Tapping Generosity of Emigrants

When budget woes brought construction on this town’s half-completed hospital to a halt in December, Mayor David Sanchez Guerra knew where to turn for help: the Talpa de Allende Club of Reseda.

Sanchez’s faith in the group of Talpa natives in the Los Angeles area was well-placed. Responding to his plea for cash, the gung-ho hometown club launched a series of benefits and raffles that raised $27,000. That should enable the town to complete construction on the clinic later this year.

The mayor had reason to think the Talpa natives would come through. Since forming last year, members have donated a school bus, several wheelchairs, money for earthquake repairs and an old folks’ home to this impoverished town of 12,000, high in the Sierra Madre mountains of Jalisco state in southwestern Mexico.

“We have many needs and they are not forgetting us. If the club had not interceded, we could not have done it,” Sanchez said of the 18-bed clinic. Construction will resume this month.

With government spending on social projects in decline throughout Mexico, officials such as Sanchez are increasingly trying to tap the generosity--and growing financial resources--of Mexican Americans. Last year they sent an estimated $6 billion back to their native land.

The figure has been growing at a 12% annual clip. The tide of remittances is accelerating even faster in the Caribbean and Central America.

Although emigrants send most of the cash directly to their families, an increasing number are bankrolling community projects such as the Talpa clinic through membership in the expanding ranks of hometown clubs. There are about 1,500 clubs in the United States--double the total a decade ago--all set up as nonprofit groups to do charitable works.

The undisputed king of hometown clubs is the state of Zacatecas, which has lost one-third of its population to emigration. The state receives a staggering $1 million a day in remittances, or 166% more than the federal government spends there.

Zacatecas’ far-flung network of hometown clubs, including 60 groups in the Los Angeles area, is the main source of financial support for about 350 community projects since 1992, from drainage systems to cultural centers, beautification projects and roads.

Zacatecas has encouraged the clubs’ involvement in social projects by offering matching government funds. The strategy is spreading: The Talpa club’s cash gift to the clinic will be matched 3 to 1 by federal, state and local funds, the first project of its kind in Jalisco.

Though such good works are roundly applauded, the remittance phenomenon has its critics. And there is growing disagreement over the wisest use of the money, especially in light of a new push by Mexican officials to get clubs to invest not only in philanthropic programs but in so-called proyectos productivos, projects that generate jobs.

The Talpa club has tentatively agreed to invest $40,000 in a coffee growers’ cooperative in La Cuesta, an isolated village 20 miles from here that has been decimated by low coffee prices, out-migration and illicit drugs. It’s typical of the new wave of proposals to divert emigrant cash into projects that generate longer-term economic benefits.

The projects ostensibly would reduce the emigration tide and counterbalance the “economic distortion” that some observers say remittances are causing in regions grown overly dependent on them. Mexican presidential candidate Vicente Fox, who is governor of Guanajuato state, sees job-creating projects as a way of reversing the social costs of emigration.

Pablo Serrano, head of social development at the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Mexico City, said such projects could counteract the distorting effects--higher land prices, inflation and worker “passivity”--that remittances have on regions in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean that have become too dependent on them.

“The question has always been raised why Mexicans can’t channel this large amount of [remittance] funds into uses that would have dramatic beneficial impacts in the immigrant-sending regions,” said Raul Hinojosa, assistant professor at UCLA’s North American Integration and Development Center.

But others warn that such projects, mostly still in the discussion stage, would invite graft and mismanagement. Wayne Cornelius, director of the UC San Diego Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, said such programs could be susceptible to “inappropriate use of resources and the temptation of politicians to use them for electoral gain.”

“A problem I anticipate is that once the federal and state governments jump in, they would want to control how funds were used and that might take some of the initiative from the migrants and lead to political fights,” said German Zarate-Hoyos, a lecturer and immigration specialist in Cal State Fullerton’s economics department.

Rather than business propositions, emigrants’ energies are better directed toward “building a school or homes for the elderly. . . . You don’t have to worry about ongoing investment or the sustainability. You just walk through town, see all the poverty and need for things like better health care and make a list,” Zarate-Hoyos said.

What is certain is that Mexican government officials on all levels are alert to the financial clout of immigrant clubs and are making concerted efforts to form strong ties and encourage their help, for both philanthropic and economic uses.

The governors of Jalisco, Michoacan and Veracruz have traveled to hometown clubs in Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Washington in recent months to drum up contributions.

“The state governments need the money. That’s why they are pushing people to organize,” said Victor Espinosa, an associate researcher at UCLA’s department of psychiatry who recently studied 24 Michoacan state hometown clubs in the Chicago area.

Mexican consulates across the U.S. act as cheerleaders and facilitators to encourage emigrants to form clubs and establish contact with their native states and towns, said Jose Antonio Larios, community affairs chief at the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles.

Talpa’s clinic seems a clear example of how emigrants’ energy, commitment and cash can make a difference. A hospital has been a top civic priority for 20 years in this poor, isolated town that is a popular destination for religious pilgrims who flock to the semiannual processions of the Virgin of the Rosario of Talpa. Believers say the figure has miraculous healing powers.

Her intervention notwithstanding, dozens of Talpa residents die needlessly each year because they can’t get emergency medical treatment. The nearest hospital is a two-hour drive away, in the city of Ameca.

“If you get sick here, you’re much sicker by the time you get to Ameca. A lot of people die on the way,” said local policeman Victor Rodriguez.

Hollywood contractor Arturo Robles, 37, a Talpa club member who immigrated to California in 1979, knows first-hand how dire the need is for a clinic here. His newborn brother died in 1975 because the town lacked an incubator, and an uncle bled to death from an accidental gunshot wound in 1985.

“The old people are just abandoned in Talpa, so we’ve been bringing them walkers, sponsoring them in the rest homes, buying them medicine and Pampers,” Robles said. “It’s a promise of ours to help.”

When the clinic project ran short of funds, Mayor Sanchez phoned Talpa club founder and President Javier Talamantes for help. Talamantes began setting up fund-raising concerts in the Los Angeles area starring Mexican singing stars Linda Arce, Gerardito Fernandez and Chayito Valdez, who either donated their time or charged minimal appearance fees.

“You can’t leave it to the government to do. The authorities work very slow and ignore the people,” said Talamantes, 62, a retired Reseda contractor who immigrated illegally to the United States in 1967 but is now a U.S. citizen. He is the driving force behind the 200-member Talpa club.

Talpa butcher Rigoberto Gradilla said: “If it weren’t for the people living outside, it would never be built.”

Other Jalisco state clubs in Los Angeles are in the middle of projects for their hometowns. Emigrants from Tonaya are building a retirement facility. Villa Guerrero is underwriting a football playing field and Jamay is building a cultural center.

Meanwhile, the Talpa club in Reseda has no shortage of philanthropic projects to consider for the old hometown, which just barely keeps its head above water.

“There are a lot of necessities, people living in miserable conditions,” Talamantes said during a visit here in April. “If we don’t get involved, nothing is going to happen ever.”

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* IMMIGRATION REFORM

Mexican “hometown clubs” back immigration reform. A3