Oral History Interview with Alicia Chacón,
1996
Interviewee:
Alicia Chacón
Interviewer: José
Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D.
Transcribers:
Karen McGee and José Angel Gutiérrez
Date of Interview: June 22, 1996
Location
of Interview: El Paso, Texas
Number of Transcript Pages: 194
Cite as: Oral History Interview with Alicia Chacón, CMAS 2, Special
Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.
Alicia Chacón
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
The purpose of these interviews is to
collect biography on Mexican-American women in politics. OK, it is on now. And
you are a first in many regards. The county judge position, I think you were
the first Mexican-American woman ever to be county judge in
Texas.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Of a major county. There have been some women county
judges in some of the small counties.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, Enriqueta Diaz.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
But of a major,
urban county
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Enriqueta Diaz was in Maverick County. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
But I think that you
pre-dated her. I think you were the first.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There is Norma Villarreal
Ramirez, at the moment, in Zapata County.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There have been
others who have run.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
But I don't think they were successful, so either way,
whether it is of the major, you are one of the first?
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2
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, and I am the first
Mexican-American, the first woman of a major county even later Cindy
Crier was elected in Bexar County, but of the seven
urban, major counties.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Oh, you are talking about women in general. No, I was
talking about Mexican-American women.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Women in general. Women in general. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Yes, that is
true. That is true.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
to serve and be elected as a County Judge as a major urban
county.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That's right, that's right because there was a woman, a county judge back in
the...in the...in '74, I believe it was a woman in West Texas
someplace.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I
believe she was the first one. But a Mexican-American woman, I think that you
are the first. We are going to cover basically four areas.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Your family
biography. That is, where your parents, both sides came from, and then your own
biography with your family.
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3
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And then, your early political activities,
and then bringing it up to the present time. Please provide as much anecdote,
as much wisdom, as much detail, as much commentary as you wish to make of the
interview fruitful for future researchers. So, why don't we start with your
grandparents on your mother or your father's side. Names, you know, where they
are from, something.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
It is, I am probably unusual in that both of my parents
were only children, and I think in Mexican families that is very unusual, but
the circumstances of the lives of my, of the early child, of the infant life of
my parents kind of dictated what happened to them. My mother was born in
Chihuahua, in the city of Chihuahua, and her father, her father
was a revolutionary and...
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
I am going to get a little closer. Excuse me for a
second. So we make sure that we pick up the sound.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
El
era general en el ejército de Pancho Villa y anduvo en muchas
de las batallas cuando mi mama tenia dos años. (He was a general
in Pancho Villa's army and was in many of the battles when my mother was two
years old. My grandfather was killed and so her mother
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4
decided to
come to the United States, not to stay in
Chihuahua anymore.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What were their names? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Mi
abuelito se llamaba Carlos Almeida -- general Carlos Almeida.
Mi abuelita llamada Escolia Domínguez de Almeida; y mi mama se
llamaba Jesusita. El crea que este nombre era muy popular.
Porque ella también le gustaba después la canción "Jesusita de
Chihuahua" que era canción de la revolución. Mi abuelita se vino
con ella (My grandfather was named Carlos
Almeida--General Carlos Almeida. My grandmother was named
Eustolia Dominguez of Almeida; and my mother was called
Jesusita. He believed that this name was very popular. Because
she also liked the song which came later "Jesusita of
Chihuahua" which was song of the revolution. My grandmother came
with her) when my mother was two years old, that would have been, she was born
in 1914, I guess like about 1916 se
vinieron a los Estados Unidos. (they came to the
United States.) For a long time they lived there in South
El Paso. My mother went to school there in Avery
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5
School;
one of the oldest Mexican-American schools there in South El
Paso. And then later my grandmother decided to move to
Canutillo, which was in a small town in the Upper
Valley of El Paso County and she bought a little house
there and that is where she and my mother was a teenager was there. And both of
them then went to, my mother didn't want to go to school very much. I think her
mother wanted her to go to school but my mother really didn't like school. And
so she las dos fueron a trabajar en
(they both went to work in) there is a big cannery in the
Upper Valley for chili which is seasonal because they pack and
package the chili and tomate
(tomatoes). Casi todo el
pueblo trabajaba en la caneria. Allí venían los buses y los llevaban a la
caneria. (Almost the whole town worked in the cannery. The
buses came to take them to the cannery.) And they would work, it was seasonal.
The town worked during that period at the cannery and my mother went to work
there. And, my father was born in Dona Ane, a little town in the
Las Cruces area. And, he came from a family that had lived there
for many years. And, his father was of Jewish-German descent and
se llamaba (named)
George Rosencrans had come, the family had originally come
from New York but had been in the Mesilla area
since the 1700s. And he married Josefa Ordoñez and they had my
Page:
6
dad. Obviously, (they did not get along)
no se congenearon and they separated when my
father was an infant and my father was given to his maternal grandparents
ella se llamaba (she was
named) Magdalena Ordoñez--I think. Ordoñez was her name and
her husband. My grandfather continued to live in the Las
Cruces/Upper El Paso Area and my grandmother left for
California and never came back to El Paso. She
never met my dad. Which I think is very strange for a Mexican-American woman,
but that is what she did. And my dad never knew his mother. But he was very
happy because lo crearon muy chipiles
sus abuelos, y siempre fue muy chiple con ellos. Los quería muchos.
(His grandparents spoiled him, and he was very spoiled.) During that
period of the, immediately after the depression, the
abuelitos (grandparents) of my father
decided to go back to Mexico. They had originally come from
Mexico and so his maternal grandparents, that had raised him,
left and went to Mexico. My father was just a young man then,
y se quedo solo en (and
he stayed by himself in) Canutillo. He had also moved to
Canutillo and when he
Page:
7
was 19 years old, he fell in
love with my mother. My mother was 16 and they married. And, they moved in to
live with my grandmother and they lived there for, you know, for a good number
of years. At that time my grandmother had never had papers. You know, people
used to go back and forth all the time without documentation. My grandmother
had lived here, I am sure, for at least, you know, close to 30 years and had
never had documentation. And, prior to the 30s she had always gone back and
forth and there was no problem. In 1938 she became ill and but she was still
going back and forth and she was going to a doctor in Juarez. On
one of the occasions that she was returning, the immigration told her that she
had no status, and that she could not come back. And, so she did not bother to
go through to arrange status. She just stayed in Juarez. She had
her sister that lived in Juarez and so she just stayed in
Juarez and my mother would go and see her. But then, you know,
in that year she passed away. She was already ill. She had cancer and so she
didn't want to go through the hassles of coming back and so she died in
Juarez and she is buried in the cemetery there in Cuidad
Juarez. My mother and my dad continued then, just, they inherited my
grandmother's house and they continued to live there and my father used to work
for the county. And
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8
he loved politics and in fact, maybe about in
the, in the early, in the late 30s, early 40s, he was elected constable. When
there was, you know, it was like a handful of voters there in
Canutillo but he was the Constable and he kind of enjoyed, you
know, that le gustaba mucho la
política . (He liked politics.) But, then in...he was drafted.
And, it is unusual to me now; I guess when you think about it, that he would
have been drafted when World War II had come upon us and he had four children.
I was like maybe five and I had an older sister and an older brother and then
we had a tiny baby that was like a couple of days old on the day that my dad
had to leave. But, my dad was drafted and he went to first to
Georgia and then to Europe. He was gone for like
three years. And, we stayed in Canutillo with my mother. And, I
think that during that period was a very strong development period for us
because I think that was the period that when people ask me, "What period
do you remember of your childhood that was very happy?" And, I always
remember those years there in Canutillo and with my mother. And
how strong my mother was.
Page:
9
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Can you give names to the siblings and
when they were born?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
My oldest brother is Carlos and he was
named after my mother's father General Carlos Almeida. My
sister was, who is two years older than I, is Berta, and then
myself, and then the young one that was born just before my father left was
named after my father because my mother feared that my dad might not return and
so that was Willie Jr.
Y cuando se fue mi papa estuvimos muy pacíficos con mi mama.
(And when my father left, we were very well behaved with my mother.) My mother
was a strong disciplinarian but yet she allowed us a lot of latitude and the
town was very small and so we could wander. And all the families knew
-- todas las familias se conocían.
(all the familias knew each other.) Everybody knew each other.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How big was
Canutillo at the time? You said a handful of voters, but the
population?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Umm. Well, you know, I can't put a number, but... |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What years were
these?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
it was
very small. It was 19, maybe '46.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
So, the town was very small. I remember almost all of the
families. There was a lot of ranchos around it and the people from the
ranchos
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10
would only come on occasion but the town itself was very small. You could
almost go through who the familias
(familys) were or at least those
familias (familys) that we were acquainted
with and that were friends. Había los
Reyes, Los Carascos. (There were the Reyes, the Carascos).
Los Carascos (The
Carascos) were very, very prominent people.
Era el Señor [Carasco] que era el dueño de
"la tienda". Bueno, había tres tiendas de abarrotes. La de el
Señor Carasco, una de un Señor que decían "El
Arabe". Vez como la jente de los barrios nomas decían
...(It was the gentleman [Mr. Carasco], who was the
owner of "the store". Well, there were three grocery stores. Mr.
Carasco's store, the one of the man who was called "El Arabe". See
how the people in the barrios
would say...) His name was Richard Haken, but
everybody said " la tienda del
Arabe " ("the store of the Arab")--
vez (see).
Y luego otro de (and
then the other of) Mr. Sierra. E. C. Sierra had a little tiny
grocery store. I see it now and I can't believe it. It is smaller than this
room, you know. But, that is where we used to buy the groceries and my mother
had some very nice
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11
neighbors that she had grown up with and you
know, and had been friends with most of her, at least her teen years. And so we
were very, very happy and it was a very sheltered type of environment .
Porque nos salimos en la mañana
almorzados. Andamos por todo el pueblo ... (We went out in the
morning after having breakfast and then wandered throughout the town...)
wandering around with the other kids, just kind of
"vasilando" ("fooling
around"); and then we would report back in the evening. And one of the
unusual things of that pueblo
was that there was a little theater
que tenia un (that had a) projectionist
que le daba a la maquina con la
mano . (That ran the machine with his hand.) And the real unique
thing was that we would all be at the house just waiting for when the theater
was going to open. And when he was... When Mr. Carasco was
going to start selling tickets, he had a kid there with a huge drum. And he
would start beating the drum. Y cuando
empezaba el tamboraso, (and when the drum beating started) we
would light out because we knew that they had started selling tickets for the
movies.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So, the beat of the drum was the church bells. That was the way to call
people.
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12
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
That was for the movies. If you wanted to go to the movies, that was it. And
then most of the social life there evolved around the church, you know, the
la quermes (the bazaar )
annually, and so forth. The other thing is
que celebraban allí mucho. Era un pueblo de la major...Yo
digo que todo la jente era Mexicana. No recuerdo que habría como do
sajones (that we celebrated there a lot. It was a town of the
majority...I mean that all the people [in the town] were of Mexican decent. I
don't remember there being many Saxons.)
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Católicos (Catholics), right? OK.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Uh hmm. The J. P. was an
Anglo. Judge Harley. I hardly remember him, but I remember him
through my dad knew him since my dad was a constable. The J. P. was Harley,
Mr. Harley. Y luego muy
grande celebración el diez y seis de septiembre. Se reúnan todo el pueblo en el
rebote. Y allí tenían y daban sus discursos los ... (And there
was a very large celebration for the 16th of September. All of the town
gathered in the " rebote
" And there they gave their speeches the...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Tell us what does
" rebote " mean
in this context?
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13
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, that it would be, it was a kind of gathering place.
It is the place where people played handball. It was the handball court.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
An open handball
court.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
En todas las pueblos había una
rebote. Unless you didn't grow up in the
pueblo of
Mexicanos , you don't know what
" rebote " is
but...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No,
" rebote " to
me, in my area, the Winter Garden area is the cutting of onions
and harvesting of onions.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No. Where they would have the fields and they would have
in each town Cuz [Because] aquí todos
tenían .(Here all had one..) In fact,
ahorita todavía in San Elizario todavía hay
rebote. (today there is still a "rebote" in
San Elizario.) But every town used to have one. It was a big
handball court where the men would play and they would play just with their
hands. It is like handball, but except a Mexican version of it.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And you would have two
walls. One solid, two solid walls and then like a half of a wall and then the
rest of it was open so there was a concrete and with two walls and so it lent
itself to be like a little
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14
gathering place
y allí ... (and there...) and it was. That
was the community gathering place. On Saturday and Sunday afternoon, all the
men were there for sure because they would go to play
rebote (handball) and we had a gentleman
that lived with us for many years who would play until his hand was like a
frog. Because they would play just with their hands and the handballs are not
soft balls. They are hard. Anyway, those were the gathering places. And they
would gather there and they had a lot of discursos (speeches) about the
diez y seis and they and
they would have the "Grito"
(shout) and that was, really I think, the prominent
celebration that they had there. They also had, my mother was active in the
PTA, but there at the school they had a separate PTA for
Mexican-Americans and the Anglos and most of the Anglos were, it was a small
population and they were from the large farms that surrounded the
pueblito (little town)
and my mother was active in the PTA. When my father returned, which
must, which by then I was seven, because I had gone two years to school, from
the service he was offered a job in Ysleta, which was another
little town on
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15
the opposite side, in the Lower
Valley of El Paso County and my mother was very
reluctant, but we did, we did move. It was, you know, for sure he would have
employment and employment that he liked, kind of in the political field and yet
he was a mechanic at the, he really enjoyed working with equipment. And, so we
moved to Ysleta. We sold my grandmother's house and we bought a
small house in Ysleta and we moved to Ysleta and there I spent almost all of my
life. I fell in love with Ysleta. My mother never like it very much. I fell in
love with it. I loved it immediately and I really liked the people and I liked
the school. We lived across the street from the grade school. The town was
different in that this town, Ysleta was again a small town, a little larger
than Canutillo. And, it was more of a mixture of ethnic groups.
I would say it was like 50 percent Anglo and 50 percent Mexican-Americans, but
the people didn't mix a lot. There was a healthy respect, I think, and
everybody got along well. It was never that I remember, when I was growing up,
any major incidents, but the, it was like separate because most of the
activities for us revolved again either with the school or at the church.
Particularly all of my teen years, all of our activities was with the church,
with the Catholic Church.
Page:
16
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Were the services segregated in the church
as well? A Mass for the Anglos and...
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
It wasn't at first. It was all in Spanish
and in fact the mission where I went to was one of the historical missions
founded in 1681 and that mission still was under the jurisdiction of the
Mexican Province of the Jesuits so that we were directly influenced and all our
priests came from Mexico. And that was true until about 1990.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Amazing.
The Chamizar...That was part of what the arrangement was with
El Chamiziar , but not
the church.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well except, not the church. |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
The church continued to have, the Mexican province still
had that particular parish through 1990. And, so we grew up in it and it was
very Spanish. The priest refused to have Masses in English. The English
speaking Catholics wanted to have a Mass in English and he refused. And, so
they built their own church. So, in the little town, there were two Catholic
churches. And one of those things that I
Page:
17
always remember is that
we were sent a letter that was read aloud by the priest at our church that said
that the new church did not have geographic boundaries, but that it did have,
it was specifically for the English speaking community, so it was understood,
you know. La iglesia de los
gringos. (The church of the
gringos .)
