Zedillo Begins Historic Tour of State

When the snow-capped peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains are visible from the streets of East Los Angeles, Diana Spagnoli walks her kindergarten class outside for a view that many of her students have seen only in books.

Many of the children at Breed Elementary School have not been to the beach, either. Some have not seen the landmark shops and restaurants on Olvera Street, not far away. And most have only heard about Mexico, the recent homeland for almost all of their families.

This week may change some of their lives forever. They are not likely to forget the day when the president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, and the governor of California, Gray Davis, stopped at their school during a historic tour of California that begins today in Sacramento.

The important lesson, teachers say, is that being from Mexico and living in California does not mean you have to choose sides.

“The feeling is excitement and overwhelming joy,” said Laura Banuelos, who attended Breed Elementary School as a child and is now a second-grade teacher there. “I was [my family’s] firstborn in this country and I remember the frustration. . . . This [visit] is role-modeling for the kids.”

Zedillo’s tour, under escort from the governor, is designed to carry a similar message to the rest of California too.

After years of tension stoked by inflammatory debates about illegal immigration, leaders from Mexico and California hope their series of joint speeches and celebrations will signal a new era of cultural, business and political ties.

“We are seeing the beginning of something that will only get bigger,” said Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, an assistant professor of international politics at UCLA. “This is not a passing political trend,” he said. “This is a permanent, tectonic plate shift.”

The significance is evident in preparations for a trip that will appear more like a formal dress meeting of two nations than that of a foreign president visiting a U.S. state.

Zedillo is scheduled to address a special joint session of the California Legislature after his arrival from Mexico City today.

Over the next three days, the governor and other state dignitaries will join the Mexican president for a meeting with mayors and business leaders in San Francisco, a televised town hall program broadcast statewide in Spanish, a posh dinner at a private Beverly Hills mansion, a Harry Truman-style whistle-stop arrival and speech at Union Station in Los Angeles and a San Diego tour of cross-border business enterprises.

Public exposure to Zedillo will be limited, despite urging from Davis’ staff.

There were no news conferences scheduled as of Monday, although Zedillo has agreed to meet privately with editorial boards for three state newspapers, including The Times. There is only one scheduled event open to the public--the president’s arrival at Union Station in Los Angeles about noon Wednesday.

The trip is still a political bonanza for Davis, who campaigned last year on a platform to end racially divisive politics in California and is now leading an effort to solidify the state’s increasingly influential Latino community as a stronghold for Democrats.

But Davis is also stepping delicately around a controversy that hangs like a cloud over the visit.

Some Latino leaders are upset that he has declined to end a lawsuit now pending in federal court regarding Proposition 187--the 1994 ballot measure that sparked much of the state’s racial and cross-border tension with its mandate ending health, welfare and education benefits for illegal immigrants.

Instead, the governor has asked the court to mediate a settlement. And he has threatened to pursue the appeal if an agreement cannot be reached that satisfies the voters who passed the initiative as well as groups that opposed it.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the state’s highest-ranking Latino officeholder and a fellow Democrat, blasted Davis for betraying his campaign promise to heal racial wounds. Speculation has now turned to the possible impact on Zedillo’s visit.

Davis’ aides said the governor tried to head off an embarrassing confrontation by alerting the Mexican government about his plans for Proposition 187 before he made the announcement public in California--an unusual consultation for a matter of state policy.

Now, officials say that Zedillo and Davis will probably discuss the matter in private as they tour together, but neither side wants the controversy to disrupt the tour.

“This is bigger than that,” said one Capitol observer. “It’s for the long run.”

The bilateral momentum has been building for more than a year. Anger over the Proposition 187 campaign in 1994, the anti-affirmative action Proposition 209 in 1996 and last year’s Proposition 227 to end bilingual education fostered a surge in political participation by California Latinos.

The state’s electorate remains barely 12% Latino, while its overall population is nearly a third Latino. Still, last year’s candidates responded with unprecedented appeals to Latino voters. The biggest milestone was a debate sponsored by the state’s largest Spanish-language television network that featured all four major party candidates for governor in the June primary.

After he won the November election, Davis led a delegation of California business, academic and political leaders to Mexico City during his first month in office.

The governor met with Zedillo at his presidential palace and emerged with the news that there would be a reciprocal visit to California.

Zedillo, a 45-year-old lame-duck president who attended graduate school at Yale University and speaks fluent English, has been in California previously while serving as Mexico’s education secretary.

But his trip this week will be the first for a president of Mexico since Carlos Salinas de Gortari visited in 1991, and it is only the second such trip in more than 35 years.

Like the Davis trip to Mexico, Zedillo’s tour is not intended to produce specific trade or cultural agreements, although officials are exploring possible new business announcements and student exchange opportunities.

Mexico is California’s second-largest trading partner and is rapidly approaching the No. 1 spot held by Japan. In the first three quarters of last year, California’s exports to Mexico jumped 15%, while commerce with Japan, which is struggling with a sputtering economy, dropped about 15%.

Officials have hinted that Zedillo will announce plans for California high-tech companies to invest in Mexico. Zedillo had intended to visit Silicon Valley and San Jose during his trip, but those plans were canceled.

The primary purpose of the visit is symbolism, emphasizing a new bilateral relationship and, perhaps most significant, changing the state’s approach to its own Latino population.

At Breed Elementary School, where 99% of the students are Latinos with roots in Mexico, students in classroom No. 4 are decorating walls with crayon-colored maps of California and Mexico. Early Thursday, they will be part of history as they listen to Zedillo and Davis read stories to them in Spanish and English.

“I think it is going to create hope,” said Margarita Majeau, a third-grade teacher and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. “They are going to see two countries being friends, the two countries that are most important to them.

“I am a teacher in East Los Angeles,” she added. “And I am proud too.”

See Mexico President Zedillo’s address before a special joint session of the California Legislature live at 10:30 a.m. today on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/zedillo