Celluloid Heroes Can Be Latino Too

The political awakening of Moctesuma Esparza unfolded on Monday nights in the old movie palaces of downtown Los Angeles. During his boyhood in the 1950s, he’d watch with wonder as stars like Pedro Armendariz and Maria Felix enacted heroic, revolutionary roles in the classic Mexican films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Hollywood movies never portrayed Mexicans like that--powerful, proud and principled. Esparza was accustomed to seeing stereotypes on the silver screen--the toothless revolutionary, the meek maid, the Latin Lover and his Hot Tamale.

But seated in the Million Dollar Theatre next to his father, a child of the Mexican Revolution, the boy from East L.A. got the sense that “we were not these docile, nonassertive people, like the image of Mexicans in this country . . . that we wouldn’t protest . . . that anything could be done to us.”

Esparza emerged in the 1960s as a Chicano student radical and eventually went on to make movies in Hollywood himself. By the time he entered film school at UCLA, his activism had gotten him indicted for arson, burglary and conspiracy to disrupt public meetings. The charges didn’t stick, but Esparza remained true to the mission he defined for his film career from the start.

“I decided to create images of human beings--heroes and villains, extraordinary people and ordinary people,” he told an attentive audience Wednesday during an annual sociology conference at Cal State Fullerton. “I would focus on creating positive images of Latinos in film that would destroy the negative stereotypes that came out of Hollywood.”

Among his credits as producer: “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” in 1982, “The Milagro Beanfield War” in 1988, “Gettysburg” in 1991 and “Lorca” and “Selena” in 1997. His latest film, “The Price of Glory,” stars Jimmy Smits.

Esparza, who turns 51 Sunday, recounted his radical road to Hollywood during his smooth, extemporaneous talk for the university’s Sociology Day, which focused on Mexican Americans in Southern California. It was not until later that he realized a coincidence in the timing of his talk.

The first week in March marked the 32nd anniversary of the massive 1968 student walkouts in East Los Angeles that he helped organize and that led to his first arrest as a protester. The walkouts sent 20,000 students into the streets demanding better barrio schools and a solution to the high dropout rate. They were tumultuous demonstrations that won a place in the annals of Chicano civil rights.

“Before we knew it, we were getting the attention that nobody had wanted to give us,” said Esparza, who’s working on a movie about the student protests.

Esparza and I had never met, though I had seen his films and he had read my column. Later in the evening, I also spoke as part of the sociology program, recalling my own political formation during the 1960s and the activist path that led me to journalism at UC Berkeley. I was struck by the common themes in our lives and careers.

The conflict between clashing images of Mexico, one positive from parents and one negative from society. The anger in adolescence. The commitment to make changes. The entree into the media through the movement. The desire to find an outlet for lingering social concerns in our professions.

We both appeared on campus at the invitation of Gerald Rosen, a Cal State sociology professor who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Chicano movement, interviewing Esparza and other leaders at the time.

In his opening remarks, the movie producer tipped his hat to the veteran researcher seated in the front row: “Jerry had the courage to show up in East L.A. not knowing anybody at all, recording what we were doing for posterity.”

Rosen had brought along a file of loose photos from the era that he shared with us later. Several shots captured a young Esparza in meetings and marches, spotted by his head of thick, black hair. Today, the ex-activist is gray and a little jowly. With four children in their teens and 20s, he doesn’t dare talk at home about how rarely he went to class during his college days, spent organizing more than studying.

Even now, a fighter’s spark still motivates Esparza’s work. He showed a preview of his new movie about a Latino father, the Smits character, raising three boys to be champion boxers. He described it as “a ‘Rocky’-like, heroic movie that shows us winning.”

The triumphant underdog could be the theme of Esparza’s life, too.

He was named Moctesuma after the Aztec emperor who ruled Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, at the time of the Spanish conquest. His father chose it because “he wanted me to know who I was, that I had an ancient, glorious history.”

Esparza and his wife, Esperanza, a painter and filmmaker, christened their own children with Nahua names: Tonatiuh, 22, Tonantzin, 20, Tenoch, 18, and Tlacael, 14.

Esparza lives in El Sereno, a Latino neighborhood just three miles from where he grew up. His childhood home was a ramshackle place adjacent to Ramona Gardens, the housing project that seemed princely by comparison.

His mother, Esther, bled to death in childbirth, leaving his younger brother retarded for life from lack of oxygen. His father, Francisco, was one of 17 children, only 13 of whom survived to adulthood.

The elder Esparza migrated from Mexico as a teenager in 1918, at the height of revolutionary turmoil. He worked as a chef at La Scala, the famed Beverly Hills restaurant frequented by movie stars and other celebrities.

So Esparza’s childhood home, condemned when he was 12, was filled with stories of glamour and rebellion. His father weaved old legends about Villa and Zapata and brought home anecdotes about Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. (Taylor reportedly loved his lima bean soup so much she had it shipped from the restaurant to her on location during the filming of “Cleopatra.”)

Esparza was in his early 30s when his father died. But the elderly immigrant had lived long enough to enjoy his son’s early successes.

Esparza’s first film, “Cinco Vidas” (Five Lives), won an Emmy in 1973 after he sold it to KNBC. He had produced the documentary, a profile of five people from the barrio, as his graduate thesis. Four years later, he won an Oscar nomination for another documentary, “Agueda Martinez,” directed by Esperanza Vasquez, the woman he would marry the following year.

As we walked to his car for his drive back to Los Angeles, Esparza told me had no regrets about any of his films. He made no compromises to find a market. Instead, he found stories that got financed because they captured the attention of investors and audiences.

His new projects include the story of labor leader Cesar Chavez, directed by Luis Valdez; the life of singer Bobby Darin, starring Kevin Spacey; and a drama about a Navajo girls’ basketball team, starring Laurence Fishburne.

In preparing the script about the student walkouts, planned for HBO, Esparza said he tracked down two retired police officers who were involved in his arrest. He had dinner with them and invited them to his home.

And he has come to appreciate other perspectives on the polarized conflicts of his youth. Some of the cops were brutal, but others were decent. Some of the protesters were idealistic, but others were wild.

“There’s a lot of gray,” Esparza confided. “There’s a lot of ambiguity in the story for me today.”

Today, he’s also optimistic about the future of filmmaking in Hollywood. He sees a new wave of actors and an eruption of good scripts by Latino writers, and he encourages talent through scholarships and job opportunities.

“I know the face of Hollywood is going to be very different in five years,” he told his audience. “What it’s going to take, of course, is young people like you who lead committed lives to pursue your dreams.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com