Consulate Takes Activist Role for Mexicans in U.S.

Highlighting the increasing tensions between Mexico and the United States over the border, the Mexican Consulate is taking a highly aggressive stance against law enforcement actions toward illegal immigrants in Southern California, encouraging both publicity and litigation.

The high-profile role of the consulate in the recent Riverside County beating incident as well as a crash last weekend involving illegal immigrants is an outgrowth of the Mexican government’s rising dissatisfaction both with election-year political rhetoric here as well as beefed-up border controls imposed by the Clinton administration.

In the past year--and even more so in the past month--the consulate has helped growing numbers of Mexican nationals report alleged police abuse. Without fanfare, Mexican Consulate officials this year initiated a unique assistance program that includes lawyer referrals for the families of people killed or injured by officials and the creation of a civil rights manual for Mexicans living in the United States.

“We just want the rule of law to apply to everyone, including the Mexicans who live here,” said Consul General Jose Angel Pescador Osuna. “Even though we have a lot of respect for the judicial system in this country, we see police abuses.”

In the past month alone, the consulate has referred at least 40 people to the Mexican-American Bar Assn., which provides the names of attorneys willing to give legal help, usually for free.

Although local police agencies do not keep records by nationality, the consulate says that so far this year five Mexicans have been shot by Los Angeles Police Department officers and sheriff’s deputies and that dozens of cases of beatings and other forms of abuse by law enforcement officials have occurred.

Internal investigations are underway to determine whether excessive force was used in the five deaths. But authorities point out that often these cases are not as clear-cut as they might appear. In several instances, they said, the people who were killed were threatening the lives of police officers or innocent bystanders, and that the details will be thoroughly reviewed.

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As for consulate officials, “they’re taking an aggressive stance to serve the needs of Mexican nationals, and I think that’s their right as long as their energy is directed in the right places,” said LAPD Cmdr. Tim McBride. He is helping Chief Willie L. Williams convene a meeting later this month with the consuls general of Mexico and Central American countries. “The fact is that we’d prefer they focused on meeting with our personnel rather than immediately going to attorneys. I don’t know if referring people to attorneys, for example, is going to provide the best avenues of communication.”

Mexican Consulate officials monitor newspapers and TV news for reports of police shootings and beatings involving their citizens.

The consulate last month published a 225-page manual instructing Mexican nationals of their rights under U.S. laws. The manual offers advice on such subjects as renting an apartment and how to act when stopped by police. The manual is distributed to Mexican nationals--regardless of their citizenship.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” it warns, “. . . because that could be fatal.”

The Riverside case, which is drawing international attention in Spanish-speaking countries, put the spotlight on the consulate’s assistance campaign.

It is a campaign that experts say must be set in the context of an old, “hate-love” relationship between Mexico and the United States. On the one hand, the countries are the closest of allies and partners, bound most recently by the sweeping North American Free Trade Agreement, which did much to dissolve economic barriers between the two nations.

On the other hand, Mexicans sometimes view Americans as arrogant, antagonistic and opportunistic, willing to provide desperately needed jobs to Mexico’s proud people but then treating them as second-class human beings. The Riverside incident also hit hard at already bruised national feelings in Mexico because, analysts said, they focused attention anew on Mexico’s reliance on jobs north of the border, especially as Mexicans struggle with what many economists have called the country’s worst recession of modern times.

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In the Riverside beating case, consulate officials helped secure medical help for the two immigrants beaten by two sheriff’s deputies and aided in the release of all 19 from INS detention. The consulate is coordinating their legal representation, as well as securing travel visas for the parents of Alicia Sotero Vasquez, the woman seen on videotape being clubbed by sheriff’s deputies.

“This particular case is bigger because of the media attention,” said Rodolfo Quilantan, head of the local consulate’s Department of Protection. “But these are the same services we’ve been giving other people. This is the normal job we do.”

Officials at the Mexican Consulate say they have received a number of telephone calls criticizing efforts to assist the 19 immigrants because they entered the U.S. illegally. (The consulate never uses the term “illegal”--preferring “undocumented.”)

