Voting Dispute Deepens Rift Over Latino Group

In the heart of Orange County’s largest immigrant community, the Latino advocacy group Hermandad Mexicana Nacional has created a potential political powerhouse by helping tens of thousands of new residents become citizens and register to vote as well as offering them food, clothing, jobs and legal advice.

The only large-scale organization of its kind in the county, Hermandad has been praised for serving a group of people--mostly poor, Spanish-speaking immigrants--who have nowhere else to go. But the organization also has drawn sharp criticism from some Latino community leaders and former members who contend Hermandad clients have been manipulated for political and financial gain.

Now Hermandad is at the center of controversy involving allegations of voting by noncitizens who were taking classes at the group’s facility. At least 19 legal residents who were in the process of becoming citizens said they registered to vote at Hermandad offices before they were sworn in.

Those 19 residents also said they cast ballots Nov. 5 in the 46th Congressional District, where Democrat Loretta Sanchez narrowly defeated Rep. Robert K. Dornan. The district attorney’s office is investigating similar contentions of potential voter fraud first raised by Dornan.

Reaction to the revelations from Latino community leaders was immediate and deeply polarized, underscoring the controversial nature of Hermandad.

Said Asencion Briseno, a board member who has volunteered at the organization for more than a decade: “There are people who want to hurt Hermandad. There are many enemies, organizations that want to fight against us. But I would put my hands in the fire for them because they are doing honorable work.”

But Al Chavez, a member of the Democratic Central Committee in Orange County and a longtime volunteer in Latino community organizations, accused Hermandad, and particularly its director, Nativo V. Lopez, of exploiting immigrants who lack education and experience in the U.S. political system.

“The whole Hermandad organization is a money-making situation for him,” Chavez said. “He’s very much building a political machine, and for some reason, very few people are willing to speak up about it.”

It is almost impossible to separate the work of Orange County’s Hermandad--which is part of a national organization--from Lopez, who started the chapter here in 1982 out of a borrowed office and built it into a thriving and politically significant organization.

Soft-spoken, cordial, but distant and controlled, Lopez outwardly shows none of the passion that drives his work. Employees and former members say Lopez exerts almost total control over operations and the release of information from Hermandad, but he does it in a low-key way. His wife, Maria Rosa Ibarra, a naturalized citizen from Mexico who runs the center’s citizenship classes, appears to be the outgoing member of the family.

That dynamic was illustrated clearly at the organization’s annual Christmas party this year, attended by more than 500 members, many of whom brought children for a Christmas toy giveaway. Lopez spent most of the evening quietly standing in the background while Ibarra warmed the crowd as they waited for an appearance by Congresswoman-elect Sanchez.

Ibarra called out over a microphone: “Who won the vote this year? Who’s going to decide who will be governor in 1998?”

“Los Latinos!” the crowd shouted back. “We, the Latinos!”

The room was packed with Hermandad’s clients: hard-working immigrant families, many of them new citizens or awaiting citizenship, young, with children, often holding down two jobs. They are outsiders, people who face cultural and economic as well as linguistic barriers to integration, and they have few organizations to turn to.

“The work that Hermandad does is very important,” said Ruben Smith, a Newport Beach attorney who is active in Latino community issues. “They are trying to bring these people into the American way of life.”

But several political insiders, who asked that their names not be used, said Lopez has personal ambitions and has taken advantage of immigrants who depend on him for help.

A former Hermandad member who said he quit the organization in 1990 after the board refused to open financial records to the membership, contended that Hermandad is rife with favoritism. “Nativo runs that place like a dictator, and all those members are like puppets,” he said.

Lopez ran a successful campaign for the Santa Ana Unified School District board this fall, garnering 8,588 votes. He was appointed president at the board’s first meeting.

Some have questioned the propriety of Lopez running a campaign while directing a nonprofit institution that receives government funds, but Lopez has said in interviews that he kept the two activities separate.

Through his organization’s newspaper, Union Hispana, Lopez also has taken partial credit for the election of Sanchez to the 46th District seat, a victory now being challenged by Dornan, the Garden Grove Republican.

Sanchez and her campaign chairman, Wylie A. Aitken, have stressed that their campaign did not work with Hermandad, although it may have benefited from the group’s voter registration effort.

According to county records, Hermandad this year registered at least 1,347 voters, of whom nearly 800 voted in November. In the week before the election, Hermandad workers contacted thousands of voters urging them to cast ballots.

