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The struggle for Chicano
representation in the state of California began as soon as the United
States took over California in 1847. This struggle has been a
long-fought battle to assert one ethnic group’s rights as American
citizens. However, the outcome of this confrontation remained in
question for the better part of 130 years. This is the story of that
struggle.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
On May 13, 1846, the United States
Congress, at the request of President James Knox Polk, declared war on
the Mexican Republic. And thus began the Mexican-American War. The war
in California ended less than a year later with the Treaty of Cahuenga,
signed on January 13, 1847. Another year later, on February 2, 1848, the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forced Mexico to hand over to the United
States 525,000 square miles of landing, including California.
Of the treaty’s twenty-three articles, four defined the rights of
Mexican citizens and Indian people in the territories. Californians were
given the freedom to live in ceded territories as either American or
Mexican citizens. The new American citizens would be entitled to
"the enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States
according to the principles of the constitutions."
The California
Constitution
A year later, forty-eight
delegates met in Monterey to put together the first California
Constitution. For six weeks from September to November 1849 the
Constitutional Convention created a constitution that would guarantee
rights to all citizens living within California’s borders. The final
Constitution – written in both English and Spanish – provided that
all major legislation in the future would be written in both English and
Spanish.
Article XI, Section 21 of California’s 1849 Constitution reflected the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s guarantee, declaring, "All laws,
decrees, regulations, and provisions, which from their nature require
publication, shall be published in English and Spanish." Article
II, "Right of Suffrage," Section 1, stated that "Every
white male citizen of the United States, and every white male citizen of
Mexico, who shall have elected to become a citizen of the United States,
under the treaty of peace exchanged and ratified at Queretaro, on the
30th day of May, 1848 of the age of twenty-one years, who shall have
been a resident of the State six months next preceding the election, and
the county or district in which he claims his vote thirty days, shall be
entitled to vote at all elections which are now or hereafter may
authorized by law."
Section 5 decreed: "Every citizen of California, declared a legal
voter by this Constitution, and every citizen of the United States, a
resident of this State on the day of election, shall be entitled to vote
at the first general election under this Constitution, and on the
question of the adoption thereof." Eight Californios – six of
them Mexican Californians – represented Hispanic interests at the
Convention. They were as follows:
1. Antonio M. Pico from San Jose
2. Jacinto Rodriguez from Monterey
3. Pablo de la Guerra from Santa Barbara
4. M.G. Vallejo from Sonora
5. José Antonio Carrillo from Los Angeles
6. Manuel Dominguez from Los Angeles
7. Miguel de Pedrorena – a native of Spain – from San Diego.
8. José M. Covarrubias – a native of France – representing Santa
Barbara.
The sad reality of this bilingual convention is that – even before the
ink was dry on the official paper – certain Anglo-American interests
were taking steps that would lead to a gradual and continuous
appropriation of Chicano suffrage. This action, to some people, may have
been regarded as the logical prerogative of a conquering people over a
conquered people. But the conquerors – once Mexico had requested peace
– signed a treaty and wrote a constitution that guaranteed citizenship
and voting rights to the Californios who had well-established roots in
this region. This had been a promise but – by 1893 – most of these
guarantees would be eliminated through legislation and plebiscites.
During the first couple of decades, several prominent Californio
families of Spanish and Mexican origin who held large tracts of land
called ranchos, shared the reigns of power with the Anglos who were
arriving in their territory in ever-greater numbers. But, in the First
California Constitutional Legislature, which commenced on December 15,
1849 in San Jose, was attended by a nineteen delegates from the northern
states of the U.S. Another ten hailed from the southern states, but no
natives of California were represented in the Assembly. Jose M.
Covarrubias, a Californio landowner in the Santa Barbara area, but a
native of France, was one of the few Assemblypersons with any strong
California ties going back more than a decade.
Early Chicano
Representation
The first California Senate in
1849 was composed of nine members from northern states, five members
from southern states, and only two members who were native Californians.
The session last four months and adjourned on April 22, 1850. Less than
half a year later, on September 9, 1850, California would be admitted as
the thirty-first American state.
The first session of the California Legislation after statehood
commenced on January 6, 1851 and lasted until May 1, 1851. One of the
delegates representing Los Angeles for the Whig Party was a well-known
Californian named Andres Pico. Andres – the brother of the last
Mexican Governor, Pio Pico – was the Mexican military officer who had
fought the American forces under his commander, General Jose Maria
Flores.
In the early days of 1847, General Flores, recognizing that he was
losing control of the situation, turned over command of his forces to
his deputy, Andres Pico, and fled south to unoccupied Mexican territory.
