Posted on February 25, 2013
By Tony Castro AKA
What they see in Los Angeles, as in other parts of the country, is a dramatically changed sociological, cultural and political landscape. Call it Latino power. Pictured: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
This article is the first in a series entitled Latino Power LA: The Kingdom and the Power, Part 2 and Part 3.
The hypnotic eyes of a 1960s Chicano activist with flowing long hair and a Che Guevara look have beamed like headlights through a morning fog from the wall of a housing project along Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles for more than half a century.This article is the first in a series entitled Latino Power LA: The Kingdom and the Power, Part 2 and Part 3.
“We Are Not a Minority,” the mural’s message states simply.
For almost as long, Latino activists, the media and even advertisers have unashamedly hailed each succeeding decade as the time of the Hispanic in America with a near-messianic fervor signaling long-awaited expectations that have always ended in equally disappointing frustration.
Those symbolic mural eyes, however, may have finally found their way through clearer skies. What they see in Los Angeles, as in other parts of the country, is a dramatically changed sociological, cultural and political landscape. The prophecy of the mural has come true.
Historic 2005 election of Antonio Villaraigosa
Call it Latino Power. In the modern world, for many it would appear to have begun in the new millennium with the historic 2005 election of Antonio Villaraigosa as the first Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles in modern times.With Villaraigosa triumphantly walking from his Inaugural Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to City Hall—accompanied by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, family and thousands of Latino well-wishers—the inspiring scene riveted the attention of the country, if not the world, to the seemingly quixotic rise of a new political force in the one American city long associated with the romance of the Hispanic hero.
“The arrival of Antonio was not unlike the sudden presence of the mythical Zorro in oppressed Spanish colonial California, seeming to right past wrongs and inspiring his people to assert themselves and assume their proper place of influence in Los Angeles,” says Spanish-born Hollywood writer Teo Davis, who is developing a film project about Latino Power.
Only a generation before Villaraigosa’s mayoral election, there were no Hispanics on the City Council, and the lack of much Latino influence was evident even when they did have representation on the city’s lawmaking body.
In 1949, Edward R. Roybal became the first Latino elected to the City Council, but he had watched powerlessly a decade later at the wholesale razing through eminent domain of an entire Hispanic community called Chavez Ravine on the hillside area overlooking downtown for the benefit of the Dodgers’ new stadium.
“I could not have stopped the destruction of Chavez Ravine and the displacement of those hundreds of families,” Roybal said in an interview after his retirement from Congress in 1993. “I was fighting the future of Los Angeles, and there was no way to stop the future.”
Ironically, today the future of Los Angeles rests among Latinos. They make up 48 percent of the surrounding county, according to the 2010 Census—a far cry from the post World War II period when Hispanics represented slightly more than 7 percent of the population.
“The Latino agenda,” as Villaraigosa puts it, “is the American agenda.”
But it has been a long time coming to that. In 1871, Romualdo Pacheco was elected lieutenant governor of California. Pacheo is also the state’s only Latino governor, elevated but not elected to the seat in 1875 when then Gov. Newton Booth was elected to Congress.
http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-1/2/
Latinos shut out of major office for nearly a century
Richard Alatorre (L.A. Times)
But Roybal’s move to Congress left Latinos without representation on the City Council, a significant void during the civil rights movement years.
In most Latino studies programs, the 1960s are remembered as the time of Cesar Chavez and the organizing of California farm workers, buoyed by grape and lettuce boycotts in the cities, that forced many growers into recognizing Chavez’s union with better labor conditions and higher wages.
But Chavez’s movement was basically a rural issue that didn’t affect or improve lives of urban Latinos.
“The organizing of farm workers never translated to the organizing of Chicanos in the city,” recalled Latina feminist Rosa Marin, a leader in the 1968 Los Angeles student protests of unequal conditions in the city’s public school system.
“They came to be known as the Chicano Blowouts,” says Marin. “We were all students in high school, and this may have been the first real organizing that our community had ever done. There was no one to teach us, and we were having to teach ourselves, mostly by trial and error, from organizing that we’d seen or learned at leadership conferences we attended.”
The late Los Angeles restaurateur Frank Casado remembered marveling at the student movement.
“What it came down to is that we Latinos were outsiders with no real insider knowledge of power—of how it worked, how you got it, how you organized to get it,” said Casado, who along with Roybal, then a City Councilman, founded the Mexican American Political Association in 1960.
