When Tequila and Machismo Get Behind the Wheel

This is no time to be touchy about the problem of drinking and driving among men of Mexican descent. The facts are too sobering to get defensive.

When it comes to safety behind the wheel, Mexican males drink too much and know too little.

In a nutshell, those are the findings of a new study exploring the driving records and drinking habits of a group of 300 Mexican and Mexican American men in Long Beach. Half were drunk drivers interviewed before being released from jail. The other half were residents recruited from the community as a comparison group, matched by education and income.

The study found that these men had something in common, regardless of whether they had been arrested for drunk driving. As a group, they “vastly overestimated” their ability to hold their liquor.

How many drinks would it take to make you an unsafe driver? Average answer: eight to 10. How many before you’re plastered? A dozen drinks in less than four hours.

Perhaps it’s the machismo talking. Whatever the reason, those numbers from the Mexicans surveyed were double those reported by non-Latino white men.

The report from the Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also looked at 300 Caucasian males, similarly split between drunk drivers and a control group. Compared to the Mexicans, the whites were less likely to be married and employed, though they earned more as a group.

Researchers didn’t explore why the subjects of Mexican ancestry, more than three-fourths of whom were born outside the United States, overestimate their drinking capacity. But they concluded that something needs to be done to make them more realistic about these dangers--for their own good.

Machismo makes for an awfully flimsy shield in a car crash.

Research shows that Mexicans and Mexican Americans have higher arrest rates for drunk driving. So they are also more likely to die in car crashes caused by alcohol. One study last year found that among Mexican Americans, 65% of all highway deaths were alcohol-related, compared with 46% among whites.

And the problem is getting worse for people of Mexican heritage while other groups are improving. In national roadside surveys, the percentage of Latinos found to be legally drunk at the wheel doubled between 1973 and 1996. At the same time, rates declined for white and black drivers.

But it’s not all Latinos. Studies show that the problem of driving while drunk is not as serious among Cubans and Puerto Ricans. That’s why researchers zeroed in on the Mexican group in Long Beach.

Like many of us, Pete Moraga has witnessed reckless drinking in the Mexican American community all his life. As an insurance industry spokesman based in Los Angeles, he works to draw attention to safety information, like that found in this troubling new study. But as a socially conscious Chicano, he worried that the report could inflame ethnic stereotypes, even encourage racial profiling by police.

Still, he decided that nothing is gained by ignoring the problem--only more lives lost.

“I want to deal with it head-on, and do something about it,” Moraga told me. “We as a community at large will be better for it.”

Others already have taken a hard and unpleasant look at the issue of alcoholism among Mexican Americans. It was the subject of an extensive story in The Times last year. But drunk driving is a separate problem--one that can be corrected.

For example, Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the study were much less likely to know the legal limit to be considered impaired at the wheel in California, which is 0.08% blood-alcohol content. So researchers stress getting the information out in culturally relevant education programs through churches, schools and family.

They also were much more likely than whites to drink at home or at a friend’s house, rather than at a bar. Researchers saw that as an opportunity to put pressure on the men through their loved ones, who risk losing everything if they let their husbands, sons and fathers get behind the wheel after drinking.

The community must make it “socially unacceptable” to drink and drive, said Julie Rochman, vice president of the highway safety research group. Violators should feel the sting of being stigmatized by their own peers, she added.

That means some deep-seated attitudes must change. Despite the romanticizing in countless mariachi songs, more Mexican men must realize that it’s not manly to celebrate with beer or drown your sorrows with tequila. Because if you do that and then drive, you may find your fun is over, and your sorrows just beginning.

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