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Padilla, 59, was born poor, but now earns enough from his security firm to afford the good life: two Cadillacs, $300,000 house, swimming pool, outdoor barbecue, Scotch and sizzling T-bones on the patio. He is a Republican: he shows a photograph of his wife with Wayne Newton at President Reagan's Inauguration.
Jesse Quintero, 28, and his wife Rosemary, 27, were born and raised in East L.A., but they met as students at U.S.C. They are teachers in the schools of heavily Mexican Bell Gardens. "I am a latino," Jesse declares. "I'll never feel Anglo." He glances at Rosemary, who is wearing her Camp Beverly Hills T shirt. "Sure," he says, "we listen to Anglo music, watch Anglo TV, go to Anglo movies. But we do it with other latinos."
The Quinteros live just east of Bell Gardens. Their town is Montebello (pop. 53,000), a well-tended middle-class suburb that in 20 years has changed from entirely Anglo to 65% Hispanic.
"When I was a kid," Jesse says, "you had to become Anglo to survive. For the kids today, it's hip to be latino." How hip? A New Wave rock band formed by U.S.-born Mexican Americans is called Los Illegals. Avance, a stylish new magazine written in English, has a young, upscale circulation of 35,000. But for every trendy Avance subscriber in L.A. there are at least ten who resist adaptation. Says L.A. Times Columnist Frank del Olmo: "There's a large segment within the legal population who see themselves as Mexicans. They don't necessarily want to stay in the U.S. forever."
Some 160,000 refugees have come to L.A. from El Salvador since 1980, when the crossfire of insurgency and repression escalated. Most are unskilled and terribly poor. In 1981 Narciso Cardoza walked over the Mexican border into Texas, illegally, and then flew to L.A. to join his wife and daughter, now 5, in East L.A. "I thought I would be living with Americans, lots of blonds speaking English and playing baseball," he says of his arrival, "but it looked just like Mexico to me." He is disapproving of his Mexican neighbors who, he says, "sit around all day, swearing and drinking beer instead of working." Cardoza, 28, has a $3.50-per-hr. job as a clerk in an auto-parts store.
He is struck more by the everyday American plenty than by the grander promise. "All these tennis courts," he exults, "where anybody can play for free! And lying empty most of the day." His ingenuous pleasure could make a cynic weep. "The apples, the peaches, the strawberries are all so good here, and cheap! The first time my wife and I went to the market together," he says, "we spent $20 just on fruits and vegetables." One of his small dreams: "I'd like to go to an American disco some day and dance."
In the Salvadoran neighborhood in Pico-Union, a Japanese restaurateur has opened a place called El Libertad El Salvador, and serves teriyakiburgers. All over the city and county, in fact, the ethnics have bumped up against each other and produced some vivid, only-in-L.A. mongrels. Gutierrez & Weber,