Sobering Facts

By SONIA NAZARIO

March 21, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES URBAN AFFAIRS WRITER

As she often does on these cemetery visits, 7-year-old Jasmin Morales holds a 16-ounce can of Budweiser over her grandfather’s gravestone.

The thin girl with waist-length hair and pleated blue sundress waits as her father, Raul, plucks away grass grown over the grave. Raul blows hard on the stone, whisking away remnants of dirt.

“There you go, pops. All cleaned up. Probably thirsty, huh?” Raul says. Carefully, lovingly, sweat trickling down his face, Raul pours the Budweiser around the marker, framing his father’s grave in a froth of bubbles.

“You never thought you would see me sober,” Raul murmurs at the ground, surrounded by his wife and children. His massive chest heaves as he begins to sob.

Raul regularly goes to the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in the San Fernando Valley to fulfill his alcoholic father’s dying wish: Forget the flowers, just bring me beer. But the ritual has taken on a new meaning for Raul, who is recovering from two decades of boozing. For him, pouring beer into the ground rather than down his throat is a way to show his family that he rejects the fate of his father--who died seven years ago at 69, shuddering from alcohol withdrawals, his arms and legs tied to a hospital bed.

“I don’t have to die this death,” Raul says. A towering 41-year-old with tattoo-covered arms, he bows and kisses the headstone. One by one, his children touch their lips to the spot. With a hard look, he says to them: “You guys know you don’t have to drink and drug.” Eight Morales men who dot Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery drank themselves to death.

It is a message Raul presses on any Latino who will listen. Once or twice a week, in his booming voice, Raul touts sobriety at schools and churches, striving to stem a problem that health experts say has gone unaddressed for far too long: Alcohol is devastating parts of the Mexican American community.

As Raul and others speak out, they venture into sensitive territory. Although many Mexican American public figures and groups privately acknowledge the harm inflicted by alcohol, few have tackled the topic publicly, in part from fear it would cement ugly stereotypes. But doing nothing, many health officials warn, will hold back the nation’s largest Latino group, one that makes up nearly a third of all Californians.

“This is a major public health problem,” says Raul Caetano, the former director of the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, which recently conducted what is considered the most authoritative survey of drinking among Mexican Americans. “A quarter of adult Mexican American men are problem drinkers. That is a hell of a lot of people.”

Frequent heavy drinking among Mexican American men, says Nelba Chavez, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ top official on substance abuse, “is a problem that is so serious that we need to figure out how to address it as quickly as possible.”

“This needs to be talked about,” says state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), one of California’s most powerful Latino politicians, who grew up with an alcoholic father on Los Angeles’ Eastside. “Many of us have known about this problem for some time. Now, it is being substantiated.”

Last year, the federal government undertook its first detailed ethnic look at substance abuse. It found that Mexican American men have the highest rates of heavy, problem drinking--downing five or more drinks in one sitting at least five times a month. The rates were a third higher than any of the 11 groups surveyed, including Native Americans.

About 23% of Mexican American men--30% in California--are frequent heavy, problem drinkers, compared with 12% of white men and 15% of black men, another Alcohol Research Group survey found. (Alcohol geneticists say there is no known physiological reason for higher rates of heavy problem drinking among Mexican American men).

Nationwide, Mexican Americans are nearly twice as likely to be arrested for drunk driving as whites or blacks. In Los Angeles, cirrhosis of the liver kills Mexican American men at double the rate of white and black men. In autopsies conducted at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, alcohol abuse felled more than half of all Mexican American men who died between age 30 and 60, compared with less than a quarter of white or black men of those ages.

The problem among Mexican Americans is not restricted to immigrants or the poor. In fact, it is more pronounced among immigrants’ U.S.-born children. According to the federal survey, roughly the same percentage of Mexican Americans with family incomes of more than $40,000 as those who earn less than $20,000 are dependent on alcohol.

Most heavy, problem drinkers are not physically addicted to alcohol. More than one in four Mexican American men don’t touch liquor. Also, few Mexican American women abuse alcohol, resulting in the greatest gender gap in drinking problems of any ethnic group studied, the federal government found. Experts stress that other ethnic groups use less alcohol but more illegal drugs, which still carry a strong stigma in Mexico and among first generation Mexican Americans.

