ARTICLES
December 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Sellout
Edward Roybal and His Friend, the Cardinal
BY CHARLES A. COULOMBE
On October 24, one of Los Angeles' leading politicians died -- former Democratic congressman Edward Roybal. Congressman Roybal was the first U.S. representative I would ever meet; he came to my investiture as a Boy Scout in Troop 363 at Blessed Sacrament, Hollywood in 1972. It was a high point for my father, who despite being a Republican, admired Roybal immensely -- at that time.
The first Hispanic to represent California in the House since Romualdo Pacheco, a Republican, left that body in 1883, Congressman Roybal, despite having retired from office in 1992, bequeathed a strong influence that pervades local and state politics to this day. This was primarily through his role in shaping an emergent Hispanic leadership that includes Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles city council president Antonio Padilla, County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Sheriff Lee Baca, and Roybal's own daughter, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (who inherited part of her father's old district). All of these and more turned out to mourn the late congressman at his funeral on Halloween.
Learning that the funeral would commence at 9 a.m., I arrived at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels shortly before. Little did I realize, however, the magnitude of the event. Much of downtown was blocked off, and a sign proclaimed that cathedral parking was "reserved for limos and VIPs." Not having the one, and not being the other, I sought the parking space reserved for the hoi-polloi. Finding this area filled, and despairing of being able to park close enough to arrive anything like on time, I returned home.
A friend of mine made it in, however, and shared a program with me. The event was, as is customary at such rituals over which our cardinal presides, a feast of the local elite. The fact that so many of that elite are now Hispanic is a testimony to the effectiveness of Congressman Royal in securing what he wanted -- a place for his people at the table. All of the worthies mentioned above (and more besides, such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Congressman David Drier, and Federal Appellate Judge Harry Preger son) got up and praised the late legislator for his commitment to social justice and for extending political opportunity to his community. The Precious Blood was offered in the stemware so beloved of our cardinal, although forbidden by Rome. The mariachis recessed as they had processed, and the cortege went off to bring its sad burden to New Calvary cemetery. The cardinal's name was misspelled in the program. I too was saddened by the event, but not, perhaps, in the same way as most of the participants.
Edward Roybal was born in New Mexico in 1916 but came with his family to Boyle Heights when he was six. At that time, the plight of Hispanics in California was, to put it mildly, disgraceful. Although the memory of the Spanish and Mexican pioneers of the state was honored in the romantic fashion of the Ramona school and Santa Barbara's "Old Spanish Days," their less assimilated descendants and later arrivals suffered from housing and employment discrimination, as well as forced segregation at municipal swimming pools. There was even some bias against them in Irish Catholic circles, although this was softened somewhat by the reception of refugee priests and nuns from the persecution of the Cristeros by the anti-clerical Mexican government. During World War II, such notorious occurrences as the Zoot Suit riots underscored the predicament of local Hispanics. As a youth, the future Congressman Roybal spoke out against both the situation of his own people and such developments as the interment of the Japanese-Americans.
Young Roybal returned from serving in World War II to find that little had changed. He ran unsuccessfully for the L.A. city council's ninth district in 1947; after his defeat, he co- founded the Community Service Organization to battle housing covenants and other forms of discrimination. So successful was this effort that two years later, Roybal became the first Hispanic to serve on the council in 68 years.
This was, of course, the Los Angeles immortalized in James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, the L.A. of Mickey Cohen and the fictional Easy Rawlins. The new councilman's efforts on behalf of equality engendered all sorts of personal pressures -- not excluding threats to himself and his family. But in 1959, he joined with 149 other Hispanic leaders and formed the Mexican American Political Association in Fresno, of which he was elected first president. The organization declared that it was "a non-partisan organization working for the social, economic, cultural and civic betterment of Mexican Americans and all other Spanish speaking Americans through political action. Goals are the election and appointment to public office of Mexican Americans and other persons sympathetic to our aims."
Three years later, Roybal was elected to Congress from a district covering such diverse communities as Boyle Heights, Hollywood, and Hancock Park. Roybal threw himself into the struggle for civil rights and joined several key committees. My father, a French-Canadian from New Bedford, Massachusetts, whose community had suffered discrimination from both the Yankee Republicans and Irish Democrats, identified strongly with Roybal in the first few years we were out here. He was very proud to shake Roybal's hand, that Autumn night in 1972.
