Culture Clash : Santa Paula a Tale of 3 Cities Seeking Unity of Mexican Americans, Whites, Immigrants

The spicy perfume of cilantro, oregano and onions permeates the air at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church every Sunday morning.

After the 8 a.m. Mass, dozens of parishioners--most of them recent Mexican immigrants--fill the church’s cafeteria to devour tamales, menudo and tacos.

Children run around outdoors as adults greet one another in Spanish.

A few blocks southwest is St. Sebastian Church, where most members are at least second-generation Mexican American and the congregation speaks English.

After Mass, members gather at a brick patio under eucalyptus trees for coffee and doughnuts.

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, about four blocks west, the mostly white congregants sip coffee after the morning service.

The contrast between the churches illustrates the cultural and ethnic divisions among Santa Paula’s 27,000 residents.

Indeed--like many of the small farm communities of California--Santa Paula is a tale of three cities.

It is a city where white and Latino residents don’t mix much, some townspeople say, and where some long-established Mexican Americans dislike the recently arrived Mexicans.

Although middle-class whites and Mexican Americans live side by side in many areas of town, it is also a city where the houses on the hills are filled mostly with whites, and the toolsheds and trailers are filled with families of recent immigrants.

“There is a lack of unity among the people of Santa Paula,” said Javier Nava, who volunteers to work with at-risk youth. “Usually you don’t see white people and Mexican people socializing. It’s not that they fight over cultural issues, but each group sticks to their own.”

But some white residents say there is no division in Santa Paula.

Les Maland, who served on the City Council for 24 years, cites the number of Latinos serving on the council and school boards.

“I think we’ve done a very good job in the community,” said Maland, who has lived in Santa Paula for 58 years. “I see no segregation or division among the people of Santa Paula.”

Santa Paula Mayor John Melton, who has served on the City Council since 1974, said while some racial divisions may exist in the city, they are no worse than the problems faced elsewhere. In fact, he considers Santa Paula one of the most united communities he has ever seen--a point he chooses to focus on whenever the subject comes up.

“I don’t like this division crap,” Melton said. “I marvel at Santa Paula because everybody treats each other on an equal basis. Everyone respects each other.”

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According to the 1990 U.S. census, 59% of the population in Santa Paula--or 14,700 residents out of the total 24,062--was Latino. There were 9,800 whites--or 39%.

Yet while two of five council members and five of 10 school board members are Latino, most top city and school administrators are white.

The city has 160 full- and part-time employees, 39% of them Latino. Of the city’s 10 department heads, nine, including the fire and police chiefs, are white. Santa Paula’s numbers mirror Oxnard, which is 54% Latino and 32% white. There, 37% of the city workers are Latino and 50% are white.

Some Santa Paula residents say the numbers point to a fractured city that, in many cases, is divided along racial and socioeconomic lines. And they say it is a point that warrants attention.

“It is a case of the haves and the have-nots,” said 35-year resident Flo Zakrajshek, chairwoman of the Santa Paula Housing Authority. “I can tell you that it has created a very volatile situation. This place is like a time bomb. You can only kick a person who is down for so long before they stand up, and stand up swinging.”

Recognizing the imbalance, city officials say they have tried to bring more Latinos into the ranks, but it is not easy.

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City Manager Arnold Dowdy said the city wants to hire more Latinos to head its departments, but added, “It’s hard to find qualified minorities who want to work in Santa Paula because we don’t pay much.”

Chief Walter Adair said the Police Department has only one Spanish-speaking dispatcher because qualified candidates fluent in Spanish find better jobs elsewhere.

To compensate for the lack of bilingual dispatchers, when a Spanish-speaking resident dials 911, the call is rotated to a special center in Sacramento or Los Angeles, Adair said.

The bigger problem, Adair said, is the lack of a Spanish-speaking receptionist.

“That can be frustrating,” he said, adding that police must call for one of the 11 Spanish-speaking patrol officers--in a department of 30 sworn officers, including the police chief--to come to the station and translate. “It can become expensive for the department.”