Still, more than one-third of Mexican American men surveyed in 1995 said drinking had led to at least one of a dozen alcohol-related problems--from drunk driving to domestic violence to getting fired, the Alcohol Research Group found. The proportion of whites and blacks with three or more alcohol-induced problems declined after 1984; for Mexican Americans, it nearly doubled.

After leaving the cemetery, Raul Morales stays up all night, trying to convince a long-sober neighbor out on a binge to put the bottle down.

Later that week, Raul worries about 4-year-old Wendy Galarza-Ramirez and her mother, 19-year-old Maria Concepcion “Concha” Galarza, who live in a nearby apartment. Twice in the last two years, Concha’s husband, Alberto, has been arrested for beating her. Drunk, Alberto once whipped her back with a belt; she hid under the bed, bleeding. When the beatings begin, Concha tells her daughter that it is just “playing.”

A week after his cemetery visit, Raul visits his barber, an old friend. As the man snips his hair, he drinks shots of tequila. His eyes have turned bright yellow. His liver has turned to stone. It is the last haircut he ever gives. The barber dies later that month.

“Alcohol,” Morales says, “is an atom bomb going off here.”

Hanging Out

At 10 on one Sunday night in Northridge’s Park Parthenia Apartments, half a dozen of Raul Morales’ old drinking companions are swigging beers around a stubby palm tree in the parking lot. The men call this place La Palma. There are hundreds of spots like it in Los Angeles.

The men--house painters or factory workers in their late 20s and early 30s--stand around a Toyota pickup parked against the palm. On the flatbed, a large blue cooler brims with Bud Lights. Ranchera music, Mexico’s equivalent of country, blares from the truck radio. The men’s eyes are glassy, their voices loud. Each grasps a longneck.

Alejandro “El Alcohol” Galarza, from apartment No. 7, sucks down a beer in seconds. Next to him, wearing a broad-brimmed straw cowboy hat, is Silvestre Escalante from No. 4. He says he’s been drinking only moderately, “solo un doce,” just one 12-pack. Rafael Gutierrez, who shares an apartment with Silvestre and others, boasts that he downed 60 beers yesterday after playing soccer. Today, he says, the tally is 30.

“I feel good,” Rafael says. “I’m not drunk.” The other men nod approvingly. “I have control over the alcohol. It doesn’t have control over me. I know guys,” he adds with obvious disdain, “who with seven or eight beers fall down.”

La Palma provides a patch of shade in the parking lot that rings the 466-unit maze of candy-pink and baby-blue stucco apartments dubbed Tijuanitas, or Little Tijuana. Here, estimates Helga Ramirez, a social worker at neighboring Napa Street Elementary School, a third of the men are heavy, problem drinkers. Drunkenness is so common that children play borrachito, being drunk, on the school playground, giggling as they imitate fathers stumbling and falling down.

The men meet at the tree some nights after work, the weekly soccer game, much of Saturday and Sunday. They talk of female conquests, imagined conquests, sports, their jobs. All came to the U.S. alone. Some are crammed into apartments with a dozen or more other single men. Some have been joined by their wives and children.

There are few certainties in life, the men at La Palma say, but one is that if a man works hard, he has a right to drink as much as he wants. “Whoever drinks the most is the biggest man,” Alejandro says. “If a guy provides his family with the basics, his wife has no right to squawk that he’s drinking too much.”

Women never come to La Palma. In Mexico, particularly in rural areas, women who drink are considered loose--a cultural stigma that has carried over into the United States. According to a UCLA study, three-quarters of Mexican immigrant women do not drink at all, compared to 36% of American women.

“I think badly of any woman who drinks two, or one even,” says Alejandro. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he says any woman who drinks is a “vieja cochina,” a dirty old hag.

Liquor divides Park Parthenia into two worlds. The men drink. The women tend children, clean, cook. At baptisms, children’s birthday parties, quinceaneras--even funerals--women at Park Parthenia say it is common for men to congregate separately, binging on beer, a social pattern observed in studies that analyze Mexican American drinking.

