Demographic Change: The Primacy of “Americanness” in Public Spaces

To become suburban, middle-class Mexican Americans in Downey grappled with their status as the overwhelming demographic minority. Last week’s installment showed how the city’s autonomy—in fire, school, legislative, and safety services—afforded white residents impressive local control and thus gave families few reasons to move in the face of sweeping demographic changes.

Part 3 of a 7-part series. Read parts 1 and 2.

The first Mexican American families moved in with the help of sympathetic Spanish-speaking realtors who took them seriously as homebuyers. Once Mexican Americans moved into middle-class neighborhoods, they had to affirm their status as rightful residents of Downey. They did so, I suggest in this week’s essay, by asserting their “Americanness” in three public arenas: language, business, and politics.

I must first preface this discussion of “Americanness” with one about “Mexicanness.” In fact, the way middle-class Mexican Americans presented themselves speaks to larger trends in American immigrant integration. “Americanness” was a very public performance, one that can be captured by newspaper records, histories, and other documentary media.

But my emphasis on public “Americanness” should not obscure the private negotiations between “Americanness” and “Mexicanness” that comprise an individual’s Mexican American identity. Indeed, public reckonings with “Americanness” impelled middle-class Mexican Americans to privately reckon with what “Mexicanness” meant in the last twenty years of the twentieth century.

To some of Downey’s middle-class Mexican Americans (then and now), public expressions of “Americanness” were unintentional, as they had begun to see themselves no longer as “Mexican American,” but rather just as “American.” Their Mexican heritage became symbolic or optional as they moved on a linear path from the “immigrant generation” toward assimilation into a larger “American” middle class. (For comparison, think of how Anglo Americans with an Irish descendant might consider and carry themselves as “just white” every day except Saint Patrick’s Day.)

Other Mexican Americans identified with their Mexican heritage by speaking Spanish, practicing Mexican customs, and retaining ties to poorer co-ethnics, among other actions. (How Downey’s Mexican Americans did that without sacrificing their assimilated civic identity will be the subject of next week’s essay.)

Ultimately, though, these were private negotiations of ethnic identity, questions that my source material is unequipped to responsibly answer. But the civic identity—the public expressions of “Americanness”—draws both groups of Mexican Americans into this narrative; both groups portrayed themselves as members of the same civic community. Perhaps the most important way to resemble their white neighbors was by speaking the same language.

Speaking Spanish in public created problems for Mexican Americans in Downey, as it did in the rest of the United States. Historically, the use of Spanish has invited prejudice against Mexican Americans and other Spanish speakers. It invoked suspicion by Anglo residents and English-speaking minorities. The public act of speaking Spanish cast speakers as unassimilable and markedly foreign, even in the eyes of political progressives.

For example, public school administrators in Westminster, Orange County, used “language heritage” as a means to segregate Mexican Americans from Anglo children. The countersuit culminated in the landmark California Supreme Court decision in Mendez v. Westminster (1947) which found segregated “Mexican schools” to be unconstitutional and unlawful. (This case set the precedent for the 1957 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.)

But even the judge’s opinion suggested that Spanish speakers were perpetually different from white students. Ninth District Court judge Paul McCormick acknowledged that Mexican American students could become competent in English rhetoric and grammar, but would still have an accent and bear the mark of foreignness. McCormick’s decision brought about school integration but belied his belief that ethnic Mexicans would remain “perpetually foreign” and different from white Americans.

Both middle-class Mexican Americans who did and did not embrace their Mexican heritage shared these sentiments. Joseph Arcello, whose mother was of Mexican ancestry, grew up in Downey in the 1970s. Arcello’s father emigrated from Hungary, so the only extended family Arcello visited was his mother’s Mexican family.

Arcello and his siblings embraced their Mexican heritage by speaking Spanish, going to family parties, and owning a Mexican spice-packaging business—all primarily in East Los Angeles. In Downey, the family embraced a more subdued “American” identity. They made a concerted effort to speak only English and embrace upward mobility through education in Downey. Their civic identity prioritized these customs to not alienate themselves from English-speaking residents in Downey.

Similarly, businessman and first-generation Mexican American Pedro Martin consciously divided his private and civic identities to help his children succeed. Privately, he and his wife taught their children Spanish and decorated their home with Mexican art. Publicly, though, he ensured that they spoke fluent English, and even went by the anglicized nickname “Pete.”

Some Mexican American families did not teach their children Spanish because English was the language of commerce and public instruction in the United States. For others, the decision to avoid Spanish was more personal. One woman who grew up in a nearby Orange County suburb recalled never being taught Spanish by her Mexican American mother and being encouraged to assimilate. The mother made these parental decisions with the memories of constant discrimination her immigrant parents endured.

To this day, many Mexican-origin parents do not teach their children Spanish to remove the associations with a heritage that has historically had little social and economic mobility. These families shaped their childrearing to prioritize English, and “Americanness” writ large, in the public eye.