On January 13, 1847, Andres, seeing his own situation as untenable, met
with Lieutenant-Colonel John C. Fremont, the commander of the American
forces who was occupying the San Fernando Mission. On this date, Fremont
and Andres Pico, Commander-in-Chief of the remaining Mexican forces in
California, signed the Treaty of Cahuenga in the San Fernando Valley.
Article 5 of the capitulation declared, "equal rights and
privileges are vouchsafed to every citizen of California as are enjoyed
by the citizens of the United States."
Andres Pico became the first Californio to be elected to the Assembly as
the representative of District 2 in the 2nd (1851) and 3rd (1853)
legislative sessions. He changed his party affiliation to Democrat and
was elected to the Assembly from District 2 once again for the 9th
(1858) and 10th (1859) legislative sessions. Another Californian
landowner, Jose M. Covarrubias, served on the California state assembly
off and on from 1849 to 1862, representing Santa Barbara district.
For the first three decades after statehood, some Chicanos were able to
find the occasional support of their constituency and represent their
home districts. Pedro C. Carrillo of Santa Barbara served as a delegate
from the 2nd District in 1854-55. Manuel A. Castro of San Luis Obispo
served as a delegate from the 2nd District in 1856-57 and from the 6th
District in 1863. Esteban Castro from Monterey served in the State
Assembly as a delegate to the 3rd District (1857-58) and the 6th
District (1863-65).
Ygnacio Sepulveda of Los Angeles became a member of the California State
Assembly in 1863-65 as the representative of the 2nd District. Ygnacio
went on to become a Judge of the Seventeenth Judicial District, one of
the first two Superior Court Justices in Los Angeles County. Another
Californio, Mariano G. Pacheco served as a representative of California’s
3rd District from 1852 to 1854.
Romualdo Pacheco
It was Mariano’s brother who
stands as the most spectacular Chicano legislator during California’s
Nineteenth Century. Born in Santa Barbara in 1831, Romualdo Pacheco was
a proud Californian who also had roots in the Mexican state of
Guanajuato. Señor Pacheco originally served as superior court judge in
San Luis Obispo from 1853-1857. Romualdo moved on to serve in the State
Assembly in 1853-55 and 1868-70. In 1857, he first started serving in
the California State Senate and he continued to serve intermittently,
also in 1861-63 and 1869-70.
But Romualdo Pacheco’s best days were ahead of him. Governor Leland
Stanford appointed him as a brigadier general in command of the First
Brigade of California’s Native Cavalry during the American Civil War.
During the Republican State Convention of 1863, Governor Stanford
nominated Pacheco for the position of state treasurer. Fluent in both
Spanish and English, Romualdo Pacheco was a popular politician who got
along well with both Californians and Anglos-Americans.
In June 1871 Pacheco received the Republican Party nomination for
Lieutenant Governor of California. In 1875, when Governor Newton Booth
was elected to the U.S. Senate, Pacheco became the Governor of
California. His stay in the Governor’s office was relatively short
and, in November 1876, Romualdo ran for and was elected to the U.S.
House of Representatives to serve in the Forty-fifth Congress
(1877-1878), winning by a margin of one vote. He later served in the
Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1879 to March 3,
1883).
Even when Pacheco’s career as a representative drew to a close, her
served in his later years as a minister to several Central American
countries before his death in 1899. Loren Nicholson is one of several
authors who has written about Romualdo Pacheco’s extraordinary career
as a Chicano politician in his 1990 publication, "Romualdo Pacheco’s
California!: The Mexican-American Who Won," a California Heritage
Series (San Luis Obispo: California Heritage Pub. Associates, 1990).
However, as the Nineteenth Century wore on, a gradual erosion of
Mexican-American’s rights as citizens took place. The Fifteenth
Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1870,
had promised "the rights of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In
theory this amendment gave all Californian Mexican-Americans and other
minorities a voice in both local and national politics.
In practice, however, the Fifteenth Amendment was flagrantly violated in
the years to follow by the California Legislature. One of the most
blatant examples of this was the adoption of the 1879 California
Constitution. The revised Constitution officially rescinded the
linguistic protective provisions of the 1849 Constitution, providing
that "no person who shall not be able to read the Constitution in
the English language and write his or her name, shall ever exercise the
privileges of an elector in this State." With one fell swoop, the
guarantee of bilingual publication of laws was revoked and no documents
relating to elections were thereafter published in Spanish.
The Literacy Requirement
(1894)
Then, in 1891, Assemblyman A. J.
Bledsoe introduced an English literacy requirement as a proposed
constitutional amendment in the State Assembly. Bledsoe had earlier
belonged to the vigilante Committee of Fifteen that had expelled every
person of Chinese ancestry from Humboldt. In his introduction, he
lamented the "the increased immigration of the illiterate and
unassimilated elements of Europe, and believe that every agency should
be invoked to preserve our public lands from alien grasp, to shield
American labor from this destructive competition, and to protect the
purity of the ballot-box from the corrupting influences of the
disturbing elements ... from abroad."