This was an organization created to rally Hispanic support for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, similar to Viva Kennedy Clubs that formed at the same time in Texas and other states in the Southwest.
“I knew how to make tacos and enchiladas, but I didn’t know politics,” said Casado. “I’m not sure I was any different than anyone else. We were learning as we went along. Roybal was the only one with any political experience, and he had his future riding on Kennedy’s coat-tails.”
In 1960, Kennedy was nominated at the Democratic National Convention held in Los Angeles where Democrats, among them Roybal, were hoping to springboard their own aspirations—and that of their party in California—in a state that had been historically a Republican showcase.
Roybal, though, had failed to groom an heir. When Roybal left to go to Congress two years later, there were no other Latinos prepared to take his place.
A public health educator, Roybal had lost his first campaign for the City Council in 1947 before turning his fortunes around only because of the work of Fred Ross, an organizer whose Community Service Organization later trained Cesar Chavez and helped him develop the United Farm Workers.
“It’s not that Roybal lacked vision, but he only saw the immediate,” said Casado. “He organized from one campaign to the next, but there was nothing that remained in place. I think part of it was that Roybal had so much trouble waging his campaigns—he wasn’t what you’d call a natural campaigner—that it never occurred to him that he should be building the machinery that would support the campaigns of other candidates.
“I remember once asking Roybal, why he didn’t put a political machine in place. Roybal looked at me and he said, ‘I’ve done it on my own. Others can do it, too.’ That was Roybal. A nice guy, but he was only in it for himself.”
But there was a more serious problem facing Latino political aspirations in Los Angeles than just a failure to organize.
Most Hispanics living in the city at that time lived on the Eastside between downtown and unincorporated East Los Angeles or in the Northeast neighborhoods adjoining the Pasadena Freeway.
Those were old communities, and a “brown flight” phenomenon was occurring beginning in the 1960s as many young Latinos were going off to college and not returning to their own neighborhoods. They were moving eastward into the San Gabriel Valley, to Orange County and to other parts of Los Angeles.
They were moving to places where they could no longer either vote in the heavily Hispanic political districts of Los Angeles nor run for office from what had been their home turf.
“We lost our best and brightest,” said Roybal. “Many of our young, brilliant, educated men and women who could have made a difference—who could have been City Councilmen and Councilwomen and players in politics—they moved away and made their lives elsewhere.”
There would be no one to pick up Roybal’s mantel for almost a decade. There was rhetoric and activism, for sure. MAPA, Roybal’s signature group, became the most influential Latino political organization in the state insofar as endorsements each election year.
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-1/2/#sthash.oD9ptp0Q.dpuf
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http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-1/3/
La Raza Unida party
La Raza Unida party, which had formed in several southwestern states, became the champion political organization of the activists and students—and would have one major moment of glory in Los Angeles.In 1971, a California Assembly seat opened in a special election in northeast Los Angeles and caught the eye of Richard Alatorre, a young Latino political aide to Assemblyman Walter Karabian, who had the claim of having been the youngest legislator in state history and by then the party’s majority leader.
“When you talk about who truly got Chicano political movement on it’s way, you have to say it was Wally Karabian,” said Louis F. Moret, who later became one of the most influential behind-the-scenes movers and shakers among Hispanic politicians.
“You have to be on the inside to know and understand how real politics works. How you organize. How you get out the vote. How you get elected. How you network and collect IOUs and how and when y0u cash them in. Well, we, Latinos didn’t really have anyone learning the ropes of the inside until Wally hired Richard.”
But Alatorre’s first run at public office became a disaster. A Raza Unida candidate jumped into the race, took away Democratic Latino from Alatorre and allowed a Republican candidate to win the Assembly seat.
“I learned a costly lesson,” says Alatorre. “I was out-Hispanicked in my own backyard. It wouldn’t happen again.”
Alatorre won the Assembly seat in the regular election year in 1972. He became the first Hispanic since Roybal elected to any kind of office from a political district entirely within the city of Los Angeles.
“When I first ran for public office, Tom Bradley ran for making, trying to become the city’s first African American mayor,” said Alatorre. “He lost in what was an ugly, racist campaign directed at him. Four years later, he ran and won, and I remember thinking that Los Angeles was changing.”
“But that was almost 40 years ago. I knew then we would one day have a Latino mayor of Los Angeles. I just never thought it would take a generation.”
