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Life & Times Transcript

05/22/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

With all the hardships facing illegal immigrants, why don't more of them make it legal?

Raul Godinez>> Every case is unique. Some people could have entered here legally and I will not be able to help. Some people may have entered illegally and I can't help.

Val Zavala>> And then, back in the day, it was more than a sport. It was the social event in East Los Angeles. We look at the history of barrio baseball.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> What does it take to become a citizen of the United States or even just a legal resident? Well, that's a simple question with a complicated answer, but I can tell you this much. It takes mounds of paperwork, thousands of dollars in legal fees, as many as fifteen years, and some luck. Anne McDermott met some immigrants who are each on the bumpy road to legalization.

Anne McDermott>> Juan is not this young man's real name, but that's how we'll identify him because Juan is in this country illegally. Not that he had any say in the matter. You see, Juan was just seven years old when his family sneaked across the border from Mexico looking for a better life in Los Angeles. Better, but not perfect. Juan is keenly aware of what so-called illegals cannot do.

Juan>> I can't drive. I cannot find a good job. I can't go travel with my friends. I can't get a loan for scholarships.

Anne McDermott>> No loans in scholarships means it's going to be tough next year when he transfers from Santa Monica College to UCLA, but this twenty year old kid is going to pay his own way, work extra jobs. He has no other choice. The legal director at the Central American Resource Center says there's no way for Juan or his family to legalize their status, at least for now.

Daniel Sharp>> I've been giving bad news to people for a long time and it is disheartening.

Anne McDermott>> So will Juan ever have a chance? Well, not all doors are always closed to all illegal immigrants because laws change with the times with popular sentiment, and when laws aren't changing, the various INS rules and regulations affect different immigrants in different situations in different ways. Los Angeles immigration attorney, Raul Godinez, says that it's a landscape that must be navigated with care.

Raul Godinez>> Every case is unique. Some people could have entered here legally and I will not be able to help. Some people may have entered illegally and I can't help. We generally have to look at the person's complete condition. You know, what's the reason for coming? What's their employment? What's their family relationships here in the United States?

Anne McDermott>> Let's take the case of Luis Hernandez. Attorney Godinez is trying to reunite Luis with the two children he left behind in El Salvador back in 1989, children he's seen just twice in the past sixteen years. Luis eventually gained legal residency thanks to a special program for immigrants who were fleeing war-torn countries, a program that also took into account his length of time in the United States.

Now that was back in 2003. A great day for him, but it didn't mean anybody else in his family won the lottery. After all this time, Luis is still working on bringing his children here, but his lawyer says that's still three or four years away. And please note. By that time, Luis's children will be in their late twenties. Will they still want to come here?

Luis Hernandez>> Yes, they want to come.

Anne McDermott>> And come they do in groups and one by one. Do you see a lot of divided families?

Daniel Sharp>> Absolutely. Most of the people we serve here are in families of mixed status. There are United States citizen children often or a spouse with permanent residence and another spouse who's undocumented, or some children came to the United States with a parent that have no legal status. Other children were born here, so we see that quite a bit.

Anne McDermott>> And while it can take years to reunite parents with children, the waiting period can be even longer for other family members. A legal resident who wants to bring a brother or sister to his new homeland could actually be waiting anywhere from ten or twelve or even fifteen years. Now there is one thing that will further delay any immigrant's dream of legality or destroy that dream altogether and that is lying.

Raul Godinez>> If someone states, "I am a United States citizen", that alone could bar them forever from coming to the United States.

Anne McDermott>> You mean if they are lying?

Raul Godinez>> If they are lying, correct. If someone tries to seek entry, claiming to be a United States citizen, they might as well be a murderer, a terrorist, a rapist because the United States government will forever bar them. It doesn't matter who they're married to. It doesn't matter how many kids, who their parents are. But a false claim to United States citizenship to an Immigration official is the kiss of death.

Anne McDermott>> Not so Carlos Hernandez, a Los Angeles resident who is no relation to Luis. He had little difficulty getting legal status for his Mexican-born wife, Veronica. Their lawyer, Godinez, considers it a textbook case on how such procedures are supposed to work, but don't in the vast majority of cases.

Carlos, the one-time and perhaps future lightweight world champion, was born in the United States, but lived and boxed in Mexico for a time, which is where he met his wife, Veronica. They didn't give much thought to her legal status. She was a resident of Mexico until a few years ago.

Veronica Hernandez>> After September 11, my entering the country was getting more and more difficult each time because I was traveling with my tourist visa.

