Upscale Latinos Find a Home
| AR Articles on the Demographic Transformation |
|---|
| Writing on the Wall (Aug. 2001) |
| Birth Rates: Who is Winning the Race? (Nov. 2000) |
| If We Do Nothing (Jun. 1996) |
| More news stories on the Demographic Transformation |
Rebecca Zapanta opens the door to the Mediterranean mansion high on a hill in Whittier. To the left, just past a staircase, a terra cotta font glistens with blessed water from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
“This is the Purple Room,” the 54-year-old says, waving toward an eggplant-colored room featuring paintings by Mexican masters—Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo and Diego Rivera—all purchased by Zapanta and her husband, Richard, an orthopedic surgeon.
Decades before the couple bought the 12,500-square-foot home, back when it was still the old Reilly estate, Whittier’s most famous resident, Richard Nixon, attended social events in some of these rooms. When it was built in 1927, the mansion represented everything Whittier aspired to. John B. Reilly was a powerful local Republican, an oilman who years later helped Nixon make his first run for political office. When he became president, Nixon provided one of Reilly’s daughters with a Cabinet position.
Now the Reilly estate has become the Zapanta estate, and it stands as a monument to a new set of aspirations.
The Zapantas are fourth-generation Mexican Americans from East Los Angeles, part of a wave of doctors and lawyers, small-business owners and school administrators who are remaking Whittier into a center of upper-middle- class and upper-class Latino life in Southern California.
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The last U.S. census counted Whittier’s population at 83,838. Latinos constituted 23% of Whittier residents in 1980; they were 56% as of 2000 and that number is presumed to be more than 60% by now.
The city’s neighborhoods reflect a range of economic levels, with working-class and middle-class residents tending to live in the flatlands and the affluent higher in the hills.
And parts of Whittier have their social problems, including gangs and homelessness. But unlike nearby Huntington Park, Maywood and South Gate, which became much poorer as illegal immigrants surged in, Whittier “is where the heart of the Latino bourgeoisie wants to be,” said Daniel Duran, an associate professor of business at Whittier College.
The college, where Nixon got his bachelor’s degree, now has a student body that is nearly one-third Latino, the highest proportion of Latino students at any private liberal arts college in the United States.
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Whittier, founded by Quakers in 1887, was a quiet town in its early years. There were no liquor stores, let alone bars, said Hubert Perry, 94, a lifelong Whittier resident and Quaker whose father helped Nixon get elected to Congress.
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Reilly, an oil company machinist, was not welcomed when he first tried to move into Whittier in 1921. Two separate landlords told him, “We’re not going to have your kind of people in town!” Reilly recalled in a 1972 interview with the Whittier Daily News. “They were trying to control the influx into their little Quaker town.”
Two years later, he invented a drill pipe cutter that was soon in great demand in the industry, giving him the money to build his mansion. Other sprawling homes sprouted in the hills as well, many built by those in the oil industry.
The town remained white. In the late 1920s and early ‘30s, when Perry and his friend Richard Nixon went to Whittier High School, “there was only one Mexican family in the school,” Perry said.
But, as he notes, it’s a straight shot of about 11 miles from Boyle Heights to Whittier.
“They moved east from Boyle Heights, then from Boyle Heights to Montebello, then from Montebello to Pico Rivera,” Perry said. “Then people with incomes, relatively speaking, moved to Whittier . They came up Whittier Boulevard. It was kind of an easy trip.”
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In 1978, a popular Whittier High School teacher and football coach, Victor Lopez, was elected to the City Council, getting the most votes of any candidate. Lopez, who served until 1990, was the first Whittier councilman with a Spanish surname.
He and his wife were very plugged in to the community, with the teacher even doing construction work during the summer, such as adding rooms to houses in Whittier—including work on Perry’s home.
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A few years ago, Alex Moisa, 43, a Latino lawyer who moved to Whittier from Montebello, ran for City Council. He said that despite living in Whittier for 12 years, he still felt like an outsider.
{snip}
Email Hector Becerra at hector.becerra@latimes.com.
(Posted on March 25, 2008)
Comments
“A few years ago, Alex Moisa, 43, a Latino lawyer who moved to Whittier from Montebello, ran for City Council. He said that despite living in Whittier for 12 years, he still felt like an outsider.”