According to the census, Santa Paula has the lowest per capita income in the county, the highest ratio of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 giving birth, and the highest rate of residents on welfare.

Bob Borrego, 68, a lifelong Santa Paula resident and a former elementary school district trustee, believes that poverty, which affects more Latinos than whites, is what divides the town. It forces single mothers onto welfare and youngsters into gangs.

“Whether you are Anglo or a second- or third-generation Mexican American, most people in Santa Paula don’t want to talk about the human misery that the poor face and the cultural segregation that we live in,” Borrego said.

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In this quaint town, situated in a green valley with a backdrop of rolling hills, acts of racism still occur, some say.

Alfonso Urias, a former mayor and 20-year councilman, said whites sometimes forget he is Mexican American.

“I have never been snubbed, but some of the comments I hear are truly offensive to Mexicans in general,” Urias said.

Recently, Urias said, a white man dismissed the opening of a local diner with, “Well, it’s just another Mexican restaurant.”

Furthermore, Urias said he has been so frustrated with strangers asking whether he has a green card that he began carrying a fake green card in his wallet that reads: “F--- you, gringo.”

“That’s not my style,” Urias said. “But sometimes I have lost my patience.”

Angela Dominguez, 65, a second-generation Mexican American, said Santa Paula is much less racist than before. But it’s not perfect, she says.

“When I was growing up we were called dirty Mexicans, and white people would bombard our house with small rocks,” Dominguez said. “They don’t do that any more. Now they ignore that we exist and overlook the needs of Hispanics completely.”

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Like many others, 72-year-old Jess Victoria, who has owned a shoe repair shop in downtown Santa Paula for 25 years, said he did not want to talk about ethnic division.

“There has always been and will always be bigotry and racism in Santa Paula,” he said. “But I don’t let that impede my development or affect my pursuit of happiness. We need to move forward so we can succeed as a group.”

Santa Paula City Councilwoman Robin Sullivan said she has seen the division firsthand. She has often found herself at social events filled only with whites, she said.

“There is a dislike and mistrust among Anglos and Hispanics in Santa Paula,” she said. “For some reason, they just don’t seem to really get along. I think we all need to work to bring this community together.”

But the ethnic division that exists in Santa Paula goes beyond white versus Latino.

Many long-established Mexican Americans look down on the newcomers from Mexico. Nearly half of the city’s Latinos are foreign-born, according to the census, and more than 2,500 of those born outside the United States arrived in 1980 or later.

Raul Cervantez, 66, who swam across the Rio Grande to the United States in 1950 and moved to Santa Paula in 1963, considers many new immigrants freeloaders.

“They don’t have enough ambition to do anything with their lives,” said Cervantez, who is a U.S. citizen. “Mexican people don’t want responsibility and don’t think about the future.

“They don’t care about their children, they don’t want to learn English and they live off welfare,” he said. “The United States for them is like a cow, and soon this cow is going to run out of money. I don’t think it’s fair. They are my own people but they are taking advantage of this country.”

Jose Vindel, pastor of El Buen Pastor United Methodist Church, said he is appalled with the attitude of those who ostracize recent immigrants.

“We do have some Hispanic people who tend to reject the newcomers,” he said. “They don’t want to have anything to do with them, particularly if they are middle class. It’s sad but it’s something that is there and it’s poison.”

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Esmeralda Saenz, 32, came to Santa Paula four years ago from the Mexican state of Jalisco. She says she can’t understand why some longtime Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans look down on the new arrivals.

She and her husband, Julio, work in the fields by day and are trying hard to provide for their two children, learn English and assimilate in this culture.

“We are very hard-working,” said Saenz, who lives in a cramped room in an old house near California 126. “We don’t come here and ask for help from anyone. We are not a burden on the community. So why would people have bad feelings about us?”

For Eriberto Paz Leon, who immigrated to Santa Paula from a small town in northern Mexico in 1988, the obstacles to assimilation were a lack of education and the need to support a growing family.

For years Leon, who worked as a fruit picker, lived in crowded housing with other relatives. When he managed to rent a place for himself, his wife and their three children, it was a tiny trailer in the back of a house.