Like many La Palma men, Rafael Gutierrez began to drink heavily when he arrived in the United States from Guadalajara seven years ago. Starting out as a day laborer, he hung out by Northridge Lumber, a few blocks from Park Parthenia. Those who didn’t get picked pooled their money to buy beer. In Mexico, a six-pack cost Rafael a half-day’s wages; coming home drunk to his parents, especially his mother, would have been highly disrespectful, he says. In the U.S., beer is cheap.

At construction jobs, colleagues derided nondrinkers, “Mandilon! Tu mujer te pega!” Coward! Your woman has you whipped! For Rafael and his companions, drinking is a way for men to preserve pride--a public act of defiance and control. “The women don’t want us to drink,” says Rafael, who admits that beer has created problems with his girlfriend. “I drink one, and she gets pissed. So I drink more. I might get drunk just to show her up. The women here think they are more than the men. Here, you hit a woman, and the police come and get you. Not like in Mexico. So you start to have problems.”

Each country, each culture, has different norms about drinking--when and how much is acceptable, the perceived benefits and risks. In Mexico, Spanish conquerors built distilleries and compensated hacienda workers with liquor. Today, some field hands still receive alcohol as a portion of their payment.

Mexico ranks among the top 10 nations in alcohol problems; deaths from liver disease run more than triple the U.S. rate, besting even Russia. Among men, Mexican researchers have found, drinking usually occurs in binges, but often only on payday, every two weeks. Studies show that binges become more frequent after the men arrive in the United States.

“They leave their families behind. They can’t understand the language, the culture,” says Esther Arias McDowell, who works on Latino drinking issues for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. They encounter hostility from some U.S.-born Mexican Americans, who often treat immigrants as country bumpkins, she says. Long hours of work leave their children open to the seduction of the local gang. Bombarded with the message that Latinos are “less than,” Mexican Americans eventually internalize that view and treat themselves accordingly, says Arias McDowell. “They drink more to self-medicate.”

The men who hang out at La Palma express pride in those who have el vicio, the vice. But they have contempt for regulars like Alejandro “El Alcohol” Galarza, who have el gran vicio, the big vice--for men whose drinking prevents them from holding down a job. Alejandro, who has worked as a waiter, has had to go back to day labor, to sitting with recent arrivals on a mound of dirt outside Northridge Lumber for a $50 construction or gardening job.

When Alejandro is hung over, which is most mornings, he walks across the street around 6:30 a.m. to Lorenzo’s Jr. Liquor Market, where posters of Bud Light girls in skimpy swimsuits plaster the walls. Sometimes, his hands shake. His stomach and liver ache. “I pour down a beer,” he says, “and I feel better.”

When he tries to stop, he lasts four days. The urge eventually overpowers him. He sends a friend to the liquor store to get him a caguama, a 40-ouncer. “I have one,” he says, “and I can’t stop.”

Simple Demographics

Imagine a beer company targeting American Indians, using an advertising campaign laden with cultural symbols and blanketing reservations with billboards. “There would be an uproar,” says Arnoldo Torres, executive director of the California Hispanic Health Care Assn. When one small brewer launched Crazy Horse beer in 1992, with a picture of the Sioux warrior on the bottle, it was banned in Minnesota and Washington, and ultimately pulled from most shelves. Last fall, though, Anheuser-Busch launched Azteca, a beer aimed at Mexican Americans. Currently sold only in Southern California, it boasts a red and white Mexican pyramid as its logo.

“No one markets liquor to Indians,” says Torres. “But Budweiser markets heavily to Hispanics and Mexican Americans.”

For beer companies, the lure of Latinos is simple demographics. Young adults, in general, are the nation’s biggest drinkers, and Latinos on average are younger than other Americans. They also rank among the fastest-growing groups in the U.S.

Since 1981, per capita consumption of beer has declined nationwide. Researchers believe that most of that decline has occurred among whites, making Latinos a critical market--particularly because a greater percentage of Latinos drink beer than any other ethnic group, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau.

