If Chavez considered Mercado an employee, her failure to pay Social Security taxes could sink her nomination, as it did for Zoë Baird, the one-time Clinton choice for attorney general in 1993. Either way, if Chavez knew that Mercado was an illegal immigrant and sheltered her nonetheless -- something Chavez denies, despite Mercado's words to the contrary -- she would have been violating the law.

Still, Chavez's action, even if it was illegal, could be defended as a brave and risky act of charity, and of solidarity with a fellow Latina in a time of need. Yet many Hispanic leaders see Chavez as a "professional Latina" who has continually bashed her own ethnic group to curry favor with conservatives. And while she's relatively moderate on immigration issues, making her "charity" to Mercado at least intellectually consistent, she's been brutal to certain Latino groups, especially Puerto Ricans, whom she described in a 1991 book as "well versed in public assistance" and lacking a work ethic.

"There's more concern than support within the Hispanic community for Chavez," said Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, incoming chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "As more of the information gets out about her positions, that concern has grown." Marisa Demeo of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Hispanic equivalent of the NAACP, agrees. "Since the time of her nomination," Demeo says, "we have continued to learn about all sorts of positions that she's taken -- against the Family and Medical Leave Act, against affirmative action and bilingual education -- that are not good for our citizens."

Some advocates said that the Chavez choice proves that Bush is either tone-deaf to Latino concerns or doesn't realize the bad feelings that Chavez has inspired in the community. "This is definitely an 'in your face' nomination," said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy organization. Navarrete, who went out of her way to praise Chavez's intelligence and power as a writer, said that Bush was way off base if he thought that the nomination would get him diversity points with Hispanic voters. "The point of having a diverse Cabinet is to have someone who represents the views of that community," she said. "But Chavez has made a career of saying, 'I'm opposed to what most Latinos think and want.'"

"She gives cover to Republicans who believe that the only way for Hispanics to help themselves up by their own bootstraps is to cut them off at the knees," says Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

But people who want to cut off Chavez's chances at the knees, Wilkes claims, have a powerful sword: Chavez's own words. "The good thing from our perspective, and maybe the bad thing for her," Wilkes says, "is that she has a lot of written stuff that will backfire on her."

Along with Chavez's commentaries and editorials, Wilkes cites her 1991 book "Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation." In it, Chavez bashes the Hispanic political establishment for holding its citizens back. "Their leaders," she writes, "seem more intent on vying with blacks for permanent victim status than on seeking recognition for genuine progress by Hispanics over the last three decades."

Chavez spends much of the book blaming Hispanic leaders for inviting white bigotry by emphasizing their ethnic identity over their status as American citizens, and demanding what Chavez considers inappropriate remedies conceived during the civil rights movement. "Hispanic organizations that insist on special benefits ... severely strain the comity of the American public."

Yet the book, which is unrelentingly critical of Hispanic leaders, waffles between praising middle-class Hispanics and disdaining those in lower classes as a major public relations drag. "The success of middle-class Hispanics is an untold -- and misunderstood -- story, perhaps least appreciated by Hispanic advocates whose interest is in promoting the view that Latinos cannot make it in this society," she writes. "The Hispanic poor, who constitute only about one-fourth of the Hispanic population, are visible to all."

Though Chavez points out that poor immigrants lower the socioeconomic statistics of the Hispanic population as a whole, she refrains from any hint of immigrant-bashing. For example, speaking of the low educational attainments of newly arrived Mexican immigrants, Chavez writes, "Nonetheless, even these poorly educated immigrants will make progress as they stay longer in the United States."

Chavez is toughest on Puerto Ricans, devoting a whole chapter to what she calls "The Puerto Rican Exception."

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