Cruz Bustamante

Dan Schnur’s attempt to use the pending election of Assembly member Cruz Bustamante as speaker to justify Props. 187 and 209 falls flat (Commentary, Nov. 12). He avoids a number of factors that helped create the scenario to elect California’s first Latino speaker.

Bustamante’s election in 1992 occurred after the vigorous application of the federal Voting Rights Act during the 1991 redistricting in California, which helped create the Assembly district in the Central Valley that Bustamante now represents. He had the backing for the speakership of a Latino legislative caucus whose numbers have swelled from four, prior to the 1991 redistricting, to 14 after the Nov. 5 elections.

California’s Latino voters overwhelmingly rejected Props. 187 and 209 because they understood that they were the true targets of these measures. These initiatives, as well as the anti-immigrant and anti-Latino campaigns promoted by Gov. Pete Wilson--and in the final days of the presidential campaign by Sen. Bob Dole--motivated Latinos to participate in our electoral process in record numbers, unequivocally rejecting the politics of division.

Bustamante is undoubtedly a role model for all of California. The true irony, however, is that the very same policies that created the opportunities for Bustamante to rise to the speakership of the Assembly may be a thing of the past precisely because of the passage of Prop. 209.

ARTURO VARGAS

Executive Director, National

Assn. of Latino Elected

and Appointed Officials

Los Angeles

* George Skelton (Capitol Journal, Nov. 11) asks if Bustamante wanted to have it both ways by being against illegal immigration while justifying their U.S. presence. Bustamante’s response was not only truthful but, in fact, indirectly points out the hypocrisy and malevolence of immigrant bashers: They enjoy the fruits of immigrants’ low-wage goods and services in the tens of billions of dollars, yet decry the “overhead” costs of health and education services incident to their presence.

EDUARDO MORGA

Huntington Beach