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is that what you all used to call them
gringos or
Mexicanos or
gringos ?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Casi siempre le decimos "los gringos." No el term
"bolleos". No es muy popular. Gringos, Los gringos. Mi mama siempre
les dice los Americanos. Ella todo el tiempo dijo que nosotros no eramos
Americanos nosotros eramos Mexicanos. Y siempre ella los refería
Americanos. (We almost always say you "the
gringos " Not the
term "bollilos" (gringos) which is not very popular.
Gringos , the gringos. My
mother always would call them Americans. She always said that we were not
American we are Mexican. And, always she referred them Americans.) And so then,
you know, we just kind of grew up and went to Ysleta grade
school, went to Ysleta High School and then I...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Were you active in school
clubs or your favorite subjects, your worst subjects?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I guess my favorite
subjects were always History. I loved History and I loved Government. The
Civics and American History, the histories I
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18
really thrived on--and
Geography. Those were the subjects that I liked the most and really enjoyed.
The activity that I enjoyed the most during the time that I was in high school
that I got very involved in was in the 4-H Club.
Ysleta was still rural. It was not a part of the city of
El Paso and there were still cotton fields and a lot of activity
associated with rural living and so in the school we still had 4-H
Club and I became very active in the 4-H Club. And I had a
wonderful agent, extension agent, Elkie Mentor, who became a
real good friend of mine and is probably, as I have reflected, one of the
mentors and people that helped me to develop. One of the things that she helped
me; and I will never forget this; she asked my parents if she could take me to
the 4-H encampment, which was in A & M [Texas A & M
University], and then beyond that if they would allow her to take me
because she was going to see her family in Port Arthur. And,
that she really wanted to show me the state. And, I am not sure how she, she
must have been very persuasive because my mom agreed that I could go. And, so I
went with her to, she took me to Austin and she showed
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19
me the state capital and then she took me to San
Antonio and we visited it extensively to the Breckenridge Zoo, to the
Sunken Gardens. I remember, you know, all of that, visiting all of that with
her and then we spent the week at the encampment and it was pretty exciting,
you know, to be there.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What was your activity in 4-H? Was it
livestock or was it poultry?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Public speaking. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Oh. You did not raise an animal; you were
just forensic activity.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, I did public speaking. Public speaking is a portion of
4-H and one of the areas that they have competitions on and in fact
I competed because I had won at Odessa in the regional and I was
like a second, like an alternate at the state encampment. And, then she took me
to Corpus Christi and Port Arthur and we saw her
family and you know, she really wanted me to know this state. Later when we, as
we have kept in contact, she said that she always thought that I had leadership
qualities and that she wanted to expose me beyond El Paso so
that I would know what was there.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
You were a teenager about this time? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yeah, I was like, like
probably 15 or 16.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So, this should be about the 50s?
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20
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Uh hmm. The early 50s. And
in fact she was very, very protective of me because I know that there was a lot
of discrimination like I used to, she used to take me to compete in
Odessa and so forth and she would always, as with other girls,
but mostly there was, it was mostly Anglos that participated in 4-H
and she would go into the hotels and very carefully find out, you know, I guess
to be sure that there was no problem and sometimes we wouldn't stay there. We
would go to another place and she never said why. And I know now, in
reflecting, I know that it was because they had policies that they didn't allow
Mexicanos .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And you were what,
obviously Mexican looking or?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Hey, you know, una
prietita (a darkie) but she was very protective. She never let,
she never let on, she never said to me, and I never questioned it either. I
think I have now reflected on it and thought, you know, well, Miss
Mentor was very good because she protected me from that and on all of
the trips. And, I went to numerous competitions with her because she really
encouraged you. I mean she
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21
just kept after me and so she was a very
strong influence to me. At the high school that I went to, the
Ysleta was probably about half and half, but the Anglos and the
Mexicanos , but the
Mexicano kids, we didn't
participate in any of the school activities. We didn't participate; we didn't
have any Mexicano
cheerleaders, we didn't have Mexicano , there was a few football players, but
not many. There were none of the, or very few of , the most popular or any of
those things. A very few in the school class officers and we didn't question it
either because we did those things at the church. We had a very active
CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) that are non- existent
now but during the 50s were very strong. I mean, there wasn't enough time to do
all the activities that we did at the CYO and to do things at
school, so we had, so it was like separated, the academics were at the school,
the social activity and extra curricular was at the Catholic Church with the
CYO. We had the May Queen. We had all those types of good dances at
the church. So I guess, you know, you don't miss it if you have a viable
alternative. We had sports activities, we had competitions, we had everything
that we wanted to be involved in was at the CYO.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How about teachers
and administrators, were they mostly Anglos?
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22
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
At no time in my 12 years
of education did I have a Mexican-American teacher. There were none. And
certainly not administrators.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So, when did you? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I had some very good teachers and some that
were very sensitive and some that I remember to this day, you know, how good
they were. My third grade teacher loved poetry and she would recite and I got
to love poetry. And I still do. You know why? Because I read the most and enjoy
the most is poetry. I really, you know, think back that Miss
Chesser, you know, really influenced me in that respect.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
When do you recall
your first fantasies or dreams or hopes of what you were going to be?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I always
thought that I wanted to be a nurse. But you know, I knew that it was very
difficult and I had a lady friend that I used to baby-sit for and she was a
neighbor there. Era Mexicana,
Barron y Christina era (She
was a Mexican, Barron and Christina was a) nurse. And oh, I really admired
Christina, but you know, in discussing things in Christina's
career with her, she told me that when she was a young
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23
girl that
she had gone to, she had wanted to, she had applied to Hotel Duke,
which was the nursing school here in El Paso, but that the
nursing school here in El Paso was run by the Sisters of the
Charity did not accept Mexican-American students and so that she had gone to
the nursing school in New Orleans. And, I guess that I knew, you
know, when I got to high school that most of us, my friends in high school and
Mexicanos and we were
all from probably the lower end of the middle class families. Everybody owned
their home and everybody's dad worked. We weren't rich but we all had to have
little jobs during the time that, but I loved working. I used to baby-sit. I
used to tutor Christina's children and I, we didn't have counselors. There was
never anyone that really said, hey you all should go and get more education.
You all ought to go to college. It was never even a consideration for most of
us. I think all of us knew that when we got out of high school we would find
jobs and so we were kind of preparing ourselves. You know, I took all the
clerical things. I was a good typist. I did this. Some of my friends were very
good
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That
is the excuse...
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
and shorthand... |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
That is if you got out of high school, no?
Page:
24
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Because I'm sure there was a lot of people... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think that by the time that we got to high
school, it was, you know, I still maintain a relationship with, we were very
close at the Ysleta Elementary and there is still a group of us, about seventy
that graduated in '53 from Ysleta Grade School and about half of those did not
go to high school. We are still friends and I see, you know, what a waste it
was that they didn't because they have all done fairly well. They had some, and
I think, you know, imagine what they would have done if they had gone to high
school and maybe even college. But then again,
casi todos (almost all of them) they went to
work for Farah. For some of those, and they have all been
like... They have all been elevated to supervisors and that type of thing. When
I went to work for Henley Paine and he's been manager of a
store. And but... there wasn't, it wasn't something we expected. We didn't
expect to go to college and I think for many of them that they never expected
to go beyond grade school and I think that the school didn't either because
Page:
25
they used to have, in fact, very elaborate graduation ceremonies
for us in grade school and so when you graduated the eighth grade, for many
that was it. For those that did go to high school, it was well, you know, you
are getting that much more and you are preparing for work. Most of the Anglos
would, would, I guess you know, expected that they were going to college. But
no nos juntábamos con ellos ni
platicamos mucho con ellos. Entre nosotros. (We didn't get
together with them or talk much with them. . Between us) we didn't expect to go
to college. We expected to go to work. Of all of my friends that were close to
me in high school, only two went to college. And I would say that I had a
circle of friends, girls and boys, at least 20 or 30 of us that were very
active at the church and in activities and were very close to each other and
continue to be so today only two fueron
al colegio . (went to college.) But all of them have done well
in their, where they landed in their profession or in their jobs.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So, what happened to
you from high school until the time you got married?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I got married two
years later. You know, one of the things that people my age in that area
en esa época (in that
time) was that, you know, that is what you expected. You know, my parents
expected us
Page:
26
to work and they needed us for to kind of help them
because by now, we had four other children. We had Willie Jr.
which was the one born just before my father left, and when he returned we had
Estella and we had Ramon and we had
Estelle. So, we had more children and life was already
beginning to get more pressured and so we, the three older ones, it was
expected that we would work. My older brother dropped out of high school. My
mother was very disappointed. She wanted us to finish high school. He dropped
out of high school because it was the Korean War came and he got all excited
about, you know, joining the Marines. And so he dropped out of high
school; he went to join the Marines. And, low and behold they found out that he
had high blood pressure and that it was high enough that they wouldn't accept
him. He then tried the Army, he tried every one of the branches and
he couldn't get in. And by then he had gotten to a point that he did not want
to return to high school and so he went and to a trade school and learned to be
a mechanic and when he went to work my dad was working as a mechanic at
International Harvester and Carlos went to
Page:
27
work there too in the night shift and I am very proud of
Carlos because today Carlos is the owner of the
International Harvester dealership in Las Cruces. And
I am sure millonario (a
millionaire) several times over and just, you know, because of his
determination and hard work. And also, you know, the ability to change in the
automotive industry that when he started there were just very simple engines
and now they have gone to the diesel engines and whatever it is that they have
today.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Computers? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
That's right. But, you know, he has gone through all of that and in a very
successful manner.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Well, where did you work in high school? After high
school and all?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Cuando yo estaba en
(When I was in) high school, I would work as tutoring some kids after school
that were having difficulties and with the neighbors. They would pay me to help
their kids with their homework and stuff and I also worked at W. T.
Grant's which was downtown. I would catch... I had the Distributive
Education that I went to school in the morning and then at about 1:00, I would
catch the bus and come to downtown El Paso. And I worked at
downtown as a sales lady/girl. At that time, there was a lot of opportunities
and the stores did actually hire sales people just to help customers. I wish
they
Page:
28
had some today, but no
hay nadie en las tiendas. (there is no one in the stores.) And
I loved it. And what I liked the most was that I met so many people. All the
other DE students from all the other schools that I had not been exposed to.
Allí trabajaban de la Bowie, de la
Jefferson, (Working there were [students] from Bowie [High] and
Jefferson [High], El Paso High, from all of the high schools. So, it was like,
you know, they had like a little special program where they hired Distributive
Education students and so it was like a whole other group of friends that I
developed and got to know well. And again, that have maintained friendships
with me until now. And, it was like we were a special group. The regular
employees or the career ones just kind of had fun with us because we were just
kids and then they would hire us in the summer and then they would hire us
after school and during the holiday periods. When I got out of, when I finished
and I worked at Grant's for my sophomore year, my junior year, and then even
the senior year, I worked the holidays, but then when I finished high school I
went to work at the Humane Society. A friend of, a
Page:
29
political friend of my dad, un compadre
me consiguió un trabajo (a friend found me a job) which was a
clerical job. You know it was a very nice job and the nicest thing is that I
met my husband there. I met Joe, Joe
trabajaba allí. (worked there.) And, two
years later we married. So, I married him in '59 and I think that at that time
the expectation was that you married and that you would, that maybe you
wouldn't have to work, but life had changed a lot then. My mother had always
been a homemaker. She had never worked outside of the home. So, I think that I
expected that and most of my friends expected that that's what we would do.
|
| Dr.Gutiérrez: |
How old were
you by this time?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was 20. So, I married when I was 20. And immediately,
también (also), what you did then was that
you immediately had a child, so you know ten months later, I had a child and
but I had to work and so I went to, I worked, I then was given a job, a friend
of my father's had been elected county judge in 1960, Woodrow
Bean. He was a dynamo and kind of an outrageous person, larger than
life, one of those Texas politicians that are just larger than
life. And Woodrow gave me a job in, at the coliseum as an, as the assistant, as
an administrative assistant to the manager and I loved that job and I loved my
boss. By then I
Page:
30
had two children. I had another child after
Carlos was born and then a year later, Coreen
was born. And then, during the time that I was working at the coliseum I had my
final baby, Sammy. And I named Sam after the
boss there, un judío (a
Jew)-- a Jewish man that was just a lovely person, named Sam
Cohen; and he taught me more about management and about labor and
relations than I think I could have learned anywhere else. You know, he taught
me how to work, how to run the crew, how to work with the men, and how to have
a good relationship with, and how to give orders without, how to be a good
boss.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Let
me interrupt you and ask you about your father's subsequent political activity,
you know, he was a constable? Did he ever get involved in politics, in anything
else?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
He was
involved in probably every political campaign in the Democratic
Parties every two years. At that time there used to be a primary every
two years. And the governors used to run every two years.
Page:
31
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That was the year
also of the poll tax.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Yeah, he always paid his poll tax and he made sure that my
mother paid her poll tax and they bought poll taxes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did he take you with
him to these meetings and things?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I used to...Hey, I was a political operative since I was a
kid. I would go and give cards. I would go and you know, go in for people that
he was supporting and one of the people that he always supported and got to be
his friend was Ralph Yarborough. I think that, that was the
first campaign that I really remember where I met the candidate. I was a senior
in high school. I had known Ralph Yarborough before because my
dad had helped him. Ralph Yarborough used to run for the governor every two
years; and they would come to El Paso and would come there to my
dad's house and my dad would go with him to the VFW and kind of walk
around the little pueblito
(town) with him and to the Volunteer Fire Department
because that was kind of, you know, the easy, it was a much more relaxed and
people to people is how campaigns were run then. It wasn't big media or just
candidates on television and so my dad was very involved in almost every
campaign. And always supported candidates and see, well, since he worked for
the county he had a relationship with the commissioner and one of the
Page:
32
commissioners, Fred Bunson, was his direct boss
and then Judge Bean was the County Judge and so he had, you
know, jurisdiction over the...
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Was he active with the Viva Kennedy clubs?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Oh yeah, but
that was much later. I was active with those also.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, this was '59?
'60?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
But, yeah.
But my dad was very active with Ralph Yarborough. He was just,
you know, Ralph era muy jente y venia a
la casa y platicaba con nosotros chavalos. (He was a good
person and came to the house and talked with us "regular kids" )
which was just, you know, amazing to everyone. In '57, he talked to me and that
is when he ran for the special election and that is the year he was elected to
the Senate, to the U. S. Senate. In '57.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Henry B.
Gonzales also ran in 1956, no?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
He ran for governor. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No, '60, right. Was
your dad involved in that?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
My dad was involved with that campaign. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK.
Page:
33
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
But I didn't meet
Henry.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Versus that Ralph would come to the house
and had been coming like every two years, you know, when he was running for
governor and so throughout the 50s, I think he and I, I knew Ralph
Yarborough so much better and Ralph was really a hero to me. And in
'57, I was a senior in high school and I worked on his campaign as a volunteer.
I couldn't vote then because the voting age was still 21, but I was involved. I
stayed at the poll for him that one, one, on his election. It was a special
election giving his cards and my dad had been bringing people to vote and
anduvo con...había una Señora muy activa
que se llamaba Fabiana. Y anduvo el y Fabiana en los caros
trayendo la jente a votar por el (he was
with...there was a woman who was very active named Fabiana.
