Villaraigosa’s Spanish Is One of L.A.’s Languages

“¡Queremos un cambio! We want change!” mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa hollered before a roomful of campaign volunteers at his South Los Angeles office on a recent Saturday morning.

“That’s what we want. We want to be judged by our talents,” he went on: “Queremos que nos juzguen ... juzgan?”

Villaraigosa’s Spanish stumbled, caught in the perilous rules of the subjunctive. Was it juzguen or juzgan? People in the room called out their suggestions.

“You know, I was born here, man,” Villaraigosa said finally, switching back to English. “It’s hard.... It’s hard.”

The room erupted in laughter and applause. They understood.

With Villaraigosa as the front-runner for the May 17 runoff against Mayor James K. Hahn, the campaign is in many respects a fully bilingual affair. News conferences, television advertisements, mailers, speeches and debates reach voters in both English and Spanish.

Today, the contenders are to engage in a bilingual debate broadcast by Spanish-language network Univision. Questions will be posed to both candidates in Spanish and translated to English by earpiece. All answers will be translated to Spanish.

Hahn does not speak Spanish. In official settings, Villaraigosa sometimes offers remarks in distinct blocks, one language after the other. He might opt for that approach in the debate, said campaign spokesman Nathan James.

But on the trail, the candidate’s Spanish is different. It’s a looser bilingualism that shows a self-effacing candor over an aspect of his heritage that many U.S.-born Latinos consider a source of mild embarrassment: Spanish that is less than perfect. Even bad.

During Villaraigosa’s successful run for City Council in 2002, weak Spanish was a brief issue. A mailer from a supporter of incumbent Councilman Nick Pacheco derided Villaraigosa’s language as “pocho,” a pejorative describing someone who has drifted from his Mexican roots and language.

This time around, the second-generation Mexican American appears to be playing off his “pocho” Spanish much as President Bush has turned his malapropisms into a populist badge.

Although voters with a multicultural view of Los Angeles may eat it up, Villaraigosa’s Spanish could alienate others, said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

“The fact that he’s doing something almost equally in Spanish as in English is a strength in keeping his base rallied,” Regalado said.

“There is that threat, though. If he’s perceived as a bilingual- bicultural candidate, that will turn off Republicans or more traditionally conservative Democrats,” he added.

Latino voters and supporters interviewed during the runoff campaign said they found Villaraigosa’s use of Spanish familiar.

“Like my kids’,” said Erika Valladares, 40, referring to Villaraigosa’s Spanish in the South L.A. appearance.

The 40-year-old Salvadoran immigrant and campaign volunteer added with a slight shrug: “Well, I mean, el trata” [“he tries.”]

In a city where lunch is almost universally mistranslated (usually as lonche but hardly ever as the correct comida or almuerzo), Villaraigosa’s Spanish hardly scandalizes the local ear, observers said.

“If I speak Spanish and somebody from Mexico hears me, they can totally tell I’m from Los Angeles,” said Salvador Hernandez, 23, editor of the student newspaper at Cal State Northridge and a panelist on the mayoral debate held at the university in March.

“You can tell the same thing with Villaraigosa,” said Hernandez, who was born in Torrance to Mexican immigrant parents. “You can tell that’s pocho Spanish.”

His comment speaks to another shift: For some, pocho, though not entirely stripped of its ability to offend, stings less.

It is “just another term to describe the Mexican American experience,” said Lalo Alcaraz, who draws the syndicated cartoon La Cucaracha, which appears in The Times, and runs the satirical website www.pocho.com.

The collective “¿Y que?” (So what?) response to imperfect Spanish reflects that changing cultural attitude, he said. “A lot of Chicanos in East L.A. older than Villaraigosa speak like that, if that,” Alcaraz said. “If he was going to be a newscaster on Univision, OK, but what’s the big deal?”

Spanish, no matter how shoddy, is a cultural touchstone even English-dominant Latinos can relate to, said Pilar Marrero, metropolitan editor and political columnist for the Spanish-language daily La Opinion, who has written critically about Latino politicians who speak poor Spanish.

That Latino Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico speaks impeccable Spanish and Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo speaks Spanish with the help of phonetic cue cards matters little to bilingual voters and just “tells them that one of them is more pocho than the other,” Marrero said.

Villaraigosa belongs to the segment of U.S.-born Latino leaders who grew up in barrios where fear of discrimination pushed many to shun Spanish outside the home. Often, it was their parents who discouraged the practice.

In Villaraigosa’s case, Spanish wasn’t spoken in his home after he turned 5, when his father left his family, Villaraigosa campaign aides said.

He didn’t begin learning Spanish until graduating from UCLA, when he began work in union organizing.

In an interview Friday, Villaraigosa characterized his second language as “the Spanish of someone who most of his life spoke English and has worked hard to be more fully bilingual.”

“If I could speak Korean, Mandarin, Armenian and Farsi and there were cameras representing those stations, I would speak in those languages as well,” he said.

“I think in Los Angeles, that’s the most diverse city anywhere in the world, the ability to speak one, two, three and four languages is an asset,” he added.

But not too long ago, said several observers, Villaraigosa struggled juggling just two.

Today, some have noticed a difference. In Spanish-language television commercials, on Spanish-language network news and when rehashing his speeches or news conference remarks in Spanish, observers said, Villaraigosa’s Spanish seems more confident and smooth.

“His Spanish has improved tremendously, especially in the last few years,” Marrero said. A handful of bilingual journalists who are either covering the campaign or have watched Villaraigosa over the years agreed.

Yet, a few kinks still come through, and Villaraigosa seems to revel in them.

While rallying supporters at his Boyle Heights campaign headquarters last month, Villaraigosa brought up the subject of political attacks from his rival: “These are the words and actions of a desperate man,” he said.

Switching to Spanish, he demanded a clean campaign, not one of “tirar....”

He searched for the word, then switched back to English: “How do you say ‘mud’?”

“¡Lodo!” a few volunteers cried.

“OK. Lodo. Not throwing a lot of lodo,” Villaraigosa finished, beaming.

“He has a little accent, but it’s forgiven,” Pico-Union resident Ana Salgado, 52, said in Spanish after clamoring to get her picture taken with Villaraigosa at a recent pro-education rally on the 1st Street steps of City Hall.

“He’s an Angeleno,” said Rafael Gonzalez, 37, a MacArthur Park housing advocate who posed in a picture in the same picture. “When I speak to an audience in Spanish, I say, ‘Excuse my Spanish, but I am a pocho, and you’re going to have to help me out here.’... It’s part of building relationships.”

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Mayoral debate

Mayor James K. Hahn and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa face off at 10 a.m. today in their last scheduled debate, which will be broadcast live in Spanish on KMEX-TV Channel 34 and on KTNQ-AM (1020).

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Times staff writer Jason Felch contributed to this report.