Latino Group Looks Ahead to a New Era of Activism : Oxnard: Providing a diverse array of services for 20 years, El Concilio del Condado will sharpen focus on shaping public policy. Some community leaders say it’s lost touch with the grass roots.

Francisco Gonzalez said he felt as American as anyone. He grew up in Oxnard, he worked in Ventura County and he attended Channel Islands High School.

But Gonzalez, who emigrated from Mexico as a child, knew he had to prove to the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he deserved to be a citizen of the United States.

He decided to attend a citizenship workshop in Ojai hosted by El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, the Latino advocacy group, for help.

As volunteers helped him with the voluminous paperwork that makes up the U.S. citizenship application, Gonzalez said he was perplexed by the dated, outlandish questions he was being asked.

Was he a member of the Communist Party? Was he affiliated with the Nazis during World War II? The 26-year-old wasn’t even alive during World War II.

Then came the killer: Had he applied for the Selective Service when he was 18? Gonzalez could not remember filling out the postcard. He doubted he had done so, since he had dropped out of high school after his junior year.

That was the end for Gonzalez. The volunteers said he would not stand a chance of becoming a U.S. citizen any time soon. His moral character would be questioned, despite the fact that the government had not drafted anyone in years.

Despite his exasperation, Gonzalez said he was grateful that El Concilio’s workshop was nearby, saving him the trouble of driving to the INS office in Los Angeles.

“This group is great,” Gonzalez said of El Concilio. “They really help people.”

Even though it is one of Ventura County’s largest social-service organizations, many people do not know what El Concilio del Condado de Ventura does--or that it even exists.

But the nonprofit Latino advocacy group, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in July, last year provided a diverse array of health education, youth employment and citizenship services to more than 13,000 county residents.

With more than 800 volunteers and 21 staffers, El Concilio works with troubled teen-agers from Oxnard to Moorpark, striving to prevent violence and steer youths toward constructive activities.

The Oxnard-based group, which also has an office in Moorpark, counsels Latino immigrants on the pitfalls of drugs, alcohol and unsafe sex. It trains young Chicano college leaders in the ABCs of community activism. And it lobbies county leaders to take a stand on issues that affect Latinos.

Begun in 1975 as an umbrella group for more than a dozen Latino organizations in the county, El Concilio has developed a distinct identity in the past decade as a social-service group that works effectively within the political mainstream and successfully taps large local corporations for funding.

Yet some community leaders say the organization’s successes are vague at best. They accuse El Concilio of becoming too close to local politicians and companies and losing touch with the local activists it once sought to unite.

“I think the work that they do is limited in the community,” said Carlos Aguilera, chairman of Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood council. “But they claim to be the umbrella organization for all Latinos. They’ve lost touch with the grass-roots people in the neighborhoods. And that’s because they don’t really spend much time in the neighborhoods.”

Marcos Vargas, El Concilio’s outgoing executive director, said he knows there are critics of El Concilio and admits that some of their complaints are legitimate.

For instance, he acknowledges the group has not done enough to see that Latinos are adequately represented in public office. But El Concilio has to be careful not to ruffle too many feathers now that it has become mainstream, he said.

“If there’s any criticism that’s very, very valid, it’s that the [Latino] community needs a strong advocate on housing, education and other issues,” Vargas said. “And while we would like to take more stands on things, we have to pick and choose.”

Incoming executive director Francisco Dominguez said he plans to make El Concilio a more vocal force in county politics.

“You have to be at the mike,” Dominguez said. “People have to hear you to understand what you are doing and what you are trying to achieve. We have to become more active in issues affecting Latinos countywide.”

The 300 Ventura County leaders who started El Concilio envisioned a group that would unite grass-roots leaders and provide a unified voice for local Latinos.

Until 1982, when the fledgling group received a grant from the United Way, El Concilio had a board of directors but functioned without an executive director.

After El Concilio was awarded United Way membership status in 1984, the group’s mission began to change, Vargas said, providing services independent of the groups it represented.

“The initial mission of the group was to pull all the Latino/Chicano organizations together,” said Cliff Rodriguez, a member of El Concilio’s board of directors and a board member of the Ventura Unified School District.

