Annotations for Places: United States--texas--dallas

My own feeling, my own personal feeling is that if we work at it, that we'll be able to get a treaty that's good for the country and good for Mexico.

That's Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, commenting on the present status of the North American Free Trade Agreement. At this point, congressional approval of NAFTA is still in question. Mexico and Mexico's president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, have a lot at stake in NAFTA's becoming a reality, as do many Hispanic entrepreneurs in this country. In Dallas, Latino business and civic leaders recently met with the Mexican president trying to counter the arguments from a certain Texas politician that NAFTA will mean major job losses. Brian Shields prepared this report.

Dallas billionaire, Ross Perot is spending millions of dollars to go on national television to stir up opposition to NAFTA, but members of the Dallas Hispanic Chamber believe the treaty will be beneficial for their businesses. During a recent visit to Dallas, Mexican president, Carlos Salinas, asserted there's no time to waste.

I have been asked, "Why NAFTA?" Because this is the only way how we will be able to compete in the world in which we live. "Why now?" Because we are late, late when other regions in the world are getting together to increase the efficiency and competitive capacity.

To my business, it would probably help it tremendously. I've been in business now for 12 years, doing business back and forth through Mexico, and we have had quite a bit of product going back and forth. The prices generally will then be lowered on some of the items that we now are paying some duties in.

Opposition to NAFTA in the United States centers on concerns that higher paying jobs north of the border will disappear to be replaced by very low wage employment in Mexico. Such arguments are coming not only from supporters of Ross Perot, but also from grassroots Hispanic groups such as San Antonio's Fuerza Unida, if you're a loss of American manufacturing jobs that now employ Latinos here. However, President Salinas insists the treaty will have the opposite effect.

NAFTA is also a wage increase agreement, because with increases in productivity, we will be able to increase wages in Mexico more than they have been growing in the past four years.

Between Ross Perot and opponents of free trade in and out of the Congress, right now, the agreement appears to be in trouble, but Jorge Haynes with Laredo's International Bank of Commerce insists the opportunity is too important to allow it to slip away.

If we should decide not to adopt NAFTA, which is something I don't want to think about, I think we will be going backwards in our relationship with Mexico rather than forwards.

Even now, before NAFTA's implementation, business people in Texas are actively trading with their colleagues south of the border, and if the trade agreement is going to work, it will be up to individual entrepreneurs to lead the way. It's a trail already being blazed by many Hispanic-owned businesses, such as John Montoya's. He's the president of World Dallas International, a trading services company, and for him, the rewards of the agreement are quite clear.

The incident that happened 20 years ago with Santos Rodriguez certainly cast a shadow or a cloud over the city of Dallas.

Santos is a symbol, a symbol of what was happening to the Mexican-American community and the African-American community back in 1973.

20 years ago this summer, a 12-year-old boy named Santos Rodriguez was killed by Dallas police officer Darrell Cain. The incident occurred after the boy and his brother were pulled from their beds in the middle of the night, accused of breaking into a soda machine at a gas station. The boys denied taking part in the robbery. Santos was killed when Officer Cain attempted to wring a confession from him by playing Russian Roulette with a loaded gun. The incident ignited protests in Chicano communities throughout the country, and recently members of the Latino community in Dallas held a full day of events to commemorate Santos' life and death.

[Background--Hymns]

A memorial service for Santos Rodriguez was held at the Santuario de Guadalupe in downtown Dallas, just south of the neighborhood called Little Mexico. Now mostly an African-American neighborhood, back in 1973 it was the heart of the Mexican barrio.

In 1973 I was 14 years old and I didn't know Santos even though I lived about three blocks from his house.

Now, a member of the Dallas City Council, Domingo Garcia recalls the early seventies when Santos was killed, as a time when minorities had absolutely no political clout in Dallas. "We were invisible Dallasites," he says. "Vulnerable to mistreatment by authorities." He himself remembers being stopped often by the police.