And he and Fabiana went around in cars bringing the people to vote for)
Ralph Yarborough.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Do you remember her last name? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Fabiana
Silva. Ella le gustaba también
mucho la política y andaba ella y mi a'pa (padre) trayendo todas las gentes a
votar en el carro y yo estaba ayudando a los tarjetas. Y mi a'ma (madre)
también le gustaba (She also liked politics and she and my
father went around bringing all
Page:
34
the people to vote in the car and
I was helping with the cards. And my mother also you liked this) and she would
go with me to give the cards and there was some other people that worked there
in Ysleta that worked for the judges or something like that in
the courts. My dad had a compadre que
se llamaba (who was named) Luis Foyt. He was a
very, very prominent person también allí
en (also there in) Ysleta and he was an
interpreter at the court house for the district judges and so every time the
district judges. What...his kids were kind of -- told, "Hey, you
could...[give out the cards]" And you know what? They hated it. I couldn't
understand why--because I loved it. You know they would complain, "Oh we
are going to have to go and give the cards."
A mi me gustaba mucho. (But me, I really
liked it) I really... It excited me to do that.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
At that time, do you recall if you had
thoughts about wanting to be involved in politics as a candidate or hold office
or
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No. No, I
know that I just loved it.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Or work for a candidate?
Page:
35
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I just loved it. I loved
working for the candidates. And I, in, when Kennedy ran, I was
already a young married person and it was the first time that I had a poll tax.
So, the first election, my birthday is in November and so I had had a birthday.
I had registered and the first time that I voted for a presidential race was to
vote for President Kennedy and I remember that I stood in line
for about three hours. Because they used to have those old machines that, you
know, were so slow, you know, and when there were so many, but they had made...
En los barrios había hecho tanta
campaña... los Viva, y las actividades (In the neighborhoods
there was so much campaigning..the Viva, and the activities) and Viva
Kennedy Clubs and Kennedy had come and had a rally. And
it was just an exciting time. Mucha
gente (Many people) mobilized and so there was a big turnout.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Who were
some of the El Paso leaders other than your dad in this Viva
Kennedy stuff that you can recall?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, there was a lot of them. Albert
Armendariz, who was Judge Armendariz was very active
with that. Woodrow was kind of the leader.
Woodrow anque no era Mexicano, Woodrow, anque no era
Mexicano, se metía con La Raza y se organizo también mucho de eso.
(although he was not of Mexican decent, he got involved a lot with
La
Page:
36
Raza and he also organized much of that) He kind of
spearheaded a lot. The other one that was very active with, oh, had been active
with PASO and was very active with that was Mauro
Rosas. Mauro Rosas was a lawyer and was the first Mexican-American
from here to go to the Legislature. And so Maurito, who was
very prominent in the Viva Kennedy's and some of the LULAC
leadership was active in that. Alfonso Kennard, Paul
Abdal. Todos esos grupos.
(All those groups.) There was the courthouse people, of course.
Julian Teddy, who worked; he was the head custodian at the
courthouse. He was very active with those. And kind everybody worked under the
leadership of the judge.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Now by that time, there has also been the first
Mexican-American Mayor en
(in) El Paso?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, but he did something that was not very
kosher with the Mexican-Americans muy...toda la gente le quería mucho a Ray.
(very...all the people liked Ray very much.) And my dad was somewhat involved
in race campaign; but not in a lot. And also, we lived in the county; we
Page:
37
were still not in the city of El Paso. We were in
the rural area. Toda vía no eramos de la
cuidad. (Still we were not part of the city.) But he promoted
the non-partisan elections for mayor.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Now, this is Ray Telles?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
He was kind of,
los (the)
gringos persuaded him
and used him to separate the city elections from the political parties and I
see it now as a very bad thing because Mexicanos identified and you could motivate them
when it is a Democrat against a Republican. It is not so easy to motivate them
and for them to have the issues as clearly defined when there is no partisan
label on it. And since then, since Ray, you know, I think that that made it
more difficult for Mexicanos
to be elected subsequently.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
But he was the one,
y muchos se enojaron con el (and many became
angry with him) because he did that. And I have never talked with him. I have
never discussed why he did it. You know he has become a good friend of mine,
but I have no idea. Maybe, you know, he is a
Page:
38
very well intentioned
gentle spirit. He may have really believed that it was a better way.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you get involved
in the party politics? Delegate? Precinct chair?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was always involved. I was always a
democrat and always identified with the party. I do not like the non-partisan
stuff. After I got...I continued working at the county and I think, you know, I
did very well. My children were growing. In 1968, to my surprise, some of the
[Democratic] Party people called and said, "Would I consider
running." And they were going. I was a delegate. I had always been a
delegate to the state conventions. But they used to...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Do you remember when
this time was?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
There used to be real small delegations. I mean, like maybe ten people would
go, you know, just a few of the leadership people would go and do what had to
be done. By the late 60s we were getting to be more active and I think in '66 I
went and then the next time that I went was in '68. A group of people asked me.
George McAlmon, who was my friend forever. He and another
group, Corbert Coldwell, who was then
Page:
39
the county
judge and others asked me if I wanted to be the committee woman? I said, well,
what is the committee woman going to do, you know, what is it really, that job?
And they said, well, you know, you are just, you know, the state executive
committee runs the party and they have a man and a woman from each of the
senatorial districts and we want you to be the one from El Paso.
And I said, well, you know, I don't have money to travel. Joe
was by then, Joe was a policeman and I worked at the county but we had the
three little ones and it wasn't easy to have money in and by that time it cost
like $400 to go to Austin on a plane. I mean there wasn't no
Southwest Airlines. You would go Continental or you would
go on American, so it was expensive to do a trip to
Austin or to the meetings. But they all said, "Hey, you
know, we will help and we will help with your expenses." So, I agreed and
I went to that convention in '68 and it was in Austin. And I was elected to the
state executive committee and I was the first
Mexicana to serve on the state executive
committee.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Another first. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
There wasn't any others. In fact, you would look and when you would go, when
we would go from El Paso we would have rather large delegations
de Mexicanos y andábamos allí en las
recepciones y eramos
Page:
40
los únicos Mexicanos. (of
Mexican-Americans and we were at the receptions and we were the only
Mexican-Americans.).
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Nobody from the Valley or
Laredo or San Antonio?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Very few, very
few-- contados .
(counted.) By then, the party had become very torn with the
Connally and Yarborough and so El
Paso was strong Yarborough Country. You know, we just
had total disdain for those Connally people and so we...Our
delegations, were always very strong Yarborough. And not with
Conelly.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Idelogically, that also meant liberal? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Absolutely. Yeah, you were
liberal or conservative. There was only one party in Texas, you
know, but with two, two really diverse political philosophies.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How did you get to be
county clerk?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I, first I, well once I was on the state committee and then
Mr. McAlman asked me to, he was elected county chair, and he
is very wealthy, always has been and he said, I want to maintain an office for
the Democratic Party because they had never had one. And it will be,
Page:
41
he was an attorney. He says, I will have an office next to my
office, but I want you to run all the day to day things for the party and I
agreed. And so I went to work for the Democratic Party as his
administrative assistant and I really got to know, you know, to be really fully
knowledgeable with the election code. I mean, I could recite the election code
inside out. That was my business, that you know, I had to know the code and I
became totally versed with the party rules and the election code. And I did
that for four years. One of the things that happened in 1970 was that my
children had, you know.... We still had lived in Ysleta. We had
bought a house there in Ysleta; and my children began to go to Ysleta
Elementary, también .
(also.) And I was active in the PTA. I was active in the events
there at the school. We became very angry because the schools had really been
allowed to just deteriorate terrible. The building was a very old building, the
Ysleta Elementary building, the original building. It had
tubería (tubes) running across for the steam
heating and periodically they would break, the kids would get wet. I mean, all
kinds of things would happen and there was steam. Really--I look at it. My kids
could have been burned, but luckily they weren't. But they would get wet, they
would get, things would happen to them. The floors were...
Page:
42
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Were the schools still segregated at that time? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, Ysleta Elementary was never segregated.
The only school that I remember that was segregated through the 70s, through
the late 60s, was Fabans, but the school was segregated when I was there. I
never went to school with the blacks--anybody from the black community. In
fact, I knew very few. In Ysleta no
había (there wer no) black families. And in
Canutillo there had not been black families so I had, I was
never exposed to the black community growing up.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How about between the
Mexicans and whites? Were they, the schools had separate classrooms or?...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There were white kids
in these dilapidated schools also?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Yes, but by then, by 1970, the community had had a real
change. In 1958, the city of El Paso annexed
Ysleta. And began to do... and then during the late, the 60s,
began to build all of the public housing in that surrounding area, large
numbers of public housing. And in the 70s, I mean--it really was a boom and it
was an effort to kind of create public
Page:
43
housing for people in the
city that needed it, but it also had the effect that they created a very poor
area. So, economically while through maybe '58, when I was growing up and
became a young adult, the community was like a lower-middle class community. By
the time my children, by 1970, when my children were at Ysleta Elementary, we
were more into the poverty. The kids were going with kids that were very poor.
It was getting very poor. The economics had really gone down; it had really
changed a lot and so people had moved to the Eastside, north of the freeway and
very, some had stayed, but most of the, most of the, like people my age, the
parents stayed in Yselta, but they moved to the Eastside and that area. So, we
stayed in Yselta. Kind of by choice because we wanted to be close to my mother
and I wanted my kids to go to school with other Mexican kids. I didn't
necessarily want them to be going to con
las polveadas, los encremados (the powder[-faced], the
cream-colored [people].) So, you know, I guess, near Dewells.
So, I wanted them to go there, but I wanted their school to look decent. I
wanted them to have the opportunities and to have better schools. Anyway, so,
in 1970, a group of people there from the PTA and teachers joined
with us and we said we have got to do something about this school. We can't
have this school just this
Page:
44
way and so we wrote letters to the
superintendent and we wrote letters to the school board and they didn't even,
you know, they didn't even have the courtesy to tell us, to answer, to respond
and it made us very angry in that little community.
Nos dio mucho coraje (we were very angry)
that they would just ignore us and so then there was an election coming up and
so some of the teachers said, well, you know, we should run a candidate and
maybe that will change, that will at least put them on notice that we don't
like this. And up till then, the school board was made up of seven Anglos.
There had never been a Mexican-American elected. There had been some that had
run, but they had never won. They had not been successful and the reason they
weren't is that the only people that voted in those elections were the teachers
and maybe the administrative staff and they all voted for what the staff
wanted. There had never been a person that had been voted in outright. They had
always been first appointed, then run for re-election and the average term of
these people on the board was 20 years. Estaban allí enricados . (They had taken root.) I
mean, like, they had
Page:
45
been there forever. Anyway, we started
talking, well, who would run and someone said, "Well, you are the only one
that knows something about politics and that you have been involved and we
should, you should run" And so I asked Mr. McAlmon, who
was my boss, and I was working for him, and he said, "Yeah, if you want to
run -- run." And so I ran for the school board.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
But he knew the
issues. He knew you were going to be a reform candidate.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Oh, yes, he knew the
issues. He was a fine liberal. And es
Mexicano de corazón . (he is a Mexican-American at heart). He
knew the issues very, very well, and so he said run and so I ran and we decided
to run a campaign, a very quiet campaign. Just door to door, just, and it was
really kind of like we were forced to educate people because the majority of
the people didn't even know what we were talking about, when we talked about
the school board. What is it? They had always thought well, the principal was
the ultimate authority at the school, you know.
Si el principal decía -- (if the principle
said) well that was it. And so we told them about the board, we told them about
who was the one that made the decisions for that school and you know, that they
needed to vote.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Is this on house calls, going down door to door?
Page:
46
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Going door to door. And we... |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
And are you registering voters at the same time? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
We were registering
voters.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And there was no poll tax by now? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, no. By now the poll tax had been abolished in the 60s.
So, we were just, it was just a matter of registering them and informing them
about the schools. Then when we went to talk, we started to talk to a few other
people along Alameda Street. or once that I announced, other people began to
talk to me; to call me and that were having similar problems in an area south
of the freeway. Escadate, Cedar Grove and those areas that were also older
schools and were having problems.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Let me ask you... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
The other thing that was happening was that
because of the make up of the student body had changed so there was a growing
need for bilingual education and the teachers absolutely hated it. They had
this rampage against bilingual education and that they were not going to allow
bilingual education into the system.
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47
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Let me ask you this. Are the teachers
still predominately Anglo?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Yes, but there was in the ranks, there was already
Mexicanos . My children
had a lot of Mexicano
teachers.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Second question. The people that you are visiting door to door, are they
residents or are they citizens?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, citizens. Because we knew that the residents couldn't
vote. So, we were particularly were targeting and at this time, in '70, we
still had a majority of citizens. They just were not participating in this
particular election. In fact, we used the roles that we had used for the
Democratic Party. We used all the lists that we had from the party
to make the visits. And I used a lot of the material and information that I had
accumulated from the Democratic Headquarters and from, took advantage that that
was an office that I ran. And so we got, we got to the election and on that
night, I had a group of people at the house that had been helping me. And so, I
ran quickly to the administrative building just to watch as they were bringing
in the results. At that time, the district was rather unsophisticated. They had
a big blackboard and they had the names of the schools and the polls and they
would just put it on with the chalkboard. You know, they would open it up and
see and write it there. Well, when they finished tallying
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48
them up,
I had won by about like, 50 votes. And so, they were very concerned
se metieron todos a la oficina de
el (everyone went into the office of the) superintendent,
y entonces salio el abogado
(and then the attorney came out) -- Skip Brodas. I
will never forget him. He came and he said, "Well, Mrs.
Chacon, it appears like you have won, but there is a problem." I
said, "Well, what is the problem?" And he said, "Well, we will
be discussing it with you later." And I said, "OK". And so I
just went home and Mr. McAlmon was at the house with a group
of friends and I said, "George, I don't know what is
wrong, but you know, they, Skip Brodas came out and told me
that there is a problem; and he said, "I will go and find out." And
so he went to the superintendent and he talked to him as my attorney and he
said, you know, I represent Alicia and I want to know what is
the problem that your talking about. He said, "Well, at the polls at
Ysleta Elementary, there is 50 more votes on the machine than there are on the
register-- registration list, and we don't know how to account for those 50
votes on the machine. And we are going, you know, we are
Page:
49
going to
have to do an investigation." So we said OK and we just knew that we had
to continue monitoring that investigation. When they convened as a board, you
know, when you run and have school board election, there is always like two
people running or two positions running. So in this one was place four and
place five. I was place four. What they did was that they immediately, there
seemed to be no problem or there was such a margin on place five that they
declared the winner in place five, but they did not declare a winner in place
four and they had a public statement that there was a problem and that they
didn't know how they would resolve it. They then said on the radio, then we
asked for a recount. And so they went through and recounted it. We got an
affidavit from the guy that had set up the machine and he said this was the old
chutes machine that you would go in and the curtain closed and then you would
pull the little levers. He absolutely took an oath that when he had set up the
machine it was at all zeroes. In looking back now, I know that it couldn't have
been because you know, they made a mistake. The votes must have been on the
machine and I don't know where they were but they had to have been on there
because then, and then the clerk said, oh, absolutely she had checked the
machine as well and that it was at zeroes. And then they called in
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50
an expert from the company that manufactured those machines and he said, well,
you know, if the machine was not malfunctioning, that the machine was
functioning properly; and then they kind of said what the board said. What
their alternatives were going to be and by then, I had a lot of controversy had
begun to brew. One of the things is that during the campaign I had maybe subtly
accused him of discrimination. I had also...discriminating against schools
south of the freeway. I had been an advocate of bilingual education and just
said that it was a necessary tool and so,
ya (now) the racism issue had really
surfaced. And a lot of people that I knew and that had been at the high school
with me and from the Pueblo
were kind of upset with me and saying, you know, why are you forcing
these issues? You are stirring it up and you are being divisive and you know,
that term has followed me my entire life. That I was being divisive. And I
said, "Hey, I am saying, I am saying," I was stating the situation as
it is and we have to open our eyes and we have to examine it and we have to see
it. But people didn't want to. When this resistance to my victory became so
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51
obvious, well, by now everybody was talking about it. And
Woodrow being...I told you-- Woodrow being this former...He
was a former county judge by then, he went to one of the meetings and he just
said, well, you know, he just attacked them blatantly and called them racists
and said, "You know, where do you think you are? Do you think you are in
Odessa or Pecos and you are not going to, you are
not going to get away with this. You just can't do this and we know what you
are doing and we are not going to allow it." Anyway, we realized that, but
that they just weren't taking any action and under the school laws and the
election laws, an incumbent continues to serve until the replacement is
certified. Well, they weren't certifying me and they talked about alternatives.
