Dawn of a New Majority

Call it the Latino Century, because it will be just that in one important way. It’s a simple matter of numbers.

Thirty years ago, when Ventura County was still a predominantly white farming region, Latinos made up less than a quarter of the population. Today, one in three residents is Latino.

And sometime in the next century--state analysts predict 2037, when the county is a racially diverse mix of more than 1 million people--Latinos will replace whites as the dominant ethnic group, mirroring a population surge sweeping the Southwest.

There is no question about this evolution: It is as inevitable as the turn of the century.

But there are plenty of questions about what those numbers mean and how the expected 142% increase in the Latino population over the next 40 years will shape the future of Ventura County.

Some see a rosy future bolstered by an expanding middle class made up of new immigrants and the descendants of those who came here from Mexico and other Latin American countries more than a century ago.

More than ever, Latinos are buying homes, building businesses and injecting new energy into every aspect of life, from corporate boardrooms to city council chambers. In ways big and small, from the half a dozen Spanish-language radio stations pumping out a norteno beat over the local airwaves to the policies being hammered out by ethnically mixed school boards, Latinos are taking a stronger role in the cultural and political life of Ventura County.

On the other hand, too many Latinos still live in poverty, 15.5% countywide compared with half that for the overall population. Of the more than 147,000 people who lack health insurance in Ventura County, 75% are Latino.

They continue to lag behind other groups in earning power and educational attainment, while disproportionately clogging jails--733 of 1,422 inmates are Latino--and languishing on welfare rolls.

Perhaps most troubling is the number of Latino youngsters who are failing to keep pace with their peers by dropping out, joining gangs and landing in juvenile hall.

Economics will play a vital role in determining which future will materialize--one of harmonious prosperity or one in which we will need more police and prosecutors. But there are challenges there as well, centered on whether the local job market--and the Latino work force itself--can keep up with population growth and continue to transition from an agricultural economy to emerging service and high-tech industries.

“There is no question that progress has been made in many areas, but no one should misinterpret that to believe that somehow the urgency has passed,” said Cal Lutheran University professor Jamshid Damooei, who tracks the county’s shifting demographics.

“We’re at a crossroads,” said David Hayes-Bautista, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health. “It could go one way or another.”

The problems will affect everyone. Crime crosses city borders. Welfare and unemployment drain coffers countywide. And as the Latino population grows, problems once concentrated in outlying, minority communities increasingly spread across the county, if left unchecked.

Trouble is, few people in Ventura County--or anywhere else in California for that matter--appear to be giving these issues very serious thought.

“No one is really talking about even a definition of what the problems are, much less a strategy for dealing with them,” said Santos Gomez, a poverty law attorney with the Oxnard office of California Rural Legal Assistance.

Growing Numbers, Growing Influence

Already, there are plenty of signs of things to come.

Ventura County is now home to the nation’s 22nd largest Latino community, a population that grew 24% this decade. The growth was due, in part, to the legal immigration of thousands of foreign-born Latinos. But it mostly reflects the fact that local Latinos had children at twice the rate of whites.

Most of the population growth occurred in the west county, where the 1990s saw Latinos overtake whites to become the largest ethnic group. Latinos now make up 46% of the combined populations of Ojai, Ventura, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Port Hueneme and Camarillo, compared with 44.5% for whites.

Latinos also increased their numbers in the east county, moving from 12% of the combined populations of Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks in 1990 to 18% today. They are projected to constitute 21% by 2004.

Countywide, state analysts predict that whites will represent 42% of the population by 2040, compared with 44% for Latinos, whose numbers will reach 565,000.

Even if nothing changes, that population will include a substantial number of success stories. Already, 55% of U.S.-born Latino households in Ventura County are solidly in the middle class. Many have risen even higher.

“What I see for Latinos is that we are going to be a significant, visible portion of every major profession and that we are going to contribute to this county in so many positive ways,” said Dr. Martha Gonzalez, who runs a private practice in Ventura with another Latina physician, Dr. Monica Stewart-Bentley.

The truth is, just as Ventura County is becoming more Latino, there is no question that Latinos are becoming more like everyone else.

Despite perceptions to the contrary, Latinos, like the Irish in the mid-1800s and Italians at the start of this century, are being absorbed into the American tapestry and moving up the economic ladder.

The key question as Latinos assume a higher profile is how to narrow the gulf between Latinos who are finding the good life and those still struggling to get there.

“Whether Latinos will achieve the kind of educational, economic and political participation that other groups have attained remains an open question,” said Maria Echaveste, a onetime Oxnard farm worker who now serves as a White House deputy chief of staff.

