Bellevue: Aqui Se Habla Espanol

Say you have a bad headache. Say you speak only Spanish. Try walking into a doctor's office and explaining your ailment when everybody else speaks English. ---------------------------------------------------------------

Angelica Dominguez has used a lot of body language since her family arrived in Bellevue from Mexico last year. It gets confusing.

"Dolor de cabeza," Dominguez recalls saying, putting her hands to her temples and grimacing.

The clinic staff eventually got the idea and helped her. Her clinic now has a Spanish-speaking staffer. And when she needs something at the nearby Crossroads Mall, she has a friend write the words in English on a pad.

"It is difficult for us," Dominguez said in Spanish. "When we try to understand but we don't speak English, sometimes there is confusion."

Dominguez, 28, had a lot of confusing incidents as a janitor last year. And working late at night made her nervous. She quit in May to stay home with her two young daughters in their small Crossroads apartment. Her husband, Juan, 35, works days as a janitor for Ace Novelty Co. in Bellevue.

"Here it is very difficult to live with one income," Juan Dominguez said in Spanish. "In Mexico, it is easier to live with one income," but much harder to find a job.

THE SUBURBAN LIFE

Suburbs like Bellevue are attracting Spanish-speaking immigrants, who once concentrated in Seattle or rural farm communities in northwestern and Eastern Washington. Like Angelica and Juan, many of the suburban immigrants are seeking better jobs and a lifestyle slower than in larger cities.

And like the Dominguezes, many of these families speak only Spanish. Of the the 2,189 Latinos in Bellevue, 63 percent speak Spanish at home.

Of the 73,903 Bellevue residents, 2.5 percent are Latinos, up from 1.7 percent 10 years ago, according to the U.S. census. Seattle's Latino population also grew, from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent - totalling 18,349 people - in the past decade.

Jobs in hotels, restaurants and office janitorial services drew many of the Latino families that head teacher Marcia Zervis saw in Sammamish High School's English as a Second Language (ESL) program last year. Bellevue-district Administrator Jerry Litzenberger predicts Spanish-speaking students will be the district's next large influx.

In the past school year, the number of ESL Spanish students went from 51 to 113, pushing Spanish from the fifth to the second most frequently spoken language in the Sammamish ESL program, surpassing Russian, Vietnamese and various Chinese dialects and settling behind Japanese.

"We don't have any CEOs (among Spanish-speaking parents) such as in the Japanese immigrant groups," Zervis said, "but we do have some business owners. To a degree, some of these families also fit a broad description of migrant workers. Some are here because they find better jobs in the service industry than in the fields."

Spanish-speaking immigrants are a diverse group, some bringing professional experience but little English-language proficiency, others seeking a better life than picking cherries and cutting asparagus could provide.

Raul Perez Calleja was an economist in Mexico City before moving to Bellevue with his family five years ago. He worked construction jobs while he learned English in free classes at the Lake Washington Technical College, then opened a Mexican restaurant in Lake Forest Park for two years, which he recently closed.

The restaurant experience showed Perez Calleja the need for a Latino business and service network.

"In the restaurant business you meet a lot of people," PerezCalleja said. "They would call me and say, `I need a dentist who speaks Spanish.' It's hard when you need something but you don't know English or what is available in this community."

Perez Calleja, who now works part time at a cabinet store, formed La Asociacion de la Comunidad Latina (Latino Community Association) in Bellevue this year. He has kept a list of Puget Sound-area Hispanic professionals, businesses, services, entertainment and government agencies, and this fall plans to distribute a directory he financed by selling ads to these groups. Perez Calleja says the desire for a slower-paced lifestyle will continue to draw Latinos to the suburbs.

But many low-income families become trapped between the suburban dream and service-industry jobs. Struggling to make a living at the minimum wage creates the "classic definition of the working poor," says the Rev. Horacio Yanez of Bellevue's St. Louise Catholic Church, which offers the only Spanish-language Roman Catholic service on the Eastside.

"Bellevue is a hospitality town," Yanez said. "Families might get enough for rent working as waiters, but any food has to come from somewhere else."