They said, well, we might declare a winner, excluding that poll. Well, then I
would clearly lose if they did that. Since we can't account for them, we might
just exclude that poll and declare a winner and every alternative that they
would kind of discuss that they were legal, that they were talking about, just
would eliminate, you know, would wipe out my victory. So, by then we realized
that they weren't taking any action and we realized that we were going to have
to take some efforts to force them. And I didn't have money. And so, Judge
Albert Almendariz who was, had just been active in '68
Page:
52
and '69 in
creating MALDEF and he was the chair of the MALDEF board and he came
forward and he said, Alicia, this looks like a very... the
type of case that MALDEF needs to be involved in. And he said, "I am going
to call MALDEF and Mario Obledo in San Antonio
and see if Mario will look into it and that we will undertake, you know, to
defend, to represent you." And so Mario, Mario came and what Mario did was
that he hired a local attorney and they, we filed a suit against the district.
First we filed in the Court of Appeals a mandamus to mandamus the board to name
a winner, to declare a winner, that they had no authority to look beyond the
total numbers, that if, on the surface, this is the numbers that they had, they
had to accept those numbers. That they did not have authority to look beyond
what was wrong with the machine or what wasn't wrong with the machine. The
Court of Appeals agreed to hear the arguments. And I think you know by now that
there was enough controversy in the community that going on that everybody was
kind of on pins and needles about how they were going to resolve this
situation. And ya se vía armado
borlote (it
Page:
53
had excalated to a scandal) and so
then they, the court of appeals heard the case, was very reluctant, you know,
all of the judges, everyone was still very much part of the establishment. They
didn't want to rule against the school board so they took it under advisement
and they wouldn't render a decision and you know, you can't force the Court of
Appeals to render a decision on, so they said they had to study it. So we
didn't find any relief there. By this time then, the board decided that they
would conduct a second election--totally unprecedented and not stipulated or
authorized in the Election Code or the Texas Education Code. They just
undertook it. They said that they had this terrible situation, that they could
not declare a winner with the statistics, with the information that they had,
so that they were going to write a letter to every person that had voted in the
original election and instruct them to come in and under oath, cast their vote
and swearing under oath that they were voting the identical way they had voted
the first time. We immediately fought, filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court
saying that, that election was not a valid one, that they had no authority to
call it. Again, the Federal Court heard the case, but the federal judge did not
take any action. He took it under advisement. Then they began to proceed with
the election and they sent out all these registered
Page:
54
letters to
people. And in fact, I couldn't find it; but I do have a copy of my letter that
I received and it basically says that, you know, we are going to conduct this
election for one week to give you the opportunity and we are going to have the
poll available for five working days and for you to come in, cast your vote,
sign a note that you are going to vote the same. So then we asked them for a
list of the, who was eligible to participate. Well, they refused to give us the
list. Which is denying you access to, you know, as a candidate, to, and against
the law. Then we asked them, then we said, you know, well, how do we know who
is eligible to vote then? And they said, everyone that is eligible has received
a registered letter. I said, well, only because you are telling us that. We
don't know it. Because you have refused us access to the, to the eligibility
list, to the eligible list. So then we talked to some people and kind of used
the strategy MALDEF suggested that we find some people that had not
voted and ask them to go and vote, attempt to vote and so they were denied. So,
then we filed that they were denied the right to vote and so we went to court
Page:
55
again and they went to court on my behalf saying, well, they were
citizens, they met all the eligibility requirements. If the district was
conducting an election, they were eligible to vote and they were being denied
their civil rights to exercise their civil rights in voting. Well, again, there
was a third one and the judge, the district-- the federal judge heard it and
then took no action. So the election proceeded. The only relief that the judge
provided at the first time was he said he was allowing the election because we
filed an injunction to stop the election. The only thing he allowed was that
the district could not require the people to sign an oath of how they were
voting. That was a violation of their rights and that they could not, that was
the only relief we got. So, we had to stay, we had to have people there to stay
there all those days of that election telling people, you know, they are going
to ask you to sign. You don't have to sign, you can vote anyway you want to.
There is nothing that says you vote the same way. You vote your conscience.
Well, then they, when they completed that election, well by then, I tell you,
there was a lot more controversy and so I had a much larger margin then and...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you
have an actual campaign, I mean in essence, you tried to go get people to go
vote?
Page:
56
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, because we didn't even know who it was. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So this was some people... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
All we did was have people
there.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
On
their own?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, yes, because the ones that had gotten the certified letters, people
got an actual certified letter with a receipt return requested. They were the
only ones and every attempt that we had made to get a list of the eligible
voters so that we could contract them was, we were denied. So we really did not
know, other than those that we knew personally that maybe some friends had
taken them, we had no way of contacting them. But I won with a larger margin.
And then the district took, again, they did another totally unprecedented
thing; is they combined the results of the two elections to declare a winner.
And so I went on the school board and that in itself, you know, became an
experience. The process by which I had gotten onto the school district and one
of the things that I began to do immediately was, you know, at that time there
was no open records meeting, there was no requirements on
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57
executive sessions and they would discuss everything in executive session. Most
of the meetings were in the superintendent's office with the doors closed and
the first thing I said was, you know, you all need to know that anything that
you all discuss, I am not bound to keep quiet about what you all discuss and
even if you all discuss in my presence, I will feel free to discuss anywhere
else and give information to the public. Talk about cramping their style, you
know, it was just difficult because they couldn't have a meeting without asking
me but they had to, you know, how are they going to talk about these things
that they talked about with me there and my saying I don't consider it
privileged? It was there, but I felt that, you know, that was about the only
thing that I could do as one person was to tell the public what they were doing
and what they were discussing and how, you know, the process was going. The
first time that I was on, that I had been seated on the board and there was a
time that they were going to do promotions and Dr. Hanks, the
superintendent at that time, brought a list of the candidates he was
recommending for principals and again, there was not one single
Mexican-American principal or in any administrative position and the district
make up, the make up of the district was about 70%
Mexicanos . And so when he brought, the
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58
student body and the population, so when he brought in these
recommendations-- traía como cuatro
gringos (he had about four
gringos ) and I just said, "You know,
Dr. Hanks, do you not have a Mexican-American that meets all
the requirements for principals?" And he just looks that, you know, kind
of, dismayed, you know, like what are you talking about? And he ponders the
question and he says, "Well, I think I do. I think I have one
person." And so the other one sarcastically says, "Well, let's see
his file." And so they went and brought this file of this gentleman named
Crecensio Dominguez, C.V. Dominguez
le decían. Trajeron el file de
(as he was called. They brought the file of ) C.V. Dominguez.
"Well, you know, he meets all the requirements. Why are you not
recommending him? Well, he is recommended. He is, you all can consider
him." And so it was kind of an appeasement as I see it. The others said,
"Well, go ahead. If he is qualified, Dr. Hanks, promote
him." And so we had the first Mexican-American principal.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
A little private
affirmative action..
Page:
59
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
He was the first Mexican-American principal and I am very
proud of the district now because I see it, you know, some 20 years later and
the superintendent is Mexicano, probably 70 percent of the administrative staff
is Mexicano and a good,
at least a good 50 percent of the principals are
Mexicanos and women. Because that was the
other banner that I think I carried was, you know, I would ask, you know, well,
do you have any women? And again, there had been no women up to then,
principals, and we had a good number of them promoted over the years.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
At this point
in politics, where do you think you had the greatest resistance? As a
Mexican-American or as a woman?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Always as a Mexican-American because that is the banner
that I carried. I have not particularly carried, you know, I would support the
women's movement and I supported the affirmative actions on their behalf, but
my real interest and my... has been the advancement of Mexican-Americans and in
fact, by now it was...We were into the 70s and we were looking at the
"movimiento"
("movement") the "Chicano Movement".
Se había empezado. Y se habían organizado muchos grupos de
jóvenes y pocos adultos -- pero mas bien los jóvenes estaban ya muy
organizados. Los Chicanos Unidos. Aquí la parecería los
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60
Chicanos Unidos. Había MECHA, había MAPA
. (It had begun. And many groups had formed made up of young people
and a few adults -- but, really the young people were already very organized.
The United Chicanos. Here you would find the United Chicanos. There
was MECHA, and there was MAPA.) And they were really
beginning to be very, very active and want to be active. I helped them as much
as I could. I was still working for the Democratic Party and I
would, you know, make things available for them. Since I was knowledgeable...
and other Mexicanos
began to run for school boards and as they began to have problems, well, I
would kind of act as an advisor for them, at least, on the election code and
the, how it blended into the Texas Education Code.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How many terms did
you serve on the Ysleta board?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I served eight years. I served two full terms. Eight
years. From 1970 until 1978.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Did you recruit others on the second time around?
Page:
61
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Absolutely. The second, I run again in '73 and by then, in '73, when I was
running for reelection, we elected another
Mexicano with me. I was able to carry him in
-- Oton Medina. And so, after '73...the election of '73, there
was two of us. During that time was a very difficult time because it was just
during the time of my campaign, the kids at Ysleta High School walked out. The
kids were very, by then it had totally the economics of the, the economic level
of the parents and the students had totally, had dramatically changed. Where it
had been middle class in the 50s, by the late mid 70s, it was...They were
teaching mostly poor kids. And it had become more immigrant as well. So...and
the teachers had not kept up with the change. You know, they thought they were
talking to the student body of the 50s and here they were talking to the
student body of the...And, they just were not sensitive. They were making, they
would be very callous in the remarks about, you know, about the kid's clothes,
the kid's appearance, the kid's language, their ability to speak or inability
to speak fluent English. Groceros
(rude) you know, really ugly to them. And the kids walked out. More
than half of the kids walked out of the school. They were just, they were just
fed up. They had been organized by a group called Chicanos Unidos
and they walked out of the high school and I live not too far, maybe about
three blocks from the high school
Page:
62
and so one of the counselors
called me and said, you know, you need to come over Alicia
because we are having a terrible problem over here. The kids have walked out.
And I said, "OK, I will come over." And so, I went over. By that time
it was a really difficult time. They had called the police and the school was
surrounded by police. I mean, the kids were all over the...all over the street
and the front of the... If you can notice on Alameda. They were all over the
front lawn and they had overrun the front lawn into the street and they were
surrounded by cops by the time I walked over. What really pissed the
gringos off was that the
kids then lowered the American flag from the flag pole and raised the Chicano,
the thunderbird flag and I mean, that was like lighting a fire. It just made
them so angry and the administrator, the superintendent, the principal -- just
said everybody that was out there was expelled. And then they went through
taking names. They expelled over 200 kids. And this was during the campaign and
so by then the teachers started, you know, really
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63
pushing. I was
up for reelection, they really started pushing people and saying, you know,
that I had incited these kids, that, you know, the stuff that I was doing had
incited these kids and not taking responsibility for what they were doing. I
mean, if the kids were incited by anybody, it was by the teachers and the way
they were being treated. But they didn't think that. One of the interesting
things during reelection was that I had known the editor of the El Paso
Times from my involvement with the Democratic Party,
Bill Latham, se
llamaba (was his name) and when I went to him for an
endorsement or for consideration as a candidate the first time that I ran, he
said to me, "Well, I know you are a very nice lady and I know that you
would do well, but we always endorse the incumbent. If the incumbents have done
well, we always endorse the incumbent." I said, "That is great, Bill.
I will see you later." And so, here I am running for reelection and so I
go to him and I said, "Bill, I am running for reelection and you know you
told me the last time that unless the incumbents have done something really
wrong, bad, that you always endorse the incumbent. I am an incumbent". And
I said, "If you will ask Dr. Hanks, I have not done
anything totally outrageous. I have been supportive of many of the
administrative policies. There have been
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64
some things that I have
advocated, but all in all," I said. "I think that you would find that
I have been a good board member." [Lathem] "I know you have darling.
But this year, we have decided we are not going to endorse." And, you
know...it was just...You know, it was classic...you know. He says, "I know
you have darling, but this year we are not going to endorse." So, that was
it for an endorsement from the Times. And, and the turmoil cost a lot of
people. But, I was reelected... pero (well) by then I think, people were really,
their eyes had opened. Ya se les había
abierto los ojos a La Raza. Ya sabían, mas o menos, que estaba sucediendo.
(They had already opened their eyes to La Raza. They already knew,
more or less what was happening.) And so they reelected me and they elected
Oton Medina.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Now in this campaign did you do absentee voting? Did
you do street walking? Did you do
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Again...absolutely...you know, the only way we get people
out is to do house to house. And we had a dual card, we had a card with my
position and his because all the elections were district wide.
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65
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
So,
you know, there was no just in one district. We were running together.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Now, how did
you raise money this time?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
How did we raise money? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This time? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Just with friends |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Do you remember how
much you spent?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And we didn't spend a lot of money. We just printed up cards. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No ad in the paper,
no bumper stickers?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, we never used the paper and we never used bumper
stickers.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No yard signs? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Uh, we did our own. We stenciled them and in fact, one of the things that we
did then was that when Briscoe had run in '72, late in the
campaign he had sent them to the camp, after the election was already over, the
shipment of his yard signs came real late and this whole box of them came after
and so I had received them on behalf of the [Democratic] Party, but
you know...Then I asked Mr. McAlmon what do I do with them and
he said, "Whatever you want." And, so my idea was that I saved them
and I took them and since this was then by
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66
'73, I was running and
so we just painted the backs of them and then we wrote, we used them and wrote
with a, what do we call it? Silk screen, our names on all of those, so we used,
we recycled Governor Briscoe's signs, yard signs to have yard signs for the
campaign in '73.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What was the margin of victory this time? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
It was, it was more
substantial for both of us. And in fact, I was running against two Anglo women
and I had a plurality and Mr. Medina had a smaller margin but
he was victorious and so it was, you know, it was a very, very good feeling for
the community. We really felt like, you know, that we cracked the ice. And we
were going to move ahead.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
This is a convenient break. I need to change tapes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Uh, do you want to
stretch a bit?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
¿Ya te estoy cansando?
(Am I tiring you already?)
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
No, no this is great. This is great. The walkout, we
finished the reelection. Is that the close of the school board campaign or...
Page:
67
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I continued to be on the school board. But this was my second
reelection, my reelection in '73 and I continued to serve on the school board
through 1978 and we did a lot of very innovative things. In the next election,
on the school board, we elected a third Mexicano , so that we, when I left in '78, there
was three Mexicanos and
three Anglos and a black gentleman, that in fact, we had appointed. And it was
the voice of the Mexicanos
that had appointed the black gentleman. So, it was very, very good
and I guess to close, to bring closure to that is the fact that, you know, that
at that time we advocated for single member districts and then we had a vote
where we couldn't get the majority to go to single member districts. We wanted
the districts to voluntarily do it and they wouldn't and then in 1980 I was a
plaintiff, the plaintiff with others to force the district to go into single
member districts.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
And that time would be... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And once they went into single member
districts there is only one Anglo left on the school board in
Ysleta.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
That court did render a decision? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
By that time you had
[Judge] Lucius Bunton? Is that the Federal Judge?
