Plight Brought South Gate Together

For many years, South Gate was a city in search of a community.

When Firestone and General Motors closed their factories in the early 1980s, they took with them thousands of jobs and the financial heart of a city that for its first 60 years had been a blue-collar suburb of Los Angeles.

In the space of a decade, South Gate’s demographics shifted dramatically, going from 80% white to 80% Latino. Suddenly, it seemed, no one knew their neighbors anymore. The community, according to residents, felt disjointed, even fractured.

But after Albert Robles was elected South Gate’s treasurer in 1997 and quickly began exercising his political will over the city of approximately 96,000, that all changed. Robles curried political favor for his friends and family -- eventually, authorities charged Friday, plundering $12 million from the city. Only then did residents find a cause to unite behind.

“I think his legacy is that he unified the community,” said Marilyn Echols, a 58-year resident of the southeast Los Angeles County city near Downey. “We all pitched in and did our darnedest and got him out,” she said, referring to the recall of Robles in 2003. “I don’t think he intended to do that, but that’s what he did.”

The movement to oust Robles and his allies brought long-time white and Mexican American residents together with Mexican immigrants, business owners, police officers and city employees.

Friday, Robles was indicted by a federal grand jury on 39 counts of money laundering, bribery, wire fraud and public corruption.

Father John Provenza , the pastor of St. Helen Roman Catholic Church, said those charges came “as a big relief.... It’s been like a cloud hanging over our community.”

The recall and its aftermath, said Mayor Henry Gonzalez, were “the best thing that ever happened in the city of South Gate.”

When Robles, 39, began his political career he seemed to have a bright future. A Mormon who had gone on a mission in Mississippi and earned a political science degree at UCLA, he was “smart and articulate,” Gonzalez said. Many saw him as a champion of the working class.

“I was very impressed with him,” said Gonzalez, who supported Robles’ first bid for office in 1992, when he was elected to South Gate’s five-member City Council. But Gonzalez now calls his decision “the worst mistake I ever made. I helped create this monster.”

In 1997, Robles decided to run for the post of city treasurer, which paid $69,000 a year at the time. Once in office, he and council members who backed him began a spending spree that officials said would leave the city near bankruptcy. Residents endured corruption investigations, civic unrest and unruly, if not near-riotous, council meetings.

Federal officials estimate that Robles personally received $1.2 million from various schemes using his elected office and political influence to funnel money from city projects to family and friends between 1998 and 2003.

Robles and his council majority hired dozens of new employees, even creating a Community Services Agency with 100 employees, though it was unclear what jobs they actually performed.

Robles also brought giveaways to local elections -- perhaps aware that many new voters were from Mexico, where the longtime ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had spent decades linking elections with giveaways.

The giveaways included plants, burritos and soft drinks. For Christmas 2000, with an election three months away, Robles and his allies held a toy giveaway. Finally, with the recall movement gaining strength, the council raffled off a city-owned house.

South Gate is a crowded collection of single-story buildings, bungalow homes and Latino businesses. Its City Hall and police station are clustered near the city’s main intersection of Firestone Boulevard and California Avenue, surrounded by immigration services and a bail bonds business.

But many residents paid little attention to government, avoiding the politics around them. Some worked two jobs or had families that took up their time. Many came from Mexico, where politics was considered a dirty game and election ploys were common.

But by 2001 these residents, many of whom had voted for Robles in the past, became weary of his tactics and began to work for his ouster.

“We left [Mexico] due to corruption,” said Jesus Miranda, who initially supported Robles. “They’re not going to buy us for a dollar or for gifts any more.”

Pat Acosta, who runs a South Gate shoe store with her husband, said Robles’ downfall was the work of a massive grass-roots effort on the part of residents.

“Robles started attacking the chamber of commerce, threatening to take away services like the high school beauty pageant, fundraisers and the Christmas parade,” said Acosta, a former member of the chamber’s board. “The chamber then decided we needed to be more actively involved.”

As civic involvement grew, the city’s disparate communities united. White residents and Latinos who had rarely mingled joined forces, said Angel Colon, Acosta’s husband. The couple published a newsletter encouraging residents to attend City Council meetings and stand up to Robles.

“The community’s demographics were changing,” Colon said. “The majority of Anglos were now senior citizens; their children had moved away. The seniors had their own cliques. Some, but not many, mixed with the new community. In general, the two didn’t socialize. But all of us came together for the recall. This was a big thing.”

The recall also brought police and immigrants together for the first time.

Many of South Gate’s immigrant residents were fearful or intimidated by police and City Hall because in Mexico, where many of them were from, neither had ever welcomed poor people.

During the recall, immigrants found themselves working alongside police officers and other city employees. The relationships and trust built during that fight have remained strong, city officials said.

“Before, there was no way I knew a police officer to call,” said Miranda, who owns a taqueria. “Only the Rotary and Lions [club members] knew the police. The rest of us, no.

“When we did the recall, all the South Gate police were working with people who never in their life thought they’d ever know a police officer. Now it’s poor people who know the chief of police. When events take place in the schools or parks, the first ones we invite are the police.”

After years of contention, City Council meetings these days are “boring,” said chamber of commerce President Tony Monroy. “Everything is calm; everybody is together.”

Gonzalez said he hopes that the city will be able to maintain its new-found unity.

“We need to return some stability and retain the united front,” said Gonzalez, who hopes to place a utility tax on the March ballot to raise about $6 million for the city’s coffers. The city is currently $8 million in debt -- partly because of Robles’ spending sprees.

At a party last week for departing City Councilman Hector de la Torre, who was elected to the state Assembly, about 300 people gathered at the city’s American Legion hall. The talk, said Gonzalez, quickly turned to the remarkable political events in South Gate’s recent history -- and how the citizens had regained control of their city.

“We were talking about how we took the city back,” Gonzalez said. “It was because we were a united group. It’s important for us to keep that continuity.”