“[Beer companies] have realized Latinos drink a lot more, so they are fighting for this market,” says Albert Melina, who has lobbied to reduce alcohol-related billboards on behalf of the nonprofit San Fernando Valley Partnership. “They are reaching out to a community that is disenfranchised, that has problems. And they are trying to push beer on them.”

The nation’s top domestic brewers--Anheuser-Busch Cos., Coors Brewing Co. and Philip Morris Cos., owners of Miller Brewing Co.--boosted their Spanish-language advertising to a combined $31 million in 1997, from $26.3 million the previous year. Anheuser-Busch and Philip Morris are among the nation’s top eight advertisers to Latinos.

Many health activists identify Anheuser-Busch--maker of Bud Light, the No. 1 brand among Mexican Americans--as the most aggressive beer marketer. Last year, the company increased its stake of Grupo Modelo SA, Mexico’s largest beer company and maker of Corona, to 50.2%.

Sylvia Castillo, associate director at Los Angeles’ Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, says the marketing of beer to Latinos “is pouring gas onto a flame.”

Jeff Becker, vice president of alcohol issues for the Beer Institute, says that’s absurd. “You always have critics, people who will say we prey on people,” he says. “But our marketing and other practices are very responsible.”

The industry, he says, has spent more than $300 million in the past decade to promote responsible drinking. “A lot of public health advocates want to villainize the industry. They’ve got the wrong enemy. The enemy is alcohol abuse.”

Anheuser-Busch’s West Coast corporate manager, Luis De Leon, says that as a Mexican American, he finds criticism of his company’s ads offensive. “To suggest that an ethnic group needs protection from certain types of ads,” he says, “is elitist, condescending and insulting to that ethnic group.”

Beer ad campaigns aimed at Latinos, counters George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, often have a harder edge than those directed at a broader audience. He and others cite a Budweiser ad that plays off a popular Mexican nationalist saying--”Como Mexico no hay dos. Como Budweiser Tampoco.” Mexico has no equal. Neither does Budweiser.

In recent years, the industry has emphasized sponsorships as a marketing strategy, funding low-rider car shows, mariachi festivals, rodeos and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. IEG Sponsorship Report, the main group that tracks corporate sponsorships, projects that in 1999, beer companies will spend $24 million to sponsor Latino events in the United States.

In California, Cinco de Mayo has become “one of the top party dates of the year,” an alcohol industry newsletter says. Beer banners, beer tents, inflatable beer cans and beer girls are a mainstay at most events. In some cities, including Los Angeles and San Jose, the holiday has been transformed from a low-key cultural event into heavy-drinking affairs that sometimes turn violent.

As the problems have mounted, there has been a backlash. Event organizers from Pasadena to Chicago to Washington, D.C., have turned down beer sponsorships and banned the public sale of alcohol.

Last year, the nonprofit CalPartners Coalition launched the first statewide effort to lobby cities to bar beer companies from Cinco de Mayo celebrations. In many Los Angeles County events, beer is still on tap.

A Long Road Back

Unlike his former drinking companions at La Palma, Raul Morales is third-generation Mexican American. He was once solidly middle class. His father, a lifelong military man, did stints in World War II and Korea. Raul grew up in Canoga Park in a three-bedroom, ranch-style home rimmed by roses.

After an honorable discharge from the Air Force in 1977, Raul took some college courses, worked as a foreman for two construction companies, then built his own handyman business. In flush times--his late 20s--he earned as much as $3,000 a week. He owned three motorcycles and a Lincoln Continental. For weekend parties, steaks were piled high in the spare freezer.

Raul, who sipped his first beer at age 7, told his wife, Maria, he drank to forget a childhood spent protecting his mother and sisters from his father’s drunken rages. “I could enter another world,” Raul says, “one without problems.”

Maria believes Raul’s drinking was intrinsic to his identity as a man, to being dominant. When Raul left a drinking session early, his friends would jeer that Maria had him “on a leash.”