Anne McDermott>> Veronica is now a permanent resident in the process of becoming a citizen, something her daughter already is, thanks to dad. Why did it go so smoothly for this family? Their lawyer doesn't know. But one thing he does know, he and Daniel Sharp and other ethical attorneys, is what they must never do and that's give false hope to immigrants. Yet there are those who will, those who will take immigrants' money and deliver nothing. Some of this fraud is carried out by people who call themselves notaries.

Daniel Sharp>> In Latin America, a notary is usually a person with significant legal training. In the United States, of course, a notary public is essentially a witness with no legal training who basically signs a document for a person. So people from Latin America see a notary office offering legal services and they go in and they're often offered a work permit for a fee for a thousand dollars or something to that effect and the notary either takes their money and does nothing for them or, worse, takes their money and submits an application to Immigration and subjects the person to the risk of deportation.

Anne McDermott>> But despite the confusing regulations and the backlogged application process, a process that once took a few months and now can take years, and the seeming lack of hope for some, well, it apparently doesn't discourage a lot of immigrants like these people, and this man who wants us to know he'll be a good citizen.

>> "I pay my taxes."

Anne McDermott>> This man says immigrants are good workers. Are you saying that you hired illegal aliens?

>> "You bet I did. Yes, I did."

Anne McDermott>> And others still do.

Raul Godinez>> As we speak, Louisiana is being rebuilt after the effects of Hurricane Katrina. If you take a look at who's rebuilding that part of our country, it's essentially a group of illegal immigrants that are being hired and being recruited to get the work done.

Anne McDermott>> To get the job done.

Daniel Sharp>> We have a situation today where we have eleven to twelve million people in our country who we've basically allowed in with a wink and a nod. They've done jobs that most Americans are unwilling to do.

Anne McDermott>> And in the meantime, they plod on through the system hoping for some sort of legal status and that's what Juan, the college student, is hoping for because he wants to go to law school someday and practice here in California, which will never be allowed as long as he's here illegally. Sure, maybe he could be an attorney in Mexico, the land of his birth, but to Juan, that would be like leaving his home and going off to a foreign country. Anne McDermott for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Ever since the war in Iraq began, relations between America and France have been strained. So what kind of welcome did a preeminent Frenchman get when he decided to travel across the United States? His answer is in his book, "American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville". The author is Bernard-Henri Levy. He's a writer, philosopher and household name in France.

You've traveled all over the country probably more than most Americans. But, of course, we here in Los Angeles are only interested in ourselves (laughter), so we'd love to hear what you think of Los Angeles. You've had quite a few observations, but what's the one that's kind of a prized comment?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> I have to be frank with my friends of Los Angeles. I must say that it is not the city I prefer in America and far from it. You know the famous saying that the city is like a text that you have legible and illegible cities, that you have intelligible and unintelligible cities. Los Angeles is a very prototype of the unintelligible city. There is a sort of monstrosity in Los Angeles.

Val Zavala>> Monstrosity?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> Monstrosity. As you know, to quote another philosopher, the philosophic definition of monstrosity according to the Greeks, according to Aristotle, is somewhere where you have an excess of material and in fact the lack of shape. It is the case, in a way, of Los Angeles. There is a monstrosity in the Greek meaning of the word of this city and something else, above all, there are some areas of great and unendurable for the people of Los Angeles themselves, poverty. Los Angeles is also one of the cities where you can see in some areas very close to Beverly Hills area some homelessness.

Val Zavala>> But we've been hearing about this growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, the increasing poverty. We've been hearing about that for years and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

Bernard-Henri Levy>> First of all, many people in Los Angeles try to do something themselves. Some of those whom we just quoted do something by themselves, creating some charities and helping covertly. This, by the way, is one of the characteristics of the American democracy where you are stronger than we are in Europe. The degree of solidarity, the extent of philanthropy, not only for the big tycoons, but for the average people, is something they are not able in America. But it's not enough, of course.

Val Zavala>> Now one of the stereotypes about Los Angeles is that we are non-intellectual and high intellectual. Did you find that to be true?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> You should see other parts of the country. You did not travel enough around America, believe me. You have, on the contrary, there is a traditional debate here, a tradition of underground culture. You have some bookshops like book soup. I had myself the experience of some debate and some lectures with a huge audience and real response and reply of the public in Los Angeles during many days which I have not in so many parts of the country, so I think it is unfair. It is a clich�, you know. The city of Hollywood, the city of bimbos, the city of reality television? This is a clich�, nothing really definite.

