Miguel del Valle flunked first grade. “All year I thought I was doing OK,” he says. “The teacher put me and a couple other kids who spoke Spanish in a corner and gave us table games to play with. She taught the rest of the class, and we had a good time. Then in June she called in me and my mother and explained that I had failed because I couldn’t speak English. My heart stopped!”
Both supporters and critics choose the same word to describe del Valle: consistent. “He’s that rare bird who’s committed to family and community,” says Roberto Rivera, his former legislative aide. “When you talk about other subjects, you can see him quickly losing interest.”
Perhaps Miguel del Valle is too much an idealist, too little a schemer to advance very far in the grimy world of politics. Some regard him as just the kind of highly principled coalition builder who, given the right set of circumstances, might bring together Chicago’s Hispanics, white liberals, and even blacks in the sort of inspired unity that existed briefly in the mid-1980s; friends have urged him to run for the new Hispanic congressional district carved out of sections of the northwest and southwest sides. But while Gutierrez plunges ahead–he was expected to announce his candidacy shortly before this paper went to press–del Valle seems to be concentrating on more modest goals for the moment. He remembers how the regular Democratic organization amassed its heavy artillery against him in 1990 and very nearly seized his senate seat. “I was naive,” he says. “I thought if I worked hard, kept in touch with the community and other elected officials, the bosses would respect me. I found out it doesn’t necessarily work that way.” Del Valle is up for re-election to the state senate in 1992, and he feels an obligation to retain his seat if he can. His education continues, he admits, and there’s no point in trying to jump too far too soon. After all, you can’t even get into second grade if you don’t know the language well enough.
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But as the numbers of Hispanics have gone up, the quality of their lives has gone down. A recent study by University of Chicago sociologist Marta Tienda states that Puerto Ricans in particular are developing the characteristics of an underclass. “This minority group fared worse than blacks in the 1980s,” she writes, “a reversal of the situation prevailing during the 1990s.” An extensive 1988 study by the Chicago Reporter of four census tracts in the East Humboldt Park neighborhood (near North and California) revealed a 68 percent rise in poverty between 1970 and 1980, a 78 percent rise in serious assaults, and a 61 percent hike in robberies and burglaries. The median family income–$10,872–was among the lowest in the city, and 40 percent of families were headed by a single parent.
Among the most telling statistics provided by the Reporter was that 73 percent of the class of 1983 at Roberto Clemente High School, which serves much of that neighborhood, had dropped out. Though the dropout rate leveled off at about 50 percent in subsequent years, more than half of those who graduated were performing well below grade level. It is hardly a surprise then that between 1980 and 1986 Hispanic enrollment in public universities in Chicago plummeted by more than 10 percent; many high school graduates would not be able to pull their weight in higher education and they knew it.
Del Valle insists this report, unlike many churned out by legislative committees, is not destined for a dusty spot on the shelf. “This is a blueprint document–these issues will be addressed!” He recently proposed that the University of Illinois earmark 10 percent of the gross revenues from its athletic programs for minority admission and retention. He says he only meant to send a message and didn’t expect school officials to jump at the idea. They didn’t.
Now on the books is a law he proposed authorizing a $50 fine for motorists who play loud car stereos. Block-club members in his district had urged him to muffle the “boom cars.”
