Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

More Mexicans in Las Vegas lead dual lives

WEEKEND EDITION

May 7 - 8, 2005

Every two months or so, Reveriano Orozco leaves behind his bustling chain of 10 money order businesses in Las Vegas and Reno and becomes a legislator for a few days.

In Mexico.

Orozco serves as the alternate representative for Mexican immigrants in the United States in the Congress of Michoacan, his home state. Since January, he and Jesus Martinez Saldana, formerly of Fresno, Calif., have held one of the 40 seats in the state's legislature.

Orozco, a successful businessman here, takes on his role of fledgling politician in the southwestern coastal state when Martinez Saldana, who has since moved back to Mexico to spend full time in the legislature, can't be there. The two also have attended sessions together.

Orozco is one of an estimated 250,000 Las Vegas residents of Mexican heritage, who together make up 70 percent of the Hispanic population here. And as the number of Mexican-born Las Vegas Valley residents grows, so too does a group whose daily lives are a paradox of sorts. As this group of immigrants scales the economic ladder toward the American dream, they increasingly turn their attention back to Mexico.

"For us as immigrants who have reached a certain economic stability, we have a double function," said Jose Angel Ortiz, a Realtor and president of the Las Vegas Foundation of Zacatecanos, or people from the Mexican state of Zacatecas, located in the heart of Mexico.

"We are involved in the local economic and political life, as well as that of our country of origin."

The phenomenon is not without its critics, who say it is an example of how Mexicans are not assimilating into life in the U.S.

Others, including UNLV history professor Raquel Casas, say such behavior has long been common among immigrants.

"Benevolent societies and immigrant groups ... have always been formed in receiving nations," Casas said.

Luin Goldring, a sociology professor at Canada's York University who has studied Mexican immigration to the U.S., said that the idea of immigrants maintaining contact with their homeland may be old, but the form it is taking with Mexican immigrants is new.

"Part of what makes it different is the simultaneity of the contact," Goldring said.

"Not only can you get on a plane and be there in a few hours, you can send faxes and e-mail as well."

Immigrant clubs

The foundation Ortiz heads, which groups seven clubs that together have 120 members, is an example of the hyphenated Mexican-American lives many immigrants lead.

These clubs are becoming more sophisticated locally and nationwide, as members use the clout of their numbers and economic well-being to mount projects on both sides of the border, ranging from scholarships for Las Vegas area Hispanics to drilling a well in Mexico.

Take Alan Torres, a local mortgage broker who is secretary of the Civil Association of the State of Durango, a civic group that helps Durango natives in Nevada. His home state, a ranching and mining state north of Zacatecas, has sent an estimated 50,000 immigrants to the Las Vegas area, making it the source of more immigrants locally than any other part of Mexico.

Torres helped organize the first Congress of Communities of Duranguenses held April 22-24 at the Las Vegas Hilton.

The event featured groups like his from around the nation, as well as the mayors of almost half of Durango's 39 municipalities.

But the centerpiece of the event was the launch of the so-called 3-for-1 program among the estimated 500,000 Durango natives in the U.S.

The program offers a way to channel some of the billions of dollars immigrants send home into projects that will help the poor. Its name comes from the idea that Mexican federal, state and local governments each contribute a peso for every peso that immigrant clubs send home.

And though the government matches funds that immigrants send back to Mexico, the program was created to "do things that the government is not doing ... like meeting basic needs that most benefit the community as a whole," Goldring said.

The clubs have supported projects to improve or create water systems, roads and hospitals.

As the late April meeting of Durango natives from both sides of the border unfolded with parrillada, a mixed dish of grilled chicken and pork, it was clear that small-town mayors from the central Mexican state had high hopes for the program.

Jesus Raul Soto, mayor of Ocampo, in cowboy hat and boots, said the closest hospital for his town's 10,500 residents is an hour by car. He said he hopes Durango natives in the U.S. -- a group that includes 10 of his cousins in the Las Vegas area -- remember his spot on the map when it comes to funding projects with their money.

Torres said it is time his fellow countrymen living in the Las Vegas area and around the nation sign up for the program.

"Though we're not exactly newcomers here (in Las Vegas) ... and we even have children born here, we can't forget our origins ... and those of us who have the economic means should help," he said.

He said there are already projects on the table that his local club of 200 members would support in Durango, including a center for senior citizens.