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-1/3/
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Latino Power LA: The Kingdom and the Power, Part 2
Posted on February 28, 2013
By Tony Castro
Art Snyder with Father Juan Santilla. Snyder is said to have had Latino power, because of the strong support of Latinos. (LA Public Library)
A Los Angeles Times editorial cartoon once depicted Art Snyder in a car crashing through a large picture into a council meeting with the caption reading: “Councilman Snyder is here. I guess we have a quorum.” Snyder, a lawyer, loved the controversy almost as much as he liked handily beating the Latino challengers that would try taking him on at election time.
“Yo soy Mejicano en mi corazon,” Snyder would tell political rallies where he would be mobbed by Mexican American women—from grandmothers at tardeadas to Guadalupanas at church meetings who would wish him well and slip tiny religious medals into his coat pockets.
Snyder maintained he had been threatened so many times by members of the Mexican Mafia that he carried a .45 caliber handgun with a permit.
He defeated his most serious challenge—a city planner whose claim to fame was that President Jimmy Carter once stayed at his home—by humiliating him in a debate on local Spanish television.
His opponent, whose Spanish was barely passable, made the fatal mistake of pausing to think after being asked a question, and Snyder jumped in. He translated the question into English, and his opponent compounded his error by answering in English—which Snyder translated into Spanish for the viewing audience.
California Secretary of Health Mario Obledo.
Meanwhile, in the 1970s Latino politicians in Los Angeles had bigger problems. A Reader’s Digest investigative story alleged ties between the notorious Mexican Mafia prison gang and Mario Obledo, a former Harvard law professor who had become Gov. Brown’s secretary of health and welfare.
By inference, other Latino leaders were implicated as well. No legal or investigative action ever resulted. It seemed, however, that the Latino power circle of the city was under attack.
At the time, the Los Angeles Times had just published a series of investigative stories targeting one of Latino LA’s most cherished institutions—TELACU, The East Los Angeles Community Union—accusing it and its leaders of improprieties involving federal funding.
In Washington, D.C., the aging Edward Roybal was under investigation by his peers in Congress for allegedly accepting a $1,000 bribe from a South Korean lobbyist. Roybal eventually admitted taking the bribe and was reprimanded by Congressional leaders, who originally wanted to censure him.
Roybal was already aging and made matters worse by hailing the reprimand, as opposed to the censure, “not only a personal victory for me, but for all Hispanics throughout the nation.”
“We have Art Snyder on one end,” said Casado the night of the reprimand, “and Ed Roybal on the other. Think it’s time for new blood?”
But the Casados were loyal to their own. They rallied more than 5,000 Hispanics around a statewide Latino Leadership Unity Dinner in downtown Los Angeles that drew the governor, Roybal and virtually every elected Hispanic political in California.
The most significant of those politicians, certainly from the Casados’ perspective had to be the governor, Jerry Brown, who used a line that he would use again and again in speaking to Mexican American audiences.
“It’s your turn in the sun!” the governor told the crowd in a stirring address. “And I want to be part of it!”
See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-2/2/
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http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/
By Tony Castro
By Tony Castro
Art Snyder with Father Juan Santilla. Snyder is said to have had Latino power, because of the strong support of Latinos. (LA Public Library)
A Los Angeles Times editorial cartoon once depicted Art Snyder in a car crashing through a large picture into a council meeting with the caption reading: “Councilman Snyder is here. I guess we have a quorum.” Snyder, a lawyer, loved the controversy almost as much as he liked handily beating the Latino challengers that would try taking him on at election time.
“Yo soy Mejicano en mi corazon,” Snyder would tell political rallies where he would be mobbed by Mexican American women—from grandmothers at tardeadas to Guadalupanas at church meetings who would wish him well and slip tiny religious medals into his coat pockets.
Snyder maintained he had been threatened so many times by members of the Mexican Mafia that he carried a .45 caliber handgun with a permit.
He defeated his most serious challenge—a city planner whose claim to fame was that President Jimmy Carter once stayed at his home—by humiliating him in a debate on local Spanish television.
His opponent, whose Spanish was barely passable, made the fatal mistake of pausing to think after being asked a question, and Snyder jumped in. He translated the question into English, and his opponent compounded his error by answering in English—which Snyder translated into Spanish for the viewing audience.
California Secretary of Health Mario Obledo.
Meanwhile, in the 1970s Latino politicians in Los Angeles had bigger problems. A Reader’s Digest investigative story alleged ties between the notorious Mexican Mafia prison gang and Mario Obledo, a former Harvard law professor who had become Gov. Brown’s secretary of health and welfare.