Although the Assembly voted down the proposal on January 21, 1891, a
flood of petitions from the public favoring the literacy requirement
flooded Sacramento. With such overwhelming support from their
constituents, the Legislature hastily adopted Bledsoe’s proposal as a
constitutional amendment subject to ratification at the next general
election. In 1894, the people of California voted to approve the English
literacy requirement, which henceforth before part of Article II,
Section 1.
The anti-immigrant attitude – directed at Asians, Mexicans and Eastern
Europeans – prevailed into the first half of the Twentieth Century to
the point that it was even written into the California election laws.
Section 5567 of the California Elections Code, as adopted in 1941,
required that elections be conducted in the English language and
prohibited election officials from speaking any language other than
English while on duty at the polling stations.
Such actions violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment and, therefore, were unconstitutional. But the literacy law
remained on the books in California until it was challenged in the
California courts many decades later. In the landmark court case,
Genoveva Castro et al. versus the State of California, the
constitutionality of the English literacy requirement was challenged
[CASTRO v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA, March 24, 1970. L.A. No. 29693. 2 Cal.
3d 223].
In analyzing the causes of the literacy legislation, the Court found
that "fear and hatred played a significant role" in promoting
California’s lawmakers to pass the voting requirement. Although it may
have appeared to be "a genuine desire to create an intelligent and
responsible electorate," the court concluded "the English
literacy requirement was a direct product of the narrow and fearful
nativism rampant in California politics at the end of the nineteenth
century."
For the first half of the Twentieth Century, anti-immigrant legislation
and sentiment did, in fact, prevent fair political representation of
Chicanos and other minorities groups in California. One of the most
devious means of limiting minority representation was a practice known
as gerrymandering. In California, legislatures were able to divide a
county or city into oddly shaped representational districts to give
political advantage to Anglos in elections. Gerrymandering resulted in
voter dilution, in which the political representation of a political
unified minority was obstructed or diminished so severely that political
representation of Latinos was nonexistent.
The End of World War II
The year was 1947 and the place
was California. World War II had ended two years earlier and millions of
American GI’s had returned home to their families and jobs. The Great
Depression had ended with the coming of World War II and California –
like the rest of the country – was experiencing a newly found economic
prosperity.
As a result of this prosperity,
Los Angeles was drawing large numbers of people from all around the
United States and from Mexico. Between 1940 and 1950, the population of
California increased from over 6 million people to 10 ½ million. During
the same period, the population of Los Angeles County jumped from 3
million to 4.7 million people.
During World War II, hundreds of
thousands of Hispanic Americans had served in the U.S. military, many
receiving decorations for their service to their country. These proud
veterans returned to their native land, but still experienced many forms
of discrimination and prejudice in the job market.
However, as the war drew to an
end, an important piece of legislation presented Chicano veterans with
an opportunity for advancement in California. The G.I. Bill Act of June
22, 1944 – or the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act [Public Law 346,
78th Congress, Title III, §§500-503, 58 Stat. 284, 291-293 (1944)] –
put higher education within the reach of thousands of Mexican-American
veterans. The Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952 [Public Law
550, 82nd Congress, July 16, 1952, Ch. 875, 66 Stat. 663, 38 U.S.C. 997]
provided similar privileges to Korean War veterans.
Over the next decade,
Mexican-American veterans attended local and nationwide colleges and
universities to obtain college degrees. In many cases, these vets were
the first members of their families to receive a higher education. Armed
with the weapon of education, many of these Chicano veterans became the
politicians of the 1960s and 1970s.
In California’s expanding
wartime economy, some Mexican Americans had become skilled workers,
putting them into a new economic bracket. But, the new prosperity had
not translated into political representation yet. Not a single Hispanic
person from California had served in Congress since the end of Romualdo
Pacheco’s tenure as representative in 1883. Additionally, not a single
Mexican American had served in the California Legislature since the end
of Miguel Estudillo’s tenure in the California Senate (1911). The last
Latino to serve as mayor of the City of Los Angeles, Cristobal Aguilar,
had been voted out of office in 1872 and the last Mexican-American
member of the Los Angeles City Council had stepped down in 1881.
The Emergence of Edward Roybal
It was in this vacuum of
non-representation that a unique individual came onto the scene. More
than any other person, Edward Roybal would pave the way for two
generations of Mexican-American Californians, who would achieve
representation in the Los Angeles City Council, the U.S. Congress, or
the California Legislature.
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Roybal had come to Boyle Heights in 1922 with his parents, when his
unemployed father sought new employment. Roybal graduated from Roosevelt
High School and attended UCLA before going to World War II. After the
war had ended, he returned to Los Angeles and became the Director of
Health Education for the Los Angeles County Tuberculosis and Health
Association.