The case study of a Spanish-language theater underscores how Mexican Americans avoided the Spanish language. The Downey Avenue Theater was erected nearly thirty years before Downey’s incorporation. Across the street from the civic center and the city hall, the Avenue Theater anchored the downtown district. The Theater developed alongside American cinema, offering films from The Jazz Singer (1927) to Star Wars (1977). By 1970, it had a near-monopoly on family-friendly recreation after its main competitor, the Meralta, shut down.

Throughout the 1970s, though, a newer movie theater in the Stonewood Center siphoned revenue from the Avenue Theater. By 1981, the Avenue Theater’s owners looked for a seller. They found one in Javier Bueno, president of the J. Bueno Corporation, a small chain of entertainment venues. Bueno announced his intention to open a Spanish-language theater in early 1981.

To make a Spanish-language theater palatable to the white community, Bueno framed his business as one that would attract “respectable” nuclear families. He issued comments to several of the media outlets in anticipation of anti-Mexican pushback. He insisted that he intended to attract second-and-third-generation Mexican Americans—not Mexican immigrants—who “still like Spanish-speaking films.”

Elsewhere, Bueno assured that the other two theaters were only frequented by “respectable” people who sought “safe” forms of recreation with their spouses and children. Bueno stressed this point to portray his clients as nuclear families like those throughout American middle-class suburbs. Bueno implied that his movie theaters would serve the families, not the singles, youths, and unmarried women. The community’s reception to his “family-friendly” strategy was mixed.

White residents feared that the theater would decrease their quality of life. Many took to anonymous op-eds to voice their concerns. One writer warned that the theater would allow Mexican-origin residents to live in the United States without learning English, which would lead to unspecified “adverse effects on the city of Downey.” Another warned that services provided to those outside the English-speaking majority would lead to the “rape of our beautiful Downey.” A third letter vaguely warned of the “precedent the movie theater would set.”

Each writer imagined the moviegoer as invariably foreign and unassimilated despite Bueno’s target demographics. The opposition principally applied to public communications in a language other than English. This is because a Spanish-language theater represented the threat of demographic change. The Watts Riots scarcely affected Downey, as last week’s essay showed, but Bueno’s theater would have attracted Spanish-speakers to the heart of Downey.

The Avenue Theater shortly before its February 1981 opening. The sign read “Coming soon: Mexican movies.” Courtesy of the Downey Historical Society.

Those who defended the theater emphasized the familiarity of Bueno’s target demographic. Supporters compared themselves to the movie-goers as nuclear families and American citizens of middle-class means. The editor of the Southeast News urged readers to “stay calm” and welcome the family-oriented recreation:

[Bueno] plans to show movies which will attract respectable Spanish-speaking people who are willing to drive some distance with their families because they like Spanish-speaking films…How about giving Bueno a chance to show that he can run a theater where nobody else could make it go? The Avenue has been as good as dead for several years. Maybe he can breathe some life back into it. He’s not going to show porno films, for goodness sake: he’s pitching his whole effort at families with some money to spend for a night at the movies.

On February 5 of that year, the city council officially addressed the issue, with many of the same arguments. Only two councilmen voiced support for the theater, but did so by reassuring citizens that the theater’s success hinged on doing business “the wholesome way.” A policeman from Buena Park spoke and told citizens that Bueno’s Spanish-language theater there did not attract any crime, and “shows mostly cowboy and family type films—not porno.” White supporters of the Spanish-language theater argued that their community needed to welcome those with similar “wholesome” interests.

Supporters’ arguments on the whole showed an affinity (or at least tolerance) for Mexican Americans who acted differently from what racial ideology predicted. Bueno’s target demographic spoke Spanish, as stereotypical Mexican neighbors would have. But Bueno’s audience also spoke English, belonged to a nuclear family, and portrayed a civic identity that otherwise resembled the other white residents.

The theater failed to attract sufficient visitors and closed soon after it opened. On its February opening night, the Downey Police Department reported no disruptions, but the next night, a passerby fired a pellet from an air rifle and put a hole in the theater’s glass door as an act of intimidation. (This went unreported in Downey newspapers and was only picked up by the Los Angeles Times.)

Opening week damage at the Downey Avenue Theater. Courtesy of the Downey Historical Society.

Neither the Mexican Americans of Downey nor their counterparts from metropolitan Los Angeles watched the Spanish-language films, and by June, Bueno sold the theater to an Anglo owner. That theater failed, too, and the property has been unowned for most years since then.

But the overwhelming pushback to the Spanish-language theater showed the middle-class Mexican Americans the dangers of subverting assimilated norms. In many ways, the Spanish-language theater incident underscored the expectations outlined by realtors (which I discussed last week). To frequent the Spanish-language theater would have been to publicly embrace an ethnic Mexican identity. The community response suggested how whites would have viewed Mexican Americans as “foreign” or different if they spoke Spanish. Such an association threatened middle-class Mexican Americans’ economic gains and position in the suburb. The community pushback to Bueno’s theater was but one episode of that affirmed the importance of speaking English in Downey—and the primacy of public “Americanness” more broadly.

Mexican American entrepreneurs likewise espoused “Americanness” in public. This was not due to a dearth of entrepreneurs who embraced their Mexican heritage, as next week’s issue will show. Rather, “Americanness” in business formed a core component of the civic identity. Many prominent civic leaders got their start as businesspeople in Downey.