By inference, other Latino leaders were implicated as well. No legal or investigative action ever resulted. It seemed, however, that the Latino power circle of the city was under attack.
At the time, the Los Angeles Times had just published a series of investigative stories targeting one of Latino LA’s most cherished institutions—TELACU, The East Los Angeles Community Union—accusing it and its leaders of improprieties involving federal funding.
In Washington, D.C., the aging Edward Roybal was under investigation by his peers in Congress for allegedly accepting a $1,000 bribe from a South Korean lobbyist. Roybal eventually admitted taking the bribe and was reprimanded by Congressional leaders, who originally wanted to censure him.
Roybal was already aging and made matters worse by hailing the reprimand, as opposed to the censure, “not only a personal victory for me, but for all Hispanics throughout the nation.”
“We have Art Snyder on one end,” said Casado the night of the reprimand, “and Ed Roybal on the other. Think it’s time for new blood?”
But the Casados were loyal to their own. They rallied more than 5,000 Hispanics around a statewide Latino Leadership Unity Dinner in downtown Los Angeles that drew the governor, Roybal and virtually every elected Hispanic political in California.
The most significant of those politicians, certainly from the Casados’ perspective had to be the governor, Jerry Brown, who used a line that he would use again and again in speaking to Mexican American audiences.
“It’s your turn in the sun!” the governor told the crowd in a stirring address. “And I want to be part of it!”
See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-2/2/
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http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/
Posted on March 1, 2013
By Tony Castro
State Assemblyman Richard Alatorre and his wife Angie attend the inaugural gala of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes. (Photo molina.lacounty.gov)
This article is the third in a series entitled Latino Power LA: The Kingdom and the Power, Part 1 and Part 2.
If any city in the country seemed destined to be the fountain of Latino Power in America, that place was Los Angeles and that time was the early 1980s.
Latinos in Los Angeles, where Hispanics at the time already comprised a third of the population, even had a phrase for the coming days when they would wield Latino power—The Politics of Promise.
Two political machines controlled Los Angeles politics then and wielded tremendous influence beyond the city.
One was the Waxman-Berman Machine named after two congressmen whose influence dictated politics and power on the heavily Jewish Westside of the city for more than a generation.
The other was the Latino Machine on the heavily Hispanic Eastside, which could have been called the Alatorre Machine, though State Assemblyman Richard Alatorre denied any claim to being a power broker.
“I am not the Apostle,” Alatorre loved to say when the topic of running the city’s Eastside and Northeast ever came up.
But few believed him.
HELP-Matrix Humane-Liberation-Party Blog ~ http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/ ~
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@Peta_de_Aztlan Blog ~ http://peta-de-aztlan.blogspot.com/ ~ @Peta_de_Aztlan
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This article is the third in a series entitled Latino Power LA: The Kingdom and the Power, Part 1 and Part 2.
If any city in the country seemed destined to be the fountain of Latino Power in America, that place was Los Angeles and that time was the early 1980s.
Latinos in Los Angeles, where Hispanics at the time already comprised a third of the population, even had a phrase for the coming days when they would wield Latino power—The Politics of Promise.
Two political machines controlled Los Angeles politics then and wielded tremendous influence beyond the city.
One was the Waxman-Berman Machine named after two congressmen whose influence dictated politics and power on the heavily Jewish Westside of the city for more than a generation.
The other was the Latino Machine on the heavily Hispanic Eastside, which could have been called the Alatorre Machine, though State Assemblyman Richard Alatorre denied any claim to being a power broker.
“I am not the Apostle,” Alatorre loved to say when the topic of running the city’s Eastside and Northeast ever came up.
But few believed him.
Richard Alatorre (Photo by Calstatela.edu)
Alatorre had been in charge of California’s redistricting after the 1980 Census, and his legislative committee produced new maps that eventually would elect two new Hispanic congressmen from Southern California alone as well as the first Latina legislator who would capture the imagination of the women’s movement.
But all the while, what Alatorre had also been quietly doing was laying the groundwork for the election of California’s first Latino statewide elected official, the first step toward possibly electing a Hispanic governor or U.S. Senator.
Alatorre even had the perfect candidate in mind.
His name was Art Torres, a Harvard-educated Los Angeles State Assemblyman who grew up in the Boyle Heights barrio and had gone on to a better life.
