When information broke this week that former Los Angeles Councilmember Jose Huizar was going to plead responsible to federal racketeering expenses for his position in a corruption scandal that rocked Los Angeles politics, I instantly considered “American Me.”
No, not the overwrought Edward James Olmos film concerning the origins of the Mexican Mafia — I’m speaking concerning the long-forgotten guide revealed in 1948 about Mexican American life in and across the Eastside. Writer Beatrice Griffith, a social employee in barrios like Pleased Valley, Belvedere and Maravilla, penned the best-seller to doc the travesty of what she noticed: a neighborhood of excellent folks cheated out of the nice life by racism and charlatans.
It’s a robust, fantastically written exposé of what Mexican People confronted in the course of the World Battle II period, alternating between quick tales and street-level dispatches to handle points — police brutality, housing inequality, underfunded colleges, medication — that stricken the Eastside then and sadly persist immediately.
She rightfully pointed a finger at white supremacy because the wrongdoer behind so lots of the issues. However equally as villainous in her thoughts was considered one of L.A.’s quintessential archetypes: the Eastside politico.
Within the fictionalized chapter, one José Villa smokes an expensive cigar and spits out bromides like “Un pueblo unido es un pueblo fuerte” (A united folks is a powerful folks) whereas shaking down a shopkeeper who wanted assist releasing a wrongfully jailed son.
Within the nonfiction essay, Griffith deemed Villa’s real-life counterparts “sell-out artists” who work “each side of the tracks to their benefit” and thrive “on the fears, ignorance, poverty and political isolation of their folks.
“Such a person,” Griffith concluded, “shortly hops on the bandwagon and beats his chest concerning the plight of ‘my folks,’ when it’s to his benefit to take action.”
That describes lots of the most distinguished Eastside leaders within the 75 years since Griffith revealed “American Me.”
That’s Huizar. That’s Huizar’s successor, Councilmember Kevin de León. That’s De León’s former council colleague Gil Cedillo. That’s Cedillo’s Roosevelt Excessive classmate, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. That’s Villaraigosa’s former political advisor Richard Alatorre and his good friend Richard Polanco. And their good friend, Artwork Torres.
Huizar, who pleaded responsible on Friday, and Alatorre, who pleaded responsible in 2001 to federal tax evasion for not reporting cash he obtained from folks making an attempt to affect him when he was on the Metropolis Council, are the one ones to have confronted prison expenses.
However they and others of their ilk are philosophical compadres. Virtually to a person — and so they’ve virtually all been males — the Eastside politico has performed an outsize, poisonous position in L.A. Latino life.
For the file:
9:35 a.m. Jan. 21, 2023An earlier model of this column said that Jose Huizar was the one considered one of a number of L.A. Eastside politicos to have confronted prison expenses. In 2001, former L.A. councilmember Richard Alatorre pleaded responsible to felony tax evasion for failing to report about $42,000 he obtained from people making an attempt to achieve his affect whereas he was an elected official and sat on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.
These native sons boast of rags-to-riches tales in entrance of media cameras and earlier than audiences whereas amassing energy that lets them get pleasure from bespoke fits, fancy dinners, marketing campaign donations and different luxuries.
They cycle out and in of positions in Metropolis Corridor and Sacramento — elected official, lobbyist, marketing consultant, commissioner — that allow them keep within the political sport for all times. They dangle alternatives — volunteer, canvasser, marketing campaign supervisor, staffer — to idealistic upstarts, padding the kids’ resumes and sucking the reformist out of them.
Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, proper, congratulates newly named Police Chief Bernard C. Parks in 1997.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Occasions)
Every cries a righteous cant of illustration and selflessness that he trots out at public appearances and every time folks whisper that he’s misplaced contact along with his roots. When considered one of their very own does one thing fallacious, Eastside politicos make excuses and justifications or keep silent. Anybody who opposes them will get slimed as a traitor and outsider. Their continued scandals and rival cliques have made generations of Latino voters cynical about democracy itself, which permits the Eastside politico to outlive, thrive and replicate.
It’s not simply Latino politicians who embody these traits, after all. However Eastside politicos at all times forged themselves as above the fray, as the way in which ahead for a metropolis that’s now majority Latino. So what have they delivered to their constituents all these many years since Griffith so caustically known as them out in “American Me”?