Running his own construction crew, Raul would rise at 4 a.m. with a shot of tequila. He would drink beer straight through the day. After work, Maria sometimes found Raul passed out, slumped over the wheel of his car, the engine still running. By his early 30s, as booze made it hard to drag himself out of bed, Raul began to snort cocaine. Twenty-four beers a day became the norm.

Raul was arrested for drunk driving so many times that the police impounded seven cars in all. Raul hurt his back working, went on unemployment, fell months behind on the rent. He sold most of the family’s possessions. In 1986, Raul, Maria and their six children went on welfare and moved into a three-bedroom apartment in Park Parthenia.

There, he joined the local gang. Raul ended up drinking and drugging in the alley behind his apartment, financing both by selling crack.

The tattoo on Raul’s upper right arm reads El Tormento, The Torment. It became Maria’s name for Raul.

Four years ago, Maria says, Raul demanded $100. Forget it, she said, the money is to feed the children, not for beer. Raul hauled back and split her lip. When Rudy, their oldest child, stepped in, Raul hit him too.

No other drug, according to a 1990 federal report, is as closely associated with violence as alcohol. One U.S. Department of Justice report says half of convicted offenders in jail for violent crimes, including rape and assault, had used alcohol shortly before committing their crime. Studies show that in 25% of domestic violence cases, and 75% of those reported to police, the batterer was drinking.

Raul broke the living room window 20 times. He threw dishes. The glass coffee table. The television set.

The two youngest boys, Mauricio, now 10, and Angel, 9, hid under their beds or huddled together under a blanket. Oscar, 17, the stockiest son, would lock his arms around his father to keep the swinging from beginning. “I was so scared,” Oscar says, “so I would just hold him.” Froilan, the second oldest, used TV to tune out. Sometimes, he beat his head against the wall.

Jasmin, the youngest, sure that her father might be killed drinking outside at night, would try to barricade the door with her body. Raul would brush her aside.

Each night, Jasmin, who slept in her parents’ bed, awoke at 2 a.m. and shook her mother. “We are going out to look for my dad,” the girl would tell Maria. If Jasmin found Raul in the alleyway, she tugged at his hand, pleading, “If you love me, stop! Let’s go to bed, daddy. Please! Let’s go to bed.”

Maria preferred it when Raul was out of the house. When he returned home, he often wanted sex. If she rebuffed him, Raul would accuse her of whoring around--for Maria, the worst thing anyone can say to a traditional Mexican woman. Sometimes, Maria says, smoothing her skirt, she would give in just to protect her reputation. Other times, she says, Raul would pin her arms, would force himself on her.

Divorce, Maria’s mother said, was not an option. “Es tu cruz,” her mother said-- It is your cross to bear. Maria became despondent. She blamed herself: Raul wouldn’t drink if he were happier. Piles of dirty clothing and dishes accumulated. The place began to stink. In her most desperate moments, she told Raul: “I wish you were dead.”

When Raul’s earnings finally dwindled to nothing, Maria defied his wishes and found a job cleaning offices at night. Observing American women at work, it became clear: They were just as capable as the men. Maria became a volunteer at nearby Napa Street Elementary. She took self-esteem classes there. A teacher taught her to read and write. She became PTA president. She was one of six women at the school to form a weekly Al-Anon group, a support organization for family members of alcoholics. She learned she had to stop trying to save Raul or he would never hit bottom and get help.

In late 1996, Raul was arrested for selling crack to an undercover police officer. Maria didn’t bail him out. She didn’t take the children to visit.

On Christmas Eve, Raul called from jail. His conversation with Jasmin--whose name is tattooed across his belly--tore him apart.

The previous Christmas, Raul had arrived home drunk. He mistook the Christmas tree for his dead father. “Daddy! Daddy!” he bellowed, extending his arms. Jasmin, then 4, stood in his way. Raul shoved her aside, hugged the tree, then passed out on top of it, sending it crashing, breaking every ornament.

On the phone, Jasmin told Raul it would be best if he stayed locked up. “That way,” she said, “you can’t hurt my Christmas tree.” Besides, Jasmin said, he was nicer in jail, where he couldn’t drink.

Raul promised to stop.

