Activist is caught between 2 cultures

by Esther J. Cepeda - Feb. 18, 2011 12:00 AM
Washington Post Writers Group

CHICAGO - There's nothing remarkable about a member of the Minuteman Project raising a fuss over a Spanish-language billboard. The outrage was spurred by an ad for low-cost auto insurance in Victorville, Calif., featuring the image of an attractive Hispanic woman and the inducement that you would get "more for your money" at Adriana's Insurance.

The anti-illegal immigration activist in question said the billboard was "a blight and affront on our language" and demanded the company "cease its divisive campaign of erecting Spanish-language billboards on American soil," according to a report in the Victorville Daily Press.

The remarkable part is that this activist - a 61-year-old unemployed Vietnam War veteran who fears that illegal immigration is killing the country he so dearly loves - is a second-generation U.S.-born Latino who simultaneously brags that his grandfather rode with Pancho Villa while fancying himself "probably the biggest Minuteman in America."

Raymond Herrera identifies with two groups on very different sides of the immigration-law reform battle. He's had the painful experience of being a skilled laborer who lost jobs to illegal immigrants preferred by employers looking for the cheapest, most disposable labor. "I was an American carpenter making a living with plenty of jobs," Herrera told me, describing what led him to his role as founder of "We the People, California's Crusader," a group that opposes illegal immigration.

"I was married, had my first child, a house, two cars, two cats, a picket fence, whole thing. ...Then in 1980 when they came across that border, I lost my jobs, I lost my house, eventually I lost my family - I lost my way in America.

"Like so many other American workers, I lost my American dream. The father that displaced me, his children are now in competition with my sons. Now they're taking away my children's American dream, too."

Yet he is a dark-skinned, bilingual Latino who, in the grand tradition of the American melting pot, considers himself an American first and an ethnic minority last. Like other Hispanics, he is proud of his Mexican immigrant roots and deplores the exploitation of illegal immigrants.

Perhaps the one group Herrera has the most in common with is the 31 percent of Latinos who, in the fall of 2010, believed that the impact of illegal immigration on Hispanics already living in the U.S. is negative. Compare that to only 20 percent who felt that way in 2007 when the Pew Hispanic Center gauged these attitudes.

This increasing anxiety is not something most Latinos want to discuss publicly because illegal immigration is as complex as Hispanic families that can be a diverse mixture of legal residents, illegal immigrants and the U.S.-born.

According to Herrera, his outrage begins with the erosion of a common American culture. He believes previous generations of immigrants were eventually united by the English language, but this ideal is being eroded because about four in five illegal immigrants come from Latin American countries.

He then expresses his fear.

"They advertise in Spanish to sell car insurance to illegal aliens by telling them, 'You don't need a license to drive in America, you just need insurance,'" Herrera said. "Never mind that they can't read the signs or know California rules of the road. They endanger public safety."

Herrera's final argument is one of exploitation of both legal resident and illegal-immigrant consumers. He points out that Adriana's Insurance was given an "F" rating by the Southern California Better Business Bureau because of 47 complaints against it for allegedly not honoring quotes, canceling policies without notification, unauthorized billing and not paying legitimate claims.

Yet, despite the public-policy concerns he seeks to bring into the spotlight, being a brown face in the crowd of the mostly White anti-illegal-immigrant movement hasn't been easy. Though he sometimes gets hugs from illegal immigrants who admire his views that the Mexican government should be responsible for creating a working economy that doesn't export its workers, more often Herrera is accused of betraying his roots.

Whether you love or hate Herrera's complicated views on illegal immigration, his story reflects America.

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