He had especially close ties to farm labor legend Cesar Chavez and to the Kennedy family, whose popularity among Latinos had remained strong long after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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Posted on March 1, 2013
By Tony Castro
The fountain of Latino Power in America was Los Angeles and the time was the early 1980s, when Ted Kennedy took notice of the city’s growing Latino voters. (AP Photo)
Art Torres, then in his mid-30s, was charismatic and a gifted orator whose speeches sometimes reminded listeners of the distinctive Kennedy phrasing and rhetoric. He was a also young father married to a television newscaster he had met at a rally for Chavez’s farm worker’s union.
Political speculation was that Torres would be running for lieutenant governor or possibly mayor or maybe one of those congressional seats that his pal Alatorre had specially created.
“Ultimately,” said Alatorre, “he will be the next governor of the State of California.”
No one seemed to disagree. Art Gastellum, then an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley—who would go on to become the Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee in 1982—had gone on the record, saying:
“Art Torres could well be California’s first Mexican American governor of modern times.”
Torres indeed was special, not just one of those Hispanic politicians who had once had his picture taken with Ted Kennedy.
The two had developed a close bond over the years, and Torres had traveled with Kennedy and then wife Joan to Mexico City where the senator met with then President Jose Lopez Portillo, anticipating his run challenging Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.
At one point in Mexico, Kennedy and Torres found themselves deluged on the streets by throngs of Mexican well-wishers.
“Art,” Kennedy said to Torres as they shook hands with the Mexicans inching closer to touch them. “I hope you can pull this kind of crowd in East Los Angeles!”
In 1981, Kennedy led a long line of political figures offering praises about “the future of Latino politics,” as one of them called Torres, at a major fund-raiser at a Gatsby-like Pasadena mansion once owned by Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.
The opulence was like something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, with old European chandeliers and statuary throughout, and little spared on the opulence, as well as the rare automobiles in the driveway, including a Ferrari and a $100,000 Stutz Bearcat.
“Art,” said Kennedy, “this does not look like East Los Angeles to me.”
“Hispanics live in other places as well,” Torres said.
“Well, where were all of them during my campaign, Torres!”
Kennedy’s own political dreams had ended the previous year when his attempt to unseat President Carter had been defeated.
But at that moment, there in the early 1980s, few doubted the inevitability of Latino Power there in that decade and of Art Torres.
Kennedy himself was so certain of his friend’s future that he could crack jokes about Torres’ political wisdom, knowing no one would take it seriously.
“Let me tell you about my friend Art Torres,” Kennedy said at the fancy fundraiser.
“When I was thinking of running for president in 1980, I called Art to ask his opinion, and he said, ‘You’ve got to get in. All the polls say you’ll win by a landslide. Go ahead!’”
Nearby, Torres mumbled to his friend, “You’re bad. Oh, you’re bad!”
Kennedy continued:
“Then, when the California primary came along, I called Art and again asked what he thought, and he told me, ‘Get out of it. I’ve got my ear to the ground. And I hate to tell you this, but you’re not going to make it!’”
Kennedy wound up winning the California primary.
“And finally,” said Kennedy, the timbre building in his voice, when we were at the Democratic National Convention, and it was becoming clear we weren’t going to have the votes, I asked Art for his advice, and he said, ‘Look, whatever you do, don’t go out and make a speech!’”
Kennedy’s electrifying speech only became the highlight of the Democrats’ convention in 1980.
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/2/#sthash.8O0RR4xt.dpuf
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http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/3/
http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-in-la-the-kingdom/
March 2, 2013
Posted on March 2, 2013
By Tony Castro
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Alatorre had been in charge of California’s redistricting after the 1980 Census, and his legislative committee produced new maps that eventually would elect two new Hispanic congressmen from Southern California alone as well as the first Latina legislator who would capture the imagination of the women’s movement.
But all the while, what Alatorre had also been quietly doing was laying the groundwork for the election of California’s first Latino statewide elected official, the first step toward possibly electing a Hispanic governor or U.S. Senator.
Alatorre even had the perfect candidate in mind.
His name was Art Torres, a Harvard-educated Los Angeles State Assemblyman who grew up in the Boyle Heights barrio and had gone on to a better life.
He had especially close ties to farm labor legend Cesar Chavez and to the Kennedy family, whose popularity among Latinos had remained strong long after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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Posted on March 1, 2013
By Tony Castro
The fountain of Latino Power in America was Los Angeles and the time was the early 1980s, when Ted Kennedy took notice of the city’s growing Latino voters. (AP Photo)
Latino Power: Ted Kennedy pulls in LA’s Latinos with some help
Art Torres, then in his mid-30s, was charismatic and a gifted orator whose speeches sometimes reminded listeners of the distinctive Kennedy phrasing and rhetoric. He was a also young father married to a television newscaster he had met at a rally for Chavez’s farm worker’s union.
