Growing pains in Pahrump

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006 | 7:10 a.m.

Pahrump — Alonso Flores didn't know what to expect on a recent early evening in a parking lot behind a Mexican restaurant in this fast-growing town about an hour west of Las Vegas.

He had called a half-dozen Hispanics with concerns about the recently passed "English Language and Patriot Reaffirmation Act," many of whom mistakenly believed that the bill made speaking Spanish illegal.

Within minutes, dozens had gathered on the blacktop. Flores corralled a few cars and turned on the headlights to see a sign-up sheet that he sent around.

The organizing of Hispanics in Pahrump, a town very much in the spotlight these days, had begun.

It was part of the fallout from the Pahrump Town Board's Nov. 14 approval of the ordinance. Other results include claims by some Hispanic business owners that fewer Hispanics from Las Vegas have visited the town in recent weeks, as well as reports of residents alleging discrimination for speaking Spanish or being Hispanic.

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo, who told the roughly 45 police officers under his command in Pahrump to ignore the ordinance, drawing himself into the controversy, called the ferment facing the town "part of the town becoming more cosmopolitan."

It was a way of saying that Pahrump, facing a projected doubling-plus of its population of 35,000 in the next five years, is going through growing pains.

The Hispanic population and the issue of immigration, issues that weren't in the open before, are now part of those growing pains, DeMeo said.

In Pahrump on Wednesday, Arturo Reyes sat down for a few minutes at noon while shuttling tortilla chips from the kitchen to the front counter in the restaurant he owns, El Cancun No. 2, on State Route 160.

Reyes estimated that he has seen 20 percent less business in recent weeks because many Las Vegas Hispanics who normally come to Pahrump for various reasons are now hesitant to make the trip.

Realtor Carmen Ruiz - who advertises her business with a State Route 160 billboard that reads, "Hablo Espanol" - said she normally gets up to 10 inquiries a week from Las Vegas Hispanics.

In recent weeks, she has received nada.

As if to underscore the situation, El Mundo, the Las Vegas Valley's oldest Spanish-language newspaper, asked average Joses on the street what they thought about the ordinance, and they repeated the misinformation apparently rampant in the Hispanic community.

Nelson Ramos, a native of Honduras, said the ordinance would "work against the town itself, since ... not being able to speak Spanish, they (Hispanics) are going to go somewhere else and the city will stop growing."

Until that happens, the 10 percent to 15 percent of the town's population that is Hispanic learns to live in a sometimes tense atmosphere.

Examples include staff in two area schools allegedly telling students that speaking Spanish would earn them a suspension, and one student calling another names.

The first allegation was reported on a call-in show on KHMP Channel 62, a local station, which featured Town Manager David Richards.

Richards said Monday that he will speak this week with schools Superintendent Rob Roberts about the reports.

"I anticipate he'll be as concerned as I am," he said. "I hope this is isolated and I hope it stops."

As for the name-calling, Reyes' 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, had a fight with a classmate about the slur. The restaurant owner said he has found himself explaining the tension between some of his fellow townspeople and Hispanics, or immigrants, since the ordinance was passed.

"I tell them that we are in a small town that used to be retirees and now it's growing a lot, and some people are uncomfortable with that and all the Hispanics that are coming," he said.

Reyes said he understood efforts to organize fellow Hispanics, although he was not sure what he would look for from such efforts .

On one hand, Alvaro Castaneda was in town recently to launch a local chapter of the Mexican American Political Association, a 46-year-old California-based group with a history of activism .

Then there's Flores, who is the adviser in Southern Nevada to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, an organization that works in immigrant communities across the nation.

He said the group of about 70 people who gathered that night in the parking lot had goals such as obtaining political representation, ensuring that such ordinances don't pass in the future - and learning English.