Val Zavala>> But here in southern California, we have so many different groups, ethnic groups, class groups, different languages. It's such a fragmented society. Are we going to survive or are we just going to break apart?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> Of course, because this what you describe is the miracle and the very definition of America. America is that. America is the only country in the world which, number one, has no name, no name. The United States of America is not a name. It's nothing. I mean, no country in the world which is called United States of something. No name. No real or ethnic identity. Not even saying the common memory. You have people who come there with an African memory, the European memory and the Korean and the Iranian memory.

Not even the same language. You have some people who come here in California who speak Spanish when they arrive and the second generation will speak English and the third will have forgotten Spanish sometime. So the miracle of America is precisely the ability to take these people as they are with their backgrounds, with their roots and to build Americans and American citizens out of these diversities. This is precisely why America is great, except as a country of European nations.

Val Zavala>> Now there are some people who say that American culture overall is on the decline. Would you agree with that?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> No. I don't believe so. I've seen some great artists. You have some great writers. You have the best movie industry. So I don't believe at all in this myth of the decline. Economically, the same. You know, as long as the rest of the world will continue to invest its money in America or in your currency, as long as all the managers of every country of the world will come and continue to believe that it is in American universities and colleges that they can have the best formation, as long as America will be the bank and the school of the rest of the world, you will keep your power.

Now the question is what do you do of this power? Is it a power for the good or the power for the bad? This is the real question. Are you powerful for the best or are you powerful for the worst?

Val Zavala>> Did you notice any major changes between observations of Tocqueville, your predecessor, and today?

Bernard-Henri Levy>> I think that America is facing a crisis which Tocqueville did foresee, but the extent of which he did not imagine. Crisis of accountability, crisis of democracy, having sometimes some aspects of a sort of soft tyranny, the tyranny of the majority, the growing fundamentalism. All this was foreseen by this incredible, great young man of thirty-one or thirty-two years old who was Tocqueville.

If you have the crisis, if you have the poison in America, you have also the counter-poison and you have also the medicine against the crisis. Again, the vibrancy of American democracy, the vividness of the creed is exactly what was viewed one century and seventy years before this book already describes.

Val Zavala>> Bernard-Henri Levy, author of "American Vertigo", thank you very much for your time and your observations on America.

Bernard-Henri Levy>> Thank you.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> If you were growing up in East Los Angeles in the forties and fifties, there was only one place to be on a sunny weekend and that's at places like this where the priorities were clear: church, family and baseball. It was a golden era when homegrown heroes stayed in the neighborhood.

Saul Toledo>> The Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation had what they called a municipal day, meaning muni for municipal.

Val Zavala>> Local teams on playgrounds who played some very serious ball.

Saul Toledo>> You know, I never had a baseball bat in my hands until they started this program.

Val Zavala>> Saul Toledo was twenty-six when he stepped onto Evergreen Field in East Los Angeles. Most of the time, he played second base for the Carmelitas, a team that came to be known as the Yankees of the muni leagues.

Saul Toledo>> That's my picture. I'm in that picture of that team up there that won the championship. I played pretty good ball until I was in my early thirties, you know.

Val Zavala>> Saul's memories and those of hundreds of others were brought together at Cal State Los Angeles' library.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> This is the only exhibit ever done focusing on Mexican-American baseball, let alone here in southern California.

Val Zavala>> Students of Professor Francisco Balderrama did the detective work in collecting memorabilia: photos, oral histories and artifacts, documenting amateur baseball from the thirties through the sixties. The teams reflected the neighborhoods they were in.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> So that you have Mexican teams playing Black teams, Mexican teams playing Japanese-American teams.

Saul Toledo>> But the majority of them by this time were mostly Mexican, you know.

Val Zavala>> The teams were often sponsored by businesses or growers who figured, if their employees played together, they would also work well together and stay loyal to the company. But that didn't always happen when Mexican-Americans started leagues of their own.

Dr. Francisco Balderrama>> And they used those leagues, they used that baseball time, very, very often to meet and discuss issues of the workplace, to organize strikes against those companies. So instead of really being company teams, they ended up being union teams.

Val Zavala>> Few owners were as passionate or as beloved as Mario Lopez. He was a successful businessman who owned a Chorizo factory.

Saul Toledo>> You know what a Chorizo is? It's a very famous Mexican delicacy, you know, to make with egg omelets or you can make it with beans. Anything you mixed in there, the Chorizo was going to make it delicious, you know.

