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Fiery voice for immigrants
Gutierrez views issue as state's biggest civil rights fight since farm workers' struggle in '60s

Yvonne Wingett
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 10, 2005 12:00 AM

Alfredo Gutierrez walks into the conference room of a Tempe landscaping business and scoots up a chair to a granite roundtable. He folds his hands, leans forward and nods respectfully at the four sunburned and baseball-capped men, the elected leaders of the company's 300 Mexican weed pullers, lawn mowers and flagstone layers.

They have many questions for Gutierrez about their place here in Phoenix after the passage of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration measure, Proposition 200.

Known in the Valley as a hell-raising activist, former legislator and professional lobbyist throughout the immigrant community, Gutierrez is much more.
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This fit, mustachioed man of pressed pants and Mexican-style dress shirts has become their teacher, counselor and biggest advocate.

Gutierrez has emerged as the most effective and influential force on the side of undocumented immigrants in an issue that has pitted neighbor against neighbor, family against family. As the debate over the presence of those four landscapers and the thousands of other undocumented immigrants rages, Gutierrez is their calming and comforting voice.

In clipped Spanish, the men say they do not understand the uproar over their presence in this country, this fight for basic rights, this fear of their language and culture. True, they are missing the papers that make them legal, but so what, they say. In their view, they work hard and stay out of trouble.

"We sought you out for your experience," said Alex Martinez, leader of the crew. "We need your help."

As he does so often these days, Gutierrez answers questions about economic boycotts, Proposition 200 and immigration reform.

"This is a moment very difficult," he said in their language. "We are fighting for our presence in the state, for our rights. For our children, for our future. You can't lose hope now. You've sacrificed too much."

Years ago, Gutierrez would not have spoken so softly. Back then it was Alfredo Gutierrez, the college activist, the dealmaking legislator, the man-about-town, and the lobbyist. Now, he has returned to the role of community activist, through his radio show and dozens of meetings like this, where he talks with students and undocumented workers about immigration.

His critics say this return to street level is an attention-getting act. Where was his passion for the immigrant, the poor, the dispossessed, they ask, in the years he made a fortune working against the cause, representing anti-union companies?

Gutierrez says it's true, that he has made a good living representing Phelps Dodge Corp. and other big businesses. At the same time, he says he has spent much of the past 20 years involved in the Spanish-speaking community.

The biggest change may be in style. The young "Alfie" was a bundle of ego and temper. That's how people who grew up with him during the 1960s know him. Younger people and recent immigrants only know the soft-spoken, humorous and hopeful man on the radio.

Thousands of those people in slaughterhouses, agricultural fields and kitchens tune in for the half-hour talk show to hear him discuss strategies that could drastically affect they way they live.

His public affairs show, Aqui Estamos con Alfredo Gutierrez, gives him a forum to shape the discussion. It gives him the power to organize protests at the state Capitol and to persuade people to boycott.

In Gutierrez's view, Arizona is in its biggest civil rights struggle since the 1960s, when farm workers fought for bathroom breaks and long-handled hoes. That was bad. Today is worse: "This is the ugliest I've ever seen it. I've lived with absolute segregation and discrimination, but this is perhaps the darkest hour."

The debate has demonized an entire people, he says, and lawmakers and public officials are giving people a license to hunt for undocumented immigrants.

Gutierrez has come full circle, returning to the same cause he fought for nearly four decades ago. As his 60th birthday approaches, he has returned to his roots as a vocal advocate of for the Spanish-speaking immigrant community.

Sense of obligation
His return to this community is guided by a sense of obligation to the person most affected: the immigrant. His mom was one when she carried him in her womb, across the Mexican border into this country.

He sees her struggles in the faces of the newly arrived migrants and their children. And so he volunteers his time for the talk show, meets with groups of students and workers to offer survival advice, and laces up his tennis shoes to march 25 miles in the name of civil rights.

"The nature of this fight, this battle, has become urgent," Gutierrez says. "The most important civil rights movement in this country. People ask, 'Why do you do this?' I owe an obligation to my mother. You can dispense of my obligation or not."

Gutierrez is the son of a miner, Samuel, and seamstress, Blanca Julia. He and his four siblings grew up in a modest home in the poor Arizona copper town of Miami, where his father taught him about union organizing.

After high school, he went into the Army, serving as a sharpshooter in Southeast Asia. Gutierrez returned to Miami in 1966 to work the mines, just as there were rumblings of a strike. Faced with the possibility of layoffs, he moved to Tempe, thinking of enrolling at Arizona State University under the GI Bill. But, instead, he took a job with the university grounds crew.

