Mexican Hometown Clubs Vote for L.A. Politics

When it came to politics, Crisoforo Salvador never had time for it.

He worked. He had children. He didn’t apply for U.S. citizenship because he planned to return to his home in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca someday. So what was the point?

Recently, though, Salvador went to a seminar that Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes held on city services, taxation and the workings of the City Council. And he changed his mind.

“I hadn’t thought about it before,” said Salvador, a 45-year-old taxi driver from the Mexican village of Santa Maria Tavehua. “Now I think I’ve got to become a citizen so that I can vote for the candidate I think is best. It wasn’t important before.”

Salvador’s political awakening is exactly what leaders of a federation of Oaxacan hometown clubs hoped would happen when they broke with a long-standing tradition recently and endorsed a candidate for public office. That candidate, Reyes, is an incumbent running for reelection and has no significant competition.

Nevertheless, said Hilda Delgado, an organizer with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, “This is a milestone.”

The decision by the Oaxacan Federation of Communities and Indian Organizations in California, she said, was the first time any of the dozens of Mexican hometown clubs had jumped into local politics.

The endorsement, Reyes said, could awaken the slumbering political power of Mexican-immigrant hometown clubs.

“I think we’ve hit an incredible resource,” he said. “I think they will rival the homeowner associations.”

Volunteers from the Oaxacan federation have been working a weekend phone bank, earning Reyes’ appreciation as they called parts of his district -- Pico-Union and Koreatown -- that are home to thousands of Oaxacan immigrants.

Gustavo Santiago, the group’s spokesman, said the federation, which makes use of many parks, gyms and recreation centers, realized it needed to develop a relationship with the local councilman. “It’s very important for us to have a go-between in the place where decisions are made -- which we don’t have now,” he said.

The federation’s endorsement is a radical departure for Mexican hometown clubs.

Throughout U.S. history, immigrants from other countries have made a virtual religion of politics. The Irish in Chicago, Italians in New York and Jews in Los Angeles found in politics a route to progress.

Mexicans, on the whole, have strenuously avoided it. They’ve frequently listed corrupt politics in their home country as one reason for coming to the United States. Once here, Mexican immigrants often retain that aversion to politics. Reyes’ own mother and father -- immigrants from Mexico -- rejected politics as a dirty business even here in the U.S.

Many immigrants also spend years here planning to return home. Many don’t become citizens; when they do, they often don’t vote. They remain disenfranchised in the country where they live and raise their children.

One symptom of this yearning for home is the array of Mexican-immigrant hometown clubs throughout Southern California, representing perhaps tens of thousands of people.

The Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles estimates there are 250 clubs in Southern California representing hometowns in 16 federations.

The clubs focus on organizing parades and street fairs, on building public works in their villages, and on winning the right for immigrants here to vote in Mexican presidential and state elections.

They have never before ventured in a formal way into U.S. politics. The mere proposal to pay more attention to California politics and lobby Sacramento ignited fierce internal battles in recent years within a Southland federation of immigrants from the state of Zacatecas, the best organized of all Mexican immigrants.

As more Mexicans put down roots in Southern California, those attitudes are adjusting, Santiago said. “You come to the United States and you have to change your way of thinking,” he said. “Why should we be afraid of politics?”

Among Mexican immigrants, home ownership in Los Angeles has risen dramatically in the last four years. Large numbers of Oaxacans are among those buying homes for the first time, often in Pico-Union and South Los Angeles.

Some immigrant leaders also have begun to see the importance of political involvement.

The Union of Oaxacan Mountain Communities was formed years ago to promote basketball tournaments in Southern California, at which money was raised for public-works projects back home.

The union’s leaders long thought “politics was a waste of time,” said Jesus Garcia, from the mountain village of Jaltianguis, Oaxaca. “They could never agree. As they were our leaders, we as a people didn’t do it because they didn’t.”

But a new crop of leaders began exploring political involvement, in part to make sure the group got access to city gyms and parks in the 1st District, where many of their members live.

“This is a new era,” Garcia said. “We want to get involved a little. We want to know what our obligations are and what the benefits are.”

Still, the idea of endorsing Reyes met some resistance.

“We shouldn’t use the name of all Oaxacans,” said Otomi Dominguez, leader of the Oaxacan Indian Confederation. “There are Oaxacans who live in Santa Monica and elsewhere and can’t vote for Ed Reyes.”

It’s unclear, though, how many Oaxacans will actually follow the endorsement.

Oaxacans are not the unified bloc that, say, the Irish were in Chicago for many years.

Oaxacan organizations are notorious for forming, then dividing, then dividing again.

These fissures are sometimes caused by personality conflicts, sometimes by politics in Oaxaca -- such as the recent controversial election for governor.

Moreover, most of the thousands of Oaxacans who live in the 1st District are not citizens and cannot vote.

Odilia Romero, an organizer with the Oaxacan Indian Bi-National Front, said her group has worked for 18 months in Pico-Union to organize Oaxacans.

The group ran into heavy opposition to the idea of political involvement and found few people who could vote, she said. “They kicked us out of one hometown association when we brought it to them,” Romero said.

The federation, however, plans to marshal volunteers to create a database of registered voters from Oaxaca in the 1st District.

It did not endorse a mayoral candidate, but may do so, Santiago said, if the election goes to a runoff.

It’s unclear what would happen to Oaxacan unity if the community faced choosing between two strong candidates -- instead of only one, as is the case in the 1st District.

Reyes is endorsing the re-election of James K. Hahn for mayor. A tug of war might result within the Oaxacan community if Hahn faces a Latino -- either Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa or state Sen. Richard Alarcon -- in a runoff.

Indeed, Santiago said, it’s not a given that the federation would work for a Latino even if one made it to the runoff.

The candidate’s ethnicity “doesn’t interest us,” he said. “What interests us are actions and results. We’ll support whoever supports our agenda. In a close race, we might make the difference.”