He left jail a few months later in 1997 convinced that he could quit whenever he wanted. Instead, he headed straight for Lorenzo’s Jr. Liquor Market and drank until he lost consciousness.

Two days later, Raul froze in the middle of the street. It was 2 a.m. He was walking to Lorenzo’s. Nothing had changed. Only now, Jasmin didn’t search the streets at night for him. Maria had given him an ultimatum: three months to sober up or get out. He looked toward the winter sky and told God he would stop drinking. He went home, prayed and gave Maria every penny in his pocket. Later that day, he began an outpatient treatment program run by the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependency. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He has not touched a drop since.

For the last year, Raul has worked at Interviewing Service of America Inc., a market research company, where he was promoted to supervisor ahead of schedule. He has become a volunteer outreach worker for the National Council. He dreams of buying a house far from La Palma.

He struggles to gain the respect of his children. He tries to wrest control of being a father back from Rudy, who says he can never forgive him. “For me,” says Rudy, “my dad is no longer my dad. For me, he is dead.”

Maria has seen a remarkable change. “When he is sober,” she says, “he is a wonderful dad, a wonderful husband.” Still, she says, she is afraid to love or trust him again.

Raul is afraid of falling off the wagon, of landing in the graveyard that has claimed so many Morales men.

‘Gloria a Dios! ‘

At the Pentecostal Iglesia de Jesucristo one Thursday evening, minister Pedro Castaneda rises to deliver a sermon against alcohol abuse.

“How many ex-drunks are there here?” he asks the congregation of 80 men, women and children. Almost every man rises to his feet, many of them from Park Parthenia. Among them: Roberto Galarza, “El Alcohol’s” father.

“Alcohol is destroying a lot of Latino families,” Castaneda, a recovering alcoholic, tells the crowd. “With God, the man comes home from work, and that beer in his hands turns to juice, to milk for his children. What a difference when God is in the heart! Hallelujah!”

Everyone stands up. Their hands reach up, swaying. Faces drip sweat. They cry out with joy, clapping nonstop.

Castaneda recalls how his father taught him to make pulque, a fermented beverage, from Mexico’s maguey plant. “What does the maguey plant do for you now?” he asks.

“Nothing!” the crowd roars back.

The organist launches into song. “I was a boozer at bars. But now I’ve found God,” Roberto belts out the tune, his eyes closed, his hands reaching upward. “A drunk boozer who went to bars. But now I’ve found God.” As he sings, he lifts his 2-year-old granddaughter into his arms.

Men kneel before the altar. Others lay their hands on each other’s shoulders, chanting “Gloria a Dios!”, Glory to God, so fervently they shake. A cacophony of prayer fills the room. “Now I don’t need Budweiser--or Coors,” Castaneda bellows. Hoisting the word of God toward the heavens, he adds:”Now, I drink only from the Bible.”

The Park Parthenia men who come to hear Castaneda have few other places to turn for help. Neither do most Mexican Americans.

Not one federal or state program targets Mexican Americans, says William McColl, associate executive director of the National Assn. of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors. “They are getting the shortest end of the stick.”

In California, fewer than seven residential alcohol treatment programs focus on Latinos, according to Cal State Northridge Chicano studies professor Juana Mora, an alcohol treatment expert.

In the San Fernando Valley, population 1.3 million, there are two publicly funded, inpatient detox programs. It takes two months or longer to get in. Although the area is 30% Latino, neither has Spanish-language inpatient programs structured for Latinos--critical, many say, to luring Mexican American men into treatment.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Spanish are more available, but too often, says Arias McDowell of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, they drive men away by employing verbal abuse as part of the treatment. “English-language groups are less confrontational,” says Fred Hoffman, a USC sociology lecturer whose 1994 study detailed how terapia dura--rough therapy--is typical of most Spanish AA groups. Some counselors believe that Spanish-language AA should abandon the emotionally bruising approach and use what they see as a more productive, supportive style employed at English-language AA meetings.

Terapia dura, Hoffman says, carries over from AA in Latin America. Other alcohol counselors say tougher tactics are seen as necessary because, compared to whites, more Latinos come to AA because of a court order, not voluntarily. Mexican American culture, these counselors say, is so accepting of male binge-drinking that a heavy hand is needed to punch through denial. Few women attend Spanish-language sessions, so coarse language is common.

