culture shifts

rodrick_98 · Mar 25, 2007

By LORI RODRIGUEZ
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

PASADENA — Historian C. David Pomeroy Jr. traces his Pasadena family back four generations to the founding of the rural community that became rough-neck, honky-tonk heaven.

Pomeroy, 66, and his family witnessed waves of change. The strawberry fields, courtesy of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton after the turn-of-the-century Galveston hurricane, are still commemorated in street names and festivals. World War II industrialism fueled Ship Channel refineries that still chug on. The Ku Klux Klan ensconced itself in a bookstore on Red Bluff and, much to the relief of city fathers, packed up in the early 1980s. Gilley's mechanical bull stopped bucking years ago.

But Pasadena, ever the chameleon, is undergoing its most profound shift to date as the old Anglo culture gives way to a new and growing Hispanic majority.

Though the trend started decades ago, Hispanics' majority status was first recorded in the 2000 Census. Mostly new immigrant families with children, they are filling the schools, propelling the economy and transforming the landscape.

"Change is a hard thing to accept," Pomeroy says.

"In the case of my father, it was all, 'This is our town. What are they doing here?' The old school still is all about how this town is not how it used to be.

"You have a different culture, you don't quite understand it, and you're fearful of it."

Pomeroy, a retired lawyer steeped in historical perspective, has moved out of heavily Hispanic north Pasadena off Texas 225 to a booming new development along Fairmont Parkway on the south side.

Most of his minority neighbors are Asian and Middle Eastern business owners. He and his wife have stopped shopping at a couple of former haunts.

"It's just that they're so Hispanic-oriented now that all the signs and other information are in a language we don't understand," he says.

The physical shifts are startling.

Now nearly 60 percent Hispanic, Pasadena was chosen as the pilot site for H-E-B's pioneering Mi Tienda, a supermarket directly aimed at Spanish speakers. The old Elks Lodge has become El Palacio Real for quinceañeras and other galas.

The Denver-based Cinema Latina chain's first theater in Texas offers up U.S. blockbusters dubbed or subtitled in Spanish and chili on the popcorn. The local Wal-Mart has made room for an in-store health care clinic called Mi Acceso Soludable, or My Healthy Access.

St. Pius Catholic Church rubs shoulders with Templo Apostolico and other immigrant-favored evangelical congregations.

'Sort of like an incubator'

"Our area looks like what the rest of Texas someday will look like," says Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, whose district includes Pasadena.

"We're sort of like an incubator. What works for us today in our area will work in the rest of Texas in the future."

When actor John Travolta and crew descended on Pasadena to film Urban Cowboy in 1980, the good-ol'-boy part of the city's history was immortalized. But for some of the earliest Hispanic residents, the harsher, racist elements of the culture are just as well forgotten.

"My mama brought me to Pasadena from Mexico when I was 3 years old. Whenever we would drive along Red Bluff at the corner of Thomas, I would duck," says Isaac Sauceda, pastor of the Divine Restoration Apostolic Church, recalling the KKK bookstore.

"Every single Hispanic in Pasadena lived in a little area downtown called 'Little Mexico.' It wasn't so much segregated. It was just a lot of family that found comfort near each other."

Pastor Wayne McClain, who started the Apostolic Church, United Pentecostal Church International, in 1968 with an all-white membership, now heads a congregation made up of a lively mix of newcomers, retirees, Hispanics and a couple of Jamaicans. McClain helped Sauceda start his own church a decade ago.

"They started out in a small wedding chapel with about 70 people. After about six months, they outgrew that and had about 150 when we brought him into our fellowship hall for a while. They have 300-plus now," says McClain.

Political clout still lacking

Hispanics, however, haven't similarly penetrated the body politic.

Garcia has represented Pasadena on Commissioners Court since January 2003. But for decades, the Precinct 2 office was held by Jim Fonteno and, before him, John Ray Harrison, who was quintessential "old Pasadena." His daughter, Nikki Harrison Caffee, is Garcia's Pasadena liaison.

Mayor John Manlove, who was adopted as a baby by white parents, is half-Hispanic. But the City Council always has been all white and mainly male.

"You will see that changing. There really haven't been any viable Hispanic candidates, but there will be. It's just a matter of time," Manlove says.