Another of his club's efforts is a special-issue license plate, which is on a waiting list to be produced.

When the Durango plate reaches the market, Torres said, money raised from its sales will also be used for the 3-for-1 program, as well as for scholarships for the children of immigrants living in Las Vegas.

Giving back

Ortiz, the Realtor, said Zacatecas was the first state to participate in the 3-for-1 program.

The local group has held numerous fundraisers for building projects in Zacatecas, including, most recently, a funeral home in a small municipality named Villa Nueva, and a well in Felipe Angel, Ortiz said. In the last five years area clubs have poured money into 10 projects, all of which are supervised by Mexico's federal government, he added.

Javier Barajas, who owns a restaurant in Las Vegas called Lindo Michoacan and until recently was president of the local club of Michoacanos, said he was disappointed to find after a recent visit to his home state that only five of 11 projects his club had sponsored in the last year or so had actually gotten off the ground.

Barajas said it appeared that local government contributions weren't going toward the projects they were intended to fund.

He said the possibility that corruption had gotten between the club and its goals especially upset him after getting used to a greater rule of law and lesser scale of corruption in the U.S.

Mariano Lemus Gas, recently named consul of Mexico in Las Vegas, said the federal government would be looking into Barajas' concerns. He also said that the Mexican government's guidelines for the 3-for-1 program include that the projects must be linked to "productivity and infrastructure."

If they are not, he said, then the projects are not carried out.

Still, Ortiz, of the Zacatecas club, said he is thankful he has been able to obtain a standard of living in the United States that would have been difficult in Mexico, and he said he feels the obligation to give back.

"Those of us who work in these projects don't receive a salary -- it's a personal satisfaction."

At the same time, he said, "this is not for everyone."

"Some people go once to our meetings and they get all excited the first time and then they don't come back."

This happens because they don't have time for meetings, working long hours in construction jobs. In short, they find themselves where he was a decade ago, he said.

Ortiz, who is 34, arrived in Sherman Oaks, Calif. from Zacatecas when he was 15. He has worked in a restaurant busing tables, in a factory, and as a porter in a Strip casino. He became a U.S. citizen in 1996, after starting the process 10 years earlier.

"Now I have the space in my daily schedule and the economic capacity to do this," he said, referring to the club.

Part of both places

The law differs from state to state in Mexico on whether you can be a U.S. citizen and participate in local politics.

In Michoacan, for example, you can't be a citizen of the United States and hold political office. So Orozco, despite living north of the border for 13 years, is still a legal resident -- the step below citizenship.

This way, he can continue his frequent trips to the round, stone-columned, 17th-century government building in Morelia, the capital of his home state. He often goes just to keep up on events that might affect immigrants, since Martinez holds the right to vote when he's also there.

On his most recent trip, April 6-8, he helped organize a forum in Morelia for Mexicans who have lived in America to discuss the 3-for-1 program and other issues facing immigrants.

As for his relationship to the United States, he said, "I will not become a citizen until the laws change (in Michoacan)."

"But still, I am very content here, my two children were born here ... but you could say I am part of both places."

Ortiz' home state of Zacatecas, meanwhile, allows U.S. citizens born in that state to hold office in the legislature. And though Ortiz is a citizen, he said he's not interested in politics, here or there.

"Politics doesn't attract me," he said.

"When you get involved in politics, you have to change too much."

So he prefers trying to let the money of his compatriots do the talking to ensure that basic necessities, like water, reach Zacatecas.

And he's clear on where his future lies.

"My business is here and my children were born here ... (and) I think their future is here because in Mexico you can study and choose a career and still get nowhere," he said.

Barajas summed up how his fellow countrymen felt as they met for lunch recently.

"Mexico is my mother, and the U.S., my father," he said.

Deborah Boehm, a guest scholar at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, said that she has seen the same attitude with many Mexican immigrants.

"They have meaningful lives here and in Mexico, and the two are not mutually exclusive," she said.

And, she added, the tendency to "feel they belong in both places" is only going to increase.

"The move is going to be toward creating these multiple ties, especially with a place so close like Mexico."

Goldring said immigrants, because of these ties, "want to raise their families here, feel some responsibility for Mexico's development and want to be good (U.S.) citizens."

"They're being pulled in several directions at once."

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