In 1947, 30-year-old Edward R.
Roybal decided to run for councilman of the 9th Council
District, which included Boyle Heights, Bunker Hill, Civic Center,
Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and the Central Avenue District. The racial
makeup of the district’s 185,033 residents was: 45% White, 34% Latino,
15% African American, and 6% "other." Even Roybal’s
political base, Boyle Heights, was just 43% Hispanic at the time, while
34% of the inhabitants were native-born Whites.
Professor Katherine Underwood has
analyzed Roybal’s run for office and noted that Roybal’s first
campaign lacked endorsements and neglected voter outreach. In the
primary election on April 1, 1947, Edward Roybal and three other
candidates ran against the incumbent councilman, Parley Parker
Christensen. On Election Day, Christensen won 8,948 votes, while Roybal
came in third with 3,350 votes (15% of the total ballots cast).
Seventy-five percent of Roybal’s support had come from Boyle Heights.
(Katherine Underwood, "Pioneering Minority Representation: Edward
Roybal and the Los Angeles City Council, 1949-1962," Pacific
Historical Review – 1997).
Following this loss, Roybal became
involved with several of his campaign supporters to create the CPO
(Community Political Organization) in September 1947. The organization,
which was later renamed CSO (Community Service Organization), became the
first broad-based organization within the Mexican-American community,
representing veterans, businessmen, and workers.
The primary goal of the CSO was to
register Mexican Americans to vote. For this purpose, the organization
recruited 1,000 members and registered 15,000 new voters in the Latino
sections of Boyle Heights, Belvedere, and East Los Angeles. By 1949,
Roybal believed that he had enough support to run for the Ninth District
seat once again.
In the April 5, 1949 primary
election, Roybal knocked Daniel Sullivan and Julia Sheehan out of the
council race by capturing 37% of the total votes cast. This forced a
runoff with Christensen in the May general election. In the general
election held on May 31, 1949, Edward Roybal soundly defeated six-term
Councilman Christensen by a vote of 20,472 to 11,956, winning by a
2-to-1 margin. With this victory, Ed Roybal became the first Mexican
American since 1881 to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. He
would serve as Council member of the 9th District from July
1, 1949 to Dec. 31, 1962, before moving on to the U.S. Congress in 1963.
Even with Roybal’s victory, CSO
continued its registration efforts. By 1950, some 32,000 Mexican
Americans had been added to registration rolls, contributing to the
election of businessman Albert G. Padilla to the San Fernando City
Council. Mr. Padilla was made Council member on April 18, 1950 and
served for four years. (Source: Elena Sanchez, San Fernando City Clerk).
A year later, Roybal was reelected to the Council seat for the 9th
District in the primaries on April 3, 1951 when he defeated Irving Rael
by 17,941 votes to 5,762 votes (almost a 3-to-1 margin).
The Election of Charles Navarro
(1951)
In the meantime, a second
Hispanic, Charles Navarro, ran for the City Council. In the April 3
election, five candidates ran for the Council seat, representing
District 10. In this primary election, left-wing Assemblyman Vernon
Kilpatrick received 5,301 votes, while Navarro received the second
largest number of votes with 5,077. Navarro and Kilpatrick thus advanced
to a showdown in the general election, to be held in June.
The Los Angeles Times reported
that this election represented "one of the bitterest Council fights
in years," pitting the Conservative income property owner and
"champion of free enterprise" Charles Navarro "on a
strong anti-Communist platform" against the left-wing Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick had already served for twelve years as an Assemblyman but,
according to the Times, "had a long record of left-wing activities
and associations."
Once the complete returns had been
tallied, Navarro had defeated Kilpatrick 9,075 votes to 7,382 on June
29, 1951 at the general election. Navarro took office as Councilman on
July 1, 1951.
In the 1953 contest for the 9th
District, Roybal ran unopposed, winning his seat in the April 7, 1953
primary election. Charles Navarro was also reelected at the same time.
Very little changed in the political representation of Latinos for the
rest of the 1950s. Edward Roybal sought the nomination for Lieutenant
Governor in 1954, but failed.
Then in 1958, Ed Roybal announced
that he would run for the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors. The outgoing
Supervisor John Anson Ford endorsed Roybal. He and Councilman Ernest
Debs opposed each other. The Eastside supported Roybal, but last minute
defections hurt Roybal as several prominent Chicano leaders defected to
Debs. Because Roybal had openly opposed the Chávez Ravine and Boyle
Heights issues, the Los Angeles Times opposed him and endorsed Debs. On
the first ballot, Roybal led by 393 votes, 139,800 to 139,407. But the
County Voter Registrar reported that a 12,000-vote error had been made.
After four recounts, Debs won 141,011 to 128,994.
