TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119170.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.5 KB | 189 lines

                [╘                                                            AMERICAN SCENE, Page 12

San Diego, California

Hatred, Fear and Vigilance


A flood of illegal Mexican immigrants fuels a wave of nativism
and a tense face-off on the Tijuana border

By RICARDO CHAVIRA


    Just as the sun slips toward the Pacific, they gather along
Latin America's northernmost fringe. Several hundred white,
mainly lower-middle-class Southern Californians arrive in dusty
pickups and weathered sedans to confront what they say is a
criminal invasion of America. They park single file along a
marshy field on the San Diego-Tijuana border. Soon the men and
women are engaged in chitchat typical of a social event. Their
crimson bumper stickers proclaim WE WANT ORDER ON OUR BORDER, a
demand that nearby U.S. Border Patrol agents work hard to
enforce. Some of the 800 officers, who nightly nab upwards of
1,500 immigrants in this sector alone, buzz by in spotter
choppers or patrol in four-wheel-drive vehicles, while others
survey the area from hilltops.

    At nightfall, the protesters suddenly switch on headlights
and hand-held spotlights to illuminate a narrow stretch of
boundary. Tonight's Light Up the Border rally is one in a series
of monthly anti-immigrant demonstrations held in a place where
millions of Latin Americans and others have crossed the hills
and canyons that feed into San Diego.

    Four years after passage of the Immigration Reform and
Control Act, the human flow it was intended to stanch is on the
rise. This year an estimated 1 million foreigners will illegally
enter the U.S., most of them across the Mexican border. The
protesters, drawn by anger tinged with xenophobia, speak darkly
of the immigrants. They reject the conventional wisdom that the
aliens are benign job seekers who do work that Americans disdain
and that generally benefits the U.S. economy. "We have nothing
against Mexicans," says John Machan, a local courier. "Many of
them are hard workers, and there should be a way for them to
work -- but then go back home. A lot of the others don't come
to work. They steal, break into people's homes, bring drugs."
San Diego police say they have no evidence that illegal aliens
commit more crimes then the general population.

    Loren Flemming, himself an immigrant from Calgary, says he
has joined the demonstration to denounce a double standard.
"Canadians can't come in the way these people do," he claims.
"They get on welfare just by showing up at the office." Roger
Hedgecock, a former San Diego mayor, uses his popular call-in
radio show to endorse the protests. He also attends the
demonstrations. "We want respect for American laws," says
Hedgecock. "Mexicans are violating our laws." He and others
demand immediate but unspecified congressional action. Judging
by the phone calls Hedgecock receives, it would seem that many
San Diegans share his dismay. Says Hedgecock: "I've had callers
in the construction industry say, `Gosh, I used to be a drywall
hanger, and now there are no English-speaking drywall hangers in
San Diego County. They all speak Spanish, and I'm out of a
job.'"

    Behind the angry words and glaring headlights many
Hispanics and other residents detect a resurgence of nativism.
It is no coincidence, they say, that partisans are divided
roughly along racial lines. While no one suggests a formal link,
the protests coincide with a surge in ethnic tensions and
racially motivated crimes, both locally and nationally. "There's
a potential for violence in these demonstrations," says Bill
Robinson, a longtime spokesman for the San Diego police
department. "What we're seeing is political conservatives
protesting against people who are hungry and looking for work."

    The battle lines are clearly drawn. Directly in front of
the border protesters, counter-demonstrators, most of them
Hispanic, hold up mirrors and black plastic banners to block the
lights. Aida Mancillas, a university language professor who is
protesting the headlight rally, believes uneasiness about the
economy and San Diego's expanding minority population fuels the
demonstrations. The percentage of whites in San Diego County is
expected to decline during the '90s from its current 74% to 60%,
while that of Hispanics will rise from 14% to 23%. "Borders are
breaking down everywhere, and it's frightening," says Mancillas.
"There is a general concern that the economic standing of whites
is slipping, and so the undocumented worker becomes a target of
their fears." Before long, the competing protests have
degenerated into shouting matches, with Hispanics chanting,
"Racists go home!" while whites call back, "Wetback lovers!"