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68
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yes,
that is the judge.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Nothing ever happened on those other cases? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Nothing. They never took
any action.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Those
were left without, without resolution.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What were you doing, in terms of the
[Democratic] Party, at this time?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was still working with the
[Democratic] Party. I was, I was being reelected to the state
committee.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was
reelected to the state committee four times, so I served a total of eight years
on the state committee.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Did you ever go to any national conventions as a
delegate?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yes.
In 1972, I went to the national convention. It probably was one of the most
interesting national conventions ever and that was the national convention with
McGovern, where we had the first, and it was after all the
riots and stuff that had gone on in '68 with the Viet Nam people
and the, that led to the defeat, I think, of Hubert Humphrey,
a
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69
wonderful person that should have been President, but wasn't.
But I wasn't a McGovern delegate, I was a
Humphrey delegate. Particularly because I was, I had always
had a strong affinity and relationship with organized labor and so I was, I had
worked closely with him and they asked me to be a delegate. Plus, plus at the
state convention, there was a real debate but it was the first thing that we
had, the McGovern rules that have prevailed, that say that all
of your delegation had to represent your population, it had to be
representative of your population. And so, I mean, we had very specific, you
know, you have got to have so many Mexican women, so many Anglo women, so many
of all these categories and then besides that you have to, they also had to
accommodate who you were pledged to. But I was selected as a delegate to that
convention in Miami that nominated McGovern at
2:00 in the morning, you know. And it was a very, very interesting and exciting
process. The other thing that I think is beneficial to me then was that at that
convention I met a lot and had a lot of other Mexican leadership from across
the country and for the first time I really saw how manipulated that we really
were and how easily we fell for the bait. Because a group of us had a
particularly, some labor had been organizing the
Mexicanos that were labor people.
Alfredo Montoya,
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70
Maclovio Baraza
from Arizona, there is a man here from New Mexico
that Chano Medina and all of us had been talking about
nominating Senator Joe Montoya for the Vice Presidency because
we knew that the black constituency, that the Black Caucus was going
to name someone. We knew that the women's group was going to nominate someone
for vice president and that they didn't care what McGovern was
going to do. They were going to go through the motions of nominating a person
that represented them. And so we were advocating to the Chicano
Caucus or to the Mexican-American Caucus or whatever,
Latino Caucus, I guess it was called then, that we nominate
Joe Mendo, Joe Montoya. And that in fact, the
lead, the national leadership of the AFL-CIO had pledged to
Maclovia and to Al Montoya that they would
vote the labor votes that were at the convention for Joe. So that Joe would
have an extension beyond just the Mexicanos' vote, symbolically, you know. And
they were always just talking about symbolic, it was, even though he was a
symbolic nomination, but we had some strong activists in the caucus that didn't
feel that Joe had
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71
been...He wasn't Chicano enough for...for...He
wasn't Chicano enough for like for Roberto Mondragon. And for
others Montezuma Esparza was there.
Y no esta con nosotros (And he was not with
us.) You know. But, we said...You know...Well, hey you know, -- he has been in
the U. S. Senate. He has been alone. I mean, he has carried the
banner and whatever you want, you know --
se llama (he's named)
Montoya. We couldn't get them to understand but they were,
then we were kind of turning it, and we sit and then we had a tentative
agreement that we were all going to nominate Joe and then we were all going to
vote for Joe and we had the labor support. The steel workers, the national
steel workers were going to vote for him. Well, by then,
McGovern sends this runner to talk to
Mondragon and says to Robert Mondragon,
"Hey...you know..."We want you to be the nominator of the vice
president." And, I mean -- that just broke it all apart. Just the fact
that he was asked to be a nominator broke our coalition totally because he
said, well I am going to go, you know, and Roberto said,
"I am going to go; and, I am going to nominate. I am not going to be a
part of this other process." So, Roberto...you know...So, I saw how
easily...I mean -- what is nominating someone? And, what did that ever do for
anybody? In fact, the one that Roberto nominated was
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72
Thomas Eagleton. And, if you don't remember what happened to
Thomas Eagleton two months later...He wasn't on the ticket anymore! And we lost
the opportunity to send a message of our presence so that Roberto could
nominate Thomas Eagleton. That is how easily people were baited away. And I
felt discouraged and angry that that had occurred. I felt very disturbed that,
that had happened and I felt disturbed that we activists didn't have the
patience for, for some of the perhaps more conservative or traditional people,
but they also didn't have an appreciation for what some of the traditional
people had gone through, you know, in their own right. And, in the battles that
they had already fought -- even to be there. And, I always felt like I was kind
of in a bridge situation -- of an age group. That I wasn't quite as old as...I
had worked closely with the older group, Monclovio, Al
Montoya, and all of those. But, I also understood the anxiety of the
young ones. I wasn't so old that I...You know...I am in my 30s, late 30s, and I
understood where they were coming from. I understood from the grass roots and
from the kids that I had worked with. The
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73
only thing that I didn't
perhaps tell you and it was with the school that after the walkout and after we
were set the election, we had 200 kids left out there, expelled, and we had to
go through, we hired lawyers to advise the parents of their rights. And we, and
for the first time ever, the school board sat in session on a daily basis for
approximately two months to have a private hearing for each kid. And the piles
of dirty laundry that came out during those hearings astounded this community.
I mean...they..They were...The people could not believe the litany of
accusations that the students recited about words that the teachers had used
against them, gestures, and so forth. What I think that happened...They went at
the board since there were now two of us and with the public outcry, the
superintendent and the board agreed that they would...That the kids had some
legitimacy in their complaints and they agreed that all superintendents, all
administrative personnel would undergo sensitivity training and Dr.
John Aragon from New Mexico, from...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Highlands. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Highlands came in and
conducted that summer. That all of the teachers at Ysleta High School would
undergo sensitivity training and Jose Cardenas from
Edgewood, he was still at Edgewood, came to conduct
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74
that and so that, that satisfied some of the demands of the kids that we would
do that and then all but two kids were allowed in. And the two of them that
weren't allowed in was really because they didn't follow all the process, they
were just tougher and just resistant and they didn't want to subject themselves
to that and we really couldn't help them, if you, you know, there is, there is
certain legal requirements that you have to meet. And they were resistant to
that and so we didn't get them in. But we were successful in getting all of
them back in, other than two and maybe that brought some closure to that
particular incident. Which was a very hard one.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Can you explain this statement? Your
affinity to labor. Did that occur because you were active locally with some
groups or because the people you met through the party, the traditional
coalition of labor liberals and ethnic groups?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think maybe, maybe... |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Or the conventions at
national levels?
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75
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Maybe, no, maybe because I had always...My dad was a
unionist, you know -- worked at International. He worked for the machine, he
was a member of the Machinist's union and he was supportive of Obreros and also
the other thing that was happening in El Paso, along with the
Chicanismo, movement, was the Farah strike and a lot of people, a
lot of Mexicanos didn't
understand what the Farah strike was about and were very angry with the support
that the Farah strike had. But the Farah strike, in my opinion, represented in
El Paso, the very same classic, same clash of economics that
maybe Caesar had in California and to some
degree nationally with the farm workers. That
movimiento (movement) here was the Farah
strike. That people had to either, to really examine themselves. Were they with
the management and with those practices that were going on or were they with
the Mexicanos and would
they really see the injustice being done to them in so many ways? Because a lot
of people only listened to, well, you know -- that Farah is so good. They have
got their own...They have got their own doctor for them. They got
them...they've got... Les dan un turkey
pa [para] Thanksgiving. Les dan ... (They give them a turkey for
Thanksgiving. They give...) You know. And, all these little things that Farah
had. Well Farah had a very paternalistic attitude towards
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76
the
employee and he knew what was better for them. I mean -- if they were
sick...Well, he had a doctor there for them. He didn't want them going to their
own doctor. He wanted, you know...And they wouldn't take it, they wouldn't
accept that, you know, they were supposed to go to a doctor there. And I mean,
well, are these people free or are these people, you know, Louie Farah's
slaves, that you know, they have to go to what he provides? And so it was a
very classic separation and I became much closer to many of the labor leaders
then. Besides that I feel that the Chicano movement wouldn't have been possible
nationally without the support of labor. And I think that too many people don't
appreciate that, but that Maclovio had tremendous vision
for...for Mexicanos. And, he wasn't...He was very strong with the steel
workers. But, you know -- probably equally strong in
Mexicano and Chicano rights. And he was the
first convener and the first chair of the Southwest Council of La
Raza from which then came the National Council, the Southwest voter
registration project. Both, you know, grew out of the Southwest Council of
La Raza and Maclovio was the
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77
key to that.
He is the one that got labor money for it. Willie Velasquez
and Raul Yzaguirre would not have been able to develop what
they did without Maclovio and the board members and the
support that he was able to get from the AFL-CIO, particularly the
steel workers.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
So, I always appreciated that their involvement and their
support of me was very strong.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
At this time, are you still living in
Ysleta in the same house?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Always. I stayed there until just three
years ago.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. So then, what is your next political career move? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, the next thing then
is that I, there had, I was still working for the [Democratic]
Party, I was conducting all the daily affairs and at that time, the
Democrats, the parties used to conduct their own elections. And so I would
conduct the primaries. And then the county clerk had been a county clerk for
forever, maybe about 15 years and he was an older man. He decided to retire and
so I saw it as a natural thing for me to go and be the county clerk because one
of the functions being to run the elections. And so I ran, you know, for county
clerk in 1974 and one of the strongest ones that supported me was labor. And
one of
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78
the strongest criticisms of me was that I was, you know,
that I was a supporter of the Farah and of the boycott and of the strike. And,
I guess at this time...And, also in the Mexicanos in that I supported the Chicano
movement. I guess that was the first time that people started saying that I was
a communist. That was the next thing. I wasn't just, before I had always just
been divisive and racist, now I was a communist. But, you know, we were able to
get very strong support from people that had worked in the campaigns, from the
liberal wing of the Democratic Party. I didn't raise a lot of money,
but the liberal wing was very supportive and we piggy backed a lot of the
campaign. We had a really young, young man, Ray Caballero
running for [Democratic] Party chair and he was kind of a new and
exciting player. We had an old liberal J. P. that was running for county judge
and we kind of formed a team and the three of us did a lot of the things
combined. And labor was supporting all of us. At that time, the steel workers
were still very strong here and could turn out, you know, could turn out the
votes. If you got the steel workers with you, you
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79
know, you pretty
substantially at least in the primaries. They could carry the primary for you.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, this
was a quantum leap.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
So, when I combined the steel workers with the grass roots
Chicano movement, which maybe wasn't a...together, independently would
not...was not that cohesive...but on my behalf they would both work. It came
together, you know, that I had a lot of votes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Of course, you have all the
[Democratic] Party regulars who know you.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And I had the
[Democratic] Party regulars, well, the liberal wing.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So this is a quantum
leap from little Ysleta compared to El Paso
County.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
A county wide election. |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, the... |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
How did you run that election? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
The other thing that we
picked up was that, of course, I had been born in Canutillo and
my father had lived in Canutillo all his life and so my father
became real active in my campaign and he helped me. And he worked the Canutillo
area and then we worked the Lower Valley areas
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80
and
then the middle of the city, the central city was worked primarily by the steel
workers and organized labor.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
I can assume that you... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And then we used all of the precinct chairs
that were friends to do the organization in their precincts and particularly
though we had, you know, we had this, this little tags with the three names. By
then, I had also become, you know, from working with the [Democratic]
Party, I had been acquainted with the black leadership and we had at
least two black leaders that were very strong. One was Hank
Sidgraves and the other one was Col. Robin Washington
and both of them became good friends, and you know, I think that they were not
native to this area and so we shared a lot. You know, I taught them about
Mexicans and they taught me about black people. Because, I didn't know much
about black folks.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
There is a small population, you know, from the
military.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yes,
there is about a 3 percent of the population now is black and it is an affluent
black population.
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81
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
These are mostly settled out there from the military?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Military and
most of them in ranking and the officers, majors, colonels; we have two black
generals here. So they are more affluent. The ones that helped me was
Col. Washington helped me a lot and really befriended him and
one of the things that joined us was the other element that I always had was
the Catholicism, is that I was very strong in the church. I had always been
very strong and continued my ties to the church. Bishop
Metzger, who was the Bishop that, at the time, and that had been such
an activist against Farah became a close ally and friend of mine and he helped
-- you know -- through the ranks of the clergy. So, I had, I think, you know, a
combination that I was able to really collate those the efforts where I had
been strong. Organized labor, the church, the Catholic Church, the liberal wing
of the Democratic Party and by then there was a small surfacing of
women's...of a women's movement here, not a whole lot. It was never that strong
here, but they were supportive in, in, you know, to a certain degree. And when
you are in a, you know, in an election it all counts. I ran against six people
and I was left in a run off with Ray Telles, the nephew of the
mayor...of the former mayor and his big thing was the philosophical differences
and he tried to, to give an
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82
innuendo of my being a communist, you
know, and being a radical and supporting boycotts and endorsing strikes and all
that kind of stuff and he ran that repeatedly on the radio. I did not use any
radio at all.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Any television? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, we just used grassroots people and a lot of signs. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Yard signs? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Or posters?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Mucho (many) signs. Yard
signs. Some posters, we had some posters at that time too.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No billboards? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And labor gave them
to me.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Billboards? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Phone banks? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, we didn't spend that kind of money. Uh, I have never really liked phone
banks. I liked the knocking on the doors better. I think it is
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83
more effective and so we knocked on doors. We weren't, we had a good precinct
organized, some with precinct chairs, some with organized labor and then in the
pueblos, you know, in Ysleta, Fabens,
Sequoro, with friends that we had and then in
Canutillo my dad had worked a lot and at that time, there was,
even in '74, there was still a lot of neighborhood rallies. And we used them to
stimulate people.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
The other thing that I did then was that I organized, we
organized parades and that we would have the cars all decorated and we would
get our, you know, to slow down the traffic, we would get a really big truck. I
mean, which was still within the size that was legal, but you know, it takes a
lot longer to manipulate a truck and a cop can't really do much about a truck.
And so we would get a large truck -- the largest vehicle that was still legal
to have in all of these neighborhoods and then maybe five or six cars,
decorated, pickups. Y hacíamos
borlote . (And we made a lot of noise.) Because the whole thing
was getting, is to motivate voters and to keep reminding them that there is an
election. I mean, they forget so damn fast that your people waste time on
television and everything else. ¡Ah --
pues ya pasó! Ni supe. (Oh it already happened! I didn't know.)
And, so we had...you
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84
know...On the day of the election we started
real early and we would just, you know, we had, we were going from one end of
the county to another and then in some neighborhoods, just different cars that
that was their job was to be parading. And with loud radios. We didn't
have...the speakers aren't allowed. But, in the rural areas we had speakers,
telling people, you know...That hey...you know,
es la (it is) election and people speaking
to them. But in the city, we just had loud, loud radios so that, you know...
just to make mitote (an
uproar) . Just to get people aware. And, then at the polls for the first time,
at each of the polls that we were concentrating on -- we had like,
sombrillas (umbrellas)
with crepe paper and posters and I mean, just, so that if you went by, if you
drove by, volteabas haber que era.