In the 1950s, large numbers of
Mexican Americans moved from Texas to the Midwest and California. By
1959, the Mexican-American population of Los Angeles County had
increased to 600,000. However, aside from the two Latinos on the Los
Angeles City Council, representation was nil. No Mexican American
represented East Los Angeles or other Hispanic communities in
Sacramento, nor did any Hispanic represent California in the U.S.
Congress.
MAPA
To address the issue of
representation in California, the Mexican American Political Association
(MAPA) was organized by 150 volunteer delegates at Fresno. Meeting for
the first time in April 1959, MAPA
Delegates drew up a plan for
direct electoral politics. From the beginning MAPA declared that its
main goal was to become the political voice of the Mexican American
community. Ed Roybal was elected first MAPA president.
Navarro as City Controller
In 1961, Los Angeles City
Councilman Charles Navarro decided to run for the office of City
Controller, challenging the incumbent City Controller, Don O. Hoye, who
had served in that capacity since 1957. In the May 31, 1961 General
Election, Navarro coasted to an easy victory of the incumbent Hoye,
taking a 2-to-1 lead over Hoye in the early returns and maintaining his
lead throughout the night. The final tally from June 2, 1961 gave
Charles Navarro 331,340 votes, well above Hoye’s 161,690 votes.
Charles Navarro took office on
July 1st as City Controller, thus vacating his council
position. Upon his victory, he stated, "I’ll miss the debates and
personality clashes of the City Council, but I’m looking forward to my
new responsibilities as controller." An Anglo, Joe E.
Hollingsworth, was appointed on August 25, 1961 to Charles Navarro’s
unexpired term on the 10th District seat. Hollingsworth would
be succeeded by Thomas Bradley, who was elected at the April 2, 1963
primaries to replace Hollingsworth on June 30, 1963. Bradley served the
10th District until July 1, 1973, when he became Mayor of Los
Angeles.
1961 Reapportionment and
Redistricting
In 1960, California had a total
population of 15,717,204 persons. This new figure increased California’s
representation in the U.S. Congress from 30 seats in 1950 to 38 seats.
Roughly 1.5 million Hispanics made up more than 9% of the California
population, but 20% of these Hispanics were foreign-born, many of whom
were not naturalized and, as a result, were not eligible to vote. In Los
Angeles, Latinos only made up 9.6% of the population in 1960, slightly
above the African-American population of 7.6%.
As the new decade commenced, there
were still no Chicanos in the State Senate, the Assembly or in the
California Congressional delegation. There was no representation of the
Mexican-American population in any part of California, primarily because
of political fracturing. "Fracturing" is the drawing of
district lines so that a minority population is broken up. Members of
the minority are spread among as many districts as possible, keeping
them a minority in all the districts.
Because of fracturing, the Latino
community of Los Angeles was unable to concentrate its strength so that
it might elect representatives in some of its districts. And so it was
that the East Los Angeles Barrio, with its large population of
Hispanics, was split up into nine different Assembly districts, seven
State Senate districts, and six different Congressional Districts.
Most of these districts were
combined with neighboring Anglo communities so that Hispanics rarely
made up more than 20% of any one district's population. This
district manipulation was effective in depriving the Latino community of
legislative power and influence.
In 1961, with the 1960 census
statistics as a guide, the California Legislature reapportioned the
Senate and Assembly pursuant to section 6 of article IV of the
California Constitution. Testifying before the Reapportionment and
Elections Committees of the Senate and Assembly, Los Angeles City
Councilperson Edward Roybal, complained about the fragmentation of the
Chicano communities in L.A. He stressed the importance of creating
Hispanic districts.
After the 1961 reapportionment,
Mexican Americans represented significant populations in the following
Assembly Districts: the 40th, 45th, 48th,
50th and 51st Assembly Districts. All of these
districts fragmented the Chicano community and attached the districts to
surrounding Anglo districts.
The California Supreme Court later
ruled that California's congressional districts, as drawn in 1961, were
unconstitutional and ordered reapportionment of the districts (Silver v.
Reagan, 67 Cal. 2nd 452). Similarly, the Supreme Court also
ruled that the Assembly and Senate would have to reapportion their
districts (Silver v. Brown, 63 Cal. 2nd 270).
Although most of the redistricting
that took place in 1961 resulted in obvious and continued gerrymandering
of the Latino community in the Los Angeles area, the increasing Latino
population in the Los Angeles area finally led to the election of
Mexican-American representatives. Most significant was the creation of a
congressional district, which would pave a way for Edward Roybal to run
for Congress.
The 1962 Elections
In the June 5, 1962 California
Primary Election, thirteen Chicano candidates ran for office. City
Councilman Edward Roybal had announced that he would run for the 30th
Congressional District. Around the same time, Henry Mendoza, a
Republican, announced that he would run for the 21st
District.
