Al Jazeera America
By Naureen Kahn
September 14, 2015
When
Mario Guerra strolls through the streets of downtown Downey, he can’t
help but play the role of seasoned salesman for the city in southeastern
Los Angeles County
he adopted more than 35 years ago.
Guerra,
a Cuban-American immigrant who served eight years on the city council
and two terms as mayor, sings the praises of Portno’s Bakery, a Cuban
sandwich and pastry
shop that he helped lure to Downey. He shows off the vibrant murals and
sleekly designed street sculpture that he commissioned as a city leader
to spruce up the downtown area and imbue it with a sense of culture and
character. Subsequently, an acquaintance
stops Guerra, known about town for his role as a Catholic deacon as
well as consummate problem-solver, to ask if Guerra would perform his
wedding at the town’s annual Dia de los Muertes festival.
Guerra,
a Republican in a city that is 70 percent Hispanic and leans
Democratic, attributes his success as a GOP politician to a laser-like
focus on finding solutions,
building bridges and approaching every problem with a kind of
neighborly compassion. It’s how Guerra says he came within 5 percentage
points of his opponent in his race for a state Senate seat last fall in a
district where Democrats have a 24-point voter registration
advantage
“I
govern in that 60 to 70 percent where I feel that we can all agree and
say, ‘Let’s just make things better,’” he said. “We’re not going to
agree on everything but we
can agree on this stuff that we can fix, and it’s in that space that
you can get things done.”
But
to Guerra’s dismay, it’s a markedly different philosophy than the one
that seems to have taken hold within the Republican Party at the
national level in the 2016 presidential
cycle, particularly with the rise of Donald Trump. Guerra has watched
with a mixture of bewilderment and exasperation as the business mogul
has ridden to the top of the polls in part by spewing barbed invective
against illegal immigration, and branding Latino
immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists.”
In
preparation of going on Spanish-language television to talk about the
summer of Trump, Guerra brushed up to make sure he had one specific word
in his arsenal — payaso
— clown.
For Californians, the narrative playing out at the national level has an air of déjà vu.
Twenty
years ago, a similar wave of anti-immigrant sentiment washed over the
Golden State, and voters responded by passing a ballot initiative that
blocked undocumented
immigrants from receiving a litany of critical state services,
including public education and health care. Strongly championing
Proposition 187 helped then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson win re-election
in 1994 but the victory for the California GOP turned out
to be short-lived. Political analysts believe the referendum mobilized
dormant Latino voters and helped transform the state into a Democratic
stronghold. No GOP presidential candidate has won the state since George
H.W. Bush in 1988, while Democrats have had
a lock on most statewide offices and the state legislature since 1996.
“It
was a frustration with the finances of the state at the time and who
was getting what benefits, and the Republican Party was painted by this
broad stroke that we’re
anti-immigrant because of Prop 187. It’s not true, but that’s the way
we were painted,” Guerra said.
The
impact of that characterization has been long-lasting, Guerra noted,
with officials like him continuing to fight a particular stigma among
some Latino-Americans because
of their party identification. “If there were no D's or R's on the
ballots next to our names, I’d be a state senator today,” Guerra said.
As
the GOP candidates prepare to descend on Southern California this week
for the second Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan
Presidential Library in Simi
Valley, some warn that the national Republican Party is destined to
suffer the same fate if it continues to elevate Trump’s immigration
positions and alienate large swaths of the nation’s growing share of
Latino voters. Among other things, Trump has proposed
mass deportations and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“What
happened in California then is what’s happening nationally today,” said
Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, a California-based
Latino civic advocacy
organization. “In 1994, Pete Wilson dared to go after services for
pregnant mothers, he went after educational services, in a way that no
other governor had done in recent history and it energized the Latino
electorate in a way that we had not seen. It changed
the face of California’s electoral map for decades.”
“Now,
this field or Republican candidates have all but declared war on
immigrants and Latinos,” Carmona added. “That’s not something that we
can let go of.”
In Downey, it seems the association between the Republican Party and anti-immigrant stances and rhetoric has already taken root.
“It’s
embarrassing, to be honest, for Trump, and it’s a cruel stance,” said
Gabe Enamorado, a 26-year-old Guatemalan-American and creative director
for a local art gallery.
“All you’re doing is riling up this army of young Latinos to vote
against you. They are going to stand up to what they believe in, so in a
weird way I see it as a good thing.”
Luis
Castrellon, 35, a businessman from neighboring Rialto, Calif. who works
in health care, said he lays the blame not only on Trump but at the
feet of the wider GOP
field for mimicking his talking points. Indeed, even as some GOP
candidates — most notably former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — have beat back
against his characterizations of illegal immigrants, others have been
more reluctant to attack Trump.
“It’s
very infuriating that it’s so accepted for Trump to be able to say
those things and still be a leader in the Republican Party,” Castrellon
said, noting that in the
past he’s voted for both Republicans and Democrats. “I feel offended
for my community.”
Still,
in the midst of a heated national battle over what to do about the
nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants and indeed, how to best
integrate immigrants into
the fabric of U.S. society, the city of Downey is instructive in other
ways. A majority-white suburb whose economy was powered by aerospace
engineering in the 1980s, Downey is now known as a thriving community
made up of first and second-generation immigrants
who have climbed into the middle class.
Nick
Velez, 28, a Mexican-American veteran who opened a downtown bar after
returning home from serving in the Marine Corps in 2012, said Latino
success is one of the town’s
unique characteristics and may show the path forward for the rest of
the country.
“Everywhere
you turn there are brown faces, and they are successful brown faces,”
he said. “It’s a city that says I started from nothing and I’m here now
and I’m on my
way up.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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