Why the interviews were done
This collection of interviews arose from research conducted for a forthcoming book by José Angel Gutiérrez, Chicano Leadership: Local Elected Officials in Texas, 1950-2000. Dr. Gutiérrez began interviewing in June 1996 and concluded in the spring of 2000, during which time he interviewed 151 people (47 women and 103 men). Seventy-seven of these interviews form the Tejano Voices Project. According to Dr. Gutiérrez, at the time his manuscript went to press, this set of interviews represented the largest collection of political biographies on Chicanos/as in the United States. As he notes in his book, "Typically, these subjects were the first Chicano or Chicana to be elected in their jurisdiction or they were the youngest."
Why only half of the interviews are being made available online
The University of Texas at Arlington
received funding from the Texas State Library and Archives TexTreasures
program in partial support of the Tejano Voices Project. The funding
allowed UTA to catalog approximately half of the interviews completed
by Dr. Gutiérrez. The interviews chosen to be cataloged were
limited to those for which the interview tape and transcript had
already been delivered to the UTA Libraries at the time the grant
proposal was submitted (March 2001). See the September 2001 press
release for more details about the grant. The UTA Libraries
hope to secure additional funding in order to make the remainder
of the interviews available online. These additional interviews, as well as those presented on this web site, are available
for use on-site in the UTA Libraries' Special
Collections.
Dr. Gutierrez' perspective on the interviews
The value of oral history
"The value of an oral history project
is the reconstruction of political history and biography from a
participant or subject's point of view, usually not explored previously.
Recent advances in Chicano Studies and Women's Studies accurately
point out that the role of Chicanos/as has been ignored in the making
of history by traditional scholarship, and is now being recovered
via oral histories and new approaches to the study of history, biography,
and autobiography. … Oral history and interviews are becoming
the staple of researchers interested in recovering that banished
history."
Goals/content of the interviews
"Texas has the most Hispanic elected officials
of any state simply because it has more units of government from
which persons are elected. Hispanic elected officials in Texas are
found in every public office at every level of local government
and even federal service, except the U.S. Senate. A few Hispanics
have reached election and appointment to statewide office in Texas
beginning with Roy Barrera, Sr. as Secretary of State in 1960. …
In this study I focus only on the Chicano/a elected, local, public
official at the most basic of governmental units: city council,
county government, school district, and community college."
"I focused primarily on the stories of
struggle of Chicanos/as to gain political power. I inquired about
their family history and personal attainment to have an insight
into their leadership development. … I sought multiple information
in each interview: biography, early childhood memories, information
on their political career, both electoral victories and first political
lessons, such as facing discrimination and public rage. Because
this work is among persons of Mexican ancestry, their ethnicity
is an issue. Their individual struggle to gain public office is
grounded in the larger community and Chicano group struggle, particularly
among those elected in the decades of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, less
so after that period to the present time. The presentation of their
story and their representation or sense of being an agent for their
group is as much a part of the interview and ethnic narrative than
the quantitative information gleaned from the responses to …
specific questions."
"I asked specific questions on leadership
and issues seeking opinion. The main questions in this area were:
What is leadership? Who is the most effective Mexican American leader
today? Which is the most effective Mexican American [political]
organization today? What is the most pressing issue facing the Mexican
American community today?"
Selection of interviewees: geography and gender
"Geography was a concern, as was gender,
in the selection of those to be interviewed. Women have been winning
election to public office in recent decades and their gains have
been substantial in terms of numbers. … Nonetheless, Chicanas
are underrepresented in public office as a part of the whole number.
I made an effort to include as many as I could find available to
interview. … Those interviewed [of either gender] are located
in every geographic area of the state, except East Texas where there
are no elected officials of Mexican ancestry as of 2000. In Central
Texas, I did very little work for the same reason; there are few
Mexican American elected officials in that area. The bulk of the
interviews were conducted in South Texas, West Texas, the Panhandle
area, the major urban areas, and Southwest Texas. The largest growth
areas, in terms of the number of Chicano elected officials, are
West Texas and the Panhandle, followed by major urban areas. In
all three locations, opportunity to gain election at the local level
is being created with every election. By contrast, in South and
Southwest Texas, a person of Mexican ancestry already takes most
of the local, elected offices. The change in these two areas is
not in the number of Mexican Americans in office; rather the change
is in the gender of the office holder, more women are winning elective
office than male candidates."
Interview length
"The interviews vary in length, some are
short and some are long, depending on the time constraint imposed
by the situation, usually the schedule of the interviewee. …
If the subject had time, I choose to obtain more information than
less during the interview."
Interviewer bias
"The questions I asked during the course
of an interview not only interrupt the narration and analysis but
also, interject my own analysis. Often, I was frustrated by what
I felt was the lack of substance in a response and continued probing
with more questions into the same topic, almost as if I wanted a
specific answer. The interview with Francisco "Pancho"
Medrano comes to mind. Since graduate school I have labored with
the limitations of traditional social science research and its norms.
The stress on objectivity by the academy does not serve me well.
As a member of an underrepresented and excluded ethnic group in
political life, I cannot be objective. To not be subjective is to
limit my research and my interest. To this day, few oral history
projects have delved into the political struggle of the Chicano
community to attain political power. Chicano biography is practically
non-existent. These interviews represent the first major collection
of such combined mini-biographies and stories of struggle in Texas.
I feel compelled to help the story find a voice and audience, and
I feel compelled to let the narrator tell their story as they remember
and see it today in retrospect."
Language
"I tried to keep the person being interviewed
in one language, but working with Chicanos/as it is next to impossible.
Chicanos/as are bilingual and bicultural; some more than others,
but all the subjects presented some degree of difficulty for the
transcriber and translator. The difficulty for transcription purposes
is with code switching or using different languages in speaking,
often in the same sentence. … Readers of these interviews will
also experience difficulty in following the text that contains many
translations, particularly within a sentence. The most difficult
of these interviews were, for example, Mike V. Gonzalez and Richard
Telles, as were the persons from El Paso and other border counties.
It seems that code-switching from Spanish to English and back to
Spanish is a language along the border, particularly El Paso. But
almost all persons used some Spanish idiom, expression, folk saying,
or dicho in their interview. In some cases, I was the problem because
I used Spanish early in the interview, which may have prompted some
persons to continue in Spanish. In other cases, I asked the persons
to try and stay in one language, and usually was unsuccessful. The
interviewee has every right to speak and represent themselves in
the language they feel most comfortable with to convey their image
and message of themselves."
Problems in the field
"Usually, the interviews were conducted
in the person's office or home, sometimes they came to me in my
motel room or some other loaned office space. Lighting, air conditioning
noise, ringing telephones, other persons interrupting, and related
problems are all to be anticipated."
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