PROP. 187, CCRI SPUR LATINO STUDENT ACTIVISM.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

In the late 1980s at San Fernando High School, Guadalupe Marquez was unmotivated and apathetic.

Her grades were down, she didn't go near school activities, and politics were as foreign to her as middle age. At 17, after repeating her sophomore year, Marquez dropped out completely.

But in the past few years, Marquez has turned into a student activist - starting with the campaign against Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative to deny public services to illegal immigrants.

``I didn't agree with . . . how it blames the economic crisis in California on illegal immigrants,'' said Marquez, a Valley College graduate who will attend the University of California, Santa Barbara, this fall.

``I know, coming from a family of uncles and aunts who came here from Mexico and are trying to work for money. They are being attacked and they are a hard-working class - it really hit home.''

Marquez now is involved in campaigns to defend police brutality victims and to uphold affirmative action programs. Her political involvement, say analysts, is emblematic of a rising tide of Latino student activists who have emerged in the 1990s with an intensity not seen since the 1960s.

Kindled by 1994's Proposition 187, the new wave of Latino activism now is being fueled by the California Civil Rights Initiative to dismantle affirmative action programs.

``Those issues have begun the mobilization of students and faculty on campus,'' said Gerald Resendez, chairman of the Chicano Studies Department at Cal State Northridge. ``I think that after the Vietnam War things went into a very quiet, almost complacent period.

``Today, we don't have the big issue of the war, but we have the issues of (illegal) immigration and affirmative action,'' said Resendez, who joined CSUN in 1969 as one of the founding members of the Chicano Studies department.

The increased activism among young Latinos has manifested itself in marches, rallies and greater participation in campus politics, said Fernando Guerra, who teaches political science and Chicano studies at Loyola Marymount University.

``MEChA here at LMU has always been active, but lately even more so,'' said Guerra, referring to Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a Chicano student group.

``It's almost like this awakening, and it is beginning to have impacts for those freshmen and sophomores (in college) - those kids who were out in the streets in '94.''

By the ``kids in the street,'' Guerra was referring to the many Latino high school students who left their classrooms in the fall of 1994 to march against Proposition 187.

``Prop. 187 will always be a watershed event,'' Guerra said. ``Ten years from now, people will say Latino power grew from Prop. 187.''

Others point out that the increase in student activism also can be traced to the sheer increase in the number of Latinos enrolled in California colleges.

``They are more involved because there are more of them, both Latino and Chicano students,'' said Rudy Acuna, founding chairman of Cal State Northridge's Chicano Studies Department.

In the 22-campus California State University system, the number of Latino students has doubled in the last decade. In 1984, Latinos made up 9.4 percent of the CSU student body. In fall, Latinos were 20.1 percent of the student population, officials said.

Cal State Northridge is at the forefront of the Latino student activist movement.

The campus has long had an active Chicano Studies Department, and boasts that it ranks 13th in the nation in the number of bachelor's degrees conferred on Latino students.

The new student body president at Northridge is Vladimir Cerna, a native of El Salvador whose parents named him after Vladimir Lenin.

Cerna says Latinos have been quietly building their political strength through the 1980s. In the '90s, they are poised to take a more prominent role, he said.

``I think that especially in the presidential elections, when we're discussing the minimum wage hike and the proposition of the civil rights initiative, we definitely see all those people who are quiet - now they want to be active participants in the game,'' he said.

The question is whether Latinos will turn out in large numbers at the polls and vote in a block.

``I think it's like a roller coaster depending on the issue,'' Cerna said.

``When it's an issue on campus and it involves money, then a lot of people go out. It's the same way with the civil rights initiative. It's going to create a high peak in the roller coaster.''

Loyola Marymount's Guerra believes the rising student activism will ultimately mean greater Latino political power, as today's marchers turn into tomorrow's voters - ones who will also go out and get their friends and families to vote.

``Indirectly, they are affecting their parents and family, saying, come on, Mom, let's go out and vote, let's go out and register,'' said Guerra, who directs Loyola Marymount's Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

That most of the Latino student activists tilt toward the Democratic Party and liberal causes concerns Celeste H. Greig, a native of Spain who heads the Los Angeles County California Republican Assembly, a conservative group of grass-roots activists.

``We want to them to come to join us - not because we are perfect, but because we can offer them something better for the future,'' Greig said.

In addition to holding voter registration drives in communities heavily populated by Latinos, Greig said there are certain issues the Republican Party capitalizes on to recruit young Latinos.

``Hard work, the institutional family, the free-market system,'' said Greig, ticking off the list of issues she broaches with possible recruits. ``Most Latinos have a strong concept of family. Most are religiously oriented.''

Even so, Latino student activists say it is other issues that are driving the movement today.

Angel Cervantes, 23, of San Fernando is a founder of the Four Winds Student Movement, a nationwide organization that campaigns for education, human rights and community mobilization.

Cervantes said the 1992 Los Angeles riots were a turning point in getting him and other students involved in politics.

``The riots brought a lot of people like myself to a consciousness. It woke us up,'' said Cervantes, who received his bachelor of arts degree in history from Occidental College and his master's degree from the Claremont graduate school. ``It was like the John F. Kennedy assassination. It made us ask what kind of country are we living in?''

Two years later, when the issue of Proposition 187 began to simmer, students saw the opportunity to get involved, said Filiberto Gonzalez, a senior at Cal State Northridge and chairman of its MEChA organization.

``More people are getting politicized with issues like 187 and such, because they see that if they don't get involved with the community and don't speak up for themselves, then the wool is going to get pulled over their eyes,'' said Gonzalez, one of the organizers of an anti-CCRI march from Sacramento to San Diego.

The issues of illegal immigration and education surrounding Proposition 187 were issues that students could relate to, said Gonzalez, 22.

``Youth could identify with that, with their family and parents. They made the connection between their complacency and their misfortune,'' Gonzalez said. ``So they said no, we're not going to be complacent. They said that's me, and they took action.''

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO Valley College alumna Guadalupe Marquez, left, and Angel Cerva ntes work together at Occidental College in Eagle Rock.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News