Being put up against the wall and pressed. What was my crime? Happened to be brown, happened to be young, happened to be on the streets, especially if it was after dark. And it wasn't like just one time, it was just common, and it wasn't just common to me, it was common to most of my friends. And so, in that type of environment, the police were seen not as the people who protected you, who were there to serve and to protect, but in essence as an occupying force. And when you see that type of relationship between a community and a police department and in a political establishment, then you see the tragic consequences of what happened to Santos Rodriguez.

We're trying to make correction within the police department. That's the reason the Latino Police Officers Association formed nearly two years ago.

Dallas Police Officer Gil Cerda, President of the Dallas Latino Police Officers Association, says that, "20 years after the death of Santos Rodriguez, there are still problems with the city police department."

20 years ago it was more blunt. Hispanic police officers would face discrimination on a daily basis. Today it's faced covert. In other words, they're not going to come out flat outright and tell you, "Hey, you know what? I don't like Hispanic officers being on the police department," but it's out there.

Dallas police spokesperson, Sandra Ortega de King says, despite two shootings of Mexican men by Dallas police officers in recent years, the relationship between the city's police department and the Latino community is better, more lenient, she says than ever before.

They are listening a little bit more to the community because the community within the Dallas area has grown. Population of the Hispanics has grown so dramatically. Just the city of Dallas is 20% Hispanic.

Councilman Garcia believes relations between the police and the Hispanic community of Dallas have come a long way since the death of Santos Rodriguez, as the Latino community has grown and slowly become a part of the city's political structure.

As a police department is diversified, we've seen that now the police department is looked on on a more favorable light. Crime has gone down and the amount of police abuses has gone down. Before Santos, police abuse was institutional and systematic. After Santos it became more sort of haphazard. What we need to learn about Santos Rodriguez's death, is that it can never happen again. It's like those bumper stickers. Remember Santos, nunca mas, because there were a lot of other Santos' all throughout the United States, there's a lot of other Rodney Kings.

City council member Domingo Garcia of Dallas, Texas.

We've just heard a report about relations between the police and Latino community in the city of Dallas, Texas. With us on the phone to address the issue from the perspective of other communities, our attorney, Juan Milanes, legal counsel for Washington DC's Latino Civil Rights task force, and from California, professor Gloria Romero, chair of the Hispanic Advisory Council for the Los Angeles Police Commission. Welcome to both of you. Is there a problem, a historical problem between the Latino community and police departments across this country, or is it just a question of isolated incidents in certain areas?

In my mind, there's no doubt that it's a national issue, and I think that if we look at Washington D.C., if we look at Miami, Florida, if we take a look at Houston or Dallas or Albuquerque, Denver, LA, San Jose; in every community, historically, the issues of tensions between police and community have arisen. And that's not only in the contemporary period, but historically within the last 50 years. We can even go back to the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles. So there is a legacy I think that's present.

Why is that legacy there? What is the root of the tension between police departments and the Latino community?

I think if you want to take a look at the underlying issues of police community tensions, you're looking at not simply the police, but what police symbolize. And to me, that comes down to taking a look at perhaps an institution of society that is there to maintain what people perceive to be an unjust order. And over the last 50 years, we have seen movements to raise the quality of life, to equalize conditions between Latinos and others in this society, and in that sense, as long as you're going to find inequity in just the day-to-day living standards of people, it's not surprising to find challenges to that order, which is there to maintain.

In Washington D.C. you saw a very large influx of new immigrants, which is the predominant group of Latinos here in Washington, that the city truly just wasn't prepared to deal with because the increase in the population has been exponential when compared to any other group. So that in the last 10 years, Hispanics have doubled in size here, especially with regard to the police department. So few Hispanics and so few bilingual police officers has led to the problem of cultural clashes as well as a language barrier.

In both of your communities, there have been studies and recommendations made about how to deal with the issue of police and Latino community relations. In the aftermath what has been done to address those issues?

