Event targets Hispanic youths

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 11:21 a.m.

Although he moved to Las Vegas in 1994, Salvador Diaz describes himself as a fifth-generation Southern Californian. He also describes himself as one who is proud of his Mexican heritage.

Diaz is one of the organizers of the annual Latino Youth Leadership Conference, a five-day event sponsored by the Latin Chamber of Commerce. It is under way now at UNLV and will continue through Sunday.

The event is dedicated to helping Nevada's growing Hispanic youth population gain a better sense of cultural identity and a greater chance of attending college.

Those attending the conference keep a journal, as a way of learning how to organize their thoughts. They also undergo leadership exercises and attend classes on workplace skills. Additionally, they learn one of the most important things necessary for attending college -- how to apply for financial aid.

Diaz said that after completing the conference in 1999, he had a renewed sense of himself as a person of Mexican background.

"Where I grew up, I mostly hung out with non-Hispanics and never spoke Spanish," he said Thursday during a break in the conference. "I thought of myself as American.

"Then I moved to North Las Vegas and felt so left out when all the kids around me spoke Spanish. And one day I got searched when I was leaving a grocery store, which was the first time I felt discriminated against as a Hispanic."

Diaz is finishing a degree in international business and is anticipating a career in law enforcement. He says he hopes to be a role model for other Hispanic youths.

Among the speakers at this year's conference was author Rudy Acuna, who sued the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1990 for discrimination in hiring practices and was awarded $325,000 five years later.

Toward the end of his talk, Acuna asked the 70 teenagers present, "Do you want to work in hotels and casinos all your life, or get an education and have real power?"

County Commissioner Dario Herrera, who helped launch the first conference in 1994, also spoke at the conference.

He recalled how at the 1994 conference, a panelist canceled at the last minute and he was asked to fill in. Then 20 and a sophomore at UNLV, he said he was awed by the opportunity.

"I had never spoken in public before, much less to a group of 40 Latino youths," Herrera said.

"I told them a story of how a communications professor of mine had said I would never be able to express my ideas well because of my accent and how I became determined from that point on to see other people's mistaken impressions about me as a Hispanic as their own shortcomings, not mine."

Herrera, who recently announced his intention to run for Congress in 2002, went on to recall a moment from his successful campaign for the state Legislature in 1996.

"I knocked on a door and a big guy in cowboy boots and jeans answered. I said, 'I'm Dario Herrera and I'm running for assemblyman.'

"He said, 'I ain't voting for no ... Mexican.'

"I answered, 'That's good, because I'm Cuban.'

"The moral is that someone's always going to say to you (that) you don't have what it takes. But you do."