"If there is any group that has a real hold on the American dream, it's Hispanics. They see the value of family; they have a strong work ethnic; and they really are the hardest workers around. Most of our area has embraced the change."

Serving the neighborhood

On a bustling corner on Spencer Highway and Shaver, H-E-B's Mi Tienda offers a Centro de Negocios, styled after a Mexican village storefront, where customers line up to buy money orders, pay bills and wire cash to families back home.

A 56-foot meat aisle features every manner of Hispanic exotica. Think tripe, tongues, cheeks, kidneys and sweetbreads. Cabrito, or goat, carcasses hang behind a glass enclosure.

Masa, or flour, for tamales is made on site and from scratch, starting with the corn kernels in half a dozen flavors. Fresh cheeses appeal to every immigrant taste — for those who really can tell the difference between Salvadoran and Mexican queso fresco.

Mi Tienda sits on the site of an old Albertson's.

Its flipside is Richie's Country Cookin', a Hispanic-owned, American-themed diner that sits on the site of a failed Mexican restaurant on South Richie near West Southmore.

Country music blares. Red, white and blue dominates. A prominent plaque proclaims, "God Bless the USA." The place is a visual ode to Americanism.

Every weekday, blue-collar uniforms from the refineries abound: CIMA, Citgo, Lyondell, Valero. Retirees amble in from the neighborhood. New immigrants stud the crowd.

Since Richie's opened in April, lunch lines have extended out the front door for the old-fashioned, blue-plate specials: meatloaf, pork chops, chicken and dumplings.

"We priced it for the neighborhood. We get a lot of customers from around here," manager Valentino Rodriguez says.

"At first, Hispanics weren't coming in, but gradually they found out that the owner was Hispanic and most of the staff was, too. It made them feel at home, and now we get a lot of them."

Schools show the future

The inexorable Latinization of Pasadena is most evident in the schools, ever the demographic barometer of the future.

Kirk Lewis, who became superintendent of the Pasadena Independent School District in April, has worked at the district since 1986.

When he started, the student population was 60 percent Anglo and 31 percent Hispanic. Today, it's 73 percent Hispanic and 14 percent Anglo.

Enrollment has soared from 35,000 students to more than 50,000; 26 percent are limited-English-proficient.

"Our teachers have done a great job of meeting our goal, which is getting bilingual students into regular English classes within a three-year period. While they're in bilingual class, they're also learning content so they don't fall behind," Lewis says.

The continuing influx of immigrant children poses a challenge, he says.

"It does change the way we have to approach our delivery of instruction. But it doesn't change anything else. Every one of them has the same ambitions, the same dreams, the same hope for a better life as our other students," Lewis says.

"It's our role to find out how best to help them achieve that."

In the two decades that Lewis has worked with the district, Pasadena voters have approved almost $600 million in bonds to build more schools.

"If we're going to have a community that's viable, then all of the children must be educated," he says. "Citizens here know they have a job to do for the children."
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4659310.html

like they said, pasadena is like an incubator. what are the consequences if the city thrives? what if the city fails?

Deckard · Mar 25, 2007

What if Stinkadena ever stops... stinking??

D&D. Hold Your Nose.

A_3PO · Mar 25, 2007

I haven't been to that area in over 15 years, though I've been aware of the changing demographics. About 15-16 years ago, one of my co-workers told me of how a Hispanic family bought a house across the street from her. The would-be next door neighbors to the new family put their house up for sale the very next day and the wife told my co-worker, "We're moving to the white part of Pasadena". I lived in the southeast part of Houston at the time and heard many stories from friends who had bad experiences there.

A like Deckard says, the smell. There were times it would waft over where we lived and I wondered how a person could handle living closer to the smell than we did.

hkomives · Mar 27, 2007

"Our area looks like what the rest of Texas someday will look like," says Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia, whose district includes Pasadena.

"We're sort of like an incubator. What works for us today in our area will work in the rest of Texas in the future."
Click to expand...

Not saying her prediction is off-target or that there's anything negative with it. It just seem a little bit of showboating.

Pole · Mar 27, 2007

Damnit......another reminder that I still haven't made it over to Mi Tienda. And it's only about ten miles away.

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