Val Zavala>> And that gave Saul Toledo an idea.

Saul Toledo>> And it clicked. What a natural thing to call them: the Chorizeros, sausage makers. The Carmelita sausage makers, you know. And it took off like mad and then they started making the uniforms, instead of Carmelita Provisions, Chorizeros.

Val Zavala>> The Carmelita Chorizeros became a powerhouse on the field.

Saul Toledo>> They had twenty-six of twenty or twenty-two games at a time. They were playing one game a week, so that's twenty weeks that they went without losing a game.

Val Zavala>> And in the bleachers, crowds of fans along with Mariachis, tacos and beer. The players didn't get paid, did you?

Saul Toledo>> No, no. I've been asked that question before. Let me tell you what used to happen. He was smart enough to do it this way. When a player first got a homerun to win a ballgame, you know, or was the player of the game or whatever reason, he'd pass him a five dollar bill. Nobody would see it, you know. He did that a lot. He did that a lot. We had several guys that were given, you know, five dollars like a tip for winning a ballgame or whatever you call it. But pay? No.

Val Zavala>> The umpires got paid with help from a raffle. The prize? A couple of pounds of Mario's Chorizo.

Saul Toledo>> My impression of Mr. Lopez was that his first interest in life was his family, okay? Second, it was his business, and third, baseball, and fourth, the Santa Anita Racetrack (laughter). He loved to go to Santa Anita every Saturday. We'd get together at the shop there and he'd cook Carnitas for us and nice tacos and tamales, you name it, and he'd pay for all this. Off we'd go to Santa Anita. He'd load us up in his car, take us to Santa Anita and he would pay admission for all of us and give us a few bucks to bet. You talk about generous. Yes, he was very generous.

Val Zavala>> The Mexican-American teams produced some professional and semi-pro players.

Saul Toledo>> Some of them even played in Mexico. They started their career right there. I got an article there on Ernie Sierra who started playing ball at Evergreen and then he went off to play professional ball.

Val Zavala>> There were also the famous Pena Brothers, nine baseball-loving brothers brought together on one team for an exhibition game. That attracted the attention of the editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Saul Toledo>> And then he entered it into Ripley's Believe It Or Not. I wish I had a copy of that, but I didn't have it. Ripley had it in his Believe It Or Not, a nine-brother baseball team.

Val Zavala>> It wasn't always fun and games. The Zoot-Suit riots and Mexican-American bashing rocked the community in 1942 during the war, but the local ball teams gave the community something to cheer about. In the early fifties, the Mexican-American residents of Chavez Ravine were uprooted and evicted to make way for Walter O'Malley's Dodgers. But when a tortilla surfaced bearing a suspiciously familiar face, some of the sting softened. The tortilla source is still a mystery. And through it all, the Chorizeros, managed for twenty years by Shorty Perez, were winning championships, nineteen in all.

Saul Toledo>> The fondest memories would be winning the championship for Mario, you know.

Val Zavala>> Mario Lopez died in 1966. The Carmelita Chorizeros lost their heart and soul and were never the same. Local ball was eroded further by soccer, NFL on television and the Dodgers and Angels. Do you still go to baseball games?

Saul Toledo>> Oh, yes, yes. I haven't stopped. Baseball is still my love. I'm crazy about the Angels, always have been.

Val Zavala>> Angels?

Saul Toledo>> Oh, yeah. You know what year I saw my first Angel game? Ready? 1936. I saw my very first Los Angeles Angels game over at Wrigley Field on 43rd and Avila.

Val Zavala>> Saul went on to sports writing and announcing and barrio baseball moved on as well to the big leagues. What do you think these days of so many Mexican-Americans and Latinos and Hispanics in baseball?

Saul Toledo>> Yes, what a great question. You have a great question. The reason for that is, to me, it became a national pastime in all these countries, especially South America. As you know, to this day, I forget what it is, but something like twenty-five, thirty, maybe forty percent of the professional baseball players are Latino. Something fantastic, especially now Arte Moreno, a Chicano, a first Mexican owner of a major league sports team, Arte Moreno. Isn't that something?

Val Zavala>> As for Mario's factory, it moved to Monterey Park just a mile or so from Evergreen Field. It's still owned by the Lopez family and, in the world of Chorizo makers, it's still batting five hundred.

For information on the baseball exhibit at Cal State Los Angeles and a talk this Sunday afternoon on Fernando Valenzuela, you can go to their website at baseballreliquary.org. The exhibit at Cal State Los Angeles' library will be up through June 9. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

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