What’s left is a chasm between available treatment and need, especially for more intensive outpatient and residential programs. The federal government spends $17.1 billion a year to combat substance abuse. Last October, it allocated the first sum, $1.5 million, to ascertain what alcohol treatment approach might be most effective for Mexican Americans.

Mostly, Latinos are ignored when states determine how they will spend federal block grants for drug and alcohol prevention and treatment each year, acknowledges Chavez, the Department of Health and Human Services official. “The reality is,” says Chavez, who is Mexican American, “that people who look like many of us aren’t at the table making those decisions.”

Despite a recent $1-billion anti-drug advertising blitz, there are no major public awareness campaigns targeting the pervasive acceptance of heavy drinking in the Mexican American community.

Some consider such a campaign, preferably featuring a prominent Mexican American male, critical in changing attitudes as well as behavior, much as Mothers Against Drunk Driving helped reduce alcohol-related car accidents. Also needed are bilingual public service messages aimed at Mexican American women, telling them that if they don’t report a violent spouse to police, child welfare workers may arrive on their doorstep and take their children away, says Rogelio Tabarez, a Cal State Northridge professor of Chicano studies, who conducts classes for domestic violence offenders.

In the San Fernando Valley, Raul Morales is reaching out to Mexican Americans’ wives.

One evening, in a trailer behind Fernangeles Elementary School that serves as the parenting center, Raul stands stiffly before a dozen Latina women. Two have brought husbands.

“I swore not to be like my father. I said, ‘He has a problem, and he can’t even see it,’ ” Raul tells the group. “But I was worse--worse than the animal I feared becoming. . . . I have no pride in this, but I tell my children, ‘You had a very sick father.’ ”

Looking at each person in the room, he says they must break the cycle of drinking passed on generation to generation. “How many times have you come home tired, sat yourself in your chair, and told your young child--’Son, go get me a beer’?” he scolds.

His own wife, he says, thought that by buying him beer she was helping him, stemming his suffering. It was a mistake, he says. “With every beer she handed me, she was putting another nail in my coffin.”

Then, barking commands, Raul exhorts the women, “Let them tremble! Let them vomit! Let them suffer! Don’t bring them another beer!”

The women’s eyes grow wide. With each demand, Raul punches his meaty fist into the other hand, his silver rings clinking. “Say to them: ‘I won’t help you kill yourself.’ It’s hard. It’s hard to do this.”

One man, sitting next to his wife and baby, divulges that his father threatened his mother with a knife when he drank. He begins to sob, uncontrollably. Several women rush to him, offering white napkins. Later, the man says he is drinking and hitting his wife as well. “Call me later,” Raul says, pressing his home phone number into the man’s hand.

A spectacled woman with long black hair says her brother drinks until he falls to the ground. “What can I do?” she asks. It is clear to Raul that she is talking about her husband. Raul says that as long as his own wife and daughter searched for him at 2 a.m., he felt he didn’t need to change, that she would always bail him out. “Close the doors. Don’t help them,” Raul says.

“Shame. Pride. You say, ‘I am Mexican, I don’t have any problems.’ If you really love your husband, tell him about his problems. Tell him to get help. May God bless you.”

The women clap, loudly, as if he had opened a door.

“I never thought I would be here, telling you my darkest secrets,” Raul says. “But I want to let people know they can change.”

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At Risk

A nationwide survey by the Alcohol Research Group released in 1997 found that a greater proportion of Mexican American men were frequent heavy drinkers compared with other ethnic and racial groups.

Percentage of men who are frequent heavy drinkers

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1984 1995 Mexican American 20% 23% All Latinos 17% 18% Black 15% 15% White 20% 12%

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(Frequent heavy drinkers imbibe five or more drinks in one sitting at least once a week.)

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Mexican Americans and Alcohol Abuse

Mexican Americans Who Are Most Affected

Using medical definitions as guideposts, a recent study asked Mexican American men if they had been alcohol abusers or dependent on alcohol during their lifetime. Problems were more evident among urban than rural Mexican Americans, and among the U.S.-born than immigrants.