For example, Raul Lopez opened his own firm, Lopez Insurance Agency, in the early 1980s. Pete Martin, mentioned earlier, managed Martin Metal Finishing, a company that put coatings on airplanes and other aerospace products in nearby Lakewood. Countless other Mexican Americans—and other Latinos/as/xs—opened businesses throughout metropolitan Los Angeles to earn a middle-class income without necessarily having a college education. This especially helped first-generation immigrants, but Mexican Americans have historically had among the lowest levels of postsecondary achievement among American ethnic groups. (Take, for example, the immigrant-owned businesses that line Pacific Avenue in nearby Huntington Park.)

But unlike many minority entrepreneurs throughout Los Angeles, business owners in Downey did not sell products or services that reinforced an ethnic identity. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, most entrepreneurs avoided goods or services specifically for Mexican clienteles such as tortillerías, panaderías, supermercados, Mexican restaurants, and the like. (I do not claim that all businesses in Downey refrained from this—as that is false—but rather that “race-neutral” entrepreneurship was the norm and not the exception.) Instead, Downey business owners worked with Anglo partners and nearly always conducted their transactions in English, even if selling a product to another Mexican American.

This style of “race-neutral” entrepreneurship formed a core component of the assimilated civic identity. Entrepreneurship both gave middle-class Mexican Americans a vested stake in the civic community’s maintenance and emphasized their “Americanness” to Anglo neighbors. These businesses reinforced a civic—not ethnic—identity and helped Mexican Americans secure their place in suburbia before 1988.

Some Mexican Americans in Downey also avoided identity politics in the public sphere. This was especially useful for homeowners-rights issues and other popular conservative or middle-class suburbanite concerns.

Politician Robert Davila, the first mayor of Mexican ancestry, typified the civic identity portrayed by some middle-class Mexican Americans. Before entering local politics, Davila worked as a juvenile court liaison with the Los Angeles Police Department. Davila won his first foray into local politics in 1982 when he ran as a Republican Party candidate for a city council seat. He omitted any mentions of ethnicity and instead ran a grassroots low-taxes and anti-development platform. Davila won the election.

As councilman, Davila repeatedly voted against retail taxes proposed to fund revitalization projects throughout the city. Davila was the sole dissenting vote against a $1.7 million city grant in 1978 to redevelop four acres near downtown Downey into a senior retirement facility because he thought the cost was too high and the project was unnecessary for the city’s civic functions. His anti-development proclivities earned support from the Downey Citizens Against Redevelopment Excesses (CAREs), a fifty-member citizens’ group dedicated to keeping taxes low by limiting city involvement in infrastructural redevelopment projects. While contemporary Chicanos proudly embraced a politicized ethnic identity, Davila avoided ethnicity altogether in favor of homeowner politics.

In fact, Davila’s tenure as mayor suggests he may have been too conservative even for white voters. Davila served two consecutive one-year terms as mayor from 1984 to 1986. At his mayoral inauguration, he acknowledged being the city’s first Mexican American mayor, but wished to not be remembered as the “Mexican mayor.” The next two years of his tenure ensured that wish would be true.

The four other city council members turned on Davila in 1984 because his anti-development voting impeded city council efforts to revitalize the aging downtown Downey shopping district. In 1985, a 36-year-old challenger, Roy Paul, announced his candidacy for the incumbent mayor’s council seat, which was up for reelection in 1986. Three of the council members openly endorsed Paul’s candidacy, despite reporting to mayor Davila.

As Election Day neared, Paul carried the momentum. To derail his challenger, Davila began a smear-tactic campaign against Paul, claiming that he was actually a Democrat and would betray the political preferences of the residents. (Paul had switched his official affiliation from Democrat to Republican soon before, citing “philosophical differences.”)

The Friends of Bob Davila, the mayor’s re-election campaign, then sent out flyers that highlighted Paul’s work as a divorce lawyer and alleged that he had strong gambling habits. These tactics painted Davila’s challenger as an amoral political who did not share the Judeo-Christian family ethics of the voters in Downey. Essentially, Davila suggested that his civic identity more closely matched the residents’.

As a last-ditch effort, the Friends of Bob Davila mailed flyers to residents with a White House return address that falsely implied an endorsement from President Ronald Reagan—complete with a letter from the President thanking Davila for his support of Republican politics. Davila later admitted that President Reagan did not endorse his campaign. Despite his best efforts, Davila lost the election to Roy Paul and left public office in 1987.

Robert Davila may be an extreme example, but many other Mexican Americans in Downey avoided a public espousal of identity politics, broadly defined, in the public sphere. Suburban life in Downey brought with it numerous benefits, from safer schools to stronger investments. Before 1988, Mexican Americans were the overwhelming demographic minority, and their access to Downey’s resources depended on avoiding conflicts with their white neighbors. They did so by emphasizing their similarities—indeed, their “Americanness”—in the public sphere.

Surprisingly, this scarcely changed after 1988, when demographic change finally reached Downey. What facilitated this demographic shift is my subject for the next installment.

G. Aron Ramirez can be contacted at aron dot ramirez at yale dot edu.