“Now it has assumed an identity of its own, very much so,” Rodriguez said. “It has an identity and a role in the county’s political and business structure.”

Vargas, a former United Way employee, became El Concilio’s executive director in 1987 and quickly turned the organization into a diverse provider of youth-leadership programs, drug, alcohol and safe-sex counseling, and Latino advocacy.

The Santa Paula native grew up in Orange County, where, he said, he learned a lot about adversity and bigotry as a high school student helping to organize farm workers. He later became active in the Chicano student movement at UCLA before returning to Ventura County.

“Having people tell you they hate farm workers, people spitting on you--it’s really disturbing,” he said, recalling his high school activism.

But Vargas said he also learned the art of compromise and the importance of maintaining communication despite disagreement.

“We have a working relationship with Elton Gallegly, although we probably disagree with 90% of his legislation,” Vargas said of the Republican congressman from Simi Valley. “It’s important that we keep those ties.”

With the support of the United Way, the organization found it easier to raise money, and it developed dozens of large and small corporate backers in Ventura County and beyond.

Marty de los Cobos of the Southern California Gas Co., a former chairman of the Ventura County United Way, helped El Concilio tap big companies for donations, Vargas said.

“It would be a very poor business decision to close our eyes on a fast-growing population,” said De los Cobos, now an El Concilio board member. “I think it’s a good business decision to support El Concilio.”

Sponsors over the years have included GTE, Southern California Edison, Patagonia, Boskovich Farms Inc., Limoneria Co., Procter & Gamble and the Irvine Foundation.

Much of the group’s money also came from government grants--a situation that placed the organization in financial jeopardy in 1992, when that source of money began to dry up.

El Concilio ran up a $114,000 deficit that year, a situation it will finally overcome this year, Vargas said. The group, however, learned an important lesson, he said: Aggressive private fund-raising is paramount for survival.

But Vargas said some of the group’s stances may cost it money. He estimated El Concilio’s refusal to accept donations from alcohol and tobacco companies probably costs it about $30,000 a year.

But he said it would be hypocritical for an organization that educates Latinos on the hazards of alcohol and tobacco, and lobbies against excessive cigarette advertising and liquor stores in Latino communities, to accept money from such companies.

El Concilio also jeopardized its good relations with the Catholic Church when it began to host safe-sex workshops, but it was an issue too important to neglect, Vargas said.

Likewise, the group’s decision to organize rallies against Proposition 187 probably also cost El Concilio backing from companies that would rather see nonprofit social-service providers stay out of politics, Vargas said.

Although Proposition 187 was clearly an issue on which El Concilio felt it necessary to take a stand, the organization has to be careful not to attract too much controversy and risk hurting its mainstream standing, Vargas said. The ballot measure, which passed overwhelmingly but is now tied up in court, denies many medical and educational services to illegal immigrants.

The group’s board of directors includes Ventura County supervisors John Flynn and Susan Lacey, as well as several other local elected leaders.

Community leaders such as Aguilera see a problem there: El Concilio is the Latino organization with the most clout, but it rarely chooses to use it, Aguilera said.

“They have become more interested in their own prosperity than the Latino community,” he said.

Bernardo Perez, El Concilio’s president, said the organization has never sought to become the county’s only Latino voice.

“No organization can speak for the entire Latino community, but a lot of people look to us to be the preeminent voice for Latinos in this county,” said Perez, a Moorpark city councilman. “We recognize there is a segment of the Ventura County population that is underserved, and there are many different needs we try to fill. We don’t try and do everything.”

It is El Concilio’s wide mix of services that prompts the criticism that the group lacks focus, defenders say.

“People are often confused about whether we are an immigrants-rights organization or a drug-abuse organization,” Vargas said. “We have to define ourselves more clearly.”

Dominguez, who will take the helm in July, said he plans to maintain the level of services El Concilio now provides and possibly add others, such as more housing and substance-abuse-treatment programs. What El Concilio needs to accomplish, he said, is greater recognition.

“Marcos took the organization down one road, establishing a lot of services,” Dominguez said. “I think the next road to be built is the public-policy side, letting people know that El Concilio is here, and it plans to become more active.”