This would change a few months later, after Roe v. Wade was decided in January of 1973. The Democratic Party, in fairly short order, became the party of all abortion, all the time. Catholic Democrats had to choose.
There is a word in Gaelic, sculpeen. It means "sellout," and came to be used of such Irish American pols as the Kennedys, who happily put the dictates of their party and its backers over their nationality and/or their Catholic faith. In Spanish, the word vendido means much the same. The dilemma facing Congressman Edward Roybal was whether or not, over abortion and subsequent moral issues, to stand by the truth, or sell his soul under the convenient phrase, "I am personally opposed, but...."
This would have been the time for Roybal to show the bravery he had displayed in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, to be the "sign of contradiction" that the Faith demands a Catholic politician in a failing society be. Instead, he sold his birthright for the pottage of a seat among a corrupt and cynical elite, an elite that hated everything his baptism required him to promise. Moreover, he created a generation of Hispanic politicians for whom being vendido was an honor, so long as it meant power. The most recent fruit of this effort was perhaps California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, another graduate of the Roybal School, publicly dancing for joy when the news of Proposition 73's defeat was announced. Roybal's congresswoman-daughter has a 100 percent rating from the pro-abortion advocacy group, NARAL Pro-Choice America.
The clerics in Congressman Roybal's life apparently never tried to guide his conscience -- quite the contrary. In 1987, Roger Mahony, then merely archbishop of Los Angeles, wrote a letter declaring that the faithful could not vote for pro-abortion politicians. This was a bit odd, as there was no election immediately coming up at the time. Nevertheless, emboldened by this bit of pastoral advice, a move surfaced among the Golden State's Knights of Columbus to oust Roybal from the Knights because of his pro-abortion voting record. This effort foundered when Archbishop Mahony faxed a letter to Supreme Knight Virgil Dechant, quoted in the Wanderer, which said: "Cong. Roybal is a faithful Catholic, one of our best examples of a Hispanic Catholic in public life who is not afraid to live out his Catholic life with pride. I have known him and his family for over 30 years, and I have the highest respect for him as a member of this Archdiocese." Whatever anyone might claim, Roybal knew that his archbishop was with him, and the congressman voted for abortion happily until his retirement. In earthly terms, it was fitting that the cardinal should preside over the funeral of this man.
The political elite of Los Angeles took out a full-page advertisement eulogizing the late congressman, which concluded by saying, "when you pass by the Edward R. Roybal federal building, the Roybal Institute for Applied Gerontology or the Roybal Comprehensive Health Center in East Los Angeles, remember this quiet man and his many accomplishments."
This was unconsciously unkind. Visitors to the Roybal building's Temple Street entrance can see a piece of art, titled The New World, executed by artist Tom Otterness in 1991 for the sum of $266,000. Art commentator Michael Several has described it thus: "extending across the width of the plaza, a frieze on the pergola recalls ancient Roman reliefs placed on columns and arches. Rather than celebrating the triumphs or conquests of an emperor or general, however, Otterness portrays work, play, cooperation, war between the sexes and the violent overthrow and dismemberment of a despotic king. In a niche in the central pillar, a shackled female representing the artist as creator chained by the conventions and restraints of society, stares intently into the plaza. Appearing to be floating above the central fountain, a baby, symbolizing rebirth and renewal, lies on its back and holds aloft a globe."
What Several's description does not convey is that the frieze features lumpish, ape-like figures, their anatomical correctness (which manages somehow to be both obscene and unerotic), and the horror they inspire in the average viewer. The congressman himself was horrified at the sculptures adorning his namesake edifice. As Several also informs us, "shortly after The New World was installed in late 1991, District Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian complained to Congressman Edward R. Roybal that the baby in the fountain, with its exposed genitals, was 'a shrine to pedophiles.' Roybal, who claimed he saw two boys touch the baby's genitals and feared the sculpture would 'attract the homeless that come in, perverts, graffiti artists, everything,' called the GSA and ordered them to either modify the work or remove it. In response the GSA Regional Administrator, Edwin Thomas ordered the sculpture in the niche and the baby holding aloft the globe be removed."
However, as Several points out, "the art community quickly mobilized and protested the action, while Mayor Tom Bradley and the Los Angeles Times gave political and editorial support for the restoration." The offending sculptures were restored over Roybal's objections and will be associated with his name so long as the building lasts.
Some might find an obscure justice in that.