By CLAUDIA KOLKER
Saturday, August 14, 1999
The Miami Herald

EL CENIZO, Texas -- As ceiling fans puffed at the big American flag on the
community center wall, the dozen residents at the city council meeting here
poised hands over hearts for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Then they commenced their town's modestly historic council meeting, possibly the first in the United States to be conducted by city ordinance in Spanish.

Far-flung, sun-battered and mostly poor, this former ``colonia'' of trailers and
frail bungalows has found itself in the middle of a political vortex two weeks
after enacting a pair of surprising new laws.

Under one ordinance, all city government business must take place in Spanish.
And under the second, city employees -- all six of them -- are forbidden to
help the U.S. Border Patrol catch undocumented immigrants, or risk being
fired.

``About 75 percent of the people at meetings here only speak Spanish,'' said
Mayor Rafael Rodriguez. ``The other 25 always had to translate. . . . If you
talk only English and they don't speak enough English to understand the
meetings, people got mad.''

In a town of 7,500 where virtually every resident is an immigrant, married to
an immigrant, or the child of immigrants, the laws reflect not so much a
rejection of American culture but acknowledgment of a border culture
dominated by the Spanish language and haunted by Border Patrol search
vehicles.

Far from springing from any broad ideology, the motivation for the two laws
was utterly local, Rodriguez said. Political rivals of city council members had
accused them of turning in undocumented residents to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, and the new law will help dispel such accusations, he
said.

In addition, residents had complained bitterly of Border Patrol vehicles
stopping local buses taking residents to welfare offices and health facilities in
order to run residency checks.

The Spanish language law, Rodriguez added, stemmed from a petition of local
community members and common sense.

So far, residents of this depressed town of laborers and factory workers 10
miles down the Rio Grande from Laredo have praised the two ordinances.

``I'm for it,'' said Lupe Rojas, squinting in the sunlight alongside her
10-year-old-son. ``Because in English, well -- no! We don't understand it.''

But while several Hispanic advocacy groups praised the language ordinance's
effect of tailoring city services to constituents, the law drew ire from
immigration-reform activists.

``This is not a good idea,'' said Tim Schultze, spokesman for U.S. English in
Washington, a group devoted to making English the official language of the
United States. ``We have long predicted that this sort of thing would happen in
our country. And our opponents have said, `You're insane. You're
exaggerating. It will never happen.' ''

`Providing a service'

But Lydia Camarillo, executive director of the San Antonio-based Southwest
Voter Education Registration Project, called the statute sensible. ``It appears
that these folks clearly understand these communities do not speak English and
this is a way of providing a service,'' she said.

She knew of no other community having enacted such an ordinance, and added
that there was little chance that El Cenizo's action would be widely imitated,
or would prevent immigrants from wanting to learn English.

English translations

Under the ordinance, city council sessions and other official business will be
conducted in Spanish, and English translations will be made available upon
request within 48 hours.

While the language ordinance provokes strong debate, the city's so-called
``safe-haven'' rule apparently violates federal law, according to the INS. 

Immigration law forbids any federal, state or local government official from
restricting government entities in giving or getting immigration information,
said INS spokesman Bill Strassberger in Los Angeles. However, he added, the
INS had no plans to challenge the El Cenizo law. ``Other types of criminal
activity are our priority,'' he said.