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Este informe no está disponible en español. Orlando SentinelChavez Had To Face The Truthby Myriam MarquezJanuary 10, 2001 Linda Chavez faced the truth Tuesday and stepped down as President-elect George W. Bush's nominee to head the Labor Department. At first, the Bush camp maintained that Chavez didn't have a clue that Marta Mercado was in the United States illegally when the Guatemalan woman lived at Chavez's home from late1991 into 1993. Mercado did ocassional chores, and Chavez gave the woman spending money every few weeks, but it wasn't as if Chavez had hired the woman who called her "Mrs. Linda." Right. But Tuesday Chavez admitted that deep down she had known all along that Mercado was in this country illegally. Nevertheless the conservative commentator wanted to help a mother she described as "battered." Chavez insisted that she decided to withdraw from consideration because she was becoming a political liability for Bush but that the president-elect never told her to do so. Shades of Nannygate? Back when Mercado was helping out Chavez -- as a house guest, of course -- Zoe Baird's nomination to serve as attorney general was blowing up in Bill Clinton's face. Clinton abandoned Baird, and then Kimba Wood, to serve in his Cabinet when it became public that they had hired people who were living in the United States illegally. The irony is that Chavez, who complained Tuesday about Washington's politics of destruction, was part of the pack in 1993 criticizing Clinton's attorney-general picks for having hired illegal aliens. No doubt Chavez has practiced compassionate conservatism, as the Vietnamese man and two Hispanic women who spoke at her news conference can attest. But the Mercado flap involved more than Chavez's compassion for a woman in need. It focused squarely on Chavez's truthfulness. In fact, Mercado, who is now married to an American and living legally in Maryland, says that once she started to learn English, while living with Chavez, she told the attorney-general nominee about her illegal status. A Chavez neighbor backed up Mercado's account. But Chavez admitted Tuesday that she never told Bush about Mercado in the initial interview for the Labor Department post. I would be a hypocrite to blast Chavez after seeing the Zoe and Kimba controversies as much ado about little. It was particularly galling for Clinton to back up at least two other Cabinet appointees -- both men -- who also had hired illegals. What bothers me is Chavez's hypocrisy and opportunism. She built her public and private careers on being an assimilationist with little interest in her roots -- except when her father's Spanish heritage might help her land a political job. With no interest in learning much about her father's culture or language, Chavez made a living knocking down minorities and working women. Ronald Reagan picked the token Hispanic woman to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission apparently to ignore laws meant to help women and minorities. She outright attacked affirmative action without offering anything else to ensure true opportunity. Conservatives laud Chavez as the type of Hispanic all Latinos should aspire to be. Which is to say that we should become Americans by denying our cultural roots unless it's convenient for political purposes. This week, the truth caught up with Linda Chavez. Mrs. Linda went full circle and became another casualty -- just like Zoe and Kimba.
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