Nunez, other Hispanic power faces speak at L.A. May Day rally; Mexican congressman booed

Thursday's immigration rights rally in Los Angeles: Photo by Getty Images

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez addressed Thursday's smaller-than-expected May Day rally in downtown Los Angeles, his blue shirt looking crisp and every hair in place as he spoke in Spanish and then English to voters and future citizens who will vote.

He joined in the chant of si, se puede! (Yes, we can!), which rounded out the brief appearances by some of California's top Hispanic legislators. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did not participate in the rally which instead showcased other Chicano power faces such as Nunez, 22nd District State Senator Gil Cedillo and 45th District Assemblyman Kevin de Leon.

"No one is illegal, no one is a criminal," said Cedillo, more casually dressed than Nunez and thus looking more like the working-class masses before him. "Immigrants are the history of this nation."

That righteous rhetoric fit the afternoon's we-can-do-it, "Grapes of Wrath" sentiment. A group of Catholic seminarians held a banner which read in Spanish, "For the migrant the mother country is the earth that gives him the bread."

But overall May Day event attendance was low. Organizers had expected at least 20,000 marchers but police and fire officials told PolitickerCa.com that the rally attracted 8,500 people. By contrast, 2006's huge immigration rallies brought hundreds of thousands of Hispanics to these same L.A. streets.

One unexpected, long set of boos was aimed at leftist Mexican congressman Jose Jacques Medina, who spent three decades as an immigrant activist in California before moving to Mexico City to sit in the lower-house Chamber of Deputies. Some in the crowd were unhappy with the government's lack of aid to mistreated, illegal Guatemalan immigrants in Mexico and also his leftist party's ambitions for Mexico's state-run Pemex oil company.

They booed and shouted at Medina, their yelling surprising the nicely dressed, Nunez-allied legislators standing behind the Mexican politician at the street stage's rear. California's Hispanic politicians generally are given at least public deference by their Spanish-language constituents, and so the very vocal displeasure aimed at Medina seemed to shock some in the Nunez crew.

"I know there are a lot of communists out here," said one demonstrator who shouted at Medina. "We're against the communists. They're always putting rocks in the path of Mexican democracy."

But capitalism flourished at the L.A. rally as numerous vendors hawked hot dogs with almost everyone selling them for $3. One entrepreneurial woman instead sold her delicious hot dogs for $2.50.

ALSO on PolitickerCA.com:

• May Day immigration rallies statewide attract low crowd numbers