Latin American immigrants are frustrated too

Like Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland, with its street trolleys and small-town architecture, Plaza Mexico in Lynwood harks back to a simpler past.

Angelenos with roots in Latin America go there for a taste of the old country.

There's a roofed bandstand in the center, just like in the pueblos back home, and the faux stone facade of a colonial building -- walk through it and you enter a department store.

I went to this fake Latin America -- with its statues of Mexican patriots and wrought-iron benches like the ones in Mexico City parks -- to ask people about the real one, that region of natural and man-made splendors, salt-of-the-earth farmers and factory workers, and also quite a few criminal cartels.

It seemed a good spot for the dialogue I sometimes imagine should take place between the Spanish-speaking immigrants whose stories I often tell, and the small but vocal group of Times readers who have a deep disdain for them and their homelands.

Why don't you write about corrupt leaders in Mexico and Central America, those readers ask me. They're the ones responsible for people jumping over the fence to get here.

At Plaza Mexico, I found a lot of agreement with that sentiment and others like it. People are frustrated and angry about the conditions that led them and their countrymen to migrate. And some worry about the misperceptions back home about life in the U.S.

"I think one of the biggest causes of immigration is the poor management of the governments in our countries," Jonathan Gutierrez, a 25-year-old Orange County construction worker, told me in Spanish. "Everything is swallowed up by corruption, and there's no help for the neediest people. That's why people come here."

Gutierrez is a slight young man with a hipster air who migrated to the U.S. four years ago from the Mexican state of Hidalgo. He came to Plaza Mexico with Cecilia Sumano, a 26-year-old nanny. They smiled at the outdoor mall's kitschy vision of Mexico and took pictures of themselves in front of one of the statues.

Some of those who write to me want to tell potential immigrants that they should stay in the real Mexico. So does Gutierrez.

"Right now, it's not worth it," he said. "Work is scarce. To leave your family behind isn't worth it if you're going to be as bad off as you were back home."

Still, Gutierrez says he doesn't regret coming to the U.S. "Last year was tough," he told me, but things have gone OK for him. And if he hadn't come, he'd still be back in Hidalgo thinking about what he was missing.