He enrolled later that year and was immediately drawn to student activists talking about equal education, rights and pay for Hispanics and immigrant workers. At the time, he says, there were two kinds of Hispanic students: the step-up student or the shut-up student. Gutierrez stepped up.

At the height of the Chicano Movement in 1967, Gutierrez met and worked alongside legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez. He went to Chavez's rallies and fasts in behalf of workers. A long-distance runner, Gutierrez jumped ditches and outran armed security guards to hand out workers rights leaflets to lettuce workers.

In November 1968, after ASU announced a long-term contract with a laundry company that had a litany of complaints against Hispanics, an outraged Gutierrez orchestrated a student strike of the school in behalf of the company's immigrant workforce.

He led a takeover of the administration building and president's office, which lasted two days. After the sit-in, university officials agreed to include a set of affirmative-action-type requirements in the new contract for the workers. In the months following the protest, Gutierrez left ASU without a degree.

In 1972, he traded in his Levi's, borrowed a tie and suit jacket and ran for the Arizona Senate. He won, at 26 becoming the youngest senator in the chamber. He bought a suit and built a reputation. Over 14 years, he became known for his ability to forge alliances and gather votes. For some, this was a measure of political respect, which came from both parties. For others, particularly among the activists he had left behind, this was a measure of selling out. For them, he had joined the system.

At the height of his time at the Legislature, he was the most powerful leader in the Senate, though as a Democrat he was only the minority leader. He controlled enough votes to green-light or red-light any measure moving through the Senate. His penchant for wheeling and dealing spawned the term "shopping at Alfredo's grocery store."

He cemented his place in legislative history by cutting deals with influential House Republican Majority Leader Burton Barr and Democratic Gov. Bruce Babbitt that included teacher pay packages and university funding that was higher than the national average.

Gutierrez left the Legislature in 1986 to start Jamieson and Gutierrez, a high-powered public affairs consulting firm whose clientele included the biggest names in Arizona business, including America West Airlines, Arco, the Phoenix Suns and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The firm wielded tremendous power and made Gutierrez a well-to-do man. Gutierrez, who controlled the firm, sold it in 2001.

In 2002, nearly 20 years after the height of his political career, a 57-year-old Gutierrez tried to re-enter politics, rekindle the magic and become governor. But there was no comeback: Janet Napolitano trounced him in the Democratic primary.

Position of power
Gutierrez's money, political credibility and son-of-an-immigrant story have allowed him to claim his latest position of power. He has used it to awaken and strengthen in immigrants a sense of importance, of themselves and the immigration debate.

At the same time, he is gearing up for Arizona's 2006 election. Just as his political rivals are hoping to expand the number of public programs covered by Proposition 200, Gutierrez and a small group of Valley leaders are plotting to keep it limited.

Gutierrez is meeting with community and business leaders over lunches to sell the idea, raise money to mount a campaign to let voters define the public benefits affected by Proposition 200.

"We've got to present a positive alternative," he said during one of these lunches at the Arizona Center. "If we can redefine Proposition 200, it if passes here, I think we can change the debate nationally."

Change the debate, maybe. End it? Never, Gutierrez says. There always will be people who are concerned with the cultural changes and damage immigrants bring, he says: "Let's face it: We've re-created the fabric of the country. This is very threatening."

Gutierrez believes legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate by Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts is the first and best step in addressing the fear.

The legislation calls for a temporary worker program that could lead to permanent residency, allowing immigrants to work legally after paying fines and clearing background tests.

In a perfect world, Gutierrez would couple the immigration bill with a redrafting of the North American Free Trade Agreement to drive out corruption and force institutional change in Mexico and Central and South America. Not likely anytime soon, he says.

But he still holds out hope for the estimated 500,000 undocumented immigrants living in Arizona, he tells the four landscapers. He uses fingers to count the reasons why.

He believes the McCain-Kennedy legislation will pass in a few years. Census figures say the Hispanic population will continue to boom, translating into greater political muscle, wealth and interethnic marriages. Proposition 200 and its legislative stepchildren have heightened awareness of the contributions of undocumented immigrants.

"These are difficult times," he tells them. "But we're all in this fight together. We are going to win. Your children are going to win. You have a right to live in this country."

The Gutierrez solution
How Alfredo Gutierrez would solve illegal immigration in Arizona.

Gutierrez believes that the! McCain-Kennedy legislation is the first realistic proposal for immigration reform since the Reagan administration. The legislation would allow immigrants to work legally after paying fines and clearing background tests.

"(It) recognizes the deficiencies of our failed policies and creates a program that is comprehensive in nature," he said.

Gutierrez would go further to renegotiate agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, to require trade partners to reform their justice systems.

"As long as we tolerate doing business with corrupt elites abroad, we will perpetuate the conditions that breed desperate poverty."

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-4712.