Zedillo Visit Stirs Diverse Reaction

The arrival of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo in California on Tuesday is stirring a reaction as diverse and complex as the state’s multiethnic population, which includes the largest group of people of Mexican ancestry outside Mexico City.

Zedillo’s visit symbolizes an endorsement of the vitality and growing political clout of the state’s Mexican Americans, for years snubbed by Mexican leaders.

But Southern California’s demographic shift toward a Latino majority has generated deep fault lines across generations--and tax brackets--of Mexicans and Mexican Americans here.

Zedillo arrives today in Los Angeles, the crossroads of this complicated international relationship, a place where the cultures of Mexico and the United States meet--and collide.

For many, pride in the visit by Mexico’s president is tempered by alienation toward the political and economic system that drove them from their homeland in the first place.

Pablo Espinoza, a gardener, said the visit reminds him why he left Mexico 23 years ago. “There was barely enough to survive and eat,” he said. “That’s the reason people come here--because there’s no work.”

For Espinoza and others, the president remains the personification of a system that has helped politicos plunder the nation.

On the golf course at the Quiet Cannon Country Club in Montebello, computer salesman Gabriel Gonzalez fumed with resentments carried over the border by his parents a generation ago.

“No one from Mexico should be lobbying here for anything when they’ve got so many problems with poverty, housing, smog and polluted water over there,” he said. “None of the Mexican presidents have done a thing to improve that country’s economy and he is no different.”

Many others see the trip as a welcome sign of cooperation between California and Mexico, a climate that makes for more business between the two key trading partners. State residents also account for perhaps half of the more than $5 billion sent home each year from Mexicans living abroad.

Ruben Hoyos, 55, a Glendora auto shop owner, is looking forward to seeing Zedillo as he arrives today at Union Station.

“It’s like we haven’t seen a relative in a long time, and he’s coming to see us,” said Hoyos, who holds dual citizenship in Mexico and the United States.

Protesters see the visit as a chance to engage in politics, although Zedillo’s carefully scripted visit makes it unlikely that he will catch more than a glimpse of any countrymen or their descendants.

Various critics of Zedillo’s regime hope to press such issues as increased democracy, voting rights for Mexicans living in the United States and the plight of Zapatista rebels.

The many views reflect the heterogenous nature of Southern California’s Mexican-origin population, whose great diversity contradicts the lingering view of a single population composed of new immigrants and their children.

In fact, the broad sweep of Mexican Americans ranges from the disenfranchised to the rich and powerful, from Spanish speakers to English-only advocates to the many shades of bilingualism heard on city streets and playgrounds.

Their swelling ranks include third- and fourth-generation residents who mispronounce their surnames and new arrivals who wait at bus stops in traditional dress.

“I don’t know him [Zedillo], so what do I care?” said Chris Flores, 20, of Monterey Park, as he filled out a job application for a sales job at a local mall. “I’m American. It’s my people, but I don’t live in Mexico. I’ve never even been there.”

Strong Emotions

Latinos now make up almost one-third of California’s population, numbering more than 10 million, and they constitute about 45% of Los Angeles County’s 9.2 million residents. More than 80% of the state’s Latinos were born in Mexico or are of Mexican ancestry.

In some cases, new immigrants live with family members who are U.S. citizens--their status separated only by the vagaries of immigration law. For many, the struggle to gain a foothold in the U.S. economy is a years-long effort.

“The president should see for himself how we Mexicanos live in Los Angeles,” said Margarita Perez, 23, a native of the state of Zacatecas who lives in Pomona.

Many hope that Zedillo’s visit will mean the end of the anti-immigrant rhetoric and Mexico-bashing that marked a good deal of California politics during the 1990s.

“A lot of people, even Mexican Americans who don’t follow events in Mexico that closely, think it’s about time Mexico and California had good relations,” said Antonio Gonzalez, director of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Los Angeles-based research group that studies Latino political trends.

Many do retain strong emotional ties to la patria.

Rosario Marin, mayor of Huntington Park, a predominantly Latino city southeast of Los Angeles, said the president’s visit reminds people of their homeland.

“Many people come across the border not because they don’t love Mexico but because they hope to find a better life for their families,” said Marin, who arrived in California with her family from Mexico City 26 years ago.

Zedillo’s visit has caused a stir at Breed Street Elementary School in Boyle Heights, where he is scheduled to appear Thursday. Students have painted a banner welcoming him and Gov. Gray Davis, and plan to perform songs and dances.

Erik Lopez, one of the fifth-grade students who will introduce Zedillo during the ceremonies, said he has done library research on the president.

“I think that it’s a great thing that he’s coming because my grandfather is Mexican, and the president is Mexican, so maybe I can learn a lot more about my grandfather from meeting the president,” said Erik, 10.

Leticia Quezada, president of the Mexican Cultural Institute and a former Los Angeles school board member, said the president’s visit represents “a recognition that we continue to be Mexican, that the Mexican community in Los Angeles is important to the highest authority in Mexico.”

The last time a Mexican president visited Los Angeles was in 1991, before the wrenching debates surrounding Proposition 187, affirmative action and bilingual education.

The visit--and Zedillo’s grand reception in Sacramento on Tuesday by Gov. Davis and the Legislature--is seen as a significant victory in the culture wars that many felt divided California between Latinos and everyone else.

The shift shows that the mobilization of Latino voters after Proposition 187 has paid off, “not only by bringing people into the political process, but by turning around the political view of someplace as important as the state of California,” said Raul Hinojosa, Mexican-born director of the North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA.

Bitter Divisions

Critics see Zedillo’s visit as the latest attempt by Mexico to extend its influence north of the border. Members of the Voice of Citizens Together, a San Fernando Valley-based group seeking to stem immigration, plan to stage a protest today outside the Hotel Bonaventure to condemn “Mexican expansionism,” said Glenn Spencer, the group’s leader.

Such sentiments serve as a reminder that bitter divisions remain regarding Mexican immigration. Many Mexican Americans fear that lingering ill will could resurface should the economy falter, and politicians look for someone to blame.

Others plan to demonstrate against Zedillo for his support of free trade and foreign investment.

“This president continues to give away Mexico to the United States, Japan and everyone else,” said Pedro Arias, a retired welder and 40-year U.S. resident. He plans to join other protesters outside the Bonaventure to present the president with a mock “foot of Santa Anna” award, named after the 19th century Mexican leader who was blamed for ceding about half of the nation’s territory--including California--to the United States.

Gonzalo Molina takes a more tempered view. The 73-year-old World War II veteran and naturalized U.S. citizen said he believes in drawing from the strengths of both countries.

The United States can learn from Mexico’s educational system, he said, especially when it comes to teaching young people respect for their teachers and elders.

Mexico, he said, can learn some lessons in government from the United States.

“It is not incompatible to admire the principles of a representative democracy of America’s founding fathers, and also be able to appreciate Mexico’s Benito Juarez,” he said.

As a citizenship instructor, he helped more than 1,000 people become U.S. citizens. During those classes, Molina said, he taught his mostly immigrant Latino students both U.S. and Mexican history.

“You cannot go toward a place if you do know where you come from,” said Molina. “Mexico and California’s cultural and economic ties are so interwoven that you cannot separate them.”

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Times staff writer Antonio Olivo and special correspondent Joseph Trevino contributed to this story.