| IT ALMOST RAINED ON MY PARADE |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, September 15 2003 |
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| Los Angeles -- It's almost impossible to be part of any public civic event in California during these days of highly charged political climate and not get caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately, I did.
It was 85 degrees. The skies were clear, and the sun was shining brightly on my shoulders. But somehow I felt that it almost rained on my parade when a CNN reporter asked me if it was Arnold, not I, who should be riding in the Grand Marshal car during the Mexican Independence Day Parade in East Los Angeles.
There I was, practicing my wave and enjoying the thrill of having been invited to head the parade that I grew up watching as a child in Los Angeles. Talk about an ego-booster. Then suddenly it seemed as if I had been recalled. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I was told, was to be the Grand Marshal. Shortly afterward, it was he who got recalled -- or uninvited, as his campaign put it. The reason, the campaign claimed, was because of political pressures from the Democrats.
Sounds logical. Both Democrats and Republicans are eager to get the Hispanic vote in the California recall election, and what better place to try to get it than at one of the most important Latino events of the year, attended by an estimated 300,000 people?
What did not make sense was that the Republican gubernatorial candidate would have been invited to be Grand Marshal when I was the Grand Marshal. It's true that there is a letter dated Aug. 5 inviting Mr. Schwarzenegger to the parade and also an e-mail following up the invitation, sent Aug. 22. I saw them both. Strange, though. Aug. 5 is the day my airplane tickets for the L.A. trip were purchased, and I was invited to the parade back in June.
So what really happened? Here's the scoop, to the best of my knowledge. The president of the Mexican Patriotic Civic Committee, which organizes the event, together with the Mexican Consulate, told me he had asked a friend to invite actress Salma Hayek as guest of honor to the parade. Salma was unavailable, so the "friend" took it upon herself to invite Arnold Schwarzenegger instead on behalf of the committee and the consulate, apparently using a doctored letterhead stationery paper. Ambassador Martha Lara, consul general of Mexico in Los Angeles, told me that the woman who supposedly invited the Austrian actor had no authority to speak on behalf of the Mexican government.
If that's the case, then it raises some interesting questions. What would motivate the woman who signed the alleged invitation to forge a letter inviting "the Terminator" without authorization? If Arnold was never officially invited to the parade as Grand Marshal or in any other capacity, then why did so many media outlets report that he had been uninvited? Was it all fabricated to make it look as if Democrats were depriving him of the opportunity to reach out to the Mexican community? If the mystery woman would answer my phone calls, maybe it would all be crystal-clear.
At the end of the day, it would have been a good idea for Arnold to have been at the parade. He could have seen firsthand how neither he nor I was the main topic on people's minds that Sunday morning. It was Senate Bill 60, signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis, allowing all who live and work in California access to driver's licenses, regardless of their immigration status. "The Terminator" would have seen the signs up and down Cesar Chavez Ave. and the people cheering on the law he has vowed to repeal if elected governor. If Arnold had seen the faces of the very people who could benefit from that law, he might have realized that saying, "Hasta la vista, baby" to SB60 would not earn him the Hispanic vote, even if he had been Grand Marshal of the parade. |
