LIBERAL — The squat stucco building on East Pancake Boulevard is a symbol of what this southwest Kansas town used to be and what it, and the entire area, is becoming.
The building once housed the Petroleum Club, where drilling and pipeline companies' logos used to line the walls.
It's where the Rotary Club met, where oilmen and cattlemen took their wives to dinner on Saturday night, where visiting politicians and candidates were received by the faithful.
And overwhelmingly, the faces at the tables and in the bar were white.
Now, with the energy economy still soft and companies moving their operations out of Liberal, the Petroleum Club sits empty but not for long.
It is the subject of two competing bids: one by a Mexican restaurant and nightclub, the other by a Spanish-language Southern Baptist church.
The locals say the same thing: "If you've come to do a story on immigration, you're in the right place."
The Kansas census numbers released this week back up the public perception: there has been an explosion in the Hispanic population of southwest Kansas since the last census.
In Seward County, which includes Liberal, Hispanics make up 42.1 percent of the population, a 159.2 percent increase since 1990.
In nearby Finney and Ford counties, other leading areas of Hispanic growth, the story is the same Finney, which includes Garden City, with 43.3 percent of the population declaring itself Hispanic, showed a 110.1 percent increase, and Ford, which includes Dodge City, with 37.7 percent Hispanic, a 199.6 increase.
The draw for immigrants is the same as it's always been the chance to make more money in a new country.
Workers from Mexico have long come to the area to work on the railroad but it was in the 1960s that giant meatpacking plants in Liberal, Garden City and Dodge City began to draw them in ever-increasing numbers. With well-paying jobs scarce in Mexico, even cutting up beef carcasses for eight hours at a stretch seemed like a golden opportunity.
Many go back to Mexico with their savings. Others stay, but send their money home to family members.
But more and more are putting down roots, buying homes, starting businesses of their own in many cases, with money they make working in the beef plants.
"I worked at National Beef five years," said baker Victor Limon, waiting on a steady stream of customers. "I was working with knives for one year, then I went into packaging. I was saving up money to start a business in Mexico, but then we had this opportunity to start our own business here.
"This is a good place to raise a family," said Limon, the father of three children. "It's quiet here, not like L.A. or someplace like that."
The increasing presence of Hispanic immigrants is showing up not only in their numbers and in the number of businesses with Spanish signs lining the streets, but in economic clout.
"They're buying houses all over town," said Cynthia Sallaska, Seward County's register of deeds.
"You get couples who both work at National Beef. They're making, $60,000, $70,000. They can afford to buy the houses up north."
Sallaska's office requires all paperwork to be in English but down the hall of the Seward County Courthouse, all the signs at the treasurer's office are in both English and Spanish.
The transition for newly arrived workers from Mexico isn't always a smooth one.
County Atty. Don Scott estimated that many criminal cases in district court and 70 to 80 percent of traffic cases require an interpreter.
Part of reason for that, Scott said, is that Mexican immigrants often don't fully understand U.S. traffic laws including the need for insurance.
And Luz Cruz, who owns a boot and Western wear store along with her husband, Carlos, said Anglos in the area should work to be more tolerant of Hispanic culture.
"They don't accept our way of living," she said. "I'm not Anglo, but I know that some Anglos like to stay home, be calm, resting. Hispanics, we like to go out on Sundays, to be loud, to go to the park.
"We like to have parties late at night, until two or three in the morning, and some people don't like that."
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