Political speculation was that Torres would be running for lieutenant governor or possibly mayor or maybe one of those congressional seats that his pal Alatorre had specially created.
“Ultimately,” said Alatorre, “he will be the next governor of the State of California.”
No one seemed to disagree. Art Gastellum, then an aide to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley—who would go on to become the Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee in 1982—had gone on the record, saying:
“Art Torres could well be California’s first Mexican American governor of modern times.”
Torres indeed was special, not just one of those Hispanic politicians who had once had his picture taken with Ted Kennedy.
The two had developed a close bond over the years, and Torres had traveled with Kennedy and then wife Joan to Mexico City where the senator met with then President Jose Lopez Portillo, anticipating his run challenging Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.
At one point in Mexico, Kennedy and Torres found themselves deluged on the streets by throngs of Mexican well-wishers.
“Art,” Kennedy said to Torres as they shook hands with the Mexicans inching closer to touch them. “I hope you can pull this kind of crowd in East Los Angeles!”
In 1981, Kennedy led a long line of political figures offering praises about “the future of Latino politics,” as one of them called Torres, at a major fund-raiser at a Gatsby-like Pasadena mansion once owned by Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.
The opulence was like something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, with old European chandeliers and statuary throughout, and little spared on the opulence, as well as the rare automobiles in the driveway, including a Ferrari and a $100,000 Stutz Bearcat.
“Art,” said Kennedy, “this does not look like East Los Angeles to me.”
“Hispanics live in other places as well,” Torres said.
“Well, where were all of them during my campaign, Torres!”
Kennedy’s own political dreams had ended the previous year when his attempt to unseat President Carter had been defeated.
But at that moment, there in the early 1980s, few doubted the inevitability of Latino Power there in that decade and of Art Torres.
Kennedy himself was so certain of his friend’s future that he could crack jokes about Torres’ political wisdom, knowing no one would take it seriously.
“Let me tell you about my friend Art Torres,” Kennedy said at the fancy fundraiser.
“When I was thinking of running for president in 1980, I called Art to ask his opinion, and he said, ‘You’ve got to get in. All the polls say you’ll win by a landslide. Go ahead!’”
Nearby, Torres mumbled to his friend, “You’re bad. Oh, you’re bad!”
Kennedy continued:
“Then, when the California primary came along, I called Art and again asked what he thought, and he told me, ‘Get out of it. I’ve got my ear to the ground. And I hate to tell you this, but you’re not going to make it!’”
Kennedy wound up winning the California primary.
“And finally,” said Kennedy, the timbre building in his voice, when we were at the Democratic National Convention, and it was becoming clear we weren’t going to have the votes, I asked Art for his advice, and he said, ‘Look, whatever you do, don’t go out and make a speech!’”
Kennedy’s electrifying speech only became the highlight of the Democrats’ convention in 1980.
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/2/#sthash.8O0RR4xt.dpuf
http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/3/
Art Torres’ career was met with scandal, one that would deter Latino power to be exactly what it had been for years, The Politics of Promise. (Wiki/Creative Commons)
With all that great expectation, about the most that Torres would say about his future was:
“I have not foreclosed any option.”
And then Torres did what no one expected him to do.
Instead of running for governor or some other major office, he ran for the state senate seat that already had a Latino incumbent.
Torres could never adequately explain why he pulled back on reaching for the political heavens, other than that he felt better qualified than the incumbent he wanted to oust.
The Mexican American senator Torres challenged had been known to have a drinking problem, and the race became one of the dirtiest political campaigns that Los Angeles had ever seen.
Torres’ decision stunned many in Los Angeles, who shook their heads and agreed that this seemed to smack of the old stereotype which Latinos had long denied—the image of Hispanics at each other’s throats.
Torres would win what amounted to a Pyrrhic victory both for himself and for Latinos. He would never again win a campaign of any consequence, losing his eventual statewide run for office in 1994.
His marriage ended in divorce, and his own political future was soon buried in scandal from two drunk driving arrests.
So much promise and expectation had been met by disappointment and failure.
And it would be a generation before Latino politics in Los Angeles recovered.
