners’ desire to turn around what he called an anti-immigrant tide and win official recognition of immigrants’ contributions.

For the moment, though, attention is focused on next month’s California elections and two critical contests: Gov. Wilson’s reelection bid and the heated battle about Proposition 187.

Gov. Wilson was the favored target of Sunday’s demonstration, depicted repeatedly in posters and speeches as a “racist” who has made immigration a centerpiece of his campaign in a cynical effort to woo the non-Latinos who dominate California’s voting rolls.

A spokesman for Wilson dismissed the criticisms and downplayed the march’s importance.

“Those who are demonstrating represent a relatively small minority of Californians,” said Dan Schnur, a Wilson campaign spokesman. “Most Californians understand the innate unfairness of providing services for individuals who live in this state illegally at the same time services are being cut for those who live here legally.”

Wilson himself, during a 45-minute address Sunday to an audience of about 400 in the retirement community of Leisure World in Laguna Hills, did not mention the protest when he blamed illegal immigrants for costing the state billions of dollars in services that should be reserved for legal residents.

“We are unable to provide services to our own legal residents,” Wilson said. He declared that illegal immigrants absorb 10% of the state’s general fund. “Now, that is terribly unfair. . . . I say we should end those services to illegal immigrants. We are . . . rewarding people for violating U.S. law.”

Despite opposition from educators, medical groups, organized labor and others, polls have shown strong support for Proposition 187 among likely voters, including many Latinos. Proponents say it will deter new illegal immigration and force those already here to return home--a premise disputed by opponents, who say that measure would leave hundreds of thousands of youths without education while enhancing the spread of disease by cutting access to non-emergency medical care.

The proposition’s strong support, analysts say, underlines a widespread preoccupation about the fast-paced immigration that has drastically altered California’s demographic mix since the 1980s.

Anti-187 strategists acknowledge a difficult uphill battle, particularly because even though anti-Proposition 187 forces have apparently raised more than twice as much as proponents, fund-raising efforts have so far fallen short of the kind of money needed for an all-out television blitz against the initiative.

Many in the anti-187 coalition--including mainstream Latino groups like the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund--argued that a massive march barely three weeks before the election was a bad tactic, and attempted to scuttle the event. Several Latino activists privately expressed fears that a sea of brown faces marching through Downtown Los Angeles would only antagonize many voters.

Another group, Taxpayers Against 187--the umbrella organization spearheading the campaign against the initiative whose member groups include teachers, medical professionals and union activists--did not take part in organizing the march.

Nonetheless, march organizers--a statewide coalition of activists grouped together as the National Coordinating Committee for Citizenship and Civic Participation--opted to go ahead with the event.

Participants called the demonstration a success, as it provided a forum for opponents--citizens and non-citizens alike--to express their frustrations. And they believe it sets the stage for increased immigrant participation in future campaigns, electoral and otherwise.

“There was concern and disagreement based on what was the best way of defeating 187, but I don’t think you can deny people the right to participate,” said Councilman Hernandez, who was among the marchers.

Not so impressed was Ron Prince, chairman of the pro-187 campaign.

“If the weather’s nice, they can do that if they want to,” Prince responded when contacted at the campaign’s Orange County offices. “I’m sure a lot of people were there to see the show.”

The march, he predicted, would bolster his cause by focusing attention on the problem of illegal immigration.

“When people look at the issue, they understand the problem and they tend to support Proposition 187,” said Prince.

Sunday’s march follows a similar protest last May that drew between 8,000 to 25,000 protesters to Downtown Los Angeles, before Proposition 187 was officially placed on the ballot.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Robert J. Lopez and Nicholas Riccardi in Los Angeles and Julie Marquis in Orange County.