Well, I think on one hand we still have to look at quote, unquote the aftermath. The aftermath is more immigrant bashing than ever. In Los Angeles you're looking at the picking up just recently of skinheads accu- basically ready to bomb. It was focused on the south central African-American community, but the issues around which this aroused the greatest sentiment was around issues of Rodney King police brutality. So I think we have to look at the aftermath. There is the criminalization of the Latino that is not new. We can go back 50 years again and it's still the Frito Bandito. You still have the Latino, the Mexican, the Salvadorian as the criminal illegal alien. That's the language that's being used. So I believe that yes, in Los Angeles and nationally we had the Christopher Commission report. We've had the Colts report, we've had the Webster's report and decades before we had the McCone Commission and the Kerner reports. We have had study after study after study, and these are significant and important, but the bottom line is I will continue to take a look at, until we as a society at all levels, federal and state and local, take a look at some of the underlying complications of economic, social, political, racial inequity. We can put all the reports we want in impressive array in our library shelves, but we're not getting to the root causes and consequences of tensions in the community into which police immerse themselves.

And in Washington D.C., Juan.

Not that different. One of the things that we found when we did our investigation was that officers would compete in the third and fourth police districts, which are the police districts with the largest Hispanic populations in the District of Columbia, would compete for what was known, Officer of the Month Award. The Officer of the Month Award is based on a number of different factors, one of which is number of arrests, and one practice would be that officers would routinely go into the poorer, most immigrant sections of the Latino community and pick up individuals on disorderly conduct arrests to basically hike up their own arrest records to be able to compete for that Officer of the Month Award, and would ultimately trump up charges against anyone for anything.

Well, thank you very much for joining us on Latino USA. Attorney Juan Milanes, legal counsel for Washington D.C.'s, Latino Civil Rights Task Force, and Professor Gloria Romero, chair of the Hispanic Advisory Council for the Los Angeles Police Commission. Thanks again, for Latino USA.

The highest ranking Latina in the Clinton administration, White House aide Regina Montoya is leaving her position. From Washington, Franc Contreras has more.

Since January when Montoya was selected as White House liaison for intergovernmental affairs and made responsible for communications with state and local governments, she has made a regular commute between Washington and her home, Dallas. Just before Montoya announced her decision to leave, the Clinton administration named her husband Paul Coggins, US attorney for Northern Texas that Montoya said, helped finalize her decision to return to her home state and resume work as a private sector lawyer. During her time in Washington, Montoya's office had come under criticism and in May there were speculations she would be replaced, but White House officials corrected that and since then she's been praised for her role in flood relief efforts. I'm Franc Contreras in Washington.

A revival of traditional Mexican mariachi music is taking place across this country and many Latino youth are participating. Marcos Martinez of Radio Station, KUNM prepared this report on the Mariachi celebration held recently in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now in its fourth year.

[Mariachi Music]

Albuquerque's Mariachi Spectacular brings together groups from throughout the southwest who bring their instruments and their devotion to the music for four days of workshops and concerts. On a Saturday afternoon, some eight mariachi groups alternate between six different stages along Main street of the New Mexico State fairgrounds. This is called Plaza Garibaldi modeled after the original Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City where Mariachis gathered to play and find work. This year, about half the groups at Plaza Garibaldi are high school students. 17 year old Nick Watson plays with Mariachi Oro Del Sol from El Paso, Texas. He says Mariachi music is complex and fun to play

Well because it's challenging. It has more than three chords. It's basically what I think rock and roll is. And not that I'm knocking, I like rock and roll, but it's challenging. It's more challenging to play, you know, learn a lot more from it.

[Mariachi Music]

With this music, you can express your feelings more.

How?

Um, with the songs, the words and stuff, they're very powerful words.

Jennifer Luna is the leader of Mariachi Oro del Sol and shares Watson's enthusiasm. She says in her part of Texas, young people are very drawn to this style of music.

A lot of young people play in El Paso. That's mostly what there is there. The groups are younger kids. Cause over there it's in the schools they teach it to you, so it's pretty common over there.

The word mariachi comes from the French word for marriage. According to history, French people who came to Mexico in the 1800s became interested in the Mexican string bands of the time and invited them to play at French weddings. Today, mariachis typically include guitar, violin, trumpet, and the vihuela, which is a small guitar, and the guitarrón, which is a very large guitar. While they carry on traditions, youth mariachi groups like Oro Del Sol are also different from the older generation of mariachis in that they tend to be more gender balanced. Nick Watson says his mariachi group is all the better for including young women musicians.

