The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 71

taw" 4 Index Gallery 4 E3 1' i .1 1 l- (:. '1 When Jim Hubbard gave a group of Native American youths point-and-shoot cameras, he put a whole world in their hands. E2 Social Climes They gather to talk and smoke, smoke and talk. Cigar aficionados are leading the elegant renaissance of cigar smoking. E6 4 Ann Landers E3 Astrology.

E7 Camp Fund. E7 Dr. Joyce E5 i mwir SECTION SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 1994 Co Angeles Simes TKE SUNDAY FRGFILE Comiii' 1 I I I i dome 1.1OOO HHOUOiH Don't let that baby face fool you-Mayor Fidel Vargas, 26, has a grand vision for Baldwin Park. But some worry that he is changing the city for the worse. Story by MICHAEL QUINTANILLA, losangeles times Photos by AXEL KOESTER, for the times I he kid knows how to pack a room.

For two hours now, one of the youngest mayors in the country has been hearing from his constituents, many of them old enough to be his parents. First up is Teresa Filner, mother of two boys. Her hair is 1 fit 1 pulled under her uniform cap, her right hand raised to take an oath, as she stands in front of 26-year-old Fidel A. Vargas. The mayor, in corporate wear and refreshed from a workout in the police gym, leans his boyish face into a microphone to welcome Baldwin Park's newest cop.

Next is Kenneth Moore. Nervously, he admits that this is his first time to address His Honor. Then he unabashedly lays into the city council, griping about the deafening music blared weekend after weekend by the kids on his block. The police, he says, have done nothing. Vargas glances toward Police Chief Carmine Lanza, sitting three down on the tiered dais.

Later, the chief is at Moore's side, on bended knee, jotting down details. Vivian Ross takes her turn. Softly, respectfully, she tells the mayor of being caught in a nightmare as one of the trailer park residents who must buy a new mobile home and move because the Vargas Administration is apparently the first to enforce a 15-year-old zoning ordinance. The law is the law, Vargas says. And then, with reciprocated respect, he tells her not to worry, that the city will help her.

"We should work with the folks down there," he instructs his staff. One by one, others approach the lectern. A 33-cent-per-month sanitation rate increase is debated. Please see PROFILE, E5 J- I I- 1 4 I tions. At right, he and his wife, Melissa, and son Julian join family members to cheer their older" son at a T-balJ game.

His quote on a city art project says a lot about Fidel Vargas, who has pride both in Baldwin Park and its future genera Got the Urge to Cheat? Don't Worry, It's Only Natural ROBIN ABCARIAN were a cou-' pie of mar I I therefore impossible to ignore? Last week, when I saw the cover of Time with a golden wedding band snapped in half and the provocative headline, "Infidelity: It may be in genes" I remembered our chat. Turns out that with her own simple logic, my friend had demonstrated an unschooled appreciation for the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology- ried ladies, passing the through the lens of evolution, to explain our messed up sex lives in the context of Darwinian survival. Wright pulls together research that, ranges over the bumpy terrain of love, looking for biological cues to our behavior, attempting to answer timeless questions such as why wealthy men take trophy wives, why most societies throughout history have been polygamous and why we cheat. The answer to all these questions, evolution-wise, is propagation of the species. "The good news is that human beings are designed to fall in love," Wright says.

"The bad news is they aren't designed to stay there. According to evolutionary biology, it is 'natural' for both men and women. to commit adultery or to sour on a mate, to suddenly find a spouse unattractive, irritating, wholly unreasonable. It is similarly natural to find some attractive colleague superior on all counts to the sorry wreck of a spouse you're saddled with." (Act on your impulses, though, and that attractive colleague could one day be that sorry wreck of a spouse.) Conventional wisdom as it's often expressed on talk shows and in magazinesholds that men are programmed to stray while women are programmed to stay. Not so, Wright says.

"Women are not by nature paragons of fidelity," he says. "Wanderlust is an innate part of their nature, ready to surface under propitious circumstances." Please see ABCARIAN, E5 "Yeah," I said, "me too, but that doesn't mean you don't get the urge." "That's true," she replied. "I think most people would love to have sex with someone besides their spouse. As long as there were no repercussions." Ah, yes, repercussions. Those little details: devastation, disease and divorce.

Ah, well. We agreed that repercussionless extramarital sex was a universal fantasy for both sexesthen segued into our next favorite topic: what our husbands had done lately to make us want to rip out their nose hairs. But afterward I found myself brooding: Could that really be true? How can we be programmed for infidelity when society places such a premium on monogamy? Are our "urges" rooted in biology and time with idle conversation about old boyfriends. "Have you ever thought lustfully about other men?" I The article in Time is a much-condensed version of a book called "The Moral Animali Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life" by New Republic Senior Editor Robert Wright. It is one of a number of recent books that attempt to view human reproductive behavior asked my friend.

"I mean, have you ever thought about having sex with other guys?" "Oh sure," she said. "Who hasn't?" "But would you ever do it?" "No, of course not," she said. "I love my husband." 4-3.