Caught in a Battle for Survival : SPECIAL REPORT * Bell Gardens’ most prominent politician helped wrest control of the city from whites and established Latino power. But former allies are now denouncing her as she is . . .

In Bell Gardens, home to 44,000 people, one woman dominates the community’s political life. To some, she is a heroine, a leader in the movement for Latino power. To others, she is a bully and a demagogue who is single-handedly destroying city government.

Her name is Maria S. Chacon. She is a Mexican immigrant from Chihuahua who became an American citizen just a few years ago.

Nearly everyone agrees that Chacon helped orchestrate the 1991 revolution that swept out the City Council’s old guard. Now, after years filled with embarrassingly wacky public meetings and near-riots at City Hall, many of Chacon’s old allies have had enough.

“Councilwoman Chacon is a cancer on this city!” resident Gabriel Velasco said during the Aug. 24 council meeting, a typically raucous gathering punctuated by hissing, cheers and bilingual catcalls. That meeting, like others before, ended with police escorting Mayor David Torres and his council allies out a side exit lest they be physically attacked by the Chacon supporters at the front door.

A similar kind of disorder has spread throughout the Bell Gardens body politic since the revolution, with persistent allegations of corruption, nepotism and general incompetence at City Hall. Bell Gardens has become the laughingstock of suburban Los Angeles County government, prompting more than a few residents to wonder what has gone wrong.

“I don’t like this for my city,” Betty Avila told the council that August night, echoing the sentiments of many. “This is a farce.”

Why is Bell Gardens mired in conflict when neighboring, once largely white cities like South Gate have made a relatively smooth transition to Latino power?

A look at the historical record shows that the self-righteousness of the leaders who took over Bell Gardens’ city government in the early 1990s was corrupted by an undercurrent of self-interest.

Some of the leaders were landlords with years of gripes against City Hall. Their movement launched a vengeful, wholesale housecleaning of Bell Gardens’ bureaucracy, dooming the city to years of political chaos.

All five members of the current City Council cut their political teeth in the movement Chacon helped start. In fact, no Latino has ever been elected to the Bell Gardens City Council without Chacon’s support, including the three members who are today her declared enemies.

“It’s been devastating and painful,” says Chacon, “for me to see that people you think you know, people you supported, can turn their backs on you so quickly.”

Few of her former allies raised any protest when Police Chief Fredrick Freeman took the extraordinary step of walking into Chacon’s City Hall office Aug. 12 and taking her into custody for allegedly inciting a disturbance during a council meeting two nights earlier.

“The news of her arrest pleased many people,” said former Mayor Frank Duran, who was elected to the council in 1992 with Chacon running his campaign. “She deserves to be arrested and dragged out.”

Old Council Accused of Anti-Latino Efforts

Once, nearly every Latino in Bell Gardens was united in a cause.

In 1990, Latinos made up 87% of the population in the self-proclaimed “Hub of Progress.” Yet no Latino had ever been elected to the council.

The revolution that would change that started at the nearby Huntington Park courthouse, where Bell Gardens’ Municipal Court cases are heard. It was there that a number of landlords, including Maria Chacon, felt that they were being hounded by the city to improve their properties.

Chacon would help organize those property owners into the core of a movement.

“Division 5 in the courthouse was full of property owners who had a dream just like everyone else,” Chacon recalled. “They came to this country to buy a piece of land, only to be persecuted [by city officials]. Each one of us thought they were alone.”

Bell Gardens officials had charged Chacon with multiple code violations, court records show, after she ignored an order to improve conditions at her property on Gallant Street for five months. She pleaded guilty to one violation and was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.

“She was abusing her tenants,” said former Bell Gardens building inspector Carlos Levario, who said he worked on the case. “They were living in substandard conditions.”

Another landlord who would become a leader in the movement, George T. Deitch, was cited for vermin infestations at one of his apartment complexes after his election to the council.

Housing in Bell Gardens had deteriorated, in part, because of overcrowding in the city. During the 1980s, Latino immigration fueled a 24% population increase. In 1991 the council--then made up of five whites--approved a plan to lower density by reducing the number of apartment units. The plan to rezone 3,000 properties would also have effectively limited construction of new apartments.

Opposition to the rezoning plan united the landlords and their Latino tenants, allowing the landlords to embrace the rhetoric of ethnic politics. If there were fewer apartments, the argument went, there would be fewer Latinos.

Chacon organized a drive to recall the white council members. It was soon known as the No Rezoning Committee. She charged the council with trying to empty Bell Gardens of Latinos.

“The sleeping giant has awakened,” Chacon told The Times in December 1991. “The council has lost touch with the city. They are arrogant. . . . They are racist.”

Four white council members were ousted. Four new council members were elected--with Chacon, not yet a U.S. citizen and thus unable to run, acting as their campaign manager. In 1994, Chacon won a council seat and eventually became mayor.

Once in power, the No Rezoners purged not only top-level city administrators, but also code inspectors and other lower officials, creating what detractors describe as a climate of intimidation that continues to define politics in the city.

The new council’s alleged abuses of power are outlined in a series of lawsuits filed by former employees.

Former building inspector Levario alleged that Chacon and fellow council members Ramiro Morales, Rodolfo Garcia and George Deitch demoted him because he “reported the property of council members as needing rehabilitation.” Bell Gardens paid Levario an undisclosed amount to settle the lawsuit.

Samuel Macias, a former public works supervisor, claimed in another lawsuit that council members targeted him for retaliation when he refused to hire one of their supporters for a city job.

Macias’ suit also detailed an encounter with Chacon at City Hall, just after a group of Bell Gardens residents had filed a recall petition against her. Chacon wanted to know where Macias stood on the recall, “strongly implying that if he did not politically support her, his job would be in jeopardy,” the suit states.

