Ruckus, then fadeout

By Timothy Pratt

Saturday, June 16, 2007 | 7:36 a.m.

PAHRUMP - Most of the seats in the Bob Ruud Community Center were empty.

There were no Hispanics in the hall.

It was just another town board meeting, and the two dozen or so regulars in the audience plus the sheriff in civvies were patiently plodding through the agenda with the five elected officials on stage.

Six months ago many predicted that those meetings would start drawing more Gonzalezes and Figueroas, along with the Parkers and the Smiths. But on this night, it wasn't happening.

In fact, many of the changes predicted or hoped for last fall as the town of 37,000 tumbled into an international media scrum while tussling over English-only and illegal immigration ordinances have failed to become reality, townspeople said.

One ordinance - the most controversial - made English Pahrump's official language for local government, prohibited flying a foreign flag by itself and blocked town services to illegal immigrants. After four months of generally unflattering publicity, it was repealed by an almost entirely new board in January.

Another proposal , which would have required illegal immigrants to register within 24 hours of arriving in Pahrump and to pay $200 for doing so , never got off the ground in December.

Observers said at the time that the ordinances would change how Hispanics lived in the town, promoting activism. Some envisioned increased tension between Hispanics and others. And others worried that Pahrump, largely unknown outside Nevada, was well on its way to becoming an international poster child for intolerance toward undocumented workers.

But six months after the last attempt at regulating illegal immigration through local law foundered, Hispanics apparently haven't been galvanized to participate in local politics en masse, judging by Tuesday's meeting and comments of several people who were there.

Two attempts to organize Hispanics into groups are moving slowly if at all, others said.

So far in 2007 Hispanics and the rest of town have each retreated to their corners, in a sort of truce that Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo called an "uneasy peace."

Vicky Parker, a 63-year-old retiree who hasn't missed a town board meeting in about a year, said she opposed the English-language ordinance, which she found "offensive."

She remembers the boisterous Dec. 12 meeting , when about 500 people, most of them Hispanic, nearly turned local politics into a contact sport. At that meeting the proposal to register illegal immigrants was debated.

Parker stood at that meeting and delivered an invitation to the Hispanics present.

"I hope you continue to come," she said.

They did, but only for a few meetings.

"Then it tapered off," she said. "Now it's the same 12 to 15 people."

DeMeo, who also opposed the English-only ordinance and announced at the time that he wouldn't enforce it, said he has not received reports of violence or conflict between Hispanics and others during the past six months.

But he noted that at the town's annual Cinco de Mayo festival, Hispanic attendance was down. He had heard, DeMeo said, that it was because many linked the event to the town and decided to stay away.

DeMeo thinks many Hispanics still feel stung by the months of wrangling over their language and identity in public, and keep more to themselves.

Local government, he said, may have to extend an olive branch to draw Hispanics to town politics.

Jacqueline Guerra, a Mexican-born, bilingual U.S. citizen who attended last fall's meetings, said this week that immigrants new to the country and lacking in formal education may see the town as unfriendly.

Town Manager David Richards said he hadn't heard those sentiments. But noting that town government has had "very little interaction with Latinos" since December, he called the idea of reaching out to Hispanics an "admirable objective."

Michael Miraglia, the former town board member who introduced the controversial ordinances, said he was no longer working actively on the issue, although "nobody has forgotten about it."

He said he has a pleasant interaction with Hispanics regularly during lunch at El Cancun, a restaurant on State Route 160.

"We sit down and eat, and the ladies serving you speak English," Miraglia said. "When they do their stuff in the kitchen they speak Spanish. I always thought that was OK. You expect that type of atmosphere in a restaurant like that. But to carry on daily activities - that should be in English."

One person qualified to address that issue is Norma O'Connor, director of the adult education program for the Nye County School District.

O'Connor, who is from Puerto Rico, has seen her English as a second language classes balloon from 90 to 150 students in the past year.

"They want to learn," O'Connor said. "They came here to work, not be abused."

At the same time, she said , she has had to reassure many of her students in recent months.

"They think if they come to class, immigration is going to come and catch them," she said.