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Aztec-Modern. The same lack of science in the political arena is largely responsible for the Mexican-American's lack of collective clout. Though the pochos are 90% Democratic by registration and traditionally vote the straight party line, they have received little in the way of socioeconomic remuneration for their loyalty. Politically, they fare even worse: only one Mexican-American, Democratic Congressman Edward Roybal, 51, has made it to the House of Representatives, and he, as many pochos point out, is a New Mexican-born aristocrat who pays little attention to the problems of the barrios.
One Latin leader who has reconnoitered the corridors of power is Dr. Francisco Bravo, patriarch and prime philanthropist of the Los Angeles barrio. A bald, bullnecked surgeon who worked his way up from the vineyards and orchards of Ventura county to become a real estate millionaire, Bravo, 57, established the first free clinic for Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles (opened in 1941, after Bravo won his medical degree from Stanford), founded a scholarship fund that has dispensed more than $100,000 to brainy pochos, and owns an Aztec-modern bank, with assets of $4,000,000, in East Los Angeles.
Mavericks & Machismo. Bravo vivified the "Viva Kennedy!" drive in 1960, which helped win the state for the Democrats against Native Son Richard Nixon. And in 1966, it was Bravo who led the defection from Democrat Pat Brown's camp: Ronald Reagan drew 24% of Los Angeles' Mexican-American vote, thus tripling the usual G.O.P. total. Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel does even better in Latin neighborhoods, thanks to his excellent command of Spanish. But the man who wins Mexican-American backing most consistently and heartily is Democrat Sam Yorty, whose maverick manner as mayor of Los Angeles appeals to the Latin sense of machismo (masculine independence).
Though Mayor Yorty has installed a Spanish-speaking complaint bureau in city hall, Los Angeles' government is still overwhelmingly Anglo in makeup. Last week, Bravo and one of his Angeleno protégés, Valley State College Historian Julian Nava, 39, were making the first major effort to alter that situation. Running with Bravo's backing for the nonpartisan school board, Nava—the son of an indigent harp maker and winner of a Bravo scholarship loan to finish Harvard—was coursing the city in his green Volkswagen in a catalytic campaign against Incumbent Charles Reed Smoot, who has alienated the city's minorities by publicly opposing textbooks with added chapters on minority groups' contributions to America.
If Nava defeats Smoot in the May 31 runoff, he will become the first Mexican-American ever to sit on the city school board. That, for the pocho, would be a major step from self-pity toward self-representation.