Macias was later laid off--for budgetary reasons, according to the city. Bell Gardens eventually paid more than $200,000 to settle his lawsuit.

Chacon denied Macias’ allegations.

“What would I need his help for?” she asked dismissively.

Chacon, who will stand for reelection next year, sees herself as an ever-vigilant bulwark against corruption, a woman dismayed to have launched so many political careers only to be betrayed by her lesser, selfish allies. “It feels good to empower people. I believe that we have to do it,” she says.

Decades of Experience Destroyed, Critics Say

In all, Bell Gardens has agreed to pay about $2.5 million to at least 10 former employees who claim they were unfairly dismissed or demoted after the No Rezoners came to power, city officials say. Among the former officials receiving settlements are two city managers, a city clerk, a police chief, a personnel director and a recreation director.

The dismissals of about 20 city workers--and the recall of all but one council member--effectively wiped out decades of government experience, critics say. Bell Gardens’ new leaders were rookies without anyone they trusted to guide them.

Soon they found themselves the subject of much unwanted publicity.

Councilman Garcia came under fire for taking personal loans from city bureaucrats. Mayor Josefina Macias threw a chair at Councilman Duran during a closed session. And the only historic landmark in the city fell into disrepair when its longtime caretaker was fired and replaced by a councilman’s nephew.

Later, Chacon’s sister, Rosa Cobos, received city-allocated funding for a computer education center she operates. Many more council relatives were appointed to city commissions.

“They think it’s the way it is in Mexico, that when you get in power, you bring in your friends,” said one high-ranking Latino official active in Democratic Party politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They got rid of people who were not going to be ‘yes’ people. In doing that, they lost a lot of good administrators.”

‘We Realized We Were Being Used as Puppets’

Angered by the firings and by cuts in youth programs, former Councilwoman Rosa Hernandez helped lead a drive to recall Chacon and Morales. Even members of the Bell Gardens Police Department joined the effort, some marching in support of the recall outside City Hall.

Chacon responded by organizing boisterous demonstrations at the council meeting.

Carlos Daniel Lopez, once the president of a Bell Gardens soccer league, said Chacon asked him to attend council meetings with dozens of his young players.

“We would go to the meetings and shout, ‘Chacon! Chacon!’ ” Lopez said. The soccer players felt beholden to Chacon because she had persuaded the council to pay for their uniforms, Lopez said. But he said he soon found himself at protests that had little to do with his soccer league--including some at the Montebello Unified School District, which serves Bell Gardens children.

“We realized we were being used as puppets,” Lopez said. “It was pure manipulation.”

Finally, Lopez told Chacon he had had enough. Chacon, he says, reminded him about the free uniforms and the players’ debt to her. At the next council meeting, Lopez denounced Chacon and dumped dozens of soccer uniforms in front of the dais, an act of public humiliation for which, he says, Chacon never forgave him.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Lopez outlines his version of what happened next. With their children watching, Lopez and his wife were arrested and hauled off to jail for allegedly embezzling $700. Lopez’s suit alleges that Chacon, then the mayor, had used her power to order the police investigation. A judge later dismissed the embezzlement charges.

“She is an arrogant and despotic woman,” Lopez says of Chacon.

Chacon calls Lopez a malagradecido, or ingrate. Of his charges, she says, “That is not true. He’s going to have to go to court to prove that.”

In 1997, three new council members--David Torres, Joaquin Penilla and Salvador Rios--were elected to the council, supported by Chacon under the banner of the No Rezoning Committee. (The three defeated incumbents were themselves Chacon allies who had broken with her.)

But Torres said Chacon also turned against him and the other new council members soon after they were sworn in, when the council met to decide which of their members would take the largely ceremonial position of mayor.

“I was elected and [Chacon] got angry,” Torres said. “She started to threaten me.”

Penilla said that after he joined the council, Chacon “told me, ‘I put you in here. You’ll do what I say or get out.’ ”

Chacon and council ally Morales have fired back with allegations of petty corruption.

Councilman Rios, they say, took $1,650 in city funds to help pay for his honeymoon trip to San Diego. Rios did not return calls seeking comment. City Manager Nabar Martinez said Rios has returned the money to the city.

Said Chacon: “I stand up against corruption, so I am in the way of a lot of people who do bad things.”

Chants of ‘Recall!’ Are All Too Familiar

Chacon and Morales have denounced the mayor and the council majority for allegedly planning to restrict churches in residential neighborhoods and for raising the council’s remuneration from a $350 monthly travel allowance to $31,000 a year in salary and stipends.

The enmity between the former allies reached a climax at the Aug. 10 council meeting.

Cobos, Chacon’s sister, rose to speak during the public comment part of the meeting, then refused to cede the microphone. Mayor Torres abruptly adjourned the meeting. Police cleared the council chambers.

Although the details of what happened next are in dispute, both sides agree that there was a confrontation between Chacon and her husband, Jesse, on one hand and Police Chief Freeman on the other.

Two days later, Chacon and her husband were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace and obstructing a police officer. The charges are pending.

The heated debate resumed at the next council meeting, which began with the council majority excluding Chacon and Morales from a closed session--a move that prompted Morales to compare Mayor Torres to the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. Once the public session got underway, Chacon and Torres engaged in an hourlong verbal wrestling match.

“Mrs. Chacon, you’re out of order,” Torres repeated again and again.

“Mayor Torres, you’re not my father!” Chacon snapped back.

The meeting ended with Chacon’s supporters in the audience--which included about two dozen young people from a neighborhood youth center--yelling a chant that has become all too familiar in Bell Gardens.

“Recall! Recall! Recall!”

True to their word, a few days later Chacon and her supporters filed papers to recall the council majority they had put in office.