“It’s not easy to make time to learn English and still support my family,” said Leon, 48, adding that after a 12-hour workday, he was too exhausted to attend night school.

“My kids are learning English and I hope they will be successful. I hope they achieve the dream that I haven’t been able to achieve.”

Leon never went beyond the third grade because he had to work to help to support his family, he said.

“I came to America because in Mexico we had no jobs and no food,” he said. “And although life here is hard, it’s much better than in Mexico.”

Arturo Albarado, who immigrated to the United States nine years ago, represents the newcomers’ success story.

In late 1991, Albarado and his wife lived in a small rental house and had $700 to their name. Today, they own a large Mexican food market on Harvard Boulevard and are considering expanding.

Albarado, 30, who had been a meat cutter since he was 14, opened the market four years ago after a Santa Paula man rented him a building and gave him three months’ free rent. Another acquaintance gave him an old freezer.

“I took my chances and here I am,” Albarado said. “I have bought a house and we have what we need at home.”

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For the most recent immigrants, home is much more humble.

“Most of the middle-class people don’t want to talk about the poor,” Councilman Urias said as he drove behind tree-lined streets, pointing out ramshackle sheds and trailers that house families of field workers.

For years, Urias said, he has been urging the city to build houses for poor families. But because the majority of the council has opposed low-income housing, no projects have gone through in the past two decades.

“How can you raise your kids in a place like this?” Urias asked as two children played outside a small trailer behind a Victorian house on Santa Barbara Street. “What do the kids do? They hit the streets. It’s living in conditions like these that contribute to child abuse, alcohol abuse and family problems.”

Victor Salas, 63, president of the city’s Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, says he believes the majority of the City Council has ignored the problem for fear of attracting more poor people.

“The reality is, Santa Paula is a farming community, and farm workers have long ago infiltrated the city,” Salas said. “Whether the city wants them here or not, they are here and will stay. The city needs to help those people and improve the quality of life in the community.”

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Salas, who along with his family owns 12 houses in Santa Paula and rents most of them to farm workers, said a family might move another two or more families into their one-bedroom house.

“It’s sad but there is no other places for them to go,” he said. “The main problem is that we have very few Latinos who have a position of power in the community.”

Whether due to lack of interest or opportunity, there are few Latinos involved in city politics.

About a year ago, while serving as a board member for the elementary school district, Borrego proposed that one of the schools be named after Latino educator Joe Bravo.

Although there were plenty of letters written by white residents opposing Borrego’s suggestion, “there wasn’t one letter from a Hispanic resident supporting the issue,” he said.

Borrego attributes the lack of a strong Latino voice in Santa Paula to the fact that many Latinos are uneducated and financially unstable.

“The lawyers and doctors of Mexico do not immigrate to Santa Paula,” he said. “The people who come here are the poor and uneducated who spend their time struggling to survive.”

In an effort to mend part of the gap between Latinos and whites, the board of directors of Casa Del Mexicano began last year to allow whites to rent the premises, manager Raul Cervantez said.

The nonprofit Casa has served for 60 years as a social hall where Latinos have held wedding receptions, quince anos celebrations, and other social events.

“La Casa Del Mexicano belongs to the Mexican community, but now we have opened it to the Anglo community too. We want to bridge the gap between us,” Cervantez said.

Although a majority of the Latinos interviewed for this story said most of their friends are Latino, 40-year-old Veronica Banos, who immigrated from Mexico to Santa Paula in 1968, went out of her way to meet whites.

For years, she and her husband took their four children to a Spanish-speaking church, but recently she realized that her oldest daughter, Almaira, 8, could not pronounce certain English names. It was then that Veronica Banos switched to an English-speaking church.

“I realized it wasn’t good for the kids. It was the same as if we were living in Mexico,” said Banos, whose family is now one of three Latino families attending St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

“People are nice and treat us well,” she said of her fellow parishioners. “And that gives an opportunity for the kids to learn about the American culture.”

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this report.