A small town riddled with some big-time corruption

South Gate is an unremarkable little city surrounded by other unremarkable little cities in southeast Los Angeles County. The difference between them, however, is that the other little cities manage to exist in peace and boredom and are rarely heard from. When, for instance, was the last time you read of scandal, corruption, political recall, gunfire or firebombings in Cudahy? South Gate has had them all.

Once proclaimed the Latino-dominated city of the future, it has dissolved into a surreal world of cutthroat politics, racist accusations and acts of violence. By comparison, politics in Compton, often in a state of calamity, are beginning to look like the scholarly debate of philosophers at a Greek forum.

South Gate is a city of about 96,000, where the median income is far below the county average. Eighty-three percent of the population is Latino, and they’re at each other like roosters at a cockfight. Activists working to throw out the mayor and three others call them corrupt, self-serving and insensitive to the needs of the community.

The mayor, Xochilt Ruvalcaba, calls her enemies racist whites and Anglicized Latinos who are locked in the old ways and can’t accept the town’s new and progressive leadership. “It is the old regime clinging to shreds of power,” she says, then adds that South Gate’s biggest problem is the media. “You never hear of the good things.”

While I am certain there are many happy families in South Gate who picnic together, work hard at their jobs, value their children and love their puppies, there is also the fact that one progressive council member was shot in the head by an unknown assailant and a recall activist had three of his plumbing vans firebombed. I forgot to mention that City Treasurer Albert Robles is facing trial for allegedly threatening to kill two legislators and a police lieutenant. Mayberry this ain’t.

What has riled reformers is a combination of factors that include the city hiring of a disbarred attorney caught stealing from his clients, members of the City Council tripling their salaries and an acting police chief whose first hire was a cop once fired for tipping off suspects in a drug investigation. And, oh, by the way, after Robles was arrested on suspicion of making death threats, he was appointed deputy city manager. Even if convicted, he stands to collect $180,000 in severance pay.

“It’s a system gone totally wrong,” says Joe Ruiz, the plumber whose vans were firebombed. “We never thought it would happen here, but it has. Even if the recall wins, it will still take 20 years to clean up the mess.”

Ordered to hand over control

After reformers gathered 8,000 signatures to recall Treasurer Robles, Mayor Ruvalcaba and two other members of the City Council, things got so bad that the state ordered the city to hand over control of its special elections to the county. The order emerged from the usual chaos. City officials rejected the recall petitions as flawed, the reformers went to court and won, the city filed an appeal and lost, and the state said enough is enough. Secretary of State Bill Jones, citing electoral fraud and voter intimidation, has said that compared with South Gate, elections are more lawful in Nicaragua.

Space forbids a recitation of all the events that have brought the city under scrutiny. The mayor contends that it’s a fight between “the old Anglos” who once controlled the city and the young Latinos who are in tune with what the community needs. She is scornful of her Latino opponents as “ ‘good’ Latinos who marry white and give up the language.” All she wants, she says, is unity and peace.

One of two council members not being recalled is Henry Gonzalez. He recovered after being shot in the head during the last election, an act of violence he attributes directly to his political activity. No one has been arrested either in that shooting or in the firebombing of the vans owned by Ruiz.

“We’re all Latinos,” Gonzalez said. “The majority of those who signed the recall petitions are Latinos. And it’s mostly Latinos who pack the council meetings. The mayor tries to cut me off from even speaking. She says, ‘This is my meeting and I do what I want,’ but the city attorney tells her she has to let me talk. I’m ashamed to say that I’m a member of this council.”

The recall election is set for January. The trial of Albert Robles, often referred to as “the perceived political boss” of South Gate, is also scheduled for January. God knows what might happen between then and now, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to send in international inspectors to reassure Cudahy and all the rest of us that someone in South Gate isn’t trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.