Civil Rights Group Torn by Leadership Dispute

For nearly two decades they were almost inseparable. The civil rights leader and his protege, the man who would some day carry on the legacy of one of the nation’s oldest Latino rights organizations.

When Bert Corona, the fiery and charismatic director of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, passed away earlier this year at the age of 82, Nativo Lopez, 48, who had long headed the Orange County chapter, seemed poised to succeed him.

But he has been trumped, at least for the time being, by Angelina Casillas, Corona’s 48-year-old widow.

Two weeks after Corona’s funeral, Casillas, who joined Hermandad as an English instructor before marrying its leader in 1994, announced at a news conference that she would take the helm of the half-century-old organization, and would focus its activities solely in Los Angeles.

After years of financial crises brought on by lingering federal and state probes, Casillas said a national agenda is no longer feasible. Offices in Oakland, Chicago and New York have been closed.

The effective demise of a national organization has implications for the future of the once potent, and at times controversial, Latino organization that claims to have helped more than 100,000 immigrants gain legal status and citizenship in this country.

“We are just working on making our Los Angeles offices self-sufficient,” Casillas said. Lopez, she added, should focus on local issues in Orange County.

“She has exaggerated ambitions,” Lopez said in a recent interview. “It is truly unfortunate. Mourning should be a period of reflection, but she’s not of that mind.”

Lopez, who now runs a separate corporation called Hermandad Mexicana Nacional of Santa Ana, claims Casillas hijacked the national organization and is not legally in charge. Casillas denies that, saying she and Corona legally filed all necessary paperwork for her succession.

The organization’s 1998 tax documents, filed in late 1999 or early in 2000 and the latest available, listed Corona and Casillas as the sole officers, which she says was Corona’s choice. The 1997 tax filing listed Corona, Lopez, Casillas and Corona’s daughter as officers.

“My position is that we should maintain things at the local level. Bert agreed with that,” said Casillas. “Nativo has no business saying anything about how we run Los Angeles. He wants power. He wants to be a substitute Bert Corona.”

Some Latino community leaders in Southern California say Hermandad’s struggle cannot help but erode the organization’s effectiveness.

“When the father dies, the son feels he has the right to the position. And other members may have other ideas, and the family fights,” said Enriqueta Ramos, a Rancho Santiago Community College District board member in Santa Ana, and a friend of Corona. “It is sad. It will split the political voice. Two small groups is not as strong as one big one.”

The internal splintering also comes at a crucial period in its history, as the group continues to be locked in a three-year-old dispute with the state Department of Education over more than $4 million in adult education funds. The department claims the group cannot account for how it spent the money, meant for English as a second language and citizenship classes, and wants it back.

Hermandad officials have long maintained that the funds were properly accounted for.

State Demands Documentation

“Until we get complete documentation that corroborates Hermandad’s position, this is still a serious matter,” said Doug Stone, a spokesman for the department, which itself is under investigation by the federal government over the management of the funds. “Unless they can prove otherwise, we expect the state to be reimbursed for the money.”

On Friday, the agency sent a letter to Hermandad saying it now will consider legal action against the group, Stone said.

Templo and Hermandad were among 10 community organizations that came under scrutiny from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general in 1998 for their handling of millions in federal grants. The state Department of Education ceased funding the groups that year, and has been trying to recover the money since then.

Federal officials would not comment on the continuing probes.

The state Education Department also is facing potentially costly lawsuits from former and demoted employees who say the agency ignored their warnings about problems in the English and citizenship class programs.

For their part, Casillas and Lopez insist that their respective offices in Los Angeles and Orange County properly accounted for their expenditures. But where once the group put forward a united front, today the two camps fall short of vouching for each other.

“We are going to be responsible for the money we received,” Lopez said. “Los Angeles is going to have to be responsible the very same way. They are going to have to show how they spent their money.”

How Hermandad changed from an effective champion of immigrant rights to an embattled, feuding group is a tale of fervent idealism hindered by politics, internal and external.

The original group, Hermandad Mexicana, was founded in San Diego in 1951 to represent Mexican braceros who had come to the United States under a World War II government-sponsored guest worker program to fill in for Americans fighting abroad.

Felipe Usguiano, the founder, and Corona, by then a well-known Mexican American leader with a respectable track record, became friends.

By the early 1970s, Hermandad began to falter, and Corona took the reins. He renamed it Hermandad Mexicana Nacional in 1976, and quickly made a name for the organization.

