Mexican Americans Face Topic Of Alcohol's Devastation -- Fear Of Stereotypes Diminishes As More Latinos Publicly Acknowledge The Harm Inflicted By Booze

LOS ANGELES - As she often does on these cemetery visits, 7-year-old Jasmin Morales holds a 16-ounce can of Budweiser over her grandfather's gravestone.

She waits as her father, Raul, plucks away grass grown over the grave. He blows hard on the stone, whisking away remnants of dirt.

"There you go, pops. All cleaned up. Probably thirsty, huh?" Morales says. Carefully, lovingly, he pours the beer around the marker.

"You never thought you would see me sober," Morales murmurs at the ground. His massive chest heaves.

Morales regularly goes to the cemetery to fulfill his alcoholic father's dying wish: Forget the flowers; just bring me beer. But the ritual has taken on a new meaning for Morales, who is recovering from two decades of boozing.

"I don't have to die this death," Morales says. He bows and kisses the headstone. One by one, his children touch their lips to the spot. With a hard look, he says: "You guys know you don't have to drink and drug."

It is a message Morales presses on any Latino who will listen. Once or twice a week, Morales touts sobriety at schools and churches, striving to stem a problem that health experts say has gone unaddressed for far too long: Alcohol is devastating parts of the Mexican-American community.

Although many Mexican-American public figures and groups privately acknowledge the harm inflicted by alcohol, few have tackled the topic publicly, in part from fear it would cement ugly stereotypes. But doing nothing, many health officials warn, will hold back the nation's largest Latino group.

"This is a major public-health problem," says Raul Caetano, the former director of the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, which recently conducted what is considered the most authoritative survey of drinking among Mexican Americans.

Frequent heavy drinking among Mexican-American men, says Nelba Chavez, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' top official on substance abuse, "is a problem that is so serious that we need to figure out how to address it as quickly as possible."

"This needs to be talked about," says Democratic state Sen. Richard Polanco of Los Angeles, one of California's most powerful Latino politicians, who grew up with an alcoholic father on Los Angeles' Eastside. "Many of us have known about this problem for some time. Now, it is being substantiated."

Last year, the federal government undertook its first detailed look at substance abuse among ethnic groups. It found that Mexican-American men have the highest rates of heavy, problem drinking - downing five or more drinks in one sitting at least five times a month. The rates were a third higher than for any of the 11 groups surveyed, including American Indians.

About 23 percent of Mexican-American men are frequent heavy, problem drinkers, compared with 12 percent of white men and 15 percent of black men, another Alcohol Research Group survey found. (Geneticists say there is no known physiological reason for higher rates of heavy problem drinking among Mexican-American men).

Nationwide, Mexican Americans are nearly twice as likely to be arrested for drunken driving as whites or blacks.

Is income a factor?

The problem among Mexican Americans is not restricted to immigrants or the poor. In fact, it is more pronounced among immigrants' U.S.-born children. According to the federal survey, roughly the same percentage of Mexican Americans with family incomes of more than $40,000 as those who earn less than $20,000 are dependent on alcohol.

Most heavy, problem drinkers are not physically addicted to alcohol. More than one in four Mexican-American men don't touch liquor. Also, few Mexican-American women abuse alcohol, resulting in the greatest gender gap in drinking problems of any ethnic group studied, the federal government found. Experts stress that other ethnic groups use less alcohol but more illegal drugs, which still carry a strong stigma in Mexico and among first-generation Mexican Americans.

Still, more than one-third of Mexican-American men surveyed in 1995 said drinking had led to at least one of a dozen alcohol-related problems - from drunken driving to domestic violence to getting fired, the Alcohol Research Group found. The proportion of whites and blacks with three or more alcohol-induced problems declined after 1984; for Mexican Americans, it nearly doubled.

A week after his cemetery visit, Raul Morales visits his barber. As the man snips his hair, he drinks shots of tequila. The whites of his eyes have turned bright yellow. His liver has turned to stone. The barber dies later that month.

"Alcohol," Morales says, "is an atom bomb going off here."

Cultural role of alcohol

Each country, each culture, has different norms about drinking - when and how much is acceptable, the perceived benefits and risks. In Mexico, Spanish conquerors built distilleries and compensated hacienda workers with liquor. Today, some field hands still receive alcohol as a portion of their payment.

