Lady Bountiful?
Linda Chavez's "charity" to an illegal Guatemalan immigrant may cost her a
Cabinet post. Her critics say it's the only nice thing she's ever done for a
Latino.
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By Alicia Montgomery
Jan. 9, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- It's ironic that Linda Chavez, President-elect
George W. Bush's pick to head the Department of Labor, should find her
nomination jeopardized by her relationship with Marta Mercado, an illegal
Guatemalan immigrant who lived with Chavez in 1991. Much of the controversy
over the relationship centers around whether Mercado was an employee of
Chavez's, or a charity case.
If Chavez considered Mercado an employee, her failure to pay Social Security
taxes could sink her nomination, as it did for Zoë Baird, the one-time
Clinton choice for attorney general in 1993. Either way, if Chavez knew that
Mercado was an illegal immigrant and sheltered her nonetheless -- something
Chavez denies, despite Mercado's words to the contrary -- she would have been
violating the law.
Still, Chavez's action, even if it was illegal, could be defended as a brave
and risky act of charity, and of solidarity with a fellow Latina in a time of
need. Yet many Hispanic leaders see Chavez as a "professional Latina" who has
continually bashed her own ethnic group to curry favor with conservatives.
And while she's relatively moderate on immigration issues, making her
"charity" to Mercado at least intellectually consistent, she's been brutal to
certain Latino groups, especially Puerto Ricans, whom she described in a 1991
book as "well versed in public assistance" and lacking a work ethic.
"There's more concern than support within the Hispanic community for Chavez,"
said Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, incoming chair of the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus. "As more of the information gets out about her positions,
that concern has grown." Marisa Demeo of the Mexican American Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, the Hispanic equivalent of the NAACP, agrees. "Since
the time of her nomination," Demeo says, "we have continued to learn about
all sorts of positions that she's taken -- against the Family and Medical
Leave Act, against affirmative action and bilingual education -- that are not
good for our citizens."
Some advocates said that the Chavez choice proves that Bush is either
tone-deaf to Latino concerns or doesn't realize the bad feelings that Chavez
has inspired in the community. "This is definitely an 'in your face'
nomination," said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La
Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization. Navarrete, who went out of her way to
praise Chavez's intelligence and power as a writer, said that Bush was way
off base if he thought that the nomination would get him diversity points
with Hispanic voters. "The point of having a diverse Cabinet is to have
someone who represents the views of that community," she said. "But Chavez
has made a career of saying, 'I'm opposed to what most Latinos think and
want.'"
"She gives cover to Republicans who believe that the only way for Hispanics
to help themselves up by their own bootstraps is to cut them off at the
knees," says Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of
United Latin American Citizens.
But people who want to cut off Chavez's chances at the knees, Wilkes claims,
have a powerful sword: Chavez's own words. "The good thing from our
perspective, and maybe the bad thing for her," Wilkes says, "is that she has
a lot of written stuff that will backfire on her."
Along with Chavez's commentaries and editorials, Wilkes cites her 1991 book
"Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation." In it,
Chavez bashes the Hispanic political establishment for holding its citizens
back. "Their leaders," she writes, "seem more intent on vying with blacks for
permanent victim status than on seeking recognition for genuine progress by
Hispanics over the last three decades."
Chavez spends much of the book blaming Hispanic leaders for inviting white
bigotry by emphasizing their ethnic identity over their status as American
citizens, and demanding what Chavez considers inappropriate remedies
conceived during the civil rights movement. "Hispanic organizations that
insist on special benefits ... severely strain the comity of the American
public."
Yet the book, which is unrelentingly critical of Hispanic leaders, waffles
between praising middle-class Hispanics and disdaining those in lower classes
as a major public relations drag. "The success of middle-class Hispanics is
an untold -- and misunderstood -- story, perhaps least appreciated by
Hispanic advocates whose interest is in promoting the view that Latinos
cannot make it in this society," she writes. "The Hispanic poor, who
constitute only about one-fourth of the Hispanic population, are visible to
all."
Though Chavez points out that poor immigrants lower the socioeconomic
statistics of the Hispanic population as a whole, she refrains from any hint
of immigrant-bashing. For example, speaking of the low educational
attainments of newly arrived Mexican immigrants, Chavez writes, "Nonetheless,
even these poorly educated immigrants will make progress as they stay longer
in the United States."