Neighborhoods that face the identical problems with disinvestment and political ignorance she portrayed — however the oppressors now are Latinos, not whites.
Nobody embodied the rot of the Eastside politico greater than Huizar — and nobody higher personifies why this political inventory character should lastly die.
Huizar wielded a biography straight out of “The Nice Gatsby”: a son of working-class dad and mom who grew up in Boyle Heights, overachieved his means into prestigious schools and have become the primary Mexican immigrant elected to the Los Angeles Metropolis Council. He was as snug at high-end events in downtown Los Angeles as he was on the Quiet Cannon in Montebello for the annual banquets of the Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos del Sur de California — hometown associations from Huizar’s native Zacatecas, the state the place my dad and mom had been born and the place a whole bunch of 1000’s of Angelenos have roots.
He used this background to defend himself from critics who claimed he was permitting downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights to gentrify, and to combat again in opposition to federal prosecutors who maintained that he took hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes to let all this growth occur. When the proverbial jig was lastly up, he wrapped himself up in Catholic iconography like every good Eastside politico would.
His travails loomed over the notorious L.A. Metropolis Council racist audio leak. These on the recording — fellow Eastside politicos De León and Cedillo, politica-in-spirit and then-council president Nury Martinez and then-L.A. County Labor Federation President Ron Herrera — rationalized their peer’s unlawful actions and patted themselves on the again for doing so.
“I by no means criticized Jose Huizar,” De León mentioned, to which Martinez shortly replied, “That’s good,” earlier than including, “What’s to say que Jose additionally didn’t have debt at his youngsters’ faculty, and making an attempt to determine tips on how to pay for school[?]”
With Huizar’s responsible plea, their protection of him appears stupider than ever — and reveals once more that the one factor Eastside politicos defend above all else is their very own.
Los Angeles Metropolis Councilman Kevin de León, heart, on the grand opening of marketing campaign headquarters for his failed 2022 mayoral run.
(Gary Coronado /Los Angeles Occasions)
The progressive political winds now blowing throughout Los Angeles give hope that Huizar and his type are numbered. De León is a political pariah for refusing to resign within the wake of the racist tape leak. The 2 latest Latino council members, Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martinez, ran as anti-politicos and have thus far rejected the trimmings of their predecessors: Hernandez favors woven Oaxacan baggage as a substitute of the Louis Vuittons that Martinez flaunted, whereas Soto-Martinez appears to favor his well-worn jacket as a substitute of snazzy fits like Huizar.
I hope they and different younger Latino elected officers proceed down this humbler path. Nonetheless, the demise of the Eastside politico is one thing this paper has proclaimed earlier than — and at all times gotten fallacious.
It occurred in 2009, when then-Occasions columnist Hector Tobar wrote that politicos “wouldn’t be capable to unite the Latino Eastside behind” a Cedillo congressional run. Tobar was proper — Cedillo misplaced. However Cedillo, then a state senator, gained his previous Meeting seat the next 12 months, whereas De León took Cedillo’s state Senate seat.
In 2002, the late Frank del Olmo opined that the ugly Council District 14 race that 12 months between Villaraigosa and then-incumbent Nick Pacheco “might have sounded the demise knell for a worn-out Eastside political ‘machine.’”
That was practically the identical sentiment Del Olmo expressed in 1987, when Gloria Molina defied the Alatorre machine and gained a council seat, main the legendary columnist to hope that “internecine political battles just like the one between Molina and [her opponent]” wouldn’t change into “routine.”
Sadly, they did.
Villa, the fictional Eastside politico from “American Me,” bought no comeuppance. In his ultimate scene, Griffith describes how he sits in his downtown workplace with an image of himself “in a Mexican sombrero and charro costume shaking palms with the fats mayor who’s all mushy and smiling.”
Villa leans again in his chair, smiles after as soon as once more fleecing a Mexican service provider and repeats, “Mi pueblo me mantiene.” My folks maintain me.
That is one thing the Villas and Huizars and De Leóns of the Eastside have mentioned for much too lengthy, with little pushback. Now, Huizar faces at the very least 9 years in federal jail, and a recall marketing campaign in opposition to De León is within the works.
Might the pueblo be able to shut up the Eastside politico as soon as and for all.