Altogether, eleven Chicanos were
on the ballot for the 40th, 45th, 48th,
50th, 51st and 77th Assembly Districts.
In East L.A.’s 48th District, Frank Lopez and Frank Paz had
run against each other in the primaries. Political analysts believed
that Frank Paz might have won that election if he had not faced another
Latino in the primary.
Of the thirteen candidates, only
three men would take office following the November 6, 1962 General
Election. In the primaries, John Moreno had faced three other Chicano
Democratic candidates in the contest for East Los Angeles’ 51st
Assembly District seat. A native of Los Angeles, Moreno had attended USC
and served in the U.S. Navy from 1945 to 1947. Before running for his
Assembly seat, John Moreno served as the Mayor of the City of Santa Fe
Springs. Once elected, Assemblyperson Moreno would serve as the
representative of the 51st District for only two years: 1963
and 1964.
Philip Soto, a Democrat from La
Puente, was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and was a member of the La
Puente City Council prior to his service in Sacramento. He became the
state representative for the 50th Assembly District.
With their November 6 elections,
Philip Soto and John Moreno became the first two Latinos from Los
Angeles County to be elected to the California State Legislature in the
Twentieth Century. They were also the first Latinos to be elected to
serve in the State Assembly since the election of Miguel Estudillo of
Riverside County in 1907. The election of these two men set a precedent
for a long line of Latino legislators committed to the service of their
communities.
While Soto and Moreno celebrated
their Assembly districts, Ed Roybal also savored his own victory. On
November 6, 1962, after defeating Loyola University Professor William
Fitzgerald, the City Councilman became the first Hispanic from
California to be elected to Congress since the 1879 election of Romualdo
Pacheco.
Edward Roybal took his seat in the
House of Representatives on January 3, 1963 at the start of the 88th
U.S. Congress. He would serve for twenty years from the 88th Congress to
the 102nd Congress, retiring on January 3, 1993. At the start of his
Congressional career, Representative Roybal represented the 30th
District from 1963 to 1975. From 1975 to 1993, he served in the 25th
District. In 1976, Roybal became one of the founding members of the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
As Ed Roybal prepared to run for
Representative of the 30th Congressional District, he
resigned from his City Council seat on July 31, 1962. An
African-American, Gilbert W. Lindsay, was appointed to replace him on
January 28, 1963, even though the 9th District had a large
concentration of Latinos. Lindsay would serve in this capacity to Dec.
28, 1990, when he died in office. In three years, African Americans went
from having no representation on the Los Angeles City Council in 1960 to
having three representatives in 1963. At the same time, Latino
representation went from two council members to zero.
The City Council apportionment of
1962 split East Los Angeles among seven councilmanic districts. Because
of this fragmentation, Chicanos could not be a majority in any one of
the city’s fifteen districts, even though they represented a large
portion of seven of the council’s fifteen districts.
The 1964 Elections
In the June 2, 1964 California
Primary Election, Ed Roybal received 49,151 votes in the 30th
Congressional District, easily winning reelection to his Congressional
seat. His closest opponents received only 15,153 and 13,228 votes.
In the elections for the
California Assembly, many Chicano candidates stepped forward to seek a
mandate for representing their communities. A total of eleven Chicanos
ran for the 10th, 38th, 40th, 45th,
48th, 50th 51st, and 75th
Assembly District seats. However, by the time the elections had ended,
only one Hispanic Assemblymember would take office.
In the 50th Assembly
District, Philip Soto won reelection by 2,178 votes in the general
election. Two years later in 1966, however, facing the same opponent in
1966, Soto would lose his seat by 4,309 votes, most likely because of
boundary changes to his district after the 1966 reapportionment.
When Assemblyman Moreno tried to
get reelected to his 51st District seat, he found himself up
against another Chicano candidate, Dionisio Morales. This contest split
the Chicano vote and led to victory in the Democratic Primary by Jack
Fenton. Jack Fenton received 16,278 votes to John Moreno’s 12,850
votes.
1965 Reapportionment of the
California Legislature
In 1965, the California
Legislature was forced to reapportion itself under order of the
California Supreme Court. Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown called a
special session of the Legislature to consider reapportionment, and, in
October, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill No. 1, which
fashioned new Assembly and Senate districts.
However, the 1965 redistricting
continued the fracturing and dilution of the East Los Angeles Chicano
community. Five Assembly Districts – the 40th, 45th,
48th, 50th, and 51st – all dipped
into East Los Angeles for 20-30 percent of their registered voters,
while five other Assembly Districts – the 52nd, 53rd,
56th, 65th and 66th – all dipped in
for smaller percentages. (Richard Santillan, "California
Reapportionment and the Chicano Community: An Historical Overview
1960-1980," in The Chicano Community and California Redistricting,
Vol. I (Rose Institute of State and Local Government, Claremont Men’s
College, 1981).
