Generations forge different paths among Sonoma County’s Latino families

Juan Hernandez, executive director of La Luz Center in Sonoma Valley, is a proud man with a family story worthy of the great American novel.

It is the story of a family that was scarred but not defeated by a border, a saga that spans several generations — groups divided by time in ways that have injected another dimension of diversity into the Latin American experience, one as profound as the differences among its various ethnic and racial groups.

The Mexican Revolution drove his grandparents from Mexico into Texas, where an infamous Depression-era deportation and repatriation effort sent them back to Mexico with seven of their U.S.-born children. The labor vacuum of post-World War II America brought the family back across the border, from Texas to the fertile fields of the great Central Valley and finally to East Los Angeles.

Hernandez grew up in Boyle Heights, a 6.52-square-mile neighborhood that is nearly 95 percent Latino and continues to be the city's 'center of gravity for Latinos,' according to the Los Angeles Times. Growing up, his teachers and coaches, local business owners and government workers were Latino.

'I grew up with that second, third generation guiding me,' Hernandez said. 'You had role models who were brown like me, role models that I actually listened to. When they spoke, your ears kind of perked up. You would say to yourself, 'I don't how he did it, but I know it's possible.' '

Hernandez, who calls himself a fourth-generation Chicano, now lives in Santa Rosa with his wife, Veronica, a Spanish teacher at Santa Rosa High School. Last week, they celebrated the second birthday of their daughter, Emanelli. Sonoma County is their home.

He knows that generations and communities are intimately and uniquely intertwined, and that Sonoma County's Latino community is only now taking its early steps into maturity, where generational differences feed and reinforce each. Sometimes they clash and repel, sometimes they are molded by government policies or family plot lines. But such generational differences come together to form the classic American immigration narrative.

Generation Latino

There are some 52,000 foreign-born residents who form Sonoma County's first generation of Latinos, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. They account for about 40 percent of Sonoma County's 130,000 Latinos, who combined make up about a quarter of the county's half-million residents.

Estimating the number of second- and third-generation Latinos in Sonoma County is not so easy. According to a 2004 study by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, first-generation Latinos across the United States make up a much bigger share of the country's Latino population, about 63 percent. An additional 19 percent are second generation and 17 percent are third generation.

The report, which has not been updated by Pew and was based on a national survey of Latinos, lays out some of biggest differences among the first, second and third generations.

As expected, first-generation Latinos reported having lower incomes than those in the second generation. Second and third generations reported having higher educational attainment and were more likely to use the term 'American' to identify themselves.

The immigrant experience during the first few generations is often so strong it leaves a lifelong desire among some Latinos to retrace and understand family histories.

Hernandez's American story begins at the outset of the 20th century with the Mexican Revolution, which displaced his grandparents on both his mother and father's side of the family. All four grandparents settled in Houston in the early to mid 1920s.

On his mother's side, his grandparents had seven children who were born in Houston. They were forced to leave the country during the Depression, when the American government embarked on a massive repatriation effort that removed 1 to 2 million people of Mexican descent, many of them U.S. citizens. The main justification for the operation, which echoes some of today's presidential campaign rhetoric, was to preserve jobs for Americans.

His paternal grandparents somehow escaped repatriation and stayed in Houston's Fifth Ward barrio. But his grandparents on his mother's side settled in Piedras Negras, on the other side of the border from Eagle Pass.

Every day, Hernandez's uncles, who were U.S. citizens, would cross the border from Piedras Negras into the United States to work, doing odd jobs, shining shoes and running errands.

'At that time you just had to pay 25 cents to cross the border, even if you were undocumented,' Hernandez said. 'They would pay for my grandpa to cross the border every day so he could work in Eagle Pass.'

After World War II, when the country again needed laborers, Hernandez's oldest uncles eventually made their way up into California's Central Valley, working agricultural fields from Los Angeles to Fresno and even up to Sonoma County. The uncles would eventually bring the entire family from Texas to East Los Angeles in the mid 1950s, when urban construction was in full swing. His Tio Jose and Tio Anastasio 'Tacho,' who were American citizens, both easily got jobs in construction during that time.

'They saved, they drove big Chevy cars, they went to Eagle Pass and brought the whole family back to Los Angeles,' he said.

Although they share a common lineage, Hernandez has built a life that is far different than the one carved out by his parents and grandparents.

He and his wife live in a smaller family unit — with a single child, instead of the seven children his maternal grandmother raised. His friendships are more diverse, his taste in music is more eclectic, he travels more and he appreciates art. 'They never understood art,' he said.