Latino power, until that time, would be exactly what it had been for years, The Politics of Promise.
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/3/#sthash.nE7lYjvx.dpuf
++++Art Torres ditches his run for governor
All the while, as talk centered on Chicano Power in California at that moment and on how so much of it rode on Art Torres, something was wrong, though no one yet sensed it.With all that great expectation, about the most that Torres would say about his future was:
“I have not foreclosed any option.”
And then Torres did what no one expected him to do.
Instead of running for governor or some other major office, he ran for the state senate seat that already had a Latino incumbent.
Torres could never adequately explain why he pulled back on reaching for the political heavens, other than that he felt better qualified than the incumbent he wanted to oust.
The Mexican American senator Torres challenged had been known to have a drinking problem, and the race became one of the dirtiest political campaigns that Los Angeles had ever seen.
Torres’ decision stunned many in Los Angeles, who shook their heads and agreed that this seemed to smack of the old stereotype which Latinos had long denied—the image of Hispanics at each other’s throats.
Torres would win what amounted to a Pyrrhic victory both for himself and for Latinos. He would never again win a campaign of any consequence, losing his eventual statewide run for office in 1994.
His marriage ended in divorce, and his own political future was soon buried in scandal from two drunk driving arrests.
So much promise and expectation had been met by disappointment and failure.
And it would be a generation before Latino politics in Los Angeles recovered.
Latino power, until that time, would be exactly what it had been for years, The Politics of Promise.
- See more at: http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-la-kingdom-power-part-3/3/#sthash.nE7lYjvx.dpuf
http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-in-la-the-kingdom/
March 2, 2013
Latino power in LA: The kingdom and the power, part 4
Posted on March 2, 2013
By Tony Castro
Latino Power in LA: United Farm Workers co-founder and civil rights leader, Cesar Chavez. (Photo/ drjohnsjournal)
From the 1960s until his death in 1993, Cesar Chavez was the most important Hispanic public figure in America and especially in Los Angeles where he didn’t reside but where he cast a long shadow in the Latino community.
No Latino dared run for public office without Chavez’s blessing, and the few Hispanics who held office were safely under the wings of the man who had achieved a breakthrough in organizing the state’s hard working but poor farm labor force.
But Chavez’s political allegiance didn’t extended beyond the handful of Latino legislators in California who were trying to establish a foothold in the state’s political landscape.
His main ties in the mid and late 1970s were with Gov. Jerry Brown, who had created the state’s landmark Agricultural Farm Labor Board that had secured Chavez’s union negotiating rights and with the Los Angeles political machine that had tremendous organizing and fund-raising clout not only in California but also nationally.
It was known as the Waxman-Berman Machine, named after Congressman Henry Waxman and State Assemblyman Howard Berman, an ambitious politician who wanted the powerful position of Assembly Speaker—and had the support of Chavez and the farm workers.
Few could have foreseen, however, that ultimately this would lead to California’s Hispanic political leadership breaking ties to Chavez in what was to become a cataclysmic development that would have serious repercussions for both Latino Power and the United Farm Workers.
But in 1979, that was exactly what began unfolding.
Berman’s challenge, though, went down in flames. This was the era before term limits when Assembly speakers were almost as powerful as the governor, and McCarthy all but moved Alatorre and Torres to the basement of the capitol.
Berman vowed to be back, and in 1981 he again made a run for speaker, again with Chavez’s support and thinking he had the votes of the Latino legislators.
But instead Alatorre and Torres led a revolt of their own, supporting the surprise candidacy of San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown, the leader of California’s insurgent black political movement.
Brown won the speakership, and Alatorre and Torres became part of that new powerful team. Brown rewarded Alatorre by making him chairman of the state’s redistricting committee in which he created new congressional and legislative districts for Latinos.
Chavez and the farm workers felt betrayed, and their anger triggered perhaps the most divisive split ever among Mexican Americans in California
The struggle now had little to do with the Assembly speakership. It was Cesar Chavez against Richard Alatorre and Art Torres. It was the old Chicano leadership against the new. It was the interests of the rural Mexican-Americans against the interests of the urban.
Nobody was calling this Cesar Chavez’s last hurrah—it wasn’t. But the fight showed Chavez to be like the rest of rural America, bowing to the tide of urban civilization. It also represented the shifting of power and the assertion of a new Latino leadership in California.
