Nye County Assistant Sheriff Rick Marshall denies an audience member a microphone Tuesday at the Pahrump Town Board meeting. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

A decades-old political organization that supports Hispanic candidates and fights anti-immigrant legislation has picked Pahrump as the site for its first Nevada chapter.

The Los Angeles-based Mexican American Political Association moved to launch a Pahrump chapter shortly after the Town Board there approved an ordinance that declared English the official language, denied town benefits to undocumented immigrants and banned the flying of foreign flags by themselves.

Association member Al Castaneda said the group originally planned to open its first Nevada chapter in Las Vegas, but the location was changed because of "this little situation" in Nye County's largest town.

The idea was to put a stop to something the association finds objectionable before it spreads to other communities.

"The way I see it, this is like a forest fire. If you see there's a huge forest that's going to burn, you're going to stomp pretty hard on that (fire)," said Castaneda, who moved to Las Vegas from his native Los Angeles a year ago.

When Pahrump Town Board members met Tuesday to discuss a second ordinance that would have required undocumented immigrants to register themselves at the town office, MAPA helped pack the meeting with Hispanic residents opposed to the measure, Castaneda said.

The board ended up killing the proposal before it could be introduced.

Castaneda said the association plans to keep the pressure on until the Town Board overturns the "English only" ordinance.

"We call it simple xenophobia. There's no other word for it," he said.

Eventually, MAPA plans to open an office in Pahrump and staff it with someone to answer the phone.

For now, the chapter has found a temporary home at Carmen Ruiz's Aztech Realty office on Pahrump's main drag.

"We need to be involved, and we need to be organized ... so next time we are ready to defend our rights," said Ruiz, who has sold real estate in Pahrump for six years and lived in the community for three years.

She said until recently there never seemed to be an issue with illegal immigration in the town of about 38,000 people 60 miles west of Las Vegas. "Everything was fine. We were all very happy."

Ruiz said the town has suffered since the "English only" ordinance was first introduced. "It is really affecting the economy in Pahrump. It was a wake-up call for all of us," she said.

Such unity in Pahrump's Hispanic community is the upside to all the controversy surrounding the ordinances, said Alonso Flores, the adviser in Southern Nevada to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad.

"The Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Mexicans are all coming together," he said.

Flores has spearheaded a few informal meetings in Pahrump to discuss the ordinance making English the official language.

He said many in Pahrump at first mistakenly believed they were no longer allowed to speak Spanish after the first ordinance passed. He provided them with translated copies of the ordinance so they could better understand it.

Flores said any further controversy will just fuel the newfound unity among Latinos, though most Hispanics in Pahrump believe the new Town Board members set to take office in January "won't make crazy ordinances."

Board member Michael Miraglia, who introduced both ordinances targeting undocumented immigrants, is one of three members who will leave the board at the end of the year.

MAPA has more than 20 chapters, nearly all of them in California.

The association was founded in Fresno, Calif., in 1959 and has played a key role in electing Mexican-Americans to political offices through voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

MAPA members also aided Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in political and labor negotiations.

Castaneda, who joined MAPA in 1994, boasted that the association's membership includes virtually every prominent Hispanic politician in California and Washington, D.C.

Nearly everyone, that is, except U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "We opposed his appointment," Castaneda said. "We're not crazy."

To start a MAPA chapter, all it takes is 15 applicants. "We had way more than that" in Pahrump, Castaneda said.

MAPA was signing up new members in front of the community center before Tuesday night's board meeting. "We ran out of applications and people were clamoring for more," Castaneda said.

The association plans to open its second Nevada chapter, in Las Vegas, within the next few months, he said.

Review-Journal writer Lynnette Curtis contributed to this report.