San Diego, California Hatred, Fear and Vigilance

By Ricardo Chavira

Just as the sun slips toward the Pacific, they gather along Latin America's northernmost fringe. Several hundred white, mainly lower-middle-class Southern Californians arrive in dusty pickups and weathered sedans to confront what they say is a criminal invasion of America. They park single file along a marshy field on the San Diego-Tijuana border. Soon the men and women are engaged in chitchat typical of a social event. Their crimson bumper stickers proclaim WE WANT ORDER ON OUR BORDER, a demand that nearby U.S. Border Patrol agents work hard to enforce. Some of the 800 officers, who nightly nab upwards of 1,500 immigrants in this sector alone, buzz by in spotter choppers or patrol in four-wheel-drive vehicles, while others survey the area from hilltops.

At nightfall, the protesters suddenly switch on headlights and hand-held spotlights to illuminate a narrow stretch of boundary. Tonight's Light Up the Border rally is one in a series of monthly anti-immigrant demonstrations held in a place where millions of Latin Americans and others have crossed the hills and canyons that feed into San Diego.

Four years after passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the human flow it was intended to stanch is on the rise. This year an estimated 1 million foreigners will illegally enter the U.S., most of them across the Mexican border. The protesters, drawn by anger tinged with xenophobia, speak darkly of the immigrants. They reject the conventional wisdom that the aliens are benign job seekers who do work that Americans disdain and that generally benefits the U.S. economy. "We have nothing against Mexicans," says John Machan, a local courier. "Many of them are hard workers, and there should be a way for them to work -- but then go back home. A lot of the others don't come to work. They steal, break into people's homes, bring drugs." San Diego police say they have no evidence that illegal aliens commit more crimes then the general population.

Loren Flemming, himself an immigrant from Calgary, says he has joined the demonstration to denounce a double standard. "Canadians can't come in the way these people do," he claims. "They get on welfare just by showing up at the office." Roger Hedgecock, a former San Diego mayor, uses his popular call-in radio show to endorse the protests. He also attends the demonstrations. "We want respect for American laws," says Hedgecock. "Mexicans are violating our laws." He and others demand immediate but unspecified congressional action. Judging by the phone calls Hedgecock receives, it would seem that many San Diegans share his dismay. Says Hedgecock: "I've had callers in the construction industry say, 'Gosh, I used to be a drywall hanger, and now there are no English-speaking drywall hangers in San Diego County. They all speak Spanish, and I'm out of a job.' "

Behind the angry words and glaring headlights many Hispanics and other residents detect a resurgence of nativism. It is no coincidence, they say, that partisans are divided roughly along racial lines. While no one suggests a formal link, the protests coincide with a surge in ethnic tensions and racially motivated crimes, both locally and nationally. "There's a potential for violence in these demonstrations," says Bill Robinson, a longtime spokesman for the San Diego police department. "What we're seeing is political conservatives protesting against people who are hungry and looking for work."

The battle lines are clearly drawn. Directly in front of the border protesters, counter-demonstrators, most of them Hispanic, hold up mirrors and black plastic banners to block the lights. Aida Mancillas, a university language professor who is protesting the headlight rally, believes uneasiness about the economy and San Diego's expanding minority population fuels the demonstrations. The percentage of whites in San Diego County is expected to decline during the '90s from its current 74% to 60%, while that of Hispanics will rise from 14% to 23%. "Borders are breaking down everywhere, and it's frightening," says Mancillas. "There is a general concern that the economic standing of whites is slipping, and so the undocumented worker becomes a target of their fears." Before long, the competing protests have degenerated into shouting matches, with Hispanics chanting, "Racists go home!" while whites call back, "Wetback lovers!"

The object of much of the nativist anger is the thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal, who work on northern San Diego County farms, which last year yielded $770 million in strawberries, tomatoes, avocados and other produce. Many of the workers live in appalling squalor. As expensive housing developments continue to go up near the farms, residents often discover that they live next door to Third World-style worker encampments. "The Americans don't want us here, and so they are always reporting us to the authorities," says Longilo Miranda, 18, a worker from southern Mexico. He lives with his father in a scrap-wood lean-to. Marjorie Gaines, a city-council member in Encinitas, an upscale seaside community that includes some of the encampments, charges that undocumented workers litter, breed disease, commit crimes and harass whites. Gaines claims that drunk aliens burned down a local convenience store after the owner refused to sell them liquor. "These are border toughs," she says.

Increasingly, though, it is the illegal aliens who are victims of violent assaults by whites. Armed robbers and overzealous U.S. Border Patrol agents ^ are responsible for countless beatings and shootings of immigrants at the frontier. But human-rights activists say San Diego's racial attacks are a microcosm of hate crimes flaring nationally. In one of several attacks involving white youths, Leonard Paul Cuen, 21, was questioned last May and remains a suspect in connection with the death of Emilio Jimenez, 12. The boy was shot as he crossed a field not far from the site of the protest and within range of Cuen's home.

Last January farm worker Candido Gayoso was found in a field, feet and hands bound, a paper bag over his head. On the bag was scrawled "No mas aqui," ungrammatical Spanish for "Don't come back." The owner of a market frequented by farmhands was found guilty of assaulting Gayoso. In February Kenneth Kovzelove, 18, was sentenced to 50-years-to-life imprisonment in the shooting deaths of two field hands. He matter-of-factly admitted killing them simply because they were Mexican.

Jose Pedroza, a Mexico City native, and other Mexicans congregate along a busy San Diego street to await day labor. Suburbanites in need of gardening or other chores hire the men. Pedroza says that in their search for work he and his compatriots are targets of regular abuse, some of it violent. Not long ago, says Pedroza, several white youths mugged him as he walked across a field. "They are guys who I had seen before, skateboarding and smoking marijuana," he recalls. "One of them hit me, and another one put a gun to my chest. They took all of my money, $220."

Roberto Martinez, local director of the American Friends Service Committee's U.S.-Mexico Border Program, says he has gathered dozens of reports of unprovoked attacks against Mexicans in which robbery was not a motive. "People passing in cars throw bottles at them," he says, "or even hit them and keep going." In the newest twist, white youths clad in military garb have randomly shot Mexicans with pellet guns. Police say race appears to be the motive in many of the attacks. Theft, however, is sometimes the motive as well. Last month Border Patrol agents arrested four youths on suspicion of robbing border crossers at gunpoint. "We come here only to work," says laborer Jesus Reyes. "It doesn't seem right for people to dislike us for that."

A staunch advocate of immigrant rights, Martinez has felt the sting of racial hatred. Two months ago, he received letters filled with racial insults. They also threatened him with bodily harm unless he dropped his pro-immigrant % activities. A group calling itself the Fighters of the White Cross signed both letters. FBI agents are investigating the incidents. Meanwhile, police have beefed up patrols of Martinez's home and office. "I'm not saying the border protesters are the same ones who threatened me," he says. "But Light Up the Border has created the atmosphere for these terrorists." Rally organizers disavow any connection to white supremacists.

Martinez and other Latino activists insist that San Diego's situation demands the same kind of high-profile attention as that generated by racial killings in New York City's Bensonhurst or by anti-Semitic incidents in France. "The silence from government officials is deafening," Martinez says. "I sense that there is an indifference to what's going on because it involves people who are here illegally, and so the crimes against them are diminished." Others find an ironic contrast to Eastern Europe. "It is disconcerting to see the tearing down of barriers and greater respect for human rights over there," says Richard Castro, a member of the Mexican- American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, "while here at home the same spirit has yet to prevail."