Mexico ranks among the top 10 nations in alcohol problems; deaths from liver disease run more than triple the U.S. rate, besting even Russia. Among men, Mexican researchers have found, drinking usually occurs in binges, but often only on payday, every two weeks. Studies show that binges become more frequent after the men arrive in the United States.

"They leave their families behind. They can't understand the language, the culture," says Esther Arias McDowell, who works on Latino drinking issues for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. They encounter hostility from some U.S.-born Mexican Americans, who often treat immigrants as country bumpkins, she says. Long hours of work leave their children open to the seduction of the local gang. Bombarded with the message that Latinos are "less than," Mexican Americans eventually internalize that view and treat themselves accordingly, says Arias McDowell. "They drink more to self-medicate."

The target of ads

Imagine a beer company targeting American Indians, using an advertising campaign laden with cultural symbols and blanketing reservations with billboards. "There would be an uproar," says Arnoldo Torres, executive director of the California Hispanic Health Care Association. When one small brewer launched Crazy Horse beer in 1992, with a picture of the Sioux warrior on the bottle, it was banned in Minnesota and Washington and, ultimately, pulled from most shelves. Last fall, though, Anheuser-Busch launched Azteca, a beer aimed at Mexican Americans. Currently sold only in Southern California, it boasts a red and white Mexican pyramid as its logo.

For beer companies, the lure of Latinos is simple demographics. Young adults, in general, are the nation's biggest drinkers, and Latinos on average are younger than other Americans. They also rank among the fastest-growing groups in the United States.

Since 1981, per-capita consumption of beer has declined nationwide. Researchers believe that most of that decline has occurred among whites, making Latinos a critical market - particularly because a greater percentage of Latinos drink beer than any other ethnic group, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau.

"(Beer companies) have realized Latinos drink a lot more, so they are fighting for this market," says Albert Melina, who has lobbied to reduce alcohol-related billboards.

The nation's top domestic brewers - Anheuser-Busch, Coors Brewing and Philip Morris, owner of Miller Brewing - boosted their Spanish-language advertising to a combined $31 million in 1997, from $26.3 million the previous year. Anheuser-Busch and Philip Morris are among the nation's top eight advertisers to Latinos.

Many health activists identify Anheuser-Busch - maker of Bud Light, the No. 1 brand among Mexican Americans - as the most aggressive beer marketer.

Sylvia Castillo, associate director at Los Angeles' Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, says the marketing of beer to Latinos "is pouring gas onto a flame."

Jeff Becker, vice president of alcohol issues for the Beer Institute, says that's absurd. "You always have critics, people who will say we prey on people," he says. "But our marketing and other practices are very responsible."

`The wrong enemy'

The industry, he says, has spent more than $300 million in the past decade to promote responsible drinking. "A lot of public-health advocates want to villainize the industry. They've got the wrong enemy. The enemy is alcohol abuse."

Anheuser-Busch's West Coast corporate manager, Luis De Leon, says that as a Mexican American, he finds criticism of his company's ads offensive. "To suggest that an ethnic group needs protection from certain types of ads," he says, "is elitist, condescending and insulting to that ethnic group."

Beer ad campaigns aimed at Latinos, counters George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, often have a harder edge than those directed at a broader audience. He and others cite a Budweiser ad that plays off a popular Mexican nationalist saying - "Como Mexico no hay dos. Como Budweiser Tampoco." Mexico has no equal. Neither does Budweiser.

Where to get help

Most Mexican Americans have few places to turn for help with drinking problems.

Not one federal program targets Mexican Americans, says William McColl, associate executive director of the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors. "They are getting the shortest end of the stick."

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Spanish are more available, but too often, they drive men away by employing verbal abuse as part of the treatment, says Arias McDowell of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. "English-language groups are less confrontational," says Fred Hoffman, a sociology lecturer at the University of Southern California whose 1994 study detailed how "terapia dura" - rough therapy - is typical of most Spanish AA groups. Some counselors believe that Spanish-language AA should abandon the emotionally bruising approach and use what they see as a more productive, supportive style employed at English-language AA meetings.

What's left is a chasm between available treatment and need, especially for more intensive outpatient and residential programs. The federal government spends $17.1 billion a year to combat substance abuse. Last October, it allocated the first sum, $1.5 million, to ascertain what alcohol-treatment approach might be most effective for Mexican Americans.

---------------- Problem drinkers ----------------

Percentage of men who are frequent, heavy drinkers:

Mexican Americans: 23%.

African Americans: 15%.

White Americans: 12%.

Alcohol Research Group