> That’s because Latinos don’t “feel at home” unless they are the majority and all the signs are in Spanish.
Posted by Whiteplight at 9:13 PM on March 25
Whether upscale, or not. Where Mexican migrate, they bring crime, gangs, and drugs. I never seen it otherwise. I never meant
a Mexican whom first loyalty is not to Mexico, and that eventually all of America will be part of Mexico. And, this includes native born.
Posted by at 9:20 PM on March 25
so sorry there moisa but YOU ARE AN OUTSIDER….YOU DON’T LIKE IT MOVE!!!
Posted by lydia at 9:38 PM on March 25
“Upscale Latinos”—That’s a good oxymoron. Latinos like this will always be a minority in California as compared to the larger group. Either way, I wouldn’t want to live near them, it’s obvious what country they are really loyal to.
Posted by Mark at 9:49 PM on March 25
Hispanics have saved this town: The whites there should feel grateful. This is the only way to prevent ghetto blacks from overrunning your town, forcing you to flee for your lives. If you are white you can live with Hispanics quite well, thank you. We’re more alike than different. That is why I, like most whites, have a deep affection for Hispanics.
Posted by at 10:46 PM on March 25
Hispanics have saved this town: The whites there should feel grateful. This is the only way to prevent ghetto blacks from overrunning your town, forcing you to flee for your lives. If you are white you can live with Hispanics quite well, thank you. We’re more alike than different. That is why I, like most whites, have a deep affection for Hispanics.
Posted by at 10:46 PM on March 25
While they’re not as hateful towards us as blacks are, there are still a majority of hispanics that think whites stole the southwest from them.
Posted by at 10:59 AM on March 26
10:46pm:
SPEAK FOR YOURSELF! Not all of us Whites have a deep affection for Latinos. If anything, a number of us have a deep AVERSION to them!
Posted by Stop Immigration Now! at 1:41 PM on March 26
I must agree that Hispanics are certainly preferrable to blacks. I had some very good Hispanic friends when I was in the service and they were all decent guys. The problem is that many of the Hispanics illegally entering the country are criminals and they bring their gang and drug problems with them. We need to get a handle on illegal immigration, build a fence on the border and go after employers of those in the country illegally. We should also stop the anchor baby scam and the provision of social welfare benefits for thos in the country illegally.
Posted by tacitus at 2:03 PM on March 26
Lesser of 2 evils, 10:46?
Just wait. They have their own little surprises to pull on you and your town if they haven’t already.
Posted by Dark-Star at 4:53 PM on March 26
I wonder if empty cerveza bottles, burritos wrappers and diapers will be left on the grass of teh Nixon home in Whittier.
Posted by Jack Aubrey at 5:22 PM on March 26
“Most Whites have a deep affections for “Hispanics” say the above poster….
WHAT? Who do you call “hispanics”? Spaniards? They are Caucasian! Not the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, etc…….I do NOT have a “deep affection” for the “hispanics” as you call them! Have you lived around these people? Almost as bad as the Blacks! Have you checked out their crime statistics and their gangs, yet? How about their loud partying all night long? Blaring their damn mexican music and cars parked all over the lawns and curbs! Not to mention their trash everywhere. If I never have to listen to their gibberish “spanish” language again, or see their mexican flag, I will celebrate!
Posted by at 5:53 PM on March 26
This story is somewhat deceptive. I am a Southern California native and old enough to remember how uptown Whittier, the Whittier Hills etc. looked some thirty five years ago. It is true that the area had rich whites, but there were many cities with people who had an even higher general income, including the one I grew up in. My point is this, there were always Mexicans who lived in all kinds of cities in Southern California who had a “high income” or were upscale. I knew some of these people and went to school with them and surfed at the beach with them. This was a time when you would sometimes not even think of them as Mexican. They didn’t push this culture on you, they were totally or almost totally assimilated. Some of these guys, as I said, went surfing, sometimes tried to dye their hair, just as some of the redheaded kids did, and could not give a rats a— about Mexico, for example.
