A Strange Twist for a Resolute Radical

Jose Jacques Medina did not flee Mexico in search of work or opportunity. He left because he knew what might happen if he stayed.

In 1973, he was a 28-year-old attorney, a leader of the Mexican student movement fighting for democracy and workers’ rights. That year, he was arrested and accused of attempting to kidnap the dean of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City.

Jacques Medina faced a harsh choice: If he stayed, he could be killed or imprisoned. If he left, his country would lose an important soldier in its struggle for greater democracy. In the end, he fled Mexico for Los Angeles.

Now he may make history in a triumphant return home come election day. Mexico’s Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, has vowed to give two congressional seats to Mexican nationals living in the United States if it wins the July 6 presidential election.

The party, which has been trailing in recent polls, has selected Jacques Medina and Raul Ross of Chicago for those posts.

Jacques Medina, exiled leader of the 1968 student movement, is now Jacques Medina, community organizer and union worker. The 55-year-old Eagle Rock man is a behind-the-scenes player in Los Angeles’ immigrant community.

The prospect of ending up in the Mexican Congress says much about Jacques Medina’s life--what’s changed and what has stayed the same.

“Now I’m here and I’m going to be here, fighting for my people,” he said. “It’s my destiny, the U.S.”

His ideas are still radical: universal health care, changes in labor laws, a new amnesty law for illegal immigrants. “We want citizenship,” he said.

This week two of the three leading candidates in Mexico’s presidential race visited California.

One key issue is giving Mexicans who live in the U.S. the right to vote in Mexican elections. PRD candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the former mayor of Mexico City, promised to continue supporting the idea, taking a further step with his plan to empower Mexicans in the United States.

In Mexico, members of Congress are selected through direct election and proportional representation. Under proportional representation, congressional seats are given to political parties based upon the number of votes the party’s presidential candidate wins. The party selects the individuals who will serve in Congress.

For Jacques Medina, it would be a bittersweet reversal of fortune.

Relaxing in a Watts community center after watching a Cinco de Mayo parade, he pondered the idea of returning to Mexico as a congressman. Sometimes he sounded like a man ready to serve, and other times he sounded too deep in his struggles on this side of the border to leave.

“I’m honored and I’m going to try to do my best,” he said. “If I go to Congress, I will start our first proposition for legislation to help the Mexicans abroad. We never had a chance to have a voice in Congress. Now we will have a voice.”

The Face of Student Protests in Mexico

Jacques Medina was the face of the Mexican student protests of 1968. A photo of a young Jacques Medina being arrested appears in the definitive book on the movement, “Noche de Tlatelolco,” by Elena Poniatowska.

By the early 1970s, Jacques Medina had earned a reputation as a radical. As an attorney, he represented striking laborers, using the courts and his own negotiating skills to win demands.

In July 1973, police entered the campus of the National Autonomous University and arrested hundreds of peasants and farmers who had gathered to protest. Jacques Medina and five other leaders were arrested too. The charge of attempted kidnapping was false, he said. But of the six leaders who were arrested, three were imprisoned. The others fled to the United States.

In California, the passion Jacques Medina once directed toward Mexico’s democracy and labor movement found a new home. He organized mostly immigrant workers on farms and in factories.

“We were organizing immigrant workers in the 1970s when nobody was doing it, when [many unions were] against us,” said Felipe Aguirre, a local organizer of Mexico’s PRD who has known Jacques Medina since 1973. “We did it anyway, and he was the person that was a catalyst behind that.”

In 1976, Jacques Medina found himself in trouble again--this time with U.S. authorities. FBI agents arrested him, he said, and accused him of attempting to destroy the government, an accusation he believes stemmed from his efforts to organize workers.

That charge was dropped, but he faced deportation for entering the United States without permission in a case that drew national attention. After years of legal battle, the case was dismissed, Jacques Medina said.

Efforts in U.S. Not Always Backed

Then came the first sign of change in his relationship with his homeland. In 1980 the Mexican government granted him amnesty. One of the first things he did was to return to Mexico and organize a conference on emigrants.

“We agreed on the first bill of rights for [undocumented] workers,” he said.

His efforts in the U.S. have not always had the backing of elected Latino leadership.

In 1994 Jacques Medina helped organize a protest against Proposition 187, the initiative to bar illegal immigrants from public education and other government services.

“There were a lot of people, Latino politicians, who were opposed to” the protest, Aguirre said. “They thought it was going to create a lot of havoc.” Instead, it became a spark for a new generation of Latino activism.

In 1996, Jacques Medina was a key organizer of the Latino march on Washington, D.C., which he hopes to top with another march later this year.

His world remains decidedly Latino. From an office in Maywood, a city that is 96% Latino, he is busy at work on projects that usually involve immigrants or workers or both.

His nonprofit organization, Comite Pro-Union, provides legal assistance on immigration problems, help with tenant-landlord disputes and assistance with business plans and other aspects of entrepreneurship. Art classes are taught by Jacques Medina’s wife, Marta Sanchez.

“We’re a group of people that came together around the concept of empowerment,” said Aguirre, a paralegal who works in Jacques Medina’s office.

A major issue for Comite Pro-Union is amnesty for illegal immigrants. That position has earned Jacques Medina the enmity of some. At the Conservative Citizens Conference, broadcast over the C-Span cable channel, a speaker mentioned Jacques Medina’s efforts.

“If [Congress] granted amnesty, which Jose Jacques Medina, the Mexican lawyer, has been advancing in the United States for a number of years, it’s all over,” said one speaker. “There will be no United States within a very short period of time.”

Jacques Medina is also an international representative for the AFL-CIO. The union wants to increase its membership, he said, recognizing the importance of Latino workers.

Serving Could Be Mixed Blessing

“It’s an exciting time,” he said. “Now they know we’re not a bunch of illegals. We’re a bunch of workers.”

One effort is to equalize the wages paid to workers in different countries by multinational corporations. A worker doing the same job in Mexico would receive pay equal to that of an American or Canadian engaged in the same work. Such measures, he said, would help end immigration to the United States.

For most of his time in the U.S. Jacques Medina himself lived without residency papers--until after the 1986 amnesty law was enacted.

“I got my papers in 1993,” he said. “I became entitled to become a citizen in 1999. I want to do it.”

His citizenship bid comes at the same time as his possible selection to the Mexican Congress--an appointment, his wife said, that would be a mixed blessing.

“To get a voice and representation is extremely important,” she said. “Now the cost of that is going to be very high personally, politically, financially, physically--everything.’

When the Mexican Congress is in session it meets Tuesday through Thursday. Jacques Medina has considered flying back to Los Angeles on his off days.

It is not an inviting proposition for a man who does not like to fly. But he is not likely to pass up a rare opportunity to serve those to whom he has dedicated his life.

If the party won the elections, he said, “I would negotiate something.”