Chavez is toughest on Puerto Ricans, devoting a whole chapter to what she
calls "The Puerto Rican Exception."
"Puerto Ricans appear to be the one Hispanic group that truly fits the model
of a permanently disadvantaged group, indeed one that is developing a sizable
underclass," Chavez writes. Though she supports that assertion with
statistics about welfare dependency and out-of-wedlock births, the
anti-Puerto Rican sentiments Chavez voices frequently border on the
irrational.
In this chapter, Chavez depends on some creative use of statistics. For
example, though she acknowledges that not all Puerto Ricans live in New York,
Chavez repeatedly returns to those mean streets to make her sweeping
generalizations about the population stick. Information about the high
poverty rates of Hispanic New Yorkers are blamed on Puerto Ricans, while
Latino achievement in that city happens in spite of Puerto Rican influence.
The group is described as lacking a work ethic, as "neither working nor
looking for work." Though Chavez has employment data that shows Puerto Ricans
have higher unemployment than other Hispanic groups, charges that they don't
look for work would be difficult to prove, and Chavez doesn't. She also says
that Puerto Ricans are "well versed in public assistance" and "welfare has
supplanted the family network of support for much of New York's Puerto Rican
community." At one point, Chavez compares "the vibrant commercial areas of
Dominicans, Colombians, Cubans, and Mexicans" in New York to the Puerto Rican
"streets of the South Bronx ... filled with men and women whose bearing
suggested they had no place to go." Not exactly cutting-edge social science.
These anti-Puerto Rican sentiments stand in stark contrast to at least one
episode in Chavez's personal life. Chavez's defenders in the Bush camp cite
her help of Ada Iturrino, a Puerto Rican single mother, as proof that she
regularly reaches out to those less fortunate. Though Iturrino did not return
calls from Salon, she did rave to the New York Times about how Chavez took in
her two children for the summer several years ago as part of the Fresh Air
Fund, a program that gives inner-city kids a country vacation. Chavez also
paid the private-school tuition for Iturrino's kids, and continues to serve
as a mentor and trusted family friend.
Though Chavez might be good for the Iturrinos' education, her vocal
opposition to bilingual school programs shows her lack of concern for Latino
education as a whole, according to Wilkes. She once headed U.S. English, a
group that campaigned to make English the official U.S. language and has
stridently opposed bilingual programs. "They left U.S. English out of her
official bio," Wilkes notes. "Did you notice that?"
Perhaps that's because the group's goals are out of step with Bush's
"compassionate conservative" sentiments. "Many times, English-only programs
send a signal that says 'me, not you,'" Bush once said. He also voiced
support for limited bilingual education. "If a good bilingual program
effectively teaches children to read and comprehend English as quickly as
possible, I say great."
Chavez, however, has had little good to say about bilingual education under
any circumstances, and wrote in her book that such programs were just another
form of self-ghettoization by Hispanic liberals. "Bilingual education is
promoted on the theory that indigenous Hispanics have the right to maintain
their ancestral language and culture."
But Chavez resigned as executive director of U.S. English after she learned
that one of its major contributors had advocated forced sterilization, among
other things, as a way of controlling the growing immigrant population. In
"Out of the Barrio," Chavez describes as "anti-Hispanic" a 1986 memo in which
U.S. English founder John Tanton questioned the "educability" of Latino
immigrants.
As she does frequently in her book, however, Chavez returns to blaming
Hispanic community activists for bringing Tanton's brand of bigotry on
themselves. "What Hispanic leaders would not entertain," Chavez wrote, "was
the possibility that their own actions and rhetoric were spreading fear
faster than anything U.S. English could possibly do."
Even her critics in the Hispanic community see bright spots in Chavez's
record: her support of legal immigration, and her refusal to make illegal
immigrants the focus of her attacks. "She's pretty moderate on immigration
issues," says Larry Gonzalez, Washington director of the National Association
of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, one of the few groups that Chavez
singles out for qualified praise in her book. Navarrete concurs -- though she
insists that virtue won't do much good at Labor.
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About the writer
Alicia Montgomery is an assistant editor in Salon's Washington bureau.
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/01/09/chavez/index.html
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