 | | PAGE 1/A SECTION |
TODAY o February 15, 2001
|
|
Chains of diplomacy broken
Retirement will allow Latino advocate a more active role in confronting state's immigration issues.
Saeed Ahmed - Staff
Thursday, February 15, 2001
It's not easy trying to alter public opinion in the face of long-held misperception. Yet, few do it as well as Teodoro Maus.
For more than a decade, the Atlanta-based consul general for
Mexico has effectively mixed diplomacy and activism to shape the way Mexican immigrants are viewed here and to influence policies affecting them.
So when Maus announced he was retiring --- just as President Bush and Mexican leader Vicente Fox promised to chart a new course for U.S.-Mexico relations --- it begged the question: Why?
"It's time," says Maus, 65, who steps down as Mexico's top diplomat for Georgia and three neighboring states on Feb. 28. "The office needs to be opened up to new ideas and new thoughts."
That, however, is just part of the answer. Leaving the post also will allow Maus, who plans to stay in Atlanta, to speak out on immigration issues in ways he hasn't been able to do so far.
"In the past, I have been very careful in raising objections on many instances where I felt a voice was needed," Maus says. "Since I won't be constricted by my diplomatic status anymore, I can take on those issues now."
That undoubtedly comes as good news for the thousands of undocumented Mexicans for whom Maus has been a vocal advocate.
Working in jobs and at wages most Americans wouldn't consider, these illegal immigrants play an integral role in the state's economy but reap little benefit from the prosperity they help create, Maus says. Since his arrival here in 1989, the number of such undocumented aliens in Georgia has soared from 35,000 to 250,000. With added visibility has come a series of challenges --- complaints about racial profiling, workplace bias and denial of basic services.
For such people, Maus has been a "wonderful support," says Venus Gines, whose organization, Dia de la Mujer Latina Inc., sponsored a big send-off for him Saturday. "Aside from his role as a diplomat, he has provided an accessible, warm environment for the underserved, not just in the Mexican community, but in other Latino communities as well," Gines says.
Throughout his years as Consul-General, Maus has
championed causes that often went against conventional
thinking -- from criticizing Smyrna police for
violating state law by searching homes of illegal
immigrants without warrants, to attacking a Norcross
ordinance requiring businesses to display signs only
in English.
And by cultivating relationships with government
officials, Maus was able to achieve results, such as
helping ease tensions caused by a police crackdown on
Hispanic laborers in Roswell, or arguing successfully
that Georgia law allow illegal immigrants to drive
legally with a valid license from their home country.
"I'm a strong believer in a state or county's rights
to draft its own laws," Maus says. "If you tell me I
have to stand on my head and pinch my nose to come
work in your county, I have no problem. But when a law
is set up to affect just one segment of the
population, then it's my obligation as a
representative to make it known."
Maus speaks in soft, cadenced tones that belie the intensity of his convictions. But he doesn't hesitate to challenge conventional thinking and, as a result, has occasionally been mired in controversy.
He once said the anti-immigrant mood in the United States was so strong that the Statue of Liberty should be taken down. And last year, his comments on a local radio show asserting that Hispanics should shun businesses that mistreat them raised questions in Mexico about whether he overstepped the proper role for a diplomat by calling for a boycott.
Earlier this week, as Maus sat down for an interview, he fielded calls from local media outlets about the recent shooting of a Decatur woman in Mexico City and from angry Atlantans taking exception to a newspaper opinion piece, in which Maus proposed permitting undocumented workers to obtain Georgia drivers' licenses.
"Whenever I promote something, half of the messages I get are callers saying 'we don't need these illegal Mexicans here --- either put them in jail or send them away,' " he says. "I call this 'wanting the hands, but not the body.' It's OK for them to stay when they're making dollars for you, but it's time for them to go when they demand basic rights?"
To Maus, that attitude is hypocritical: "If you've never had a Vidalia onion or eaten a Georgia peach, if you've never bought chicken at 90 cents a pound for which some Mexican probably lost a finger in a processing plant in Gainesville, and if you've never been to a restaurant or used a road that was constructed using Mexican labor, then I will listen to your argument," Maus says. "Otherwise you're a hypocrite for not accepting that there is a Mexican person bettering your life somehow."
Growing up, Maus dreamed of becoming a painter -- diplomacy came much later, he says.
First, there were the years he spent as an architect
-- "a professional compromise," after
his father forbade him to pursue painting and he
refused to study economics as the elder
Maus wanted.
In between were the years making movies, and being
forced to leave Mexico after angering the government
by calling the cultural minister, who wanted certain
films banned, "a criminal."
And then there was the life Maus led as a painter in
New York, part of the budding neo-figurative movement
when abstract art was all the rage.
It was around that time that Maus was asked to become
a cultural attache for Mexico. He said he wasn't
interested but agreed on the condition that the
diplomatic post last no longer than a year.
That was in 1978, he says with a laugh.
Twenty-three years later, as he readies to bid his diplomatic career goodbye, Maus rattles off his post-retirement "wish list" with casual syncopation: He wants to take up painting again, to sit on the board of the Georgia Council of Arts to advance awareness of Latin American art, to finish a movie script on the life of revolutionary Leon Trotsky --- and, of course, to continue to be an advocate for Hispanic causes.
The office he inherited when he first moved to Atlanta in 1989 has grown from one with a staff of eight to one with 26 staffers offering more than 100 services to Mexicans in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.
Maus leaves knowing that the region has made some advances in casting off certain stereotypes of Mexicans.
"In the time I have been here, I have seen an incredible change in the way Mexicans are perceived --- from lazy and shiftless to hard workers with a strong work ethic," he says. "The challenge now is to open the doors of acceptance to these people who left their culture and their families to work poorly paid, dangerous jobs just to survive."
"Diversity," he adds, "is one of the most beautiful things to have happened to Georgia."
Maus also is optimistic about the future for Mexico.
Under Fox, Maus said, Mexico can finally begin to tackle the issues that caused mass migration of workers across the borders in the first place.
"I truly think that the new government is very honest and will be able to create well-paying jobs that will ensure a better standard of living for Mexicans," he says.
"President Bush and President Fox share very similar traits and have known each other for some time, and I think they can work out a fair deal between the two countries."
| 
Yellow Pages
Sunday