At a time when even some Latino civil rights leaders were reluctant to advocate for undocumented immigrants, Hermandad took the lead.

“One of the things Hermandad did was help some of us understand that these people--whether we call them undocumented or illegal--they are foremost human beings,” said Mario T. Garcia, a UC Santa Barbara history professor and author of a book on Corona. “The tendency is to dehumanize and criminalize them. Hermandad has done a lot to empower undocumented immigrants.”

It took a decade, but its efforts paid off. In 1986, Congress passed an amnesty bill that legalized the status of nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Along with it came millions of dollars in assistance grants to help the newly legalized with civics and English courses.

Bolstered by almost $25 million in federal funds, Hermandad expanded from two tiny storefronts in Los Angeles and Santa Ana to a nationwide network with offices and chapters up and down California, and in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. Its membership skyrocketed from 2,000 to 200,000.

Immigrants lined up outside Hermandad offices, and by the end of 1992, when the federal funding ended, the group said it had helped 100,000 immigrants become legal residents.

Lopez was instrumental in that growth. He had met Corona in 1971. The Boyle Heights native was making his own mark as a student organizer in East Los Angeles when he was awed by Corona.

“I was a 19-year-old punk with a lot of plans, dreams and ideals,” Lopez said after Corona’s death in January. “It was a moving experience for me, that someone of his age, his stature, was paying heed. . . . After I met him, I decided this is the person I want to follow.”

And Lopez did. In 1977, he joined Hermandad and began organizing chapters throughout Southern California. In 1982, Lopez opened Hermandad’s second office in Santa Ana. Two years later, he was named Hermandad’s co-director and second in command.

But when federal amnesty funds dried up, it became difficult to maintain its size. As revenues plummeted, the group struggled to keep its doors open, accumulating hundreds of thousands in debt.

Casillas joined Hermandad as an English as a second language instructor during those difficult times. She weathered the storm with Corona and eventually married him, a year after Corona’s first wife died.

Still, Hermandad showed a unified front. The group had prided itself in its ability to organize entire families in the struggle for immigrant rights.

“They would bring in the whole family, not just the breadwinners,” said Garcia. The strategy was effective in putting a face on the issue of illegal immigrants, and “Hermandad turned the undocumented into a political force.”

Even as Hermandad lobbied for families, its own core was beginning to crack. Lopez says the group’s leadership became concerned about nepotism in their ranks. In recent years, Lopez says, Casillas’ brother and two sisters took over the management of a number of Hermandad’s offices in Los Angeles, and began to dictate the direction of the organization.

“Unfortunately, Bert did not respond to the criticisms,” Lopez said. “It was hard to criticize someone who was my teacher, my elder.”

Casillas counters that family members always have been a part of Hermandad’s leadership, including Lopez’s own wife, Maria Rosa Ibarra, who held a seat on Hermandad’s governing board.

Corona’s daughter from his first marriage, Margo De Ley, was also once a board member.

As internal politics brewed, Hermandad was faced with fierce critics on the outside.

Then-Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan accused Hermandad of illegally registering noncitizens to vote and tipping a closely contested 1996 race for his Orange County seat in favor of Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat.

900 Purged From Voter Rolls

After a lengthy investigation by the district attorney’s office, a grand jury declined to indict Hermandad or its officers. Last year, a state investigation ended with about 900 noncitizens being purged from the county’s voter rolls, far below the thousands Dornan had claimed.

Many other immigrants had been registered to vote after passing their citizenship tests but before taking the oath that officially made them citizens.

“We admitted to [mistakes],” Lopez said in an interview. “But there was no intent to commit fraud. . . . People were registered before the gun went off.”

Today, the organization continues to offer immigration services in Los Angeles, but its major focus is two federally funded affordable housing programs.

Lopez’s for-profit corporation, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional of Santa Ana, also offers immigration services and is politically active in Orange County. Most recently, he has led a campaign demanding an end to collaboration between the Anaheim Police Department and the Immigration and Nationalization Service.

Despite the specter of a costly battle against the state Education Department, Lopez says he remains hopeful for Hermandad’s future.

“We will come out much stronger, and live up to and even exceed the dreams of Bert Corona,” he said. “It is not me as a person. The organization is much larger than myself.”

Casillas, however, contends that Corona wanted a smaller, stronger organization based in Los Angeles. With his death, a national operation no longer is possible.

“Bert,” she said, “is irreplaceable.”