They're good. We just picked who’s good and they're good. So we take them, it doesn't matter. Sex has nothing to do with it. If you're good, you're good, you play.

[Mariachi Music]

There's no doubt that among the young people attending this year's Mariachi Spectacular is some great future talent. Alex De Leon is a vocalist for the Mariachi Azul y Blanco from Adamson High School in Dallas. This 17 year old has already received high praise for his vocal talents.

[Mariachi Music]

People keep giving me comments, I'm good and stuff. So now I want to get better.

Young Mariachis, like De Leon have a chance to learn from more experienced mentors like Al Sandoval, who teaches music in the Albuquerque public schools and is director of Mariachi Romántico. Sandoval says, attendance at the Mariachi Spectacular workshops has tripled since last year. Sandoval says because of its expressiveness, mariachi music is a big part of Southwest Hispanic culture.

It's the most addicting music of all. I mean Southwest, it's the most addicting music. It grows on you and once it's in your blood, you'll never get it out. It's worse than the worst habit you can ever have because I mean, you grow to love it and you can never get away from it.

[Mariachi Music]

Everything about Mariachis hearkens back to Old Mexico from the ornate charro outfits and broad brimmed hats to the instruments and the old songs. But on the final night of the Mariachi Spectacular, as the teenage musicians joined the world's most famous mariachi groups on stage for a grand finale, the tradition seemed certain to continue for a long time to come. For Latino USA, I'm Marcos Martinez in Albuquerque.

Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez writes and teaches in Dallas, Texas.

[Background--music--regional Mexican] Thanksgiving for commentator Bárbara Renaud González has never been a traditional type of holiday. Sometimes she goes out cumbia dancing in Austin's east side with friends and her swinging mom. So she was very surprised when her 60-something proud to be single mother called her recently to ask what she wanted with her turkey.

Pero, mami, why are we having turkey? I demanded. We never had turkey when we were growing up, when I wanted to play pilgrim fathers. "No, yo queiro plato de enchiladas con pollo, por favor. “No te entiendo, mijita she said in that superior Interior de Mexico, and you are just a pocha Spanish. You went to college, didn't you? And that school up north, what did you learn? I'm making pan gravy con giblets, cornbread dressing, the green beans Del Monte, cranberry relish, the potato salad too, the jello salad with real fruit cocktail, and the pumpkin pie. But I'll make rice and beans on the side if you want. The boys want their turkey. Mira, I am making 50 dozen tamales because I know how you love them, engordan." I was insulted by now. They make me fat. "I only use Crisco," she said, "that's not fat, that's Crisco." I still do not understand Thanksgiving. It doesn't translate well into Spanish. When I patiently explained about the pilgrims to my mother after a third-grade lesson, seeking some confirmation of our role in this event, she reminded me that every celebration has two faces.

Vaya, she said, "we don't celebrate it in Mexico, but I'll make a special guisada tomorrow just for you and you can have that 'Tricks are for kids' you like for breakfast." Perhaps I realized even then that no amount of turkey would make me belong with the pilgrim's descendants I sat with at school. Everyone but me seemed to have an ancestor on the Mayflower. Though I knew, I knew that the sepia skin of Texas with its sunset strung with a thousand pinatas embraced me too. Especially me.

Thanksgiving is not a day of giving, but of taking. We are grateful for another's tradition of generosity. One we cannot ever hope to match. A generosity that I liken to the Mexican Guelaguetza, that celebration of community founded in an ancient reciprocity that ensures the survival of the people. It is a ceremony of compadrazgo and more. It recognizes a solidarity that is symbolized with exchanges of the earth's bounty, which sustains us. It is not a day of thanksgiving, but a commitment to each other that we cannot survive alone. So let's celebrate that we are Americans and give thanks that there is room at the table for all of us.

Commentator Bárbara Renaud González is a writer living in Dallas, Texas.