A Revitalized Role for Latin Mutual-Aid Club : Santa Paula: A renovated hall, dances and benefits highlight Casa del Mexicano’s opening to the community.

Santa Paula’s Casa del Mexicano was founded in 1946 as a mutual-aid society that provided financial help when illness or death stretched a member’s resources to the breaking point.

After the group built a meeting hall, Casa del Mexicano also became a place where members could visit, share a drink and swap stories from the old country.

But now, with the election of a new generation of directors, the leaders of Casa del Mexicano have launched a plan to strengthen the appeal of one of Ventura County’s oldest Latino organizations.

Changes adopted by the new board have broadened the aim of the 47-year-old group, which, like other mutual-aid societies, was started as a social club that also provided a financial safety net for its members.

One of the most visible--and certainly the most colorful--of the Casa’s new activities is the addition of Mexican wrestling every Sunday.

The Casa also has hosted an all-night grad party for high school students for the first time, donated $1,000 to Santa Paula Memorial Hospital and has begun providing free practice rooms for struggling musicians.

“There have been a number of firsts this year,” said Raul Cervantes, president of the organization, whom many members credit with restoring the club’s financial health.

“We have new blood on the board with new ideas that are up to date,” Cervantes said. “We started a new cycle and opened our doors to the community.”

The Casa’s board has also initiated the largest renovation of the Casa’s hall in its history, a $150,000 project to provide a new roof, floor, electrical wiring and air-conditioning system.

The improvements will allow Casa del Mexicano to sponsor more community dances in a safe, family atmosphere, Cervantes said.

“This is the only place the Latino community has a dance hall where families can feel comfortable,” Cervantes said. “We make them feel like home, like in Mexico.”

On the drawing board are plans to install a satellite dish, so members can use the club’s lounge as a sports center.

The board also increased fees for renting the hall and raised annual membership dues to $10 from the $2.50 that had been in force since 1946. Besides being eligible for hardship assistance, members also receive free entry to the dances at the Casa put on by other groups.

When it was started in the 1940s, Casa del Mexicano gained immediate visibility when it paid $1,200 to buy three lots on the largely Latino east side and built a community meeting hall.

The founders came from all walks of life, but shared the belief that Latinos needed someplace they could hold fiestas and dances, said Victor Salas of the Santa Paula Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce.

“It was something they wanted to do for the whole Latino community,” said Salas, whose father, Juan Salas, was a founder and early president of the Casa.

As with other Latino aid societies that still exist in Santa Paula, such as Sociedad Fraternal Mexicana and the Cerritos Club, the Casa del Mexicano’s central mission was to assist its members when illness, death or other misfortunes strained a family’s finances.

The assistance provided by the Casa and other mutual-aid societies was urgently needed by their members, said Jorge Garcia, a dean at Cal State Northridge who has studied such groups.

“The only alternative was the pawnshop in those days, and to go to the pawnshop, you first needed to own something of value,” Garcia explained. “The mutual-aid societies were always needed to insure the uninsurable and to provide a proper burial.”

As time passed and new members replaced the Casa’s founding officers, management practices grew increasingly relaxed, current and former members say. Records were misplaced, and money sometimes disappeared.

“It got to the point where the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing,” Salas said.

Control of Casa del Mexicano slowly shifted from the Mexican-American community that started it to first-generation Mexican immigrants. According to Salas, it was the financial success of some founders that accounted for the shift in membership.

“The offspring of the first members didn’t follow through with the Casa,” Salas said. “We fell into better things.” The pattern is typical of mutual-aid societies started by upwardly mobile immigrants, said Garcia, the historian.

When he was elected president of the Casa for the second time nearly two years ago, Raul Cervantes set out to reform the group’s operations. A member of the group since 1970, the 63-year-old Cervantes saw the need to improve the Casa’s management.

“Little by little, we had to bring everything up to date,” Cervantes said. “The old-timers had run the group in the Mexican way, and while we are still Mexican, we needed to make the Casa more responsible to the members.”

When four out of the eight-member board of directors resigned last year over the direction of reforms, they were replaced by younger directors who added a dose of enthusiasm.

The new, activist panel “is a very, very, very good board of directors,” said Arnold Silva, the Casa’s vice president and one of the new directors.

Miguel Rico, 26, was elected to the board in December and has helped steer the 70-member group toward greater community involvement. He was recruited after serving as secretary for a youth soccer league.

“When I joined as a member, the board of directors hardly ever got together,” said Rico, the Casa’s treasurer. “Now we meet about every week, and sometimes twice a week or more. We’ve done a lot in a short eight months.”

As part of the Casa’s new direction, Rico said the group is seeking alliances among Santa Paula’s other civic groups, including the Optimists Club, the Youth Task Force and the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce.

In recent months, the Casa has hosted benefits to help pay for the surgery of a cancer patient from Simi Valley, uniforms for the youth band Banda de Guerra, and a fund-raiser for Santa Paula Memorial Hospital.

Although the revitalized group has reached out to the broader community, Cervantes said Casa del Mexicano has become better able to serve its own community.

“For years, we were a small group of old-timers,” he said. “Now we can have our traditions--with changes. Our goals are still to improve the culture, morality and education of our community.”