I began work on a master’s degree at the California State University in Northridge. It was 1973, and I decided that an advanced degree in mass communication would be helpful in landing a good job.
While enrolled at Cal State Northridge’s mass communication master’s program, I got hired at the Simi Valley Enterprise, an obscure four-day-a-week newspaper. My beat was Moorpark, at the time semi-rural town some eight miles north of Simi Valley, today home to the Reagan Library.
Upon graduation from Long Beach, I naively thought I stood an excellent chance of being hired at the Los Angeles Times. I would have been thrilled to work there as an intern. Mexican American reporter Frank del Olmo, as had famed columnist Rubén Salazar, worked there. During my master’s research, I often visited the Times library to review old stories. It was striking to see a newsroom teeming with white people while the streets outside were crowded with Latinos. If ever there was a place in dire need of diversity, it was the Times. However, my many job and internship queries were not exactly rebuffed. They went unanswered. I felt the sting of racism.
I worked overtime on my degree and reported on Moorpark and much of Ventura County. My first story at the paper was coverage of a union vote at a mammoth egg ranch called Egg City. The workers were all Mexican immigrants and were to vote on whether César Chávez’s United Farmworkers or UFW, would represent them. Workers who spoke little or no English were happy to talk to a Spanish-speaking reporter. Every other reporter covering the story spoke no Spanish, so they had never been interviewed.
These men and women who did backbreaking work in awful conditions reminded me of my grandparents, Nina and Miko. Stoic and inured to hard labor, all they had ever wanted were slightly better pay and decent working conditions. My grandparents, however, did not have the opportunity to join a union, nor would they dare complain to their bosses.
With this story, I was, for the first time, giving voice to the voiceless. They would be heard in the next day’s newspaper. I was thrilled that my reporting was, at last, going to allow the workers to be heard. The Egg City employees told me they had endured threats and had their tires slashed by company security staff. The owner of the million-chicken ranch allegedly bad-mouthed the union, saying working conditions and pay would not improve should workers go with the UFW. Still, the workers stood firm. The vote was held, and workers overwhelmingly favored the union. My first story report included the results on the front page.
In the ensuing weeks, I discovered a sizeable Mexican population lived in the area for generations. Yet, their stories had not been told. Other reporters did not view the Mexicans as newsworthy, and there was a language barrier for residents who spoke no English. They told of the harsh working conditions in the citrus orchards, racial animosity from whites, and the absence of bilingual classes for their children.
Residents of Virginia Colony, a section of Moorpark, were Mexican pioneers, having settled in the town forty years earlier. All these Mexican experiences were stories I would eventually report. I was proud and gratified to bring those stories to Enterprise readers, confident they would find them illuminating and interesting.
But I was wrong.
My stories set off a backlash. White readers complained often and heatedly that my stories were unfairly depicting the region as a hotbed of racism and stirring up trouble. Despite the editors and me meeting with white community leaders, they were not satisfied, nor were the disgruntled readers. They wanted an end to my reporting on Mexicans.
One day, a community member came unannounced to see me. In a conversation I found reminiscent of what racist Southerners said about white northern civil rights workers, he said I did not understand the local Mexican population. He claimed they were uneducated and not suited for anything more than farm work. Moreover, they were better off in Moorpark than in their native Mexico. Evidently, he was unaware that many were US-born. My stories were disrupting the natural order of things and potentially fomenting turmoil.
“I understand the Mexican people,” he boasted. “In fact, some of my best friends are Mexicans.”
I laughed at the last comment, taking it as a joke. The man was puzzled. “Why are you laughing?” Soon, more than one hundred upset readers circulated a petition vowing to cancel their subscriptions unless I was fired. I was not fired, and soon the furor died down. But I was left shaken and angry at this intensely hateful, racist attempt to fire me and muzzle the press.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 