“You have to understand Cesar as he is now” is how New Mexico Hispanic rights leader Reies Lopez Tijerina put it back then. “He is a union man—a union leader. He might not want to admit it, but I think it’s fair to say Cesar at this moment has more in common with other union leaders than he does with other Mexican-Americans in California.”
No Latino leader could then or even now say these things publicly, but those differences were obviously part of what brought about Cesar Chavez’s defeat in this showdown with Alatorre.
Old ways, old customs and old leadership could no more override the new than the declining rural influence in the legislatures and congress could hold back the increasing power of urban growth.
In the end, Torres may have been the more torn up of the two legislators over their split with Chavez. Torres had worked closely with Chavez’s union and championed their cause in Sacramento.
“It hurts this had to happen,” he would say about the break. “It’s always difficult for a student to disagree so strongly with the teacher.”
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From the 1960s until his death in 1993, Cesar Chavez was the most important Hispanic public figure in America and especially in Los Angeles where he didn’t reside but where he cast a long shadow in the Latino community.
No Latino dared run for public office without Chavez’s blessing, and the few Hispanics who held office were safely under the wings of the man who had achieved a breakthrough in organizing the state’s hard working but poor farm labor force.
But Chavez’s political allegiance didn’t extended beyond the handful of Latino legislators in California who were trying to establish a foothold in the state’s political landscape.
His main ties in the mid and late 1970s were with Gov. Jerry Brown, who had created the state’s landmark Agricultural Farm Labor Board that had secured Chavez’s union negotiating rights and with the Los Angeles political machine that had tremendous organizing and fund-raising clout not only in California but also nationally.
It was known as the Waxman-Berman Machine, named after Congressman Henry Waxman and State Assemblyman Howard Berman, an ambitious politician who wanted the powerful position of Assembly Speaker—and had the support of Chavez and the farm workers.
Few could have foreseen, however, that ultimately this would lead to California’s Hispanic political leadership breaking ties to Chavez in what was to become a cataclysmic development that would have serious repercussions for both Latino Power and the United Farm Workers.
But in 1979, that was exactly what began unfolding.
The Latino power in LA
Chavez convinced the Los Angeles Latino political machine of Assemblymen Richard Alatorre and Art Torres to support Berman, a move that only further deepened their own poor relationship with then Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy.Berman’s challenge, though, went down in flames. This was the era before term limits when Assembly speakers were almost as powerful as the governor, and McCarthy all but moved Alatorre and Torres to the basement of the capitol.
Berman vowed to be back, and in 1981 he again made a run for speaker, again with Chavez’s support and thinking he had the votes of the Latino legislators.
But instead Alatorre and Torres led a revolt of their own, supporting the surprise candidacy of San Francisco Assemblyman Willie Brown, the leader of California’s insurgent black political movement.
Brown won the speakership, and Alatorre and Torres became part of that new powerful team. Brown rewarded Alatorre by making him chairman of the state’s redistricting committee in which he created new congressional and legislative districts for Latinos.
Chavez and the farm workers felt betrayed, and their anger triggered perhaps the most divisive split ever among Mexican Americans in California
The struggle now had little to do with the Assembly speakership. It was Cesar Chavez against Richard Alatorre and Art Torres. It was the old Chicano leadership against the new. It was the interests of the rural Mexican-Americans against the interests of the urban.
Nobody was calling this Cesar Chavez’s last hurrah—it wasn’t. But the fight showed Chavez to be like the rest of rural America, bowing to the tide of urban civilization. It also represented the shifting of power and the assertion of a new Latino leadership in California.
“You have to understand Cesar as he is now” is how New Mexico Hispanic rights leader Reies Lopez Tijerina put it back then. “He is a union man—a union leader. He might not want to admit it, but I think it’s fair to say Cesar at this moment has more in common with other union leaders than he does with other Mexican-Americans in California.”
No Latino leader could then or even now say these things publicly, but those differences were obviously part of what brought about Cesar Chavez’s defeat in this showdown with Alatorre.
Old ways, old customs and old leadership could no more override the new than the declining rural influence in the legislatures and congress could hold back the increasing power of urban growth.
In the end, Torres may have been the more torn up of the two legislators over their split with Chavez. Torres had worked closely with Chavez’s union and championed their cause in Sacramento.
“It hurts this had to happen,” he would say about the break. “It’s always difficult for a student to disagree so strongly with the teacher.”
Source: VOXXI News
- See more at:http://www.voxxi.com/latino-power-in-la-the-kingdom/#sthash.IpJFH5QZ.dpuf ++++
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