But knowing his family's story, he said, has 'empowered' him. When his life hits a snag or things at work start to get 'sticky,' he tries to put his troubles into perspective. He thinks back to the trials his grandparents and aunts and uncles went through — a revolution, mass deportation, displacement, migration and all the sacrifices that led to latter opportunities he seized: Garfield High School, UC Riverside for his undergraduate degree and Sonoma State University for his master's degree.

'It's like you're really standing on the shoulders of people who have struggled,' he said. 'And to think that I am now an executive director of a successful nonprofit. It has to do with reaching back and knowing that I come from struggle, from people who have struggled and tried to make their way. I owe them.'

Bicultural and binational

Daniel Malpica, associate professor and chairman of Chicano and Latino Studies at Sonoma State University, was born in El Paso, Texas, but lived parts of his childhood on both sides of the border. Malpica, who did his dissertation on the transnational migration of Zapotec Indians in Oaxaca, Mexico, spent parts of his childhood in Mexico City and Los Angeles, frequently traveling back and forth across the border.

'It's not a coincidence, I'm trying to understand who I am and not only me but my family,' Malpica said. 'Through that sort of going back and forth, basically I started being a bicultural and binational individual.'

When he was 10 or 12, there was nothing more he wanted than to feel like he was 'American,' said Malpica, now 48. He was young and naive, he said, had very light skin and was attending an all-white school in Whittier, in Los Angeles County. But when he was about 15, he moved back to Mexico and found himself challenged by the new experience. His Spanish wasn't on par with his classmates and their math skills were more advanced.

Through the years, he has always considered himself 'Mexican,' he said, and it was a shock recently when he realized that he's lived more time in California than in Mexico.

Malpica said there are differences even among first-generation Latinos. Those who came to the United States before the age of 10 become more similar to second-generation Latinos as they get older. This is often referred to as Generation 1.5, or one and a half. Malpica said a Latino's identity becomes more firmly grounded with age.

'If you're 18 years old (when you come to the U.S.), that's it, you know you are Mexican,' he said.

The tendency to view Latinos as a monolithic group — whether ethnically, racially or in terms of their generation — can lead to academic issues when a child's existing language skills and cultural experiences are often discarded for the sake of rapid assimilation, he said.

'School is what makes it really hard,' he said. 'Even in places like Los Angeles, schools do a poor job making these students feel at home in the sense that they don't have the adequate programs, they are not inviting.'

Education is 'at the heart of everything,' he said, adding that more investment is needed in educating Latinos in ways that enhance their existing academic strengths.

Reclaiming culture

Tony Salas, 31, grew up in southwest Santa Rosa, directly across from the Department of Motor Vehicles building on Corby Avenue, a neighborhood he said was 'pretty ghetto' during the 1990s. His parents, who were both born in Mexico, bought their four-bedroom home in west Santa Rosa around 2000.

Salas, a DJ who now lives in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, said that when he was 6 or 7, his parents were afraid to speak to him in Spanish because they thought he would have more difficulty learning English. His Spanish language skills grew stronger after he started visiting his family in Mexico after he turned 8.

The Elsie Allen graduate said he still remembers visiting the 'tortilla factory' to pick up freshly made tortillas and speaking Spanish with his grandmother. When he visits his father's side of the family in Playa del Carmen, in the state of Quintana Roo, he gets a completely different experience than most American tourists flocking to nearby Cancun.

'I get home-cooked meals, I get to sleep in their home rather than some resort,' he said, speaking of his aunt's house.

Salas said he feels it will be difficult for future Latino generations to maintain their traditions. He said that in older generations, it was taboo to marry outside your culture, but now it's more accepted.

'For me, keeping that culture alive is going to be so much harder, to keep it very authentic and keep it going,' he said. 'I'm with a white girl now. My family loves her, they accept her, but she doesn't speak Spanish.'

When he begins having children, he'll try to teach them what he learned and how he was raised. 'But their view on that is going to be very different,' he said.

While attending Sonoma State University, Hernandez, the La Luz Center executive director, said he had intended to return to Los Angeles. He received his graduate degree in psychology with a focus on organizational structure in 2009, at a time when there were few job openings in Southern California.

Boyle Heights felt safe and comfortable and was a big part of his identity.

'But I've learned that my community is where I live and work,' he said. 'There's a Latino community here, too.

'There are people that need help here,' he said. 'And I see my story in the people that I work with.'

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.