(you turned to see what it was.) We made it look like a bazaar
booth. And it was just, you know, the booth for Alicia Chacon.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You
mentioned your work with Briscoe in '72. We are now your
elections in '74. These are the years that the Raza Unida Party is
emerging. What were your reactions to that phenomena?
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85
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I was very close to
the Raza Unida here in El Paso. It was never that
viable, but the people that were active in Raza Unida were close
friends of mine. Joe Tinajero had always been close to me.
El señor viejito (the
old man), Jesus Viramontes, was close to me. So, they were
close friends. They never spoke against me and I never spoke against them. We
had kind of an understood support, you know, that where they could like in my
school board races, they had helped me because those were non partisan and they
would come and walk the streets with me for that. But I knew that they had to
do their thing and I was doing mine, you know. And they, we had a very healthy
respect for each other and we are still friends.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, is the challenge to
the institutional power of the Democratic Party; was this a good
thing or a bad thing?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, I think statewide it was a very good thing and in
El Paso we had already taken it over so it really wasn't
necessary. I mean, we were controlling the party by then and so we didn't need
it as much as I think it was necessary in other parts of the county. We had
just taken over by our sheer numbers.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
All right, by '76 you are the?...
Page:
86
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
But one
of the things that I did is that...you know...in...I had then become... I guess
it was in...when did we organize MAD?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
1976. That was my next
question.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
In
MAD. Well, I was one of the organizers, one of the founders of
MAD and I was the first co-chair with Joe Bernal
and one of the things that I did was that we had a convention here in El
Paso. And we invited a group of the guys from the Raza Unida
that had been Raza Unida -- Juan Maldonado, Jesus
Ramirez, I am trying to think some of those other young people from
that area, that I had really gotten to respect and I thought, you know,
Mike Lopez, and they came and we had a very big celebration of
MAD at my house there in Ysleta and we invited
Briscoe and we invited the chair of the Democratic
[Party] for the state chair, who at that time was Calvin
Guest. And we invited him to meet with these people and talk to them
about, you know, they were ready to transition, that they had been successful
in their effort, but they were ready to transition into the [Democratic]
Party and they wanted to, you know, kind of a formal meeting and it was a
very
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87
healthy discussion and meeting with them. And I think
productive and it brought them back into the [Democratic] Party, not
just that they would have struggled in their own area, but recognized as
leadership from the Valley.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Why didn't you seek reelection in '78?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Because
President Carter, I had been real active with President Carter
and President Carter asked me to go and be the regional director of the
Small Business Administration. First he asked me to be a member of
the Federal Elections Commission in Washington and I
told him that going to Washington was out of the question for me. My kids were
now in high school and you know, kids get very attached to their high school
and it is meaningful to them. And Joe was, Joe was, at that
time, probably had like 15 years into the PD and so it was not a
time that, you know, I could leave to Washington. So, I told him...you know,
"No." I had been real active in...in, with Carter
and one of the things that happened before, you know, maybe before we move into
Carter, was that the, there was a group of
Mexicanos that we had two governors then
that kind of were elected in '74. When I was elected county clerk,
Jerry Apodaca was elected Governor of New
Mexico and he was a close friend because he was from Las
Cruces. And Raul
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88
Castro was elected
Governor of Arizona and we knew Raul also. And the two of them
began to take, exercise some leadership at a national level with, with
Roybal from California and they convened a
group of Mexicanos , to
form what they called, NALDO for a period of time. National
Association of Latino Democratic Officials and here from
Texas, they wanted a delegate from each state.
Jerry was from New Mexico. Here from
Texas, there was a whole disagreement because by then we had
more of us in the office and there were several senators,
Estaba...Ya estaba ...(There was...Already
there was...) Joe had been defeated by
pero estaba ...(and there was)
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Truan. And there was someone else. And, so anyway...And
the legislators...Well, there were quite a few. There was
Matt, there was Paul, there was...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You had the local
senator on your staff.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
We had...and we had Tati and so they
couldn't agree on who the delegate from Texas would be.
Eran mucho...pocas envidias
(There
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89
was...a little jealousy) and you know we
couldn't agree and so finally, the only one that they could all agree to go to
this thing was me. And so Matt said, you know,
Alicia, we have kind of talked and we have agreed for you to
go and represent all of us with whatever Castro and
Roybal are putting together. So, I was a delegate to that
first meeting in Phoenix and it was kind of an exciting period.
From there, they did form the organization and it was continued and the design
of that organization was to prepare a statement for the platform committee of
the Democratic Party coming in '76 for Carter's thing. And that all
of us agreed and it was all very, very well prepared. Roybal
did a lot of work. So did Castro and Jerry,
in his own way. Jerry was not quite as into the
movimiento (movement). Jerry was Jerry -- I
guess. You know. But, he participated and always lent credibility to movements.
From there, Carter selected and asked that group for
recommendations of people to be on, what he called, the Hispanic Advisory
Committee, that would advise him from the nomination up through the
election and they would work with him. And again, I was selected from
Texas because the others couldn't agree on someone else. So, I
represented Texas on his committee estaba (there was) Maurice
Ferrer from...
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Florida.
Page:
90
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
From Florida
estaba (there was)
Ed Romero from New Mexico
y (and) Jerry.
Estaba (There was)
de la Torre from L. A. Anyway, and I got close
to Carter. You know, Carter liked me. Well, I was one of the,
I was the only woman in the group of Mexicanos and
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Let me just get clear. de la
Torre or Esteban Torrez?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, no. de la Torre.
Esteban was...
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Do you have a first name on this de la Torre person?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Rick, I think.
I think he was a councilman in...
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
a la Torre. |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
was on the committee. And then there was a guy from
Puerto Rico was on the committee because, you
know...Franklin Delano Lopez. Franklin Delano Lopez and this
committee, we did a lot of traveling with him -- with Carter.
And I really enjoyed it and appreciated it because I had never traveled a lot.
You know, first of all I don't like to travel and secondly I have never had
money to travel. And I got to go to a lot of places with, in the country with
him. Places where I had never... to me...I had never realized that
Mexicanos were
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91
so strong and kept such an identity with their culture wherever
they were. I remember one of the events that I went with him that was very
moving was we went to Flint, Michigan and the intent of going to
Flint, Michigan with him was that we were going to go to
las Fiestas Patrias (the Fiestas Patrias) in
Flint and he was going to give the grito (yell). And so we kind of talked to him
about what they represented and what it meant and so forth. And when we got
there, we went in like in a caravan because we, no, we went to Flint, but the
fiestas were in
Saginaw and so we went in a car caravan to Saginaw and during
that time, we had met the night before with Jimmy and we were
telling him, you know -- what it meant. I was with him, Ed
Romero was with him, and a Puerto Rican guy from New
York was with him. That...Because, not everybody could go each time.
You know. He would invite us to go and so anyway the three of us went with him
there and so we were kind of briefing him about
las Fiestas (the Fiestas) and what it meant
to people. And when we got there, I mean, it was just remarkable to me, because
we went into this, this like an assembly hall in Saginaw,
Michigan y toda lal jente andaba
vestida con trajes típicos. (And all of the people were in
traditional dress.). And they had it all decorated with red, white, and green
and we went in and
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92
we got up and he got all emotional and he gave
the grito (yell) and
they gave him the flag and you know, he did the symbolic thing with the flag,
" Viva Mexico
" -- you know. And, then they put this
sombrero (hat) on him, you know, and he was
just carried away. I mean, he is a very, he was a very emotional person
y estaba muy emocional
(he was very emotional) -- as were all of us. And it was an exciting time. Then
I went with him to Los Angeles to a huge rally that they had in
Los Angeles. Jerry and I went with him there. Jerry Apodaca
and that is where I met a la Torre. Maurice
Ferrer was extremely supportive, you know, of me and very, very
friendly. The other one that was on that committee was Armando
Duran who was the state chairman of the Democratic Party in
Florida and he was a Cuban. So, again...I appreciated that I got
to know so many...such a network of Mexicanos and Latinos and I guess this is the
first time that I got to know more Latinos, you know --
de otras razas. Yo siempre andaba nomas con Chicanos.
(and of other races. I was always with the Chicanos.). But I got to
know, a lot of the Puerto Rican leadership, the Cuban
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93
leadership
and...and...and... kind of appreciated where they were coming from. When
Carter was elected, we went through some difficult times
because like, the chairman of our committee had been Hank
Lacayo. Hank was a high official with the UAW and Hank
immediately was kind of brought in by labor and told you have to carry the
labor agenda. And so we were left more like, hey, he has been carrying our
agenda, but now he is carrying this agenda and he is the one that had the
direct tie-in to Carter. And so I remember that we had this meeting, it was a
very strange meeting in, I think it must have been in, I can't even remember
what town it was, but it was maybe in Wichita. And it was
like...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Kansas? Or Texas?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Kansas. Kansas. It was cold
as hell. And it was a meeting que
estábamos muchos Mexicanos, todos que habíamos estado en la campana.
(With many Mexicans, all of whom had participated in the campaign)
-- plus others. Estaba Mario
Obledo, estaba Rick Bela, estaba Juan
Patlon, estaba Raul Yzaguirre. (There
was Mario Obledo, there was Rick Bela, there was Juan Patlon, there was Raul
Ysaguirre.) and all of us were kind of just left in somewhat of a limbo because
we said, well, we now have, since Lacayo has moved and he is
carrying
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the labor agenda, we are left without someone really
carrying our agenda during the transition period.
No tenemos ni papa. (We don't have a thing.)
And, we really didn't. And how are we going to be impacting Carter's agenda?
And, so it was a lot of...a long discussion and a very difficult period and we
kind of forced it and in fact we had ugly words with Lacayo. Because we felt
that he had failed us. You know. He had led us all this time, the Hispanic
Advisory Committee and all the people that we were promoting; and now,
all of a sudden -- when we have already hit the home run and we are about
to...to come in, you know...you are no longer with us. You are somewhere else.
And you know, we just can't do that. And it was a very emotional evening, I
remember, and Lacayo in fact, after all the discussion Lacayo kind of left in
tears. Se enojo mucho. Se siento muy
insultado. Por lo que el grupo le dijo, y se salio. (He got
very mad. He felt very insulted. By what the group had said and he left.) And
so, that left us even worse. You know, because we knew now that he was against
us. But, we still pushed and we said...you know...during this
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transition Carter has to hire someone on the staff and so he...We were
finally...you know...were able to communicate and he hired Rick
Hernandez and he hired Joe Bernal.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Now, Rick
Hernandez is coming out of MAD along with Mark
Campos and those young people from Houston, no?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Right. And, so we
said that he has to hire Rick and then he has to hire Joe and so the two of
them went to Washington to work in the transition. It was a
difficult time because they gave them absolutely no staff and they were
constantly butting heads with Lacayo because by then we had made an enemy for
the movimiento
(movement) -- for us. Ands so they were left. They were hired. Because the
campaign agreed that they would hire them. The transition team agreed to hire
them, but they gave them no support. So, entonces (then) one of the weeks, I was still
the clerk and then I...I agreed to take my vacation and to take one of my
employees, la hermana de Paul
Moreno (Paul Moreno's sister) who was my
administrative assistant...that she would take her vacation and we went up to
Washington to provide clerical support to Joe and Rick.
Estábamos comp payasos. Primeramente,
porque le habíamos dicho a toda la gente que Carter quería ocupar Mexicanos.
Que mandaron los resumes. Pues, teníamos cajas donde
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quiera de
resumes (We were like clowns. First of all, because we had told
all the people that Carter wanted to employ Mexicans. To sent their resumes.
Well, we had boxes of resumes all over the place) but no way to prioritize them
or to analyze them or to even categorize them.
Estaban allí en caja. Y los dos -- mi acuerdo hacia --
hablaba el Rick y hacia un appointment con alguno ... (They were
there in boxes and the two of us -- I remember that even Rick would call and
make an appointment with someone) you know. Carter had now named his...his...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
His chief
of staff?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well,
no. His...his cabinet. And so, we were trying. You know. And so we needed...We
had all of these people that we had qualification statements for... And so we
would pull...go through it and file and then we would type up the thing,
because Rick had already made an appointment for Joe or someone to go and meet
with someone. I mean, that is the way that we were operating. And they were
operating with just volunteers that we could get to go and stay there
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during that period of time, you know, just whatever short spurts of
time to help them. They put them in that old gray building across from the old
HEW building, I think it is and that was, I think, you know, my first exposure
to how you communicate or attempt to communicate with a national, you know,
national administration and it was very difficult. The campaign had been easy
because they were courting us, but then after the election was won, and between
November and January, for the inaugural, it was like hell and like, we
had...had all the phone numbers and all the phone numbers were disconnected.
They weren't communicating that much to us anymore, but after that, you know,
Rick stayed and we all came home and Rick was going to be at the White House.
And Carter...Some of the Mexicanos
that had, or some of the Latinos like...that had been on the
Hispanic committee like Maurice Ferrer, Alfredo
Duran, and Romero from New
Mexico...They really wanted me to have a position because that I was to
be over there. And I told them, "No, I really don't want it." I said,
"I can't go to Washington. I won't go to Washington."
And so, they kept kind of talking. Maurice, because of his
personal wealth, had been, you know...had gotten to be friends with
Carter -- personal friends --much closer than the rest of us.
The rich always like the rich,
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I guess.
Y el Maurice estaba...tenia muy
relación...Y el Maurice me simpatizada mucho con migo y quería que yo
estuviera ... (and Maurice was...He had a good
relationship...And, Maurice had a lot of sympathy for me and wanted me to
be...) Anyway, después dijeron, pues
(late they said, well) you have a couple of businesses
y me hablo Ricky...me
dijo, (and Ricky called me...he said,) "They want you to
come. And will you accept being Regional Director of the Small Business
Administration?" And I said, "Well, give me more information
about it and I might consider it because this is in
Dallas." And then, by then, you know...the...had agreed to
go to Washington and Leonel had agreed to go to Washington.
All of us who had been philosophically Chicanos, you know, we weren't Latinos,
we weren't Hispanics. We were Chicanos and they had agreed to go. Then Joe had
agreed. Joe Bernal had agreed to do Action. To head...to be
the Regional Director for Action. And so, I said, that, well, I will think
about it, but you know, this like already two years into. And then they call me
again and they say, well, no you know, we are not going to be able to offer
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it to you siempre porque
no...el. (anyway because no...he.) Senator
Bentsen is real opposed to you. Bentsen always opposed Chicanos. He
might have supported Hispanics, but he sure didn't like Chicanos, and
especially those that told him what he was. And I was never a supporter of
Bentsen, maybe because of my love for Ralph Yarborough, whom
he defeated, but I think, primarily, because of what I see is his real
patrón (controlling [as
in the sociological sense]) attitude with La Raza and I think the
only way that Bentsen saw Mexicanos
was as piones
(peons) and so I was never close to Bentsen. So, anyway they
called me and said, well, me hablo el
Hamilton Jordan (and Hamilton Jordan called
me)...[and said,] "Well, you know, Senator
Bentsen..." and I said, "Look Hamilton stop fooling
around." Either...I said, "I didn't ask you for a job. I have a good
job here." I said..."You know, I have spent a hell of a time jacking
around with you guys. If you, if you are the ones that wanted me to come, if
you don't want me to come, fine." I said, just..."You know what,
don't be calling me again. The next time that you need a campaign worker, you
call Senator Bentsen, OK. Don't call me."