The problem today is that the massive illegal immigration, that has occured in such a short space of time, has not required that millions of these people go the way of former Americans. Newspapers and radio stations in Spanish, ethnically loyal Mexican politicians, cynically taking advantage of the unassimilated to keep them that way, ethnic supremacist Mexican professors, like the kind Mr. Taylor has debated, groups like La Raza, Mecha, Lulac, Maldef, all these things form a dynamic that creates constant tension and hate. If people were honest they’d admit it. I am no multiculturalist. It is disastrous. It will be disastrous more so in the near future. Only the most trenchant insistence on assimilation, including deportation of many people here by whatever method, elimination of Spanish as an option in public places, and other such measures, might keep this nation together. Just my long considered opinion. In fact, they might not want to admit it around their friends and relatives, but I know that even some Mexicans would agree with this.
Posted by Bobby at 10:17 PM on March 26
Mexicans conquer another city and the Latino Times could’nt be happier.
Posted by at 6:26 AM on March 27
“Hispanics have saved this town: The whites there should feel grateful. This is the only way to prevent ghetto blacks from overrunning your town, forcing you to flee for your lives. If you are white you can live with Hispanics quite well, thank you. We’re more alike than different. That is why I, like most whites, have a deep affection for Hispanics.
Posted by at 10:46 PM on March 25”
This is a trap a lot of white people fall into where mestizos are concerned. Because the bar for acceptable behavior has been lowered to such an appalling degree, some whites are actually coming to the conclusion that mestizos aren’t so bad, and if our town is invaded by them we should be grateful that at least they aren’t gang-bangin’ ghetto blacks. As if we should count our blessings that we’re merely surrounded by non-assimiliating Reconquistas rather than Crips, Blood, New Black Panthers, or Zebra Killers.
Is Whittier nicer than Compton? For sure. Is it as nice as it used to be back when R.M. Nixon was growing up? No, it most certainly is not.
At least blacks speak English (well, sort of). The Mexicans NEVER will. They will force YOU to speak Spanish before they will ever lift ONE FINGER to learn the gringo lingo.
I don’t know where this poster got the idea that “most whites have a deep affection for hispanics” — perhaps because this poster is hispanic himself? Because I can tell you with no reservations that THIS white man has ZERO affection for hispanics. The sooner these people are back on their side of the border, the better.
Not that I’m holding my breath…
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 5:18 PM on March 27
The Zapantas are fourth-generation Mexican Americans from East Los Angeles….
Fourth-generation & they still think of themselves as “Mexican Americans.” They are Fifth Columnists and the US will always have Mexico at its back as a vicious adversary waiting for the opportunity to strike.
Posted by at 7:56 PM on March 27
This reminds me all over again why so many Coloradans I know were delighted at the huge brush fires in the L.A. area last year. The thought of some Mexicans and Hollywood weirdos losing their homes was like the excitement and anticipation of a childhood Christmas eve all over again.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:57 PM on March 28
“Whether upscale, or not. Where Mexican migrate, they bring crime, gangs, and drugs. I never seen it otherwise. I never meant
a Mexican whom first loyalty is not to Mexico, and that eventually all of America will be part of Mexico. And, this includes native born.”
Native born what? Idiots such as yourself? Before you decide to insult a race, learn proper grammar so that you don’t sound like an idiot in the process. Why don’t you keep the slander to a minimum, so that you can keep from insulting the “native born” language.
Posted by at 8:51 PM on March 31
Dear Mistah Incredible Shrinking White Man,
Historically, geographically and demographically speaking, you are in the Mexican’s territory. California, Texas, New Mexico, Hell the entire southern border is full of Mexicans who were annexed into this country. Many of the white Texan’s neighbors are just as American as the white man. The way it is, is YOU are in OUR home. Just because we are American doesn’t mean we must sacrifice our original culture so that we have to assimilate to yours. Why don’t you do the non-hypocritical thing and renounce your “white” (If white can even be considered a race) heritage and just admit to being American like the rest of us. I don’t fly the Mexican flag, but I’m certain I can find a bunch of white people who fly the rebel flag.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think America is a union, not a confederacy.
United we stand, divided we fall. Here I find an outcry for division amongst Americans because of skin color. You are the ones who pray for war.
I am one of many who pray for peace.
Posted by The Undying American at 9:01 PM on March 31
The swamping of Los Angeles by Mexicans sounded the death knell for the California dream.
Posted by Mark at 2:50 PM on April 1