    The object of much of the nativist anger is the thousands of
immigrants, legal and illegal, who work on northern San Diego
County farms, which last year yielded $770 million in
strawberries, tomatoes, avocados and other produce. Many of the
workers live in appalling squalor. As expensive housing
developments continue to go up near the farms, residents often
discover that they live next door to Third World-style worker
encampments. "The Americans don't want us here, and so they are
always reporting us to the authorities," says Longilo Miranda,
18, a worker from southern Mexico. He lives with his father in
a scrap-wood lean-to. Marjorie Gaines, a city-council member in
Encinitas, an up scale seaside community that includes some of
the encampments, charges that undocumented workers litter, breed
disease, commit crimes and harass whites. Gaines claims that
drunk aliens burned down a local convenience store after the
owner refused to sell them liquor. "These are border toughs,"
she says.

    Increasingly, though, it is the illegal aliens who are
victims of violent assaults by whites. Armed robbers and
overzealous U.S. Border Patrol agents are responsible for
countless beatings and shootings of immigrants at the frontier.
But human-rights activists say San Diego's racial attacks are a
microcosm of hate crimes flaring nationally. In one of several
attacks involving white youths, Leonard Paul Cuen, 21, was
questioned last May and remains a suspect in connection with the
death of Emilio Jimenez, 12. The boy was shot as he crossed a
field not far from the site of the protest and within range of
Cuen's home.

    Last January farm worker Candido Gayoso was found in a
field, feet and hands bound, a paper bag over his head. On the
bag was scrawled "No mas aqui," ungrammatical Spanish for "Don't
come back." The owner of a market frequented by farmhands was
found guilty of assaulting Gayoso. In February Kenneth
Kovzelove, 18, was sentenced to 50-years-to-life imprisonment
in the shooting deaths of two field hands. He matter-of-factly
admitted killing them simply because they were Mexican.

    Jose Pedroza, a Mexico City native, and other Mexicans
congregate along a busy San Diego street to await day labor.
Suburbanites in need of gardening or other chores hire the men.
Pedroza says that in their search for work he and his
compatriots are targets of regular abuse, some of it violent.
Not long ago, says Pedroza, several white youths mugged him as
he walked across a field. "They are guys who I had seen before,
skateboarding and smoking marijuana," he recalls. "One of them
hit me, and another one put a gun to my chest. They took all of
my money, $220."

    Roberto Martinez, local director of the American Friends
Service Committee's U.S.-Mexico Border Program, says he has
gathered dozens of reports of unprovoked attacks against
Mexicans in which robbery was not a motive. "People passing in
cars throw bottles at them," he says, "or even hit them and keep
going." In the newest twist, white youths clad in military garb
have randomly shot Mexicans with pellet guns. Police say race
appears to be the motive in many of the attacks. Theft, however,
is sometimes the motive as well. Last month Border Patrol agents
arrested four youths on suspicion of robbing border crossers at
gunpoint. "We come here only to work," says laborer Jesus Reyes.
"It doesn't seem right for people to dislike us for that."

    A staunch advocate of immigrant rights, Martinez has felt
the sting of racial hatred. Two months ago, he received letters
filled with racial insults. They also threatened him with bodily
harm unless he dropped his pro-immigrant activities. A group
calling itself the Fighters of the White Cross signed both
letters. FBI agents are investigating the incidents. Meanwhile,
police have beefed up patrols of Martinez's home and office.
"I'm not saying the border protesters are the same ones who
threatened me," he says. "But Light Up the Border has created
the atmosphere for these terrorists." Rally organizers disavow
any connection to white supremacists.

    Martinez and other Latino activists insist that San Diego's
situation demands the same kind of high-profile attention as
that generated by racial killings in New York City's Bensonhurst
or by anti-Semitic incidents in France. "The silence from
government officials is deafening," Martinez says. "I sense that
there is an indifference to what's going on because it involves
people who are here illegally, and so the crimes against them
are diminished." Others find an ironic contrast to Eastern
Europe. "It is disconcerting to see the tearing down of barriers
and greater respect for human rights over there," says Richard
Castro, a member of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund, "while here at home the same spirit has yet
to prevail."