“Leadership at the local, state and national levels has to see this moment as a challenge and an opportunity to set in motion what the answer is going to be,” Echaveste continued. “People need to understand that a Latino agenda is an American agenda.”

Getting a Hold on Reins of Power

In some cases, the rising Latino tide has already transformed entire communities.

In Oxnard, where Latinos now make up an estimated 65.5% of the population, voters have elected a Latino mayor, a Latino councilman and several Latino trustees to area school boards. Ventura County’s largest city also has a Latino police chief, city manager and elementary school district superintendent.

Now, the agenda of many Latino leaders revolves around boosting political power and participation elsewhere in the county.

Latino leaders in Santa Paula are trying to get the federal government to change the local electoral system so that more minorities are elected to the City Council. Fillmore seems set to repeal its controversial ordinance declaring English to be the city language.

Despite making up a third of the population, Latinos hold only five of 57 seats on local city councils. They fare somewhat better on school boards, holding 26 of 99 seats.

Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez remains the highest-ranking Latino elected official in Ventura County. There is no Latino congressman, no state senator, no assemblyman. And there hasn’t been one for more than 100 years, when two local Latinos served in the state Legislature around the time the county was formed.

No Latino has been elected to the Board of Supervisors since Adolfo Camarillo held a seat near the turn of the century.

Indeed, when Latinos talk about expanding political power, they most often set their sights on the supervisorial seat held by John Flynn. Under threat of a lawsuit by a voting-rights coalition, the boundaries for Flynn’s Oxnard-area district were redrawn earlier this decade to make it the county’s only Latino-majority district.

But no Latino--or anyone else for that matter--has come close to toppling the venerable politician, whose hands-on, door-to-door approach to campaigning and problem-solving has won him a solid block of supporters, even among Latinos.

Still, with Flynn’s current term set to expire next spring, some Latino leaders privately hoped he would not run again. Those hopes were dashed when Flynn announced in June that he would run for a seventh term. Latino leaders showed up in force to support his candidacy.

That show of support was spurred by the fear that former Oxnard mayor and retired Republican state Assemblyman Nao Takasugi would join the race. Takasugi decided not to challenge Flynn. But no Latino has stepped up to take him on either, and it is likely that Latino representation at that level will have to wait at least four more years.

“I respect Mr. Flynn a great deal, but I think now that [one-third] of the population in the county is Latino something has got to change,” said Latino activist Ramon Rodriguez, who heads a Fillmore-based civil rights group that advocates expanding the Board of Supervisors from five to seven members to increase Latino representation.

“Latinos have to learn how to be more engaged in the process, how to start attending school board meetings and lobbying their representatives. That’s what everyone else does,” Rodriguez said.

Flynn said he understands the frustrations. But he said he also doesn’t want his ideas and leadership to be discounted simply because of the color of his skin.

“I don’t look at myself as non-Latino,” Flynn said. “I look at myself as wanting to be part of the very change we’re talking about.”

Down the road, Latino leaders are looking toward the once-a-decade redistricting process that takes place after the 2000 census to help boost political power.

Many are counting on reapportionment to correct what they view as flawed congressional and legislative boundaries drawn in 1992 that subdivided the county’s Latino communities and undercut their influence. Latino leaders have already begun planning how to convince the Legislature that communities such as Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore share common interests and should be grouped together in state Senate and Assembly districts.

At the same time, Latinos are taking it upon themselves to help train future leaders and raise money for up-and-coming candidates. Two years ago, a group of Latino elected officials and labor leaders formed Entre Nos, an organization dedicated to raising political awareness and broadening participation.

More than 100 people immediately joined. Interest was so strong, that last year the group formed a political action committee to funnel money to Latino candidates and others who support their interests.

“We as Latinos need to develop candidates, and not just those that rely on the Latino vote but that cross over and represent our communities as a whole,” said longtime Latino activist Irma Lopez, the wife of the Oxnard mayor and a founding member of the political group.

Gaining Foothold in Professional Ranks

On that point, Simi Valley City Councilman Glen Becerra couldn’t agree more. The 32-year-old Simi Valley native was elected to the council last year, the first Latino--and the youngest person--to serve on that municipal board.

His grandfather was a Mexican farm worker who settled in Simi Valley in 1927. His father was born there in 1936. And his 15-month-old son, Nicholas, was born there last year.

Becerra embodies the immigrant story, but with a twist. Unlike the majority of Latinos in Ventura County, he is a die-hard Republican and believes his party will exert more influence on the Latino community.

In fact, he is a founding member of the California Hispanic Leadership Network, a political action committee dedicated to supporting and promoting conservative, pro-business Latino candidates.

