HERITAGE MONTH AN OPPORTUNITY TO REFLECT ON NEW STATUS IN THE MAINSTREAM; LATINOS FORCED TO WALK A LONG, DIFFICULT ROAD TO GAIN EQUALITY.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

Jenaro Ayala remembers all too clearly how during the 1950s people with Latino surnames weren't allowed to swim in the San Fernando Park pool on days when it was used by whites.

Ayala just thought that was the way it was.

``I didn't realize - until I started getting more involved in the Chicano community - that this was a practice of segregation,'' the 53-year-old high schoolteacher recalled.

Now nearly five decades later, Ayala believes experiences like that actually served to draw Latinos into a powerful voice that has pushed for equal rights and created a rich legacy of culture and politics that makes the San Fernando Valley what it is today.

From the array of cultural festivals to Spanish street names and the very name of the San Fernando Valley, Latinos have left an indelible imprint on the area.

Today, as Latino Heritage Month begins, the accomplishments and victories of pioneering Valley Latinos are evident in all aspects of life:

They include Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, D-Panorama City, who is the first Latino to represent the Valley and Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon who is the first Latino from the Valley - all feats made possible because Latinos organized and pushed record numbers to the polls this decade.

Today, Cal State Northridge can boast one of the premier Chicano studies departments in the nation, and the Northeast Valley Health Corp., founded by Latinos, provides health care to 22,000 impoverished people yearly.

``We see that as something positive,'' said Ayala, adding, however, ``I think a lot of work needs to be done.''

While some Latinos feel education should be the priority for the next century, others champion increased political involvement. But many agree the most important challenge facing the community is unity amongst the Valley's population of Latinos from nations outside of Mexico.

``What we need to do is find out the interests of all Latinos and see if we can come to an agreement, an agenda we can all push forward,'' said Louis Garcia, a pioneering Latino who helped found the Northeast Valley Health Corp.

Small beginnings

In 1930, the Valley's famous orange orchards still were casting their fragrant blossoms, the freeways had yet to cut through farmland, and Garcia, then 3, had just moved to a Mexican barrio in Van Nuys from a tiny town near Victorville.

Garcia attended Limona Avenue elementary, a segregated school for the children of Mexican workers who toiled at a nearby brickyard, said Garcia, who didn't learn a word of English until the third grade, after he'd moved to Pacoima.

Discrimination was commonplace.

``In Glendale they used to have signs that said `Don't let the sun set while you're in Glendale,' meaning (minorities) don't be here after sundown,'' he recalled.

Yet, Garcia said that despite the racism, he treasures memories of that Van Nuys barrio where he and other Latinos were segregated.

``In the barrio there was a camaraderie that made you feel like you belonged,'' said Garcia, 70, and now a Sylmar resident. ``We don't have that sense of community now. In Sylmar I know only a few of my neighbors.''

Life-shaping lessons

Irene Tovar, who grew up a few doors away from Garcia in Pacoima, came to the Valley from Boyle Heights in the early 1940s as a 4-year-old. It was at Pacoima Elementary school that she learned a harsh lesson on life.

``We were taught that if you spoke Spanish it was ugly, it was something inferior,'' said Tovar, 58, who remembers students were disciplined by having their mouths washed out with soap or being slapped with a ruler.

This came with other less subtle forms of bigotry: Certain movie theaters in San Fernando segregated the Mexicans from the white moviegoers, said Tovar.

Lupe R. Ramirez, a Pacoima native born in 1922, remembers how job discrimination was also a fact of life for Mexicans and those who just had Latino surnames.

``At Woolworths and Kress's, the five and dime store on the San Fernando Mall, only whites worked there, but at the time we didn't know they were discriminating,'' said Ramirez, chair of the Pacoima Old Timers, a group of current and former residents who gather annually to reminisce.

An educational revolution

Education would be the key to Latino advancement, and Valley campuses also became a battleground.

Garcia not only graduated from high school, he was one of the first Latinos to attend San Fernando Valley State College in 1958, at a time when very few Latinos were pursuing a higher education.

``I felt like a foreigner on campus,'' remembers Garcia, who graduated in 1961 and in 1968 became the first Latino on the president's advisory board for the college, which later became Cal State Northridge.

In 1960, Tovar, Montes and others created the Latin American Civic Association, originally started to provide Latino students with English classes, but which now provides instruction, health care and food to the Valley's poor children.

``People were getting tired of being treated like we were treated, and I would say that was beginning of most social movements whether it was black or Chicano social movements,'' said Ayala.

``There was the attitude that the San Fernando Valley was a white, middle class community. That was the assumption everyone had without understanding that there was a Chicano presence, a Mexicano presence,'' said Ayala.

Organizing for change

Veto Ruiz, who attended Pacoima Elementary school in the 1950s, didn't experience the ``no Spanish'' rules of Irene Tovar's school days. But when he enrolled at Valley State College in 1966, he and other Latinos encountered new obstacles.

