Fault Lines.(California's Latin influence)

"Hola! Hola!" Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called out as he approached a crowd of boys and girls in MacArthur Park, on the gritty edge of downtown Los Angeles. The children, wearing green, red, and blue soccer shirts, swarmed around him as he asked about their games, tousled their hair. It was Sunday afternoon, May 6th--just five days after a May Day immigrants'-rights rally that had drawn an unexpectedly small crowd, of thirty-five thousand people. Among them were many women pushing babies in strollers, waving American flags and carrying signs that read "Legalizacion--No Deportacion" and "There Are No Borders in the Workers' Struggle." Toward the end of the day, some forty agitators just outside the park began throwing rocks and bottles at the police. According to department protocols, the police should have attempted to isolate these rogue elements. Instead, they pushed them into the larger crowd and then, in full riot gear, moved into the park, hitting people with their batons and firing a hundred and fifty "less than lethal" foam projectiles. Twenty-four protesters and journalists were injured, as were seven police officers. Villaraigosa, the city's first Latino mayor in a hundred and thirty-five years, was away, on a nine-day trip to El Salvador and Mexico intended to increase trade and to promote law-enforcement cooperation in countering the increasing influence of transnational gangs. That evening in El Salvador, he saw videos of the police melee. "Those images hit me in the gut," he said. He recalled one in particular--"of a young boy, maybe twelve years old, hit again, again, and again, trying to run away." He returned three days later, cutting short his trip.

It was a warm spring day, and the park was filled with people playing soccer and picnicking. Several police officers stood on a distant hillside. The chief of police, William Bratton, accompanied the Mayor; he retains Villaraigosa's strong support. Bratton usually seems to enjoy being the center of attention, but that Sunday, dressed in civilian clothing and looking fatigued, he appeared satisfied to be part of the retinue, as Villaraigosa, surrounded by a growing throng of children, walked slowly through the park. Wherever he went, people called out, "Gracias, Villaraigosa!" He paused periodically to say something to them, speaking in Spanish and occasionally translating for reporters: "We recognize your right to be here with your family and play, and your right to march here and speak out against the government--whether you are here legally or illegally. We will stand up for your rights. That is the American dream." With a nod toward Bratton, he promised that there would be a full investigation, and "consequences for the abuse." To a crowd of children, he said, "You speak English and Spanish both?" Most said yes. "That's very important, to be bilingual," he told them. "It would be great if you could learn a third language. It's so important for you to stay in school. How many of you are from El Salvador?" About a dozen hands went up. ("I'm from Mexico!" yelled a boy who was wearing the green soccer shirt of the "Mexico" team.) "We need to make sure we work on this issue of gangs," Villaraigosa said. "That's what I was doing in El Salvador. You want to stay in school, stay out of gangs, take care of your mommy and daddy."

He stopped by a picnic table. A woman named Maria Sanchez had brought food for her extended family of twenty, and she offered him a tostada. Villaraigosa had just had lunch, but he ate it with gusto, and praised the cook. He asked for a tostada for Bratton, who was standing nearby. Then he hugged Sanchez and kissed her on the cheek. People took pictures of him with their cell phones, and gave him scraps of paper to autograph. Some children asked him to sign their soccer shirts. Soon he was autographing soccer shoes, sun visors, dollar bills. A man held out a bill. "Veinte?" Villaraigosa said, shaking his head with a smile, but he signed it, too.

Villaraigosa had been tirelessly traversing the city ever since his return, reassuring the public that order would prevail, and repeatedly declaring, "We are one L.A." He insists that the city's extraordinary cultural diversity is its greatest strength. On Saturday, he had gone to two Cinco de Mayo festivals, one of them in Watts, a formerly African-American community that is now sixty per cent Latino. That evening, he attended Mass, where he spoke, in Spanish, about the events of May 1st. On Sunday morning, before his visit to MacArthur Park, he had delivered remarks at the end of Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The church was completed five years ago, and its huge nave, which seats nearly four thousand people, was filled with Latino, Anglo, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, and African-American worshippers. Villaraigosa stood in front of a series of tapestries depicting the City of God superimposed on the City of Angels. "I come today with a heavy heart," he said. "We must pray for peace, but we understand there is no peace without justice. . . . There are many who have forgotten how they got here and seek to demonize the immigrants among us. I ask Angelenos to come together--now is not a time to point fingers but to come together." After the service, a long line of congregants formed, waiting for a chance to speak to the Mayor. He kissed babies, posed for pictures, and hugged people. Two elderly nuns told him that they were praying for him. He broke away only when one of his aides whispered that Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony, with whom he was to hold a brief press conference, was growing impatient.

Villaraigosa likes to say that Los Angeles will soon be the world's most important city--a proving ground for a multicultural society, a place where well over a hundred languages are spoken within four hundred and sixty-nine square miles, where there are many ethnic communities that are the largest outside their native countries. But his vision of this international city of the future was undercut by the events of May 1st, when the L.A.P.D.--supposedly a new L.A.P.D., reformed and revitalized by Chief Bratton--acted in a manner that recalled infamously brutal moments of the past: in 1967, L.A.P.D. officers beat anti-Vietnam War demonstrators outside the Century Plaza Hotel; in 1991, they beat Rodney King, an unarmed African-American; in 2000, they beat demonstrators and reporters at the Democratic National Convention. The abuses in 2000 had led to the protocols that were ignored in MacArthur Park.

The images of police firing into crowds of immigrants also underscored the volatility and the fragility of the diverse city that Villaraigosa celebrates. In the past decade or so, there has been a sharp rise in violence between Latinos and African-Americans; much of it is gang-related, emanating from the prisons. While Latinos have entered Los Angeles in growing numbers--between 1980 and 2000 their share of the city's population rose from twenty-seven per cent to forty-seven per cent, and will be more than fifty per cent by 2010--the proportion of African-Americans has declined. By 2000, African-Americans accounted for only eleven per cent of the population; schools that were once largely African-American are now predominantly Latino. There have been a number of highly publicized hate crimes against blacks, and some black students feel so threatened that they walk in groups when they leave school in the afternoon.

Sometimes the Mayor seems to think that he can wrest the ideal city into existence through sheer kinetic energy. In the Villaraigosa administration, governing looks a lot like campaigning. The Mayor spends a great deal of time away from his office, appearing at half a dozen events most days, and holding multiple press conferences, in both English and Spanish. In times of crisis, his talent for connecting with people is a boon, but at other times it can appear contrived--as when, not long ago, he stepped into a busy major thoroughfare and started knocking on car windows, trying to hand out flyers to startled drivers. At a press conference recently, he noted that there were only five television cameras, and said, irritably, "We had sixteen cameras at the last event!" At a Greek festival, a woman approached Villaraigosa and exclaimed, "You work so hard! How do you do it?" He took her hands in his and replied, "Do you know what's happening? Your energy is flowing through me!"