The school district's Zervis has asked the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to add service jobs to the migrant-laborer category so the students would be eligible for additional education services, including a statewide computer registry, providing the chance for educational continuity. The problems these families have with money, education and frequent mobility are similar to the problems faced by migrant workers on farms or in the fishing trade.

Yanez says Eastside churches are pooling resources to help immigrant families with housing, furniture, food and finding jobs. St. Louise also runs a job-referral service, helping people find jobs that do not require fluent English. Pay averages between $5 and $6 an hour.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Signs in eight languages hang on Crossroads Community Center walls, saying hello or advising participants not to bring food or drinks into the gymnasium. The 11 part-time center employees speak many of those languages. And the Spanish speakers have been getting a workout lately, says Selwyn Foster, recreation-program administrator.

The number of Spanish-speaking families participating in the sports and other social-service programs has jumped in the past seven months, says Foster, whohad to brush up on her Spanish. The center will offer Spanish classes this fall so residents can better communicate with Spanish-speaking neighbors. Bellevue Mayor Cary Bozeman believes the diverse influx provides an opportunity for Bellevue to step out of its stereotypically homogenous past. Bozeman appointed a Cultural Diversity Task Force last month to promote positive relations among culturally and racially diverse people.

Jorge Celaya rarely uses Spanish to gossip on Bellevue streets anymore. Nowadays chances are an ear will perk up. That was not the case in the early '80s, when he was the only Latino in his Sammamish High School class.

"Now you can go anywhere and the person behind you could be Spanish-speaking," Celaya said.

The Costa Rican native has watched that change. And he saw a business opportunity: Spanish-speaking people need Spanish entertainment. Celaya opened Video & Mercado Latino eight months ago with 150 videos. He now carries more than 1,500, and a varied stock of groceries from south of the border.

After local banks turned thumbs down on his idea, a Bellevue couple loaned Celaya $30,000 in start-up money. The adjacent business owners in the K-Mart mall on 148th Avenue Northeast also predicted failure. But business is booming.

"I went from 30 customers the first month to more than 1,200," Celaya said. "They ask me for Mexican mole, coffee from Colombia, Mexican hot sauce, soft drinks from Brazil. They even ask for brooms from Latin America. The ones here are not of the same quality."

Celaya and his Honduran wife, Sonia, also help Spanish-speaking people fill out credit applications, get phone and electrical service and translate material. The K mart mall shop is a few blocks from east Bellevue, a neighborhood where many of the Spanish-speaking live.

"It is not just a making-money thing," Celaya said, "it is a place for people to get together."

Businesses such as Video & Mercado Latino and Video Mexico in downtown Bellevue, the Crossroads Community Center staff and the Bellevue Spanish religious services provide a refuge of familiarity for the Spanish-speaking.

Mass in Spanish begins at 12:30 p.m. each Sunday at St. Louise, but churchgoers continue to arrive throughout the hour. Up to 750 celebrants, from Bellevue to Everett, attend, and the Rev. Yanez estimates about 90 percent don't speak English.

"They gather outside the church and sit on the steps or in cars and talk," Yanez said. "I've left here at 1:30 and come back at 5:30 for the next service and they are still here."

But for some immigrants, making a home in Bellevue isn't the same as making Bellevue home. About half the people using the job-finding service at St. Louise are men, many of whom send money back home. Many are lonely, and Yanez says some struggle with alcohol abuse and depression because they miss their families.

The Dominguezes also plan to return to Mexico. The family hopes to have saved enough money by next year to return to the town of Tuxpan in Angelica's native Jalisco stateand open a business.

Juan and Angelica do not expect to learn fluent English, but they hope their children, Angelica, 10, and Carla Estrella, 5, will. When they grow up, it will help them land good jobs in the tourist industry in Mexico. With money saved up from steady work here, and a stint of U.S. education for their daughters now enrolled in Bellevue schools, the Dominguezes see a bright future for themselves - in Mexico.

"Time goes by too fast in the United States," said Angelica Dominguez in Spanish. "People live a rapid lifestyle. When I was working, there were days when Juan and I wouldn't have time to talk. That never happened in Mexico."