Y ya lo. .. (and I...) And, I announced for
reelection. I announced for reelection. Not a month goes by when they come back
and when they
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say the President really wants you to take that
job. And I said, "Well, what about Bentsen?" Well,
he says to hell with Bentsen because, you know, Bentsen never helped him
anyway. And he really feels strongly that he would like for you to take that
job in Dallas and I said, if you all are sure, I will take it. By then
también yo lo ise de cabrona
(I showed also that I could be a bitch) to get Bentsen. If he don't
want me to have it, I will just show him that I can have it. And you know, the
other thing that I wanted to show? I wanted to show other
Mexicanos that they don't have to kiss
gringo's asses to get
something and so I took the job and it was a difficult time. I commuted because
I had my family here.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
But were there any issue raised about your business
background or your small business experience or anything like that?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, pues al rato. Primero nada. Primero mas bien dijeron
mande tu resume (No, but later on. At first nothing. At first
they said send your resume.) And, I had...had...you know...My family had some
small businesses. That was kind of what we had always done as a
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second... We had always had a job and we had always had small businesses.
Teníamos una lavandería chiquita.
Teníamos una tienda de ropita que vendía mi hermana. (We had a
small washeteria. We had a small clothing store where my sister sold clothes.)
You know, we had our hands in some small businesses that we, my dad loved small
business, también .
(also.) That was his second love maybe. And so we were involved in some small
businesses, but then they asked me to come and so I went and I went through
this whole transition and I went up there and I stayed with family for awhile.
Because I stayed two months over there going through orientation and the reason
I was going through so much orientation was that because they didn't have the
guts to fire the guy in Dallas. The guy in Dallas was still
there. The Republican was still in the chair and they had notified him that,
you know, that it was political, that he was not going to be re-appointed --
pero no se salia (but he
wouldn't leave). So, I stayed three months in Washington with
the orientation and then they said, well, now we want you to go to
Denver and stay a week in Denver. Said you will see how a
regional office, you will work with a regional director there. I said all right
and I went to Denver. Then we finished that and they are still not doing
anything in Dallas. Then they said,
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well, now we want you to go to
L. A. and be in a district office so you will see all the
functions of a district office. I said OK. By then, you know, there is
still...Then I called Rick and I said, "Hey, am I going to
go to Dallas or not? What is going on?"
Ya eran cinco meses y toda vía ando aquia farolandome por
todas ... (Five months had passed and I was still running
around...) over all these little appointments. "No, no, you are,"
dijeron (they said) --
You know... "But we still are not, we still haven't figured out how we are
going to do with Mr. Newman and you know, as soon as we figure
out what we are going to do with Newman, then you will be coming in." I
said, "That is a bunch of crap." I said, "You know what, just
don't bother. I will take care of it." So then I got on the phone and I
called Newman's assistant in Dallas, se
llamaba (he was named) Gil Phillips. I said,
"Mr. Phillips, this is Alicia Chacon. I
am the appointed Regional Director for your region." [He replied,]
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Chacon, we know. We are looking forward to
your coming." And I said, "Well you get a desk ready for me. I am
going to be in there next week." This is like the
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weekend
now. I said, "I am coming in Monday." [He said,] "Well, but
Mr. Newman." I said, "I don't care. Don't bother
with Mr. Newman. I said, just set up a desk with a phone. That is all I need.
And I will see you Monday." So I come on in. And so, then, here is all
these poor employees that Monday. There's two regional directors in the office.
Mr. Newman is in the big office and I am over here in this desk. I go and visit
with him and I say, "Mr. Newman, I am Alicia Chacon. I am the appointed
regional director for this district." [Then he responded,] "So I
understand." And I said, "Yes, well I want you to tell, to give me a
briefing on the employees and I would like to have your appraisals and
evaluations of them, of what I might expect" The guy didn't know what the
hell I am to do in there, you know. He is just besides himself. And so then
I...You know, he kind of says, "I will prepare something in a couple of
days." I said, "That is fine. I will be working here at one of the
desks." So then I told the secretary, I want to have a retirement
celebration for Mr. Newman. I want you to find the date and I want you to call
all the regionals and invite all the regional administrators of the federal
agencies in Region 6 and all the district directors from the SBA so
that they will have the opportunity to
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come and I will meet them
at that time. So I prepared a retirement party for this man and the
Washington office called me and says, "What are you
doing?" I said, "I am preparing a retirement party for him so he can
have his retirement party and once he has his retirement party, how can he
stay?" And they said, you are right. And so, I have this retirement party
and it, he would be, it would be embarrassing for him to stay because I have
invited all the other agencies and they all come and congratulate him on his
retirement. Hey, then he leaves. I mean, that is the only way...And over there
in Washington se estaban
carcajeándo. (they were laughing.) They thought it was
hilarious that I had just squeezed him out with a reception and then we
continued. The very first thing that happened then, after I moved, kind of
official and in the place, is that Bentsen challenges my
qualifications for the position through the Federal Civil Services Commission
and over there they produced some document that says all of these things. And
they maybe had, someone had taken my resume and had really massaged it, as they
say, and embellished it.
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And so that when they translated the
information into this legal form that they call, what do they call it? The 121?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Some
humongous federal document.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
It has a number, it has a big number and so then this
investigator comes to talk to me and he says, this and this and this and you
said, this and this and this on this form. And I said, may I see that form? And
so he showed me that form and I said, I have never seen this paper before.
Well, he says, you signed it. And I said, I beg your pardon, I said, let me see
the signature then. I said, that is not my signature. He said, you didn't sign
this? I said no. All I did was that the White House told me to send in a resume
and I sent a resume and here is a copy of the resume that I submitted. I said,
who produced this or how this happened to go into the civil service I said I
have no idea. Oh, pues para entonces
ya ... (and by then...) Then they started another investigation
as to who in the hell signed that and who submitted it. They never determined.
I have always suspected it was possibly Rick or one of Rick's underlings that
did whatever they wanted to up there.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What an expediter, huh?
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106
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yeah.
The expediter that you know. There was some expediter that did that. And it
upset me in two ways. First of all, that it exposed me to this criticism that
they had alleged some things in there, you know, that I didn't have and hadn't
done. And I didn't feel it was necessary to do that, you know. I could go and
do that job without saying that I had done anything that I haven't done or that
I had any experience that I hadn't. And I said, you know, obviously they felt,
they didn't feel as strongly about, you know, about my qualifications and they
felt this was necessary. And it was an embarrassing period.
Aquí en El Paso empezaron los periódicos y
los supporters de Bentsen a decir (Here in El Paso the
newspapers and Bentsen's supporters started to say) that I was going to be
fired. That my job was on the line, that I was going to be fired. And in fact,
you know, then we had some friends here that threatened to boycott me because
this paper kept -- the Herald Post, the afternoon paper kept writing and
writing articles about this investigation and really nothing was going on. And
then they stopped it and the civil service commission came back to me and said
they
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reported to the administrator, Mr. Weaver
and he called me and he said, "Mrs. Chacon, I want to
tell you that, you know, what they determined is that we hired you as a 17 and
your qualifications qualify you for to be a 16." I said, "Well, Mr.
Weaver..." I said, "Did you hire me to be a 15, a 16, or a 17 or did
you hire me to be the regional administrator or the SBA? He said,
"Well to be the regional administrator of the SBA." And I said,
"Well, does...you know...are you changing that?" And he
said,"No." I said, "Well, then it doesn't make any
difference." I said, "And the other thing, Mr. Weaver, is that a
16..." I said, "What I want you to do though is to make me a
16.5," I said. "And a 16.5, then there is no change even on the
salary." I said, "Because I can't be..." There was a real good
guy in personnel there that told me to tell Mr. Weaver that you need...They
already knew what was coming down and tell him that if he meets your 16.5 then
there is absolutely no change at all. Because they had put me as a 17.1, so a
16.5 makes the same thing and so he said, that is fine with me. I said,
"OK." I said, "Then there is absolutely no change." I said,
"We have gone through some troublesome times for nothing." And so
then Bentsen was notified and he was mad. Because there was also...It had
absolutely no effect, other than to embarrass me. Later
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they...One of the things that Carter wanted us to advance was
the Hispanic agenda, was the minority business entrepreneurship and women. And,
we had a lot of workshops for women to get women in business. And, we had a lot
of Mexicanos coming into
business. Because now they could appeal where they had always been turned down,
they could appeal and the appeals came to me. And you know, I would review them
and if, you know
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
if they were possible, we signed off on them. We signed off on the first,
one of the biggest loans to Hinajosa at H & H
Meat and that was investigated. We signed off for a big note for
Raul Jimenez from Jimenez Food Products. The first
big loan -- the first half a million dollar loan that he got -- I signed off on
it. And other people...For Ed Romero in New
Mexico, who's now made...Who has been tremendously successful. We
signed off for a lot of those loans and people were beginning to say,
well...hey, you know...There was a...It was possible for them to really get
loans from SBA where before they hadn't. And people that had been in
businesses and hadn't grown to
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their potential because they were
kind of, you know, they could stay small but don't want it to get any bigger.
Now there was the avenue for them to get bigger and so during that two year
period, ohhh, les dimos muchas quebrada
a muchos (Oh, we gave breaks to many) and it was, it was
exciting to meet them and to see how they were progressing and what great
potential they had that hadn't ever been given the opportunity to develop. The
other thing that was happening was the 8-A program. And this is a program
specifically to give -- to help minority businesses access government work,
government contracts. And it is very inclusive. It is a wonderful program
because the agency, the SBA had the ability to take this contractor,
bring it under the 8-A program, provide business development money to them as a
grant, provide them with a contract with the government, and then provide them
with continuing counseling if they needed it or management assistance. All that
they wanted. All paid for by the feds. And the BDE or the Business Development
money was a grant so that if I got you a contract, if you were a contractor,
say you were a utility contractor and I get you a contract to go and move dirt
for the Corps of Engineers, but you need a $100,000 of equipment to
be able to do that contract, I am able to give you a grant to buy the equipment
that you
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need to take this contract. So, I give you the
equipment; I make you truly viable; and then if you need continuing management
assistance, I give it to you, professional, not that we give it to you. We hire
CPAs, we hire all these to help you to build your business and you are going to
be in this program five years. At the end of five years, we have a business
plan for you; you are going to advance; and you are going to be on your own;
and you are going to be a bigger business. You are going to be beyond needing
assistance. Well, because of the nature of the program and the advantages, many
people did abuse the program, but there were some very legitimate people. When
I gave some loans to people the particular, the district managers, or the
district directors of the SBA hated that program. On the East coast
and on the West coast, the regional directors and the district officers had
taken tremendous advantage of them and given just a lot of BDE money to people
because this is the grant money. In Texas, there had not been
one penny given. Well, I started giving to some. And the district director in
San Antonio accused me of wrong doing and sent in...you
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111
know...to Washington to... And, they started an
investigation that I had a relationship with these people and that I was giving
them money because there was a relationship. And every time, you know, there
wasn't any truth to it, but it was just the attitude was to keep these people
small. Don't let them grow. And I don't care if there is this program up here
that says, you know, we are going to help them grow. Don't use that program
because we don't want them to grow. We want them to stay, you know, where they
are. And it was an attitudinal thing and it was a very difficult one to fight,
but you know, I think that I, by then this had been, you know, like 21 months
into the SBA I had been doing the commuting. It had been stressful
to do the commuting because I would go on...I would leave El
Paso on Sunday nights and I had an apartment in Dallas
and I would stay there and then I would come back every Friday night and spend
Saturday and Sunday here and leave Sunday night again. You know that routine.
And it had been stressful on my marriage and it had been stressful, one child
was still left at home, the one, the older, Carlos was already
in the Air Force and had graduated and Corina was
going to college at St. Mary's.
Pero, Sammy tada vía estaba en la casa
(But, Sammy was still at home) and it was getting very difficult. He
was beginning to
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112
experience some problems in high school. He was
a senior. So an opportunity came to me to buy
una tortillería grande (a large tortilla
factory) that I had always... I had had friends that were running it and they
said, we want to sell it now. And if you want to, we will sell it to you and
you have always told us you wanted to buy it. So, I just said, you know, yeah.
I am ready to come home. I don't know how many investigations I left in
Dallas. You know, they were and how many times, you know, that,
and how many allegations. The other thing that had happened is that I had a lot
of grievances for reverse discrimination because I had promoted some black
people. I had promoted some Mexicanos within the agency and the white folks
had filed reverse discrimination charges with EEOC and I mean...
Los dije bien enredados, yo creo, con
tanta cosa (I left them very tangled up, I think, with a lot of
things.) It probably took them a while to unwind it all and get all the
litigation and investigations done. But you know, there was never
any...any...any...first of all, you know, I have never sought monetary
compensations or anything like that. That has never
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113
been my
interest. I lived in my same house. My house was paid for, you know. We --
Joe and I have always had a very simple lifestyle and not any
flashy spenders. We have never been in the fast lane and probably would not
know what to do there. So we...you know... When I came home, I was pretty
comfortable coming home.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Let me stop you there because I want to go back and
ask... Did you ever have similar kind of contact or relationships with other
presidential candidates that you could influence these kinds of issues,
agendas, appointments, positions with Humphrey or with
McGovern?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I had traveled with Humphrey. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Or with
Johnson?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Like you know, when he was a candidate, but he never got
elected.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you have these kind of discussions about the issues? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
With Humphrey I did and
Humphrey, Hubert Humphrey was very, very sympathetic to us.
And he understood, you know, a lot of what when we were talking because he
related to working people.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Do you think the problem... |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And I think that we
related...You know -- the status of Mexicanos to working people, you know, the
working class people, so he understood
Page:
114
them and we understood
that there was an additional burden when the ethnicity issue came to play.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Do you think
that the problem, in contrast of blacks and browns, is that the white
presidential candidates who occupy the White House have frequent contact since
childhood with blacks and none with the...?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Mexican-American except for
Johnson?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Except for Johnson. But Johnson's attitude was so
paternalistic that it got him away. I wasn't real close to Johnson but I just,
you know, kind of the things that I felt from Johnson and from that whole, the
group around him, was that it was so paternalistic.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So did you...? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Toward the...?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think that
the one that I, that I really had the most impact with was with
Carter. Because I had the opportunity to travel with him
before he was the president and for a significant period of time I had contact
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with him, face to face, in discussions, open discussions, in that
he was very open to us.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
This is on the issues or? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
On the issues. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Relationships? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
In relationships,
yes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What
did you ask for? What did you tell him?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I just told him that we had to have a
presence and I told him, you know, I would tell him that it was, that we were a
large population. It is just that he had sought out, he had recognized our
importance in the electoral process that he had to recognize our importance in
the governments and he did. And you know, one of the things that we did was
that we went to a lot of people to ask them to go with him and a lot of people
didn't want to turn down. When I didn't want to go to
Washington, you know, we, we gave him a lot of names and people
were asked and people didn't want to and in a way, I don't blame them because
it is very disruptive to your life. And in fact, when you see the ones of us
that did, it was a sacrifice to go. It was a sacrifice for
Leonel. He left his career and I think he was going and he
went and stayed up there, I think, probably about three years, came back what?
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To start over in Houston. Bambi
se fue, se estuvo como 24 meses
tambíen (she went, she was there about 24 months also) and came
back to San Antonio to start over. Joe went and
he commuted to Dallas and did the Action. He did Action for
about, maybe a couple months more than I did the SBA. He came back
to San Antonio, had a difficult time; had no job. I was
fortunate that I came back and I had been in small business and I just, you
know, I bought another business to come back to. But for everybody else, it was
very difficult to come and start up. What do you do? I mean, do you pack up and
go? Rick came back at the close of that administration and
anduvo floundering. Se estuvo con
Babbit un tiempo. Estuvo aquí y alla. (He was
floundering. He was with Babbit a while. He was here and there.) And the
gringos and the blacks,
because I think they are more, more affiliated or they have a larger network or
a closer working network with the establishments, with the corporate world;
most times white guys, when they go and get disruptive, when they come back,
there is some nice plush corporate job waiting for them!
