Furor Over Election Spotlights Latino Aid 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 claim Hermandad clients have been manipulated for political and financial gain.

Now Hermandad is at the center of controversy involving charges of voting by noncitizens who were taking classes at the 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 charges 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.

Asencion Briseno, a board member who has volunteered at the organization for more than a decade, said: “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 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 and 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 up the crowd as they waited for an appearance by congresswoman-elect Sanchez.

Petite and wearing oversized glasses, 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.

“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, charged that Hermandad is rife with favoritism. “Nativo runs that place like a dictator, and all those members are like puppets,” he said.

Lopez, who ran a successful campaign for the Santa Ana Unified School District board last fall, was appointed president at the board’s first meeting.

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

Sanchez and her campaign chairman, Wylie 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.

Born in Los Angeles into a fifth-generation Mexican American family, Lopez, 46, worked as a court translator and volunteered for several Latino civil rights organizations before starting Orange County’s Hermandad chapter.

Lopez said he worked without a salary for five years while building a client base. And he quickly became a thorn in the side of the local political establishment. Lopez organized rent strikes, defended illegal immigrants’ 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.

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 containing a printing press, a classroom that can hold 500 students and a job training center.

The 19 Hermandad students who were interviewed by The Times said that after they passed the Immigration and Naturalization Service 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 in the future.

In a recent interview, Lopez spoke of his membership’s growing political strength and 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.”