A Sympathetic Ear : Mexican Officials Visit Buyers of High Desert Land

Well before 10 a.m., Jose Luis Alvarez was already wiping his brow under a scorching summer sun that heated up his Antelope Valley ranch like a High Desert sauna.

Alvarez, who along with his family bought the tiny ranch in 1985 from developer Marshall Redman, explained what it was like to endure 100-degree summertime heat year after year, while waiting for the developer to keep his promise to provide such basics as electricity and running water.

But the 53-year-old Mexican national wasn’t the only one who was hot. Listening to his story, Rodolfo Quilantan, consul for Protection Affairs for the Mexican consul general’s office in Los Angeles, loosened his tie and shook his head.

“This is absolutely disgraceful,” he said. “Can you imagine living like this? Living out here in the middle of July when the temperatures top 115 degrees? Myself, I cannot.”

Quilantan was among a small group of U.S. and Mexican government officials who on Wednesday visited the far-flung Hi Vista area of Los Angeles County to hear horror stories from families who purchased land from the 67-year-old millionaire developer and now live without utilities and often, without hope.

He motioned to Alvarez and several neighbors gathered to discuss their purchases from Redman, who was scheduled to be arraigned this morning on seven felony charges in the sale of undeveloped desert land to more than 1,500 unsophisticated Spanish-speaking buyers.

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“The worst part of this whole story is the misguided confidence of these Mexican people,” he said. “They believed this man when he made all his promises, when he told them that in six months they would have everything, heat for their homes, electricity for their families. And now, 10 years later, they have nothing.”

On this sultry June morning, Quilantan and an assistant began the first of several days in the Antelope Valley offering legal assistance to Mexican nationals--some here legally, others not--caught up in the alleged scam. Between 1978 and 1994, Redman’s three companies allegedly sold some properties they didn’t even own, most often by land-sale contract.

Joe Sanchez, an agent for the court-appointed receiver of the Redman firms, on Wednesday attempted to reach residents of Hi Vista--a desolate expanse of desert land about 90 miles north of downtown Los Angeles--who have been denied access to a county water well because officials say that, without deeds, they cannot prove they own the land they live on.

Earlier this month, after disclosures in The Times about the Redman sales and the Third World living conditions of as many as 250 families, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors named two task forces to examine the situation.

One task force, called for by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, is exploring how Redman sold desert land for 13 years without effective government action to stop him. A second panel, created by Supervisor Gloria Molina, is investigating what can be done to help make the lives of Redman buyers easier--perhaps by easing building code restrictions and helping an estimated 50 families in Hi Vista who have been denied access to county water wells.

Nancy Manzanares, a project administrator for the county Community Development Commission, part of the Molina task force, got a first-hand view Wednesday of what living conditions are like.

She stood in the dirt outside Manuel Diaz’s ramshackle trailer and add-on shacks, looking past a yard littered with machinery and cactus plants, eyeing a structure complete with old tires strewn across the roof as ballast against the desert wind.

“This isn’t the standard?” she asked incredulously.

When told the Diaz home’s conditions were common among Redman customers, she responded: “Are you serious?”

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Manzanares said she would return to Los Angeles to “see what kind of resources we can provide for these families.”

One problem, she said, is that county resources are for the most part limited to U.S. residents and she would have difficulty seeking funds for Mexican nationals.

Another is that families involved are spread throughout three counties, from far-flung Boron in San Bernardino County to California City in Kern County and throughout north Los Angeles County, said Joe Sanchez, who has worked to straighten out complex ownership issues left by the Redman sales.

“And who knows how many of these people are Mexican nationals, how many are American citizens?” Sanchez told Mexican officials. “Over there is a Cuban family. And those people there are from Guatemala. Just because you have a Spanish-sounding name doesn’t mean you’re from Mexico.”

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On Wednesday, the group drove along rutted dirt roads, past the spot where the telephone poles came to an abrupt end, the final one standing there, cockeyed and incomplete, like the last in a long line of desert dominoes.

At the Alvarez ranch, the group spoke with half a dozen Redman buyers who told similar tales of being bused to the High Desert by the developer and shown a particular site, only to be sold land as much as 75 miles away.

Wearing a sweat-stained Chicago Bulls cap and producing a plastic bag full of documents, Adrian Melgosa said he had been kicked off the land he had paid on for years after missing a few payments.

“I want to sue this man for fraud. He cheated me,” Samuel Chavez told one of the Mexican officials. “Can you help me?”

As a voice crooned in Spanish from a nearby transistor radio, the group sat on couches on Alvarez’s front porch--an area framed by sheets of tin and chicken wire, with a propane lantern hanging from the ceiling, next to an old-fashioned, hand-cranked hamburger mincer.

One by one the buyers, all Mexican nationals, some still paying on their properties, others not, explained how much they had lost in the Redman sales. Quilantan said he would report their condition to officials in both Mexico and the United States.

Crossing his arms, leveling his gaze on the Mexican official, the 53-year-old Alvarez said that, like others, he had all but given up hope of seeing justice.

“I want my property to be legalized, that’s all I ask,” he said. “My family doesn’t want to leave here, so what can I do?”