“There are a ton of points of view within the Latino community and there is room for all of them,” said Becerra who, before taking his current job as regional manager for Southern California Edison, worked for a Republican state assemblyman and Gov. Pete Wilson.

“What I see for the Latino community is somewhat a mirror image of myself,” he said. “They will be ingrained in every aspect of American life, from the schoolteacher to the CEO. They will have a great deal to contribute, as has every minority group that has immigrated to this country.”

From his vantage point behind a prosecutor’s table at the Hall of Justice, Moorpark resident Ernesto Acosta sees close up the problems in the Latino community.

Every day, lines of Latinos dressed in drab jail blues are paraded into court, where they wait behind glass partitions for their criminal cases to be called.

“For me, it’s painful to watch them come in as defendants--as a Latino I automatically feel a connection with them,” said Acosta, 43. A USC law school graduate, he emigrated with his family from Cuba in 1967 with only the clothes on their backs.

“Sometimes I think if it wasn’t because of the good teachers I had, that could be me behind the glass.”

Acosta, who moved to Moorpark a little over a decade ago, has served on the Planning Commission and made an unsuccessful bid for City Council last year. He is all for boosting Latino political representation, but believes that should also apply to the district attorney’s office, the local bench and other branches of municipal government.

Currently, of 27 judges and four court commissioners, there are only two Latinos--Superior Court Judge Art Gutierrez and Commissioner Manuel Covarrubias.

Covarrubias is a candidate for one of two vacancies on the Superior Court. Appointed court commissioner in late 1994, Covarrubias could benefit from a push underway locally to persuade the governor to add more women and minorities to a local bench long viewed by critics as too white, too male and too dominated by ex-prosecutors.

Covarrubias said there is a need for more Latino role models, but is quick to add that many more exist now than when he was kid.

A Pepperdine University study, for instance, found that nearly 20% of the region’s Latino work force held professional or executive-administrative jobs.

When Covarrubias started practicing law 20 years ago, after graduating from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there were few Latino attorneys around.

Now, Latino lawyers have their own bar association, which has about 30 members. It’s also not uncommon to see a Latino doctor or schoolteacher.

“Things are changing, but it’s a very slow process,” Covarrubias said.

New Chapters in Immigrant Saga

Ventura County continues to be a destination for Latinos seeking to move up the economic ladder. The legal immigration of 12,000 Mexicans from 1992-1996 helped fuel the rapid increase in the Latino population this decade.

The immigration issue has always been a sensitive one in Ventura County, however, because of the impact of illegal migration on city and county coffers. Although there are no reliable data on how many illegal immigrants reside in Ventura County, experts estimate that as much as 10% of the total population is here illegally.

The surge of anti-immigrant feeling that led to passage of Proposition 187 has had one salutary effect. Record numbers of legal immigrants in Ventura County are signing up to become U.S. citizens.

“I think there was enough public policy that came down that prompted Latinos to look at naturalization as a way of becoming politically active,” said Francisco Dominguez, executive director of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, an Oxnard-based advocacy group. “The next step for those folks is to get them to participate in the civic process so they can make their voices heard.”

Signs of progress are evident, if not yet pervasive. All three student body presidents at the county’s community colleges are Latino this year, including Carmen Garcia at Moorpark College.

“I think we’ve come a long way as far as changing stereotypes,” said the 20-year-old former Riverside County resident. She intends to study political science next year at UCLA or USC. “In a way it’s showing people that we are capable and that we can do a good job.”

The future is in play, and what it will bring is still unclear. But in Thousand Oaks, Diego Velasquez, 45, is proof that Latinos are writing their own chapters in the well-worn American immigrant saga. Part of a Latino business community that has more than doubled since 1992, Velasquez emigrated 17 years ago from Colombia.

With $10,000 in credit card debt and a handful of his relatives, he started an acoustical interior business out of his garage.

He now has more than 70 employees--about 70% are Latino--and his company was recently named one of the top 500 Latino businesses in the nation by Hispanic Business Magazine.

“When I offer somebody a job I’m basically trying to help them because I’ve been there before,” said Velasquez. “The way I see it, we need to lift each other if we are going to improve.”

About This Series

This is the first of a four-part series examining the impact of the coming Latino majority on Ventura County and its institutions.

TODAY: The future of Ventura County hinges on the success of Latinos, who will reach majority status around the middle of the 21st century.

MONDAY: Guaranteeing Latino success depends in large measure on guaranteeing them access to a good education and ending feel-good policies that justify failure.

TUESDAY: The growing Latino population will require massive job creation. But will the jobs be there?

WEDNESDAY: There are problems, but also encouraging signs. The Latino middle class has doubled in three decades.

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Times Community News reporter Pam Johnson contributed to this story.