Two days after the election, 15 Hermandad employees were already knocking on doors to sign up new voters and to urge legal residents to become citizens and eventually vote. Lopez said at least 230,000 legal residents in Orange County are now eligible for citizenship.

Lopez said he urged local Democratic and Republican party leaders to pay attention to the emerging Latino vote five years ago. In a recent interview, he said he was “essentially ignored” at the time.

Aitken minimized Lopez’s significance in county politics. “The people you pay attention to are the people who become citizens and become involved in the voting process,” he said. “You want to pay attention to the product, not the creator.”

But Mark Rosen, a Santa Ana attorney who has been active in the Democratic Party, said Lopez’s political strength should not be underestimated. “There was a large population in Santa Ana that came out for the last election,” he said. “And Nativo is the spark that got them mobilized.”

Born in Los Angeles into a fifth-generation Mexican American family, Lopez, now 46, began his political activism early, starting a high school Chicano student organization in the 1960s. He worked as a court translator and volunteered for several Latino civil rights organizations before coming to Orange County to start the Hermandad chapter.

Amin David, a longtime Santa Ana community leader, said he remembered meeting a young man full of ideas and dreams. “We welcomed him with open arms because we knew the work that needed to be done down here,” said David, who remains a friend of Lopez. “To me, he was a Cesar Chavez kind of guy.”

Lopez said he worked without a salary for five years while making contacts and building a base of clients. And he quickly became a thorn in the side of the local political establishment. Lopez organized rent strikes, walked picket lines with striking drywallers, defended illegal immigrant rights and regularly packed city council chambers with hundreds of placard-carrying Hermandad members.

Soon, the Orange County chapter became the jewel of the Hermandad organization, which was formed in San Diego in 1951 and now has about a dozen autonomous chapters nationwide--in Chicago, New York and throughout California.

While most other chapters are small, low-profile affairs run out of a single office or a run-down building, Lopez has built up the Orange County operation to fill a large two-story building with a printing press, a classroom that can hold 500 students, a job training section with computers and a library, and a maze of offices and meeting rooms.

According to organization records kept at a Los Angeles office, the entire Hermandad organization operates on a $2.5-million annual budget. Most--about $1.6 million--comes from state and federal grants. The remainder comes from class fees, membership dues and other contributions.

Lopez is now paid $47,000 a year, according to the records.

Hermandad bookkeeper Antonio Montano said the organization served about 13,000 clients last year in all its offices. Most of those clients, he said, were students in English and citizenship courses.

According to Lopez, 10,000 of those clients attended classes at the Santa Ana office alone.

In a sense, Hermandad’s success in Orange County stems from its relationship with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. After a 1986 law granted amnesty to scores of illegal immigrants, Hermandad quickly geared up to help tens of thousands of Orange County residents through the process.

Now most of those people are becoming eligible for citizenship after a five-year waiting period, and Hermandad is once again ready to step in to help. This time, the organization has a relationship with the INS that allows Hermandad instructors to administer a citizenship test.

Also, INS officials periodically come to the Hermandad office to give an oral exam testing knowledge of English and American civics, one of the final steps in the citizenship process. After passing the exam, applicants usually must wait several months before they are sworn in as citizens at a ceremony.

Although the citizenship class is not mandatory, many immigrants feel a need to study English and civics before taking the test. Hermandad receives government funding as well as client fees to provide the classes.

The 19 Hermandad students who were interviewed said after they passed the INS test or interview, they were approached by someone in Hermandad’s Santa Ana office who urged them to register to vote and apply for an absentee ballot.

Voting before becoming a citizen is prosecutable as a felony and could result in deportation.

Lopez conceded that the students voted before becoming citizens, but attributed it to their eagerness to vote or misunderstandings on their part. He said instructors would be more clear about the timing of citizenship in the future.

Every day at the Santa Ana office, scores of members, who pay $20 a year in dues, pick up food or clothing at periodic giveaways, or ask for legal or political assistance. The activity is so great that Hermandad employs a parking lot attendant to keep traffic flowing, and a food vendor is stationed daily outside the front door. Many of those who arrive speak with reverence of “Don Nativo,” their champion and benefactor.

In a recent interview, Lopez spoke of his membership’s growing political strength--and of the potential for a backlash.

“People who have had the power see these people coming up,” he said. “They’re going to be wanting a bigger piece of the pie. They’re going to be clamoring for it. We want a piece of that.”