The consulate also intervened Saturday when seven illegal immigrants died and 18 others were injured when their pickup truck, trying to evade Border Patrol agents, careened off a windy road near Temecula.

“They’re overstepping their bounds,” said Glenn Spencer, whose Sherman Oaks-based group, the Voice of Citizens Together, supported the passage of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration bill approved by voters last year. “They’re taking affirmative action, as it were, to defeat any attempt by the U.S. to control its borders.”

But some international affairs experts say the high-profile assistance is in keeping with the consulate’s mission: protecting the civil liberties of its citizens.

Vibiana Andrade, the national director of immigrants rights for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said: “If you’re abroad, where’s the first place you’d go if you were in trouble? The U.S. Embassy. That’s the same role the Mexican Consulate plays for the Mexican people in Los Angeles.”

Contributing to the Mexican Consulate’s more pronounced role in Southern California is the huge growth in the number of Mexican immigrants, say defense fund officials and others. The 1990 U.S. census reported that 1.2 million people living legally and illegally in Los Angeles County were born in Mexico.

The growing numbers have created tensions, particularly with police, say consulate officials. “Every day, we obtain information about people who have had violent encounters with the police or while in jail,” said the consulate’s Quilantan.

He says his 10-member staff is kept busy daily tracking cases that include not merely police abuse but issues ranging from child abduction to family support payments to labor squabbles. Three or four workers routinely spend their entire day conducting interviews outside the office. Whenever there is a police shooting or beating, Quilantan or a delegate contacts the family.

Consul General Pescador, who emphasizes he does not condemn entire police departments for the actions of a few officers, said he believes protecting the rights--and lives--of Mexicans is his main mission.

“We are going to demand permanently the full respect of human rights . . . of Mexicans who arrive in this country with or without documents, and most importantly, we are going to pursue this according to the laws of our country and according to international law,” Pescador said.

Last month, consulate officials visited the families of two San Fernando Valley men fatally shot by Los Angeles police, referring them to attorneys.

“My parents are really thankful for what they’re doing,” said Luzmila Jaurequi, the sister of Jaime Jaurequi, a 23-year-old killed by LAPD officers on March 9 after a high-speed pursuit in which officers contend Jaurequi tried to endanger officers’ lives. The consulate helped secure visas for her grandparents to attend the funeral.

Last year, Pescador cited the shooting of two Latino taggers in the Valley as evidence that hostility was escalating against immigrants, especially since the gunman was not charged with murder or manslaughter. In another case, Pescador was distressed when authorities refused to arrest the driver who killed two Mexican sisters in North Hollywood.

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In an incident near Compton last summer, the Mexican government demanded an investigation into the death of a 25-year-old Mexican man shot by sheriff’s deputies while lying face-down in front of his house. The man apparently matched the description of a suspect in a barroom shooting earlier that night.

Since assuming his Los Angeles duties in February 1995, Pescador has built the Mexican government’s largest department of protection in the United States, Quilantan said.

Before Pescador created the civil rights manual for Mexicans--published in conjunction with KMEX-TV Channel 34--the consulate had distributed hundreds of thousands of fliers titled: “It’s better to prevent than lament.”

The manual, considered a model for other consulates, says that many serious and sometimes fatal confrontations with police, bosses and landlords are the result of cultural differences.

When stopped by police in Mexico, for example, motorists typically get out of their cars and walk over to the police patrol car. In the United States, motorists are generally supposed to stay in their vehicles.

In the Jaurequi case, West Valley police officers shot the motorist after he allegedly tried to ram officers in a patrol car and others standing nearby. A second man, Eduardo Hurtado, was shot two days later after he allegedly resisted arrest by speeding away with a West Valley police officer clinging to the car.

While LAPD officials say they still are investigating those cases, the lawyers for the families say they believe the incidents are examples of officers’ overreactions. They expect families in both cases to file lawsuits.

Times staff writer Mark Fineman contributed to this story from Mexico City.