``I think we were rather alienated by such a large institution and so many other students who came from a different background than ourselves,'' said Ruiz, now a Chicano studies professor at CSUN. ``It was very new, very challenging, but at same time the community we developed helped to give us support.''

The support Ruiz speaks of came from the campus chapter of United Mexican American Students, of which he was a founding member.

In 1967, members of UMAS, which evolved into today's MEChA organization, organized a special summit of Southern California Latino college students at Loyola Marymount University.

Their goal was to create opportunities for Latinos to attend college, to change college curriculums and to increase Latino faculty and staff, said CSUN professor Hank Lopez, who was a student then at Valley State College.

From campuses to polls

The fight for better education, however, was far from over for the Valley's Latinos. In 1971, Jenaro Ayala helped found a chapter for La Raza Unida party, a Chicano political party.

Though its focus was on registering voters and supporting Latino candidates, the chapter also helped launch a drive in the early 1970s to persuade the Los Angeles Junior College District to build Mission College in the Northeast Valley.

``We felt that having a college in our community would motivate more students to go to school and would upgrade conditions for the community,'' said Ayala, current chair of the La Raza Unida chapter.

Through the persistence of Guadalupe S. Ramirez, affectionately known as the mother of Mission College, the trustees agreed to form a task force of community members and chose Sylmar as the college's site.

``Oh it was a struggle. It took years of meeting and we used to go to Sacramento to petition them,'' recalls Ramirez, a longtime Sylmar resident who now lives in Oceanside.

Emboldened by victories on campuses, Latinos began to exert their newfound strength at the ballot box.

Groups, including La Raza Unida and the Mexican American Political Association, formed in the 1960s, went door to door registering voters with little success until the 1980s.

``When I came to San Fernando in 1969 it was very difficult for a Latino to get elected because white people voted along racial lines,'' said Jose Hernandez, a CSUN professor and San Fernando City Council member.

Latino Heritage Month events

Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, D-Panorama City, will kick off Latino Heritage Month at Los Angeles Mission College 7 to 9 p.m. today with a speech on the topic of ``Unity and Diversity'' at the Campus Center auditorium.

Mission College will host a Mexican Independence Day celebration as part of Latino Heritage Month 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday in the quad area of the campus. The event will feature mariachi bands, food vendors and artisans selling silver crafts, paintings and other items.

The city of San Fernando will host an El Grito celebration today in commemoration of Mexico's independence at 5 p.m. The celebration at City Hall will feature ballet folklorico, mariachis and various other bands.

State Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, will host a free concert in Highland Park's Sycamore Grove Park on Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m. to celebrate Latino Heritage Month. The concert, sponsored in part by Century Communications, will feature performances by the all-women's mariachi group Las Adelitas from the San Fernando Valley, as well as Lalo Guerrero and the Afro-Cuban music of Johnny Polanco y Su Conjunto Amistad. There will be arts and crafts workshops and refreshments.

The following are events organized by the city of Los Angeles:

International Latino Film Festival, noon to midnight Oct. 6-11 at the Universal Cineplex, Universal CityWalk. The festival will highlight various films by current Latino directors. A small entrance fee will be charged.

International Latin Jazz Festival, hosted by actor Andy Garcia, will feature world-renowned Latin jazz artists Oct. 25-26 at the Greek Theatre. An all-star Latin jazz ensemble will pay a special musical tribute to master conguero Mongo Santamaria, who is being presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. A small entrance fee will be charged.

``Latinos in Hollywood,'' a photography exhibit, includes images of Desi Arnaz, Rita Hayworth, Raul Julia and Jennifer Lopez. The free exhibit will be showcased from Saturday to Oct. 17 in the Universal Cineplex Lobby at Universal CityWalk and at El Pueblo Gallery on Olvera Street.

``Sabores Latinos,'' the closing ceremony for Latino Heritage Month is slated for 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 12. The free festival at Griffith Park will feature a concert, arts, crafts, food vendors and a children's play area. Some of the groups playing at the concert include Grupo Inca Kings, Brasil/Brazil, Orquesta Mazacote and Justo Almario.

Tango festival, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 5 at the corner of Gower Street and Waring Avenue in Hollywood.

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos, box

PHOTO (1) The grass-roots push for better health care in the 1960s led to today's Latino's political activism.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News

(2) Lupe Ramirez, center, is a Pacoima native who lived through the discrimination that Latinos in the San Fernando Valley accepted as a fact of life.

(3) Louis Garcia founded the Northeast Valley Health Corp. for the poor in the 1960s.

(4) Jenaro Ayala recalls how Mexicans were barred from using the San Fernando Park pool except on Thursdays.

(5) Lupe Ramirez has seen doors open for Latinos in education, politics and employment in her lifetime.

BOX: Latino Heritage Month events (see text)