A Bridge to the Past and Future for L.A. Latinos

Nick Saldivar was there, and Bill Hernandez, too, along with six or eight others, most of them retirees.

"Everyone here voted for Antonio," Saldivar said after taking a quick tally. If anyone had actually voted for Mayor Jim Hahn, he was too shy to raise a hand.

Vega, 80, had already been up to the window for his Baja special -- eggs, potatoes and frijoles. When I arrived, he was at an outdoor table talking with his pals about an event none of them would have predicted a half-century ago.

"Do you know the history of California?" asked Vega, a retired mechanic. "This used to be Mexico. But when we came, we were the minority. Now we're the majority, and there's a Latino mayor. He knows the Eastside, too. He grew up here."

Across the street, a Villaraigosa banner the size of a movie screen was draped from the winner's campaign headquarters. And the old-timers were acting like proud uncles.

"It's something you have in your blood, and you feel better," Saldivar said of his identification with Villaraigosa.

Hernandez, a retired landscaper, offered an observation.

"It's the evolution of time," he said. Villaraigosa's election, as he sees it, is just part of the slow and inevitable transformation of Los Angeles.

"Look at this," Saldivar said as he opened a copy of the Spanish-language newspaper Hoy to Page 3. "That's the last Latino mayor of Los Angeles."

He pointed to Cristobal Aguilar, whose final term ended in 1872, when the population of Los Angeles was less than 6,000. Aguilar, who got around town on a horse. One of the guys said that back in Aguilar's day, it was a bigger deal to be the city water czar, and Aguilar had held that job, too.

Aguilar served two terms as mayor. He finally lost to an Anglo who made an issue of Aguilar's poor English. More than 130 years later, Villaraigosa took some heat because his Spanish wasn't up to snuff.

In a strange way, that makes him the right mayor at the right time. The city is the world capital of melded cultures, and as a former street urchin who turned himself into a success, Villaraigosa is a symbol of unity and hope in a city of resettled lives -- at least until the honeymoon is over and he actually has to do something.