Salvadorans Stake Their Claim in Southland Political Game

Sure, $550 spread among three City Council candidates is not likely to win any elections.

But to Southern California’s approximately 750,000 residents with roots in El Salvador, that money--raised for races in Los Angeles and Glendale by Salvadoran Americans--represents a major victory. With it, members of this fast-growing community have staked their claim in local politics, hoping to emerge from obscurity and elect a few of their own.

Those are goals of the Salvadoran American Political Action Committee, or Sal-PAC, the only registered lobby for Central Americans living in the U.S.

This group of lawyers, entrepreneurs and other professionals--most of them in their 20s--aims to push the Salvadoran perspective on an array of issues affecting the region’s about 1.5 million Central Americans--including crime, health care and immigrant rights.

Their efforts are a sign of what observers call growing sophistication in the Central American community as Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Nicaraguan families who fled civil wars in the 1980s sink deeper roots in Southern California.

“There is no political voice yet among Central Americans,” said Mari Lopez, a Sal-PAC board member who coordinates community programs for the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials. “What there is amounts to a little squeak.”

But as they apply for citizenship in greater numbers, “People from Central America are starting to look for attention from their elected officials,” she said. “We have our own issues that are different than the rest of the Latino community. But when it comes to public education and the quality of life in our neighborhoods, we have the same concerns as everybody else.”

Second Largest Latino Group in Southland

A 1996 demographic study of local Central Americans conducted by the Latino officials association and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont showed signs of prosperity in the Salvadoran community, slightly more than among Guatemalans and Nicaraguans.

Already, Salvadorans are the second largest Latino group in Southern California, behind Mexican Americans. Almost a third are U.S. citizens, the study found, and about 13% own their own homes. Nearly 30% have annual household incomes of more than $35,000; about 9% earn more than $50,000. One-tenth of the community owns a business, the study found, and 2% hold American college degrees.

The numbers are promising, considering that most have been living in the United States less than 20 years, said Sal-PAC President Randy Jurado-Ertll, 26, a political strategist with the California League of Conservation Voters.

“We’re becoming a vibrant community with a growing middle class, kids who go to universities and become professionals and families who follow politics here and not in El Salvador,” said Jurado-Ertll.

Like leaders in the Jewish or Irish communities before them, he said, Sal-PAC intends to establish its community’s political clout in true American fashion--with money. The group also hopes to carve a political bloc from the about 100,000 Salvadoran American registered voters in L.A. and Orange counties.

State Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont) and Duarte school board member Reyna Diaz are the only Salvadoran Americans now holding public office in California. “Our ultimate goal is to have one of our own board members run,” Jurado-Ertll said.

For Tuesday’s elections, Sal-PAC endorsed city council candidates Alex Padilla and Madison Shockley in Los Angeles, and Gus Gomez in Glendale, splitting the $550 among them and providing campaign volunteers. The group raised about $5,000 for the state elections in November, divided among five candidates, including Gov. Gray Davis.

The money isn’t much, but “every little bit helps,” said Padilla, a 26-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who has collected $200,000 in his bid to fill the council seat in the northeast San Fernando Valley that Richard Alarcon left vacant when he became a state senator.

At their fund-raisers and meetings, Sal-PAC members tell politicians that Central Americans will someday play a key role in local elections.

More and More Move Out of Pico-Union

Salvadoran American families are increasingly moving from the Pico-Union area near downtown L.A., where most new arrivals settle, to the northeast Valley, southeast Los Angeles County and north Orange County, community leaders said.

Noting the same shift in his hometown of Pacoima, Padilla, a Mexican American, said, “One of my favorite taco stands as a kid is now a pupuseria.”

Along Van Nuys Boulevard, in what for years was a mostly Mexican American area, there are clusters of Salvadoran restaurants specializing in pupusa meat pastries.

The group’s outward migration from its barrio near downtown provides Sal-PAC with increased clout, group leaders say. “We can be the swing vote in several districts,” Jurado-Ertll said.

In November, Sal-PAC helped register more than 5,000 Salvadoran American voters on behalf of Anaheim Democrat Lou Correa, providing the Mexican American with breathing room in an Assembly race he won by 5,300 votes.

“My area has the second lowest voter turnout in the state,” said Correa, whose district includes the Salvadoran Consulate in Santa Ana. “Voter turnout is the key to any victory. To us, [the registration drive] was golden.” Beyond mobilizing voters, “the value of Sal-PAC is getting people to become aware of their issues,” he said.

A chief concern among Salvadorans is what the group calls unfair treatment of immigrants under the federal Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act of 1997.

A byproduct of lingering Cold War views, the federal immigration statute grants blanket amnesty to Nicaraguans and Cubans who fled the Sandinista and Castro regimes. For Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees, however, who fled U.S.-backed dictatorships during the 1980s, the law requires each individual to prove that he or she would suffer “extreme hardship” if deported, a costly legal hurdle.

Sal-PAC and other Central American activists say the policy cripples immigrant efforts to gain legal residency and ignores proof of widespread human rights violations in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Sal-PAC has begun lobbying to change the law, which the Clinton administration is already scrutinizing. When President Clinton toured Central America last month to witness the destruction left by Hurricane Mitch, Jurado-Ertll was part of a contingent that flew to El Salvador to lobby for changes in the immigration law.

The issue, said Jurado-Ertll, took a back seat to the hurricane.

“We didn’t have much access to the Clinton administration,” he said. “But we’ve advised other groups on what to say to his aides. Hopefully, the message got through.”

‘A Continuation of the American Dream’

Some legislators have agreed to champion Sal-PAC causes. At a recent fund-raiser at the San Salvador Restaurant near downtown, aides to Rep. Xavier Becerra, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, all Los Angeles Democrats, sampled a $25-per-plate pupusa buffet and talked over live cumbia music.

Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Alhambra) told the audience of 50 or so Salvadoran activists and business leaders that the formation of Sal-PAC “is a continuation of the American dream.” She also urged unity among Central Americans and Mexican Americans.

The sentiment is spreading, as local Guatemalan, Nicaraguan and Honduran leaders view Sal-PAC as a model for their own aspirations.

Guatanet--a national nonprofit group for Guatemalan Americans, who number about 500,000 in Southern California--predicts a Guatemalan political lobby being formed this year. About 100,000 Nicaraguan Americans live in the Southland too.