The 1966 Elections
In the 1966 California Primary
Election on June 7, 1966, four Hispanics ran for the 14th, 19th,
and 29th Congressional Districts, and all of them lost.
Fifteen Chicanos also ran for positions on the Assembly. All of these
candidates, some of whom opposed one another in the primaries, lost
their elections. The one Latino incumbent, Philip Soto, lost by 4,309
votes,.
In addition, nine Latinos also ran
for State Senate seats, the 9th, 10th, 27th
and 28th and 30th. Richard Calderón received the
CDC and MAPA endorsements for his bid for the 27th Senatorial
District but lost by 311 votes. Cecilia Pedroza and Raúl Morín had
splintered the Mexican-American vote, preventing Calderón from winning.
In his reelection bid for the 30th
Congressional District, Ed Roybal received 48,117 votes against the
22,347 votes of his Republican opponent, Henry O’Bryant, Jr. This
represented the only bright spot for the cause of Chicano representation
in the 1966 election year.
Julian Nava’s Election (1967)
The election of Professor Julian
Nava in 1967 to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board was
significant in many respects. He was the first Latino elected to the
school board and he was able to defeat an incumbent in an at-large
election. His vote total, over two million, was actually the largest
ever received by a victorious Latino candidate in the United States up
to that time. In an interview with the author, Julian stated that his
election "lit fires in many places" and "inspired the
famous ‘Walk Outs’ of the Los Angeles high schools in February of
1968, just seven months after I took office." Julian explains that
these walkouts took place because "the students (and their leaders)
believed that for the first time their demands for reform might be met
with one of their own on the school board."
But Julian Nava’s surprise
victory was one of the few events that gave representation to Latinos
during this period. The author, Richard Santillan, in "Chicano
Politics: La Raza Unida" explains that:
"After 1968, the
Mexican-American… looked at the American political system and found
that the Mexican-American after almost 120 years of being an American
citizen did not have any real political voice. The Mexican-American
tried to work in the two-party system, but the system failed him. In
1968, the California Legislature did not have one Mexican-American in
the Assembly nor the Senate." (Richard Santillan, Chicano Politics:
La Raza Unida (Los Angeles: Tlaquilo Publications, 1973), p. 11).
The 1968 Elections
By 1968, the California
Legislature was once again without Latino representatives. In the June
4, 1968 primary elections, 13 Latinos ran for Assembly seats. Philip L.
Soto once again ran for the 50th Assembly seat again but lost
one more time. By the time the elections had ended, only one Chicano was
given a ticket to enter the Assembly.
In the primary election for the 40th
Assembly District, the Democratic candidate Alex Garcia had faced twelve
other candidates in the primary election, including four Hispanics. For
Mr. Garcia, this election would begin a political career, as he served
in the Assembly from 1968 to 1974 and in the State Senate from 1974 to
1982. Assemblyman Garcia was a veteran of the U.S. Army and a graduate
of East Los Angeles Junior College, the University of California, Los
Angeles and the Southern California Business School. Before his election
to the State Legislature, Garcia was a field Representative for
Congressman Ed Roybal for five years.
A New Decade (the 1970s)
The 1970s represented new
opportunities for Chicano candidates. The beginning of true Hispanic
representation would be established during these years. In 1970,
California had a total population of 19,971,069 persons. Of this total,
2,369,292 were Hispanics, who made up 10.8% of the state’s total
population. However, in this year, out of 15,650 elected and appointed
officials at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels, only 310
(1.98%) were Chicanos ("Political Participation of Mexican
Americans in California," Report of the California Advisory
Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Sacramento,
Calif., August 1971, p. 15).
Of the 2.4 million Hispanics
living in California, 490,892 were foreign-born, making up 22.9% of the
total Hispanic population. Many of these people were not citizens and
ineligible for American voting privileges. This represented a
significant stumbling block in electing Chicanos to public office.
Assemblyman García was the lone
Latino in the California Legislature at the beginning of 1970. However,
in the June 2, 1970 primary election, three Republican Latinos ran for
Congressional seats in the 9th, 16th and 22nd
Congressional Districts. In addition, fourteen Chicanos also ran for
Assembly seats in the primaries, but only two men won.
In the primaries, Alex P. Garcia
won reelection to the 40th Assembly District by a wide
margin, getting 15,151 votes out a total of 22,953. The Democrat Peter
Chacón was elected as the representative for the 69th
Assembly District in San Diego County. After receiving a bachelor’s
degree, teaching credential and M.A. from San Diego State University,
Mr. Chacon worked as an educator and administrator for the San Diego
Unified School District.
