Insiders and Outsiders Among Latinos

SAN DIEGO — Anthony Perez and Rodrigo Garay don’t know each other, but they have a lot in common. Both are California-bred Mexican Americans with an interest in law enforcement. Both are intense and articulate, natural leaders in a community that needs more like them. Unfortunately, they didn’t meet at the big event that drew them here, the Republican National Convention. That’s because Garay was on the outside of the San Diego Convention Center, leading the largest of several Latino protests against the GOP gathering, while Perez, the district attorney of Napa County, was inside the building as a California delegate pledged to support the nomination of Bob Dole.

Garay, 23, grew up in Los Angeles. His family moved to the San Joaquin Valley after he graduated from Manual Arts High School to get away from big-city gang problems. He is now majoring in criminology at Fresno Community College, where he is also a member of MECHA, the Chicano student group founded in the 1960s that is enjoying a revival on college and high school campuses. He talks with passion about his desire to help the Latino community, especially steering more kids along the path he followed, away from gangs and into college.

Perez, 42, was born in St. Helena, the lovely town at the heart of the Napa Valley, and still lives there with his wife and three sons. He was elected a city councilman in 1988 and first ran successfully for county prosecutor two years later. He talks with genuine affection about a part of California many people think they know, but really don’t--a picturesque place that “simply wouldn’t exist” without all the hard-working Latino families who help tend and pick the wine grapes that have made Napa famous.

I talked with both men toward the end of the convention and got the clear impression that they were leaving San Diego not having budged in their respective views of the Republican Party.

Perez, one of 32 Latinos in the 165-person California delegation, prefers to talk about the GOP as the party of Colin Powell, who delivered the convention’s best speech on Monday night. It was an eloquent plea for inclusiveness that would allow Republicans to disagree even on gut-level issues like abortion and affirmative action.

When Perez spoke before an evening social gathering of Latinos, he got the noisy crowd’s attention with a loud grito, the enthusiastic yelp of a mariachi. “That’s how Gen. Powell’s speech made me feel,” he told the suddenly silenced assembly.

Perez is also a longtime fan of vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, whose support of minority economic development has made him an icon to the business people who dominate Latino politics in the GOP. Perez said he’ll stress Kemp’s supply-side economic theories as he campaigns in Northern California this fall, trying to persuade Latino voters to support the GOP ticket. “The strongest platform of the Republican Party is economic expansion,” Perez said. “It creates prosperity for everyone.”

Garay sees the Republicans as the party of Mexican-bashing politicians like Pat Buchanan, the party whose platform endorses California Proposition 209, the initiative that would abolish affirmative action programs like those that help many young Latinos attend college.

Garay says he became politicized two years ago by the anti-immigrant rhetoric surrounding the campaign on behalf of Proposition 187. Now, worried about Proposition 209, he helped organize a protest march of Latino college students against it. The protest kicked off two months ago in Sacramento and ended Monday with a rally outside the convention that drew more than 2,000 people. Garay was one of only three marchers to make the entire trek, an estimated 800 miles.

“I’d like to rest now,” he admitted, “but the march can’t be the end of it. We’ve got to keep working until November to help beat 209. After that, I’ll transfer to a four-year school and then maybe go to law school. I’ve always been interested in public affairs and that is not going to stop now.”

Garay is right about that, probably more than he realizes.

He and his fellow students are helping to revive Chicano activism in a way that older, more established leaders cannot. Significantly, the protest organized by Garay and his fellow students was 10 times larger than one held a day later by a dozen national Latino groups who met here for a summit to demand an end to political scapegoating of Latinos, especially immigrants, by both the Republicans and Democrats. San Diego police estimated that crowd at about 200 people.

So there’s obviously a lot of potential in young Garay. That’s why I’m confident someone like Perez will take him aside someday soon with the goal of teaching him those things about law and politics that can’t be learned in a classroom.

In the meantime, Perez and other well-meaning Latino Republicans would do well to listen to the fears and frustrations of young Chicanos like Garay. Unless they do, they may never find an effective way to convince a fast-growing population of young voters that the GOP is not just the party of Pat Buchanan but also of Colin Powell.