No Subject

[Tran Cao Son <tson@utep.edu>]

Hi VNSA's members,

I found the following article is from Associated Press very 
interesting. 

Will the same clash happend between Vietnamese Americans and
immigrants ? Of course, I hope not. Right now, we don't have
VN'Americans in the 4-th or 5-th generations who are old enough
to be involved in a clash of these types but it is not very far
from now. 

Any comments ?

Bye.

--------------- INCLUDED MESSAGE -------------------

                  Mexican Americans clash with immigrants

Associated Press
-------------------
Newsfinder

PHOENIX (AP) -- Ranchera music blasts through the air from a small yellow
home in the Glendale barrio, causing the windows of neighboring homes to
vibrate and hum with each squeeze of the accordion.

Mexicans in cowboy hats and wide leather belts with oversized silver
buckles dance around a blaring radio and drink beer. Today, in the back
yard, a goat will be slaughtered, skinned and roasted.

It'll be a festive party for these recent Mexican immigrants, who will
celebrate until the early morning. But for their neighbors, longtime
Mexican-American residents of this barrio, the celebration breeds only
resentment and hostility.

"They're taking over the neighborhood," complained Esther Wokvish, a
third-generation Mexican-American who grew up in the neighborhood. "It's
disgusting. They kill their goats and pigs in the yard and dump everything
in the alley. One family will rent a house, and next thing you know, there
are 10 or 12 people living there. Then, people think we live just like
them. It's awful."

In Arizona, the discord can be witnessed in neighborhoods from El Mirage in
west Phoenix to Chandler in the east. It can also be seen in battles
between gangs. Last month, gangs of warring Latin American immigrant
prisoners and Mexican-Americans caused a riot at the Arizona State Prison
at Florence. Gangs from those two groups also have disrupted high schools
in west and south Phoenix in recent years. This cultural chasm between
established immigrants and newcomers is as old as America. With recent
Latin American newcomers and old-timers, the conflict is intensifying as
more and more immigrants move into established Mexican-American
neighborhoods and take jobs in construction, restaurants and the service
industries.

For instance, once only Mexican-Americans made their home on Wokvish's
street. Today, she said only four Mexican-American families live on the
block. The rest are Mexican immigrants.

Before, they lived in shanties on the fringes of town and toiled in the
fields and groves, harvesting Arizona crops. In the outskirts of town, the
rural culture they brought from their home countries wasn't so noticeable.
Many immigrants had lived in villages so poor that even indoor plumbing and
trash cans were considered luxuries.

In Phoenix, their lifestyle offends the sensibilities of many of their
established neighbors. Often speaking English better than Spanish, the
old-timers are proud of their working-class barrios and the fact that their
families have lived in this country for two or three generations.

In living rooms and across front-yard fences, old-timers meet and grouse
about the way immigrants live, blaming them for running down the
neighborhood and accusing them of taking over their shops and stores.

Take the Rev. Pedro Lopez, for example. He had been alone in the sanctuary
of his Baptist church in south Glendale, his thoughts focused on the
redemptive powers of Jesus while he wrote the night's sermon.

But there's nothing that brings Lopez, a native-born Texan, back to earth
faster than the subject of recent Latin American immigrants to this
traditional Mexican-American neighborhood, known as El Barrio.

"There's accordion music blaring from the windows of houses at night,"
Lopez said contemptuously. "People have found the innards of goats they
(immigrants) barbecue in the trash, stinking up the alley."

Immigrants have their own share of complaints against their assimilated
brothers. The newcomers chastise the Chicanos, a term they use to describe
Mexican-Americans, for speaking broken Spanish. The immigrants also
consider Mexican-Americans to be traitors to their heritage and mock them
for having coddled childhoods compared with the upbringing in Latin
countries, where children are put to work at very young ages.

What's more, many Latin American immigrants say they are treated rudely by
U.S.-born Mexican-Americans.

That's the case with Jorge Ocheita and his wife, Maria, who own a
prosperous auto-body business in Glendale. They emigrated with their
partner in the business, Julio Ramirez, from Guatemala during the height of
that country's civil war in the early 1980s.

Jorge Ocheita said he was introduced to the strained state of relations
with immigrants when he went to a Motor Vehicles Division office in west
Phoenix, staffed primarily by Mexican-Americans, to apply for a driver's
license.

"They check out your clothes from head to toe and then listen to you talk.
If you are an immigrant, they treat you like dogs," Ocheita said. "They
just give you a bad look, give you the forms and won't answer any
questions.

"And then there's the jealousy. Some of them come in here, see that I own
the place, and they're so mad that they don't even want to do business with
me."

Maria Ocheita said she was once hired by an Anglo supervisor in a Valley
cosmetics company and told that she would be working out of the company's
Tempe office.

"They were showing me around the office and none of the Chicanos would even
speak or look at me," she said. "Then, the Chicana who was over that office
said that they wouldn't be hiring me because I didn't turn in enough
background information. And this was after being told that I would be
hired."

Five years ago, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that
50,000 illegal immigrants lived in Arizona. The estimate as of last month
was 115,000. Officials at Mexico's consulate in Phoenix say they believe
that figure could be as high as 250,000.

Landmark Middle School in Glendale has so many recent arrivals from south
of the border that it publishes its newsletter for parents in Spanish, as
well as English.

Dozens of Spanish-speaking evangelical churches have sprung up in poor
neighborhoods throughout the Valley. The Phoenix Catholic diocese suffers a
critical shortage of priests who speak Spanish.

For the newcomers, their arrival to Valley barrios brings hope. For the
old-timers, there is a sense of loss.

Susana Maria Moreno has been mourning the steady disappearance of her
neighborhood. For 30 years, she has lived in the same four-bedroom house in
Glendale. It is a modest home, made of brick and covered with stucco. Each
spring and fall, she plants petunias, snapdragons and vincas. Moreno and
her longtime neighbors take pride in their homes.

"We've put everything we got into our homes and our neighborhoods," Moreno
said. "Now, all this is being ruined by the Mexicanos."

Two houses in her block now are home to Mexican immigrants. Four families
live in one home, Moreno said. The other, she said, is a home for about six
male workers.

"They don't care about our street. They're here to make money and send it
back to their families in Mexico," she complained, noting that their yards
have no grass, the screen doors are coming off the hinges and newspapers
cover some of the windows.

"It almost feels like we're living in Mexico," she said.

Residents of El Barrio in Glendale agree. They speak wistfully of times
when beet fields and a creamery were nearby and legendary country singer
Marty Robbins lived right around the corner.

Now, they say it's common to see illegals dump motor oil into open lots and
fill the night air with ranchera music of northern Mexico.

The third- and fourth-generation Mexican-Americans also complain that the
new immigrants are taking jobs away from them, particularly now that so
many of the immigrants aren't working in the fields anymore.

"It's hard not to resent them," Rios said. "They're ruining things for us,
things that we worked hard for."

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