Lifetime prevalence based on geography:

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Urban Town Rural Alcohol abuse 3.8% 6.2% 4.6% Alcohol dependence 19.2% 15.3% 14.5% Total 23.0% 21.5% 19.1%

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Lifetime prevalence based on generational status:

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Immigrant Native born Alcohol abuse 3.1% 5.2% Alcohol dependence 12.2% 24.0% Total 15.3% 29.2%

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DEFINING TERMS

Alcohol Abuse: When drinking results in a variety of some of the following alcohol-related problems: reduced school or job performance; neglect of child care and household responsibilities; engaging in hazardous situations, such as driving intoxicated; and legal troubles.

Alcohol Dependence: When problems of alcohol abuse are accompanied by evidence of tolerance, withdrawal, or compulsive behavior related to alcohol use. Individuals who continue to use alcohol despite evidence of adverse psychological or physical consequences, such as blackouts and liver disease.

Source: “Lifetime Prevalence of DSM III Psychiatric Disorders Among Urban and Rural Mexican Americans in California,” by William A. Vega et al, September 1998

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The Consequences of Drinking

When men in the Alcohol Research Group survey were asked if they had experienced any of several alcohol-related problems--including problems with law enforcement, health, friends, a spouse, or with a job--Mexican American men were most likely to have had negative consequences as a result of drinking alcohol.

Men who experienced one or more alcohol-related problems:

*--*

1984 1995 White men 25% 22% Black men 27% 25% Latino men 17% 29% Mexican American men 21% 34% Puerto Rican men 8% NA Cuban American men 3% NA

*--*

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Three or more problems because of drinking:

*--*

1984 1995 White men 12% 11% Black men 16% 13% Latino men 9% 16% Mexican American men 11% 19%

*--*

Source: Caetano R. and Clark, C. “Trends in Alcohol Consumption Patterns Among Whites, Blacks and Hispanics: 1984 and 1995.”

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Deaths From Chronic Liver Disease

Los Angeles County, 1995

Rate per 100,000

Latinos: 18.2

Blacks: 10.1

Whites: 9.7

Asians/others: 3.6

Total: 11.1

Source: L.A. County Department of Health Services

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An estimated 100,000 alcohol-related deaths occur in the United States each year, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Most result from the health consequences of drinking and traffic accidents caused by drunken drivers. Latinos are more likely to be arrested on DUI charges than whites or blacks.

Arrested in the past 12 months for driving under the influence:

Latino: 4%

White: 1%

Black: 1%

Source: Caetano, Raul, using Alcohol Research Group survey, 1999

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Some experts believe Latinos’ high DUI arrest rates are the result of biased police officers who pull over more Latino motorists. Other alcohol experts disagree. DUI rates among Latinos are high even in cases that result in felony charges. In these cases, there is little potential for selective law enforcement because someone has been injured and police must always go to the scene.

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LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Adult DUI arrests

Los Angeles County, 1996

FELONY

White: 21.1%

Latino: 61.4%

Black: 11.4%

Other: 5.3%

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Population for Los Angeles County, 1995

White: 35.8%

Latino: 41.2%

Asian Pacific: 12.3%

Other: .5%

(About three-quarters of all Latinos in California and in Los Angeles County are Mexican American)

NOTE: Figures may not total 100 because of rounding.

Source: California Department of Justice

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CALIFORNIA

DUI arrests by Ethnic Group

Percentage of California population

Source: State of California Department of Motor Vehicles, using California Department of Justice arrest data.

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Alcohol Brands and Latinos

Anheuser-Busch Cos. is among alcohol producers who have recently begun to sell alcohol products targeting Latinos including a new beer, Azteca. In a Jose Cuervo tequila ad, a Mexican pyramid becomes the base of a blender filled with margaritas.

Top Beer Brands by Ethnic Group

Mexican Americans

Bud Light

Corona

Budweiser

Miller

Tecate

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All Latinos in U.S.

Budweiser

Corona

Bud Light