Liga Latina leaps into the season -- and the public spotlight

The Sunday talk shows crackled with arguments over a new immigration crackdown, and the morning paper carried a story on handing out more green cards.

So you might think that undocumented Hispanic people gathered Sunday afternoon in Seattle would be full of speculation about their future in this country. But they were focused on something that seemed, at least for the moment, much more important: basketball.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Mexican dancer Rebecca Silva, 10, performs at center court as players line the edges during opening ceremonies Sunday for Seattle's Liga Latina de Basketball.

For the janitors and cooks and construction workers who kicked off another season of Seattle's Liga Latina de Basketball, it was a chance to renew friendships from the old country, check up on fellow immigrants, get tips on finding work and just hang with folks who would accept them.

They lined up for tamales and sucked down the sweet, hot, corn-and-milk drink Mexicans call champurrado. They watched a ribbon cutting and dancers and, eventually, basketball.

It was, in other words, all about basketball -- but also about much more than basketball. It was about community. Sunday's was the first league opener publicized by organizers.

"We want to show people that we exist," said league co-founder Francisco Quiroz, 26, before the opening ceremonies. "This is actually one of the ways we want Americans and other cultures to know about us.

"We're trying to do something good for the community."


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	From left, Erika Ramos, Jacinta Tuxpan and Josepha Angel, all from Michoacan, Mexico, cheer on their team during the first game on opening day for Liga Latina de Basketball.

Quiroz and his co-founder, brother Eduardo, 28, came from a village in Mexico's state of Oaxaca so poor it had no soccer field.

Instead, they played basketball, a version of which originated with the Aztecs who inhabited that land hundreds of years ago.

There were three places in the Oaxacan town where people came together: the school, the church and the basketball court.

So when the Quiroz brothers arrived in Seattle, they got together with friends for basketball. But something seemed ... missing. They organized their league. And then one day, they showed up at the offices of El Centro de la Raza in Beacon Hill.

"These young guys want to talk to you about basketball," the receptionist told Roberto Maestas, the executive director of the social-service agency.

"That intrigued me," Maestas recalled Sunday. "I was busier than hell, but I said, sure, show them in." He had himself grown up dirt-poor in New Mexico -- playing lots of basketball.

Maestas soon showed up at the league's playing spot at a covered -- but cracked -- open-air concrete court in an industrial strip near downtown.

"It just amazed me. It was colder than hell, and it was raining," Maestas recalled. "But there was a spirit of family."


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Players from Michoacan are introduced to the crowd of about 200 during opening ceremonies Sunday at a park in the Central District. The social-service agency El Centro de la Raza helped Liga Latina de Basketball find an indoor court for its fall tournament.

Maestas, who helped the league get an indoor gym for its fall tournament, recited a quote at the opening ceremonies Sunday from his old colleague, labor organizer Cesar Chavez: "When good people get together, good things will happen."

Also addressing the crowd of about 200 Sunday was Flor Alarcon, a geriatric mental-health counselor by profession who volunteers as the league's secretary.

"This is the No. 1 best way for the prevention of teen pregnancy, violence, gangs, sexually transmitted diseases, the use of alcohol and drugs," she said. "The best way to prevent that is sports, and for families to be a role model for the kids."

The league's slogan is, "Families united in the spirit of sports."

To those who criticize undocumented workers for coming to this country, Alarcon has an answer: "Are they aware of the history of this country? The people who did the really hard labor in the past were whites -- they came in waves. And African Americans came as slaves."

Likewise, she said of those in attendance Sunday: "They are here. Many are undocumented, but the majority are hard-working people. ... We need to feed our families. We need to survive."

Supporters of the league said they are proud of the teams and wanted to show them off.

"It's important to recognize we're here, playing by the rules and enjoying life," said Ed Davila, a South King County physician. "It's really about family."

The league's 24 teams are drawn mostly from Mexican immigrants, although players also hail from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Chile and Cuba.

"It is a social, cultural, economic and political event -- and recreation," Maestas said.

As for the basketball itself, it looks a lot like plain old American basketball, although it's played under slightly different rules that require players to display more restraint, and makes allowance for players to dribble slightly less without getting called for carrying. For some reason, it's a remarkably quiet version of the game.

But it's like American basketball and football and other sports in one respect. "Everybody thinks the referees are wrong," Maestas said.