The Elections of 1972
The Elections of 1972 represented
another step forward for the Hispanic community of California. Richard
Alatorre and Joseph Montoya were elected from their respective districts
in Los Angeles to the California Assembly, while Ray Gonzales was
elected to represent his Bakersfield District.
Ray Gonzales, a Democrat, won a
stunning victory against a veteran Republic legislator in a bid for the
33rd Assembly District, which took up most of Kern County,
including Bakersfield, one of the most conservative areas of the state.
Gonzáles had graduated from Mount San Antonio College and UCLA, and
spent four years in the U.S. Air Force. His career in elective politics
began at the age of 28 with a one-vote victory to the La Puente City
Council in 1968. He later served as Mayor of La Puente before his
election to the State Legislature.
Richard Alatorre, a Democrat from
Los Angeles, was elected to serve as the representative of the 55th
District to the California Assembly. A native of East Los Angles,
Alatorre served in the Assembly from 1972 to 1985. In 1985, he took a
seat on the Los Angeles City Council representing the 14th
District. Alatorre would be elected as the first Chair of the Chicano
Legislative Caucus.
Aware of their unified strength,
the five Latinos now serving in the State Legislature officially formed
the Chicano Legislative Caucus. The establishment of the Caucus marked a
significant turning point in the political empowerment of the Latino
community. For the first time in California's legislative history, an
agenda was established and legislative priorities were put forward to
protect and preserve the rights of Latinos throughout California.
Later Years
The Chicano Assemblymen and
Congressional delegates of the 1960s and early 1970s forged an important
path for other people to follow, and Latino representation slowly, but
steadily, increased.
As the 1970s progressed into the
1980s, more Chicano legislators stepped forward. But, in the eyes of
many, their progress remained painfully slow. By 1985, seven Latinos
were in the state legislature, making up only 6% of the total
legislative branch. Three Latinos also served as representatives to the
U.S. Congress from California (Ed Roybal, Marty Martinez, and Esteban
Torres). In this year, Richard Alatorre left the Assembly to join the
Los Angeles city Council, once again bringing Latino representation to
that political body.
By the end of the 1980s, the
Latino community of California had elected ten people to represent their
districts: Three were members of the U.S. Congress. Three were State
Senators and four were serving in the State Assembly. The Hispanics in
the State Legislators represented only 5% of the total seats in the
Assembly and Senate.
In many ways, the Latino community
of California remained disenfranchised, when one considers that by 1990,
they represented 26% of the California population. However, because many
Latinos were foreign-born non-citizens or below the age of 18, they only
made up about 5% of the California electorate at this time, effectively
reducing their influence in electing their choices for political
representation. The Latino share of the electorate, however, would
increase dramatically to 14% by 1998 (Alvarez and Nagler, 1999: 19).
The 2000 Elections
A decade later in the November
2000 elections, the first major elections of the new millennium, Latino
candidates recorded a net gain of eight state house seats. In
California, the number of Latinos in the 80-member State Assembly
increased from 16 to 20, giving them 25% of the seats.
November 2002
After the November 2002 elections,
Latinos representatives to Congress numbered seven. In the State Senate,
the elections brought the number of Latino Senators to nine, while
Hispanic membership in the Assembly reached 18. The struggle has been
long and hard-fought. But, with the Latino population increasing at a
significant rate, Chicano political analysts see that time is on their
side.
© 2004, John P. Schmal. All
Rights Reserved.
Sources:
Fernando J. Guerra and Dwaine
Marvick, "Ethnic Officeholders and Party Activists in Los Angeles
County" in Institute for Social Science Research, Vol. II
(1986-87).
Malcolm E. Jewell, The Politics of
Reapportionment," (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962).
Lawrence (or Larry) Kestenbaum,
"The Political Graveyard: California: State Assembly, 1850s."
http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/CA/ofc/asmbly1850s.html [Last full
revision: September 1, 2003].
Library of Congress: "Hispanic Americans in Congress, 1822-1995:
List in Chronological Order." http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/congress/chron.html
Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund and William C. Velasquez Institute, "California
Congressional Redistricting Plan" (Submitted July 17, 2001, Los
Angeles). http://www.maldef.org/publications/pdf/Congressional_Plan_Supplement.pdf
"Political Participation of
Mexican Americans in California," Report of the California Advisory
Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Sacramento,
Calif., August 1971.
Richard Santillan,
"California Reapportionment and the Chicano Community: An
Historical Overview 1960-1980," in The Chicano Community and
California Redistricting, Vol. I (Rose Institute of State and Local
Government, Claremont Men’s College, 1981).
Richard Santillan, Chicano
Politics: La Raza Unida (Los Angeles: Tlaquilo Publications, 1973).
Katherine Underwood,
"Pioneering Minority Representation: Edward Roybal and the Los
Angeles City Council, 1949-1962," Pacific Historical Review
– 1997
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