Cuando nosotros...no
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había nada, ni papa. Yo
recuerdo. (When it came to us...there was nothing, not a thing.
I remember.) I felt real bad for a lot of us that went and when we came back,
there weren't nothing waiting for us at home except what you could make for
yourself. And so, we had disrupted our lives, you know...We had gotten off of
our careers where we were going. I am sure that if Leonel had
not gone to do INS that he would have been mayor of Houston because he was the
comptroller. He was respected, the people loved him. He had a good network, but
then he got out of that cycle, went over there, came back, and could never
quite pick up the momentum again. And that happened, you know -- time and time
again that happened to people that went...And so, I could understand now the
reluctance of people to break off of their careers and go and do those
appointments. The other one that I had a lot of discussion, work, discussion
with was Mondale, but Mondale was unsuccessful.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. How did you
finance the purchase of the tortilla factory?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I had my retirement from the government,
which was like, I had accumulate in the 24 month period, about $25,000 and I
had been very fortunate that while I was traveling, I was in San
Antonio and I bought some raffle tickets. Well, you won't believe this.
I had bought some
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raffle tickets for the clambake, or the oyster
bake that they have at St. Mary's and I won a Cadillac(r) or
$10,000. And I said, give me the $10,000. I don't need a Cadillac. So, I had
that $10,000 and then my retirement and that was about perfect of what I needed
because I took it on a long term. The guys didn't want a big up front money.
They wanted a small one and they wanted a loan and you know, they took a loan
with me and that I would pay them back, you know, for like ten years.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So, what is the
name of the company?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
La
Tapatia .
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
OK. And you are still involved with that? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, no I sold my stock
when I became county judge, but my sister is still a stockholder.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
So, it is still in the
family.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
When you came back, you got a new business, how long before you got back
into politics?
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|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
About two years. Es
la ... (It's...)
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Even party politics, you? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I wasn't too active. One of the things was
that people are strange. There was a lot of people that were happy that I took
the SBA. There were a lot of people that were mad that I took the
SBA. Because they felt that while you are doing some things here and you are
just dropping us and nos alborotaste ,
nos animaste y ahora ya te vas . (you got us all excited, you
motivated us and now you are leaving.). And they were unhappy. The same people,
when I come back, they say, well, we are already doing our own thing. I hope
that you don't think that you are going to come and pick it up and I said, hey,
you know, you are doing the thing ¡Delen
gas! (Give it gas!) You know, I don't need to...you know, to
pick up. I have never been one to go back or think that I can, I don't believe
that you go back and I don't believe that you repeat things again. You move on
to other things. This is my philosophy, you know, and that is how I have always
done it is to look forward. I don't look back and I don't wish that I could go
back to something because I know that there is something up ahead. So, there
was some resistance. I said, I just said, you know, I don't need to be all that
involved. I was involved with Mondale and because from the
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national office they asked me. I had known him when he was the
vice president de (of)
Carter. And had done a little bit of traveling with him. I had
told him that he wasn't doing enough for us.
Una vez me enoje con el porque me dijo , (One
time I got mad at him because he said,) "Well, I am doing all that I
can." I said, "Well, I don't think that you are doing enough," I
said. "And you know better and you know that you need to help us. I think
it was an obsession that we had with the appointments during the period when I
told you that we were very troubled because we had lost contact and Mondale was
still one that we could contact with and..." I told him, "You know,
we did a lot of work for you. And we are not getting the input into this
administration that we feel that we should have." And he says, "Well,
I am doing all that I can for you. I am. Well, it is not enough." And then
he says, "Well, what do you want me to do, scream and holler?" And I
said, "Yes, if it is necessary. I said, "You know, scream like a
banshee...you know...whatever you need to do, do it." I said,
"Because we were willing to do it for you." Anyway, he was very
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sympathetic. I saw, I really...you know, liked him also and was
sorry that his campaign was so unsuccessful and so poorly. It, like his
campaign to me, just floundered, you know.
No tenia ...(It did not...) It was the
beginning...I think the Democratic Party was beginning to not know
it's direction and so he didn't know it, you know, he didn't give it direction.
They were searching for what...what do you do...you know...to be successful or
and do you go to the middle, do you go to the left, or do you go...You know.
And, he had always been so much to the left and then when he was making all
these gestures to move to the center and to be perceived at being in the Senate
that you know, it just, he lost the credibility that I think that he had. But,
he was a very good man. Pero no
...(But no...) He couldn't...He wasn't strong. He was not a strong
man. And, I think that probably is the last one that I really knew. I never
knew or met with Dukakis. His campaign just never really
interested me. I was trying to think who else. And, then
Clinton. I have never met with Clinton. He has invited me at
different times. The only one that I met with a number of times was with
Hillary and I really like Hillary. I really appreciated her. I
think she is the strength of that family. She is the most decisive, she is the
one that gives direction, even though I feel like that the president
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has moved into an...He wants to move into...And, since the
beginning, from his appointment; he gets very, very safe people. He is not...He
was not a risk taker. Carter reached out to Chicanos who were
philosophically Chicanos. Clinton reached out for safe Hispanics. And to
others, that maybe aren't familiar with the
movimientos (movements), there is a world of
difference. And, I compare it sometimes with women's groups that say that you
reach for a woman instead of a feminist.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
In this case, the woman would be the
Hispanics and the feminist would be the Chicano?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
That's right. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And what do you think are
those philosophical differences between the Chicanos and Hispanics?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I think that there
are an assertiveness that speaks to the values, to the core values of Chicanos.
Identity with the language and the culture and wanting to promote that rather
than wanting to assimilate it or for Mexicanos to assimilate. I think there is
tremendous pride and strength
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123
in people knowing their roots and
where they come from and valuing them versus, you know -- just trying to find
ways in which you assimilate into the mainstream society. And I think that
there are many people that just, you know, have, don't recognize the strength
-- the individual strength that comes to a person when they know who they are
and where they come from versus just trying to fit into a mold of what is
mainstream America.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
OK, what did you do to get yourself reintroduced? Who
did you align yourself with?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
OK, well you know, I have never, I have never been, been
out because you know, my labor friends are always my labor friends and they
were close to me. My church friends were always my church friends. One of the
things that Bishop Metzger had done before while I was still
in the clerk's office was he had asked me to help Sister Alicia
Rodriguez begin to organize EL PISO which is the El
Paso equivalent of COPS in San Antonio. And
he had wanted them to start building the, that
movimiento (movement) and I had met with
Sister Alicia and I had worked with her. When I came back from the
SBA, she was having a little firmer support and EL PISO
was beginning to grow. It was beginning to be a spokes...and a vehicle for
representation of people at
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city council and at other forums.
And, one of the things that they had undertaken as a main focus was their
wanting to address the problems of the colonias that we had now thousands of
people. The city had forced thousands of people out into the county areas, into
the rural areas, and they were living in third world conditions in little
makeshift shacks or little trailers or any kind of shelter that they could find
without water, without sewer, without gas, without any basic utilities. That
they were isolated out there and the problem was beginning to really surface in
that these children went to school and because of their conditions there was an
increase in a lot of the third world type of diseases like hepatitis and all of
those that are associated with the stomach problems and cleanliness. And so the
schools began to experience all of these things, you know, what is happening
and well, when they examined their student body, you know, a bunch of these
children were coming from these areas. And therefore, you know, what do these
children do? A lot of lice infections, oh everything that goes with living in
those type of conditions and EL PISO had become
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the
leading body to address those problems with city council as well as with as in
any forum. And I had a natural affinity to them since I had been one of the
people from the very beginning to work with them and with labor and with the
church. So I think that, for the most part, with most of the groups, of my
relationship had never been, had never been detached, you know, it had always
been a part ever since I had commuted. I had kept up with most of the
activities that were, you know, that were happening and that I felt were
particularly important. When I was in business, I just said, well, this is a
different, you know, this is just a different venue, but you can continue doing
the same things, you know, of helping people. And in a different forum maybe,
but the job is still the same. You know, what do you do with the poor people
here? And how do we help them to advance and have some opportunities for them?
About that time the city council had, was Jonathan Rogers, who
was the mayor, and he had a very negative attitude and a very ugly attitude
toward EL PISO and when the people, but also when I came back was
when they asked me to be a plaintiff, you know, they had found somebody to put
up in front. I was a plaintiff for the lawsuit, we had a group from the
Texas Rural Development, no, the Texas Rural Legal Aid
was ready to file a
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lawsuit and they needed plaintiff. I was a
plaintiff in the lawsuit against the city, against the Ysleta
school district, against the community college, and, I guess, just those three,
and for them to create single member districts in 1980. Just when I had come
back, so they all went into single member districts. The El Paso
went into the, the city council for the first time in '80 was elected by single
member districts and they elected this young man named Escobar, who we thought
would be OK; but he turned just immediately to get sucked into the system -- to
the establishment that had controlled the city. Those few developers and
particularly a pet of Jonathan Rogers and
como era (like he was) he was one...I guess
he was one of two Mexicanos
on the city council at that time out of six. And his job was to bad
mouth EL PISO when they went up to be, to respond to EL
PISO when they would go up and he...I mean he...I think one thing that
would be, you know, that...That was his agreement with the mayor or that he
would do it. I mean, it just seemed like he took pleasure in doing it. He would
harangued at them something terrible, disrespectful, ugly, the
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others would just watch. I mean, this is two Mexicans fighting each other, you
know. Y este muchacho se prestaba para
eso. (And this young man--he was perfect for this.) And then
one of the, on his second term, there was a priest that I appreciated and loved
very much because his father had been one of the police captains that had been
close to Joe, Captain Islas and his son was a priest,
Mario Islas and Mario was one of the real active priests with
EL PISO and he was before them and David Escobar
got up and told him, you know, we don't want you here. You are just this and
you are a God damned liar and you know what? In an open council. To me, that
was it. Cabrón (Stupid
idiot) David, you know, he can say what he wants to, to people, but he can't be
calling un padre Mexicano públicamente
insultando así . (a Mexican priest and publically insulting him
this way.). And, so there was a lot of people that felt that in that district
and we said, you know, we can't allow that. That one of our own embarrasses and
says something like that to one of our priests. And so I talked to the labor
people who had supported him and I said, you know, this is happening and we
want to run, you know, I am going to run against him. I have decided that I am
going to run against him. And all of the money, the establishment money was
went with him.
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Jonathan, the mayor, wanted to
protect him and we were able to put on a good campaign. And I put on a brown
and white campaign. We did all the posters brown and white. We did everything
brown and white and they had absolutely no expectations that I would defeat him
and that one of the banks that was helping him was the State National
Bank and they called this guy, this friend of mine, Eddie
Alvarez, that had been at SBA with me, had now returned to
El Paso. And they called Eddie in and they told Eddie, we want
you, we want to do this statement about Alicia that she was
fired from the SBA, that she was investigated for these things, and for
wrongdoing. And we want you to say that it happened. He said, well, I can't say
that it happened because it didn't. And Eddie was working for Governor
Clements. He had the office here for government, for Governor Clements
by then and they told him, well, then you are not going to have a job if you
don't. And he said, "Well, I will have to see how I handle that." But
then he commented, he said, "Alicia, they offered me this and this and
they told me that this is going to happen." I said, "Well, fine you
know,
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what can they do?" I said, "I wasn't fired from
the SBA and I have got letters to that effect. I have got letters
from Mondale, I have got letters from everybody when I left
and wishing me success and from everybody in the agency from
Washington down to the Oklahoma City office. The
whole office signed a letter, you know, telling me how sorry they were that I
was leaving." Never mind that...But so, then they didn't use it. But they
kind of kept that allegation going in a kind of a rumor type of thing, passing
it around that I had done this. Never really told me openly so that I could
address it; but they continued to use it. Eddie was fired by
Clements and anyway, I won the election. I beat him two to one
and I think that this is District 6 and I think this was very classic. It was a
Chicano against a Hispanic. Y somos
Chicanos o no (and we were Chicanos or not) period.
Y este bato no es Chicano
(And this guy is not a Chicano) And that was it. And so I defeated
him. I ran for reelection and got a second term with the city council. Being on
the city council is not particularly rewarding.
Es mucho wato (It is a lot of uproar), a lot
of up here, you know...You can get to go to all these receptions -- which I
don't like. All these really...A lot of ceremonial crap. But to get anything
really done, it is so difficult, because it is just so difficult to get the
boards to assert
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themselves, the members of the council to assert
themselves. Because they all buy into all of this ceremonial stuff. And, if I
don't vote for this developer, if I don't vote with this guy, they are not
going to invite me to these things. And, so they wind up doing nothing but
potholes and trash, you know, how is the trash collected? And, so I didn't feel
particularly satisfying period during that time. And I decided that I would not
seek reelection. The other thing that happened was that in my last year, in
1986, my mother passed away and it was very hard for me for my mother to pass
away. She had been like so close to me and such a strong supporter and advisor.
She had been already bedridden for five years, but even then, you know...It is
just that you have grown up with the emotional support of your mom and I no
longer had that and it was real hard. It took me a long period to adjust to
that and I think it also gave me a time that I said, you know, I have got to
spend time with my dad because he will be gone too and so I didn't seek
reelection and I finished my term in '78 and the rest of that year, I kind of
just did
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some things at home. Kind of re-energized and went back
to La Tapatia because that, I still had, you know...My sisters were
running it, but I still had...you know, financial interest there.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This would be '88,
no?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
This was
'88, uh huh, '88. And then I, then I spent a lot of time and
Joe retired and we took my dad on a lot of trips. My dad got
kind of sick and as we, when we realized that he was getting sick, we spent one
year, un año (a
year)...We bought this custom van and we took him, you know, we took him all
through California about three weeks, you know, to all the
little towns, que viera toda lo que
quería ver (to see what he wanted to see) -- some cousins and
stuff that he had, and then we came back through the Yosemite and the Sequoias
and the Yellowstone and all. Just gave him a very good, good trip and then we
came back and then we took him through of Chihuahua because he
wanted to visit some of the pueblos
in Chihuahua y
lo llevamos por toda Chihuahua por casas grandes y luego salimos
por alla por Presidio . (And we took him through
all of Chihuahua by the large houses and then out through Presidio.) And so, it
was. He really always remembered that time and then about...you know. About six
months later, he began to be very sick and we moved him in with us.
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And, after that he was just kind of declining, but he was, he
would always remember what a great time he had had on those trips and I always
felt very good because we traveled with him and we took different of the
grandkids, of his grandkids de los
hijos...de mis hermanos (of his kids...of my brothers) with us
at the different times and so they got to know him more. And then in 1990, I
began to get restless again and I continued to working with EL
PISO and the problem with the colonias was getting worse and worse.
And so we felt that we really needed to do something; and that since it was in
the rural area that maybe it was the county responsibility now, to try and do
something. I had continued to work with EL PISO and so I...And also,
I also figured there was some historical significance to it because the last
Mexicano county judge in
El Paso had served in 1890. I said, "This is our year. You
know, it is a hundred years. How much more are we going to wait?" And so,
we mounted a magnificent effort. We were able to get every
Mexicano group that was activists and
probably every prominent Mexicano
or economically prominent Mexicanos to
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agree that if they
didn't support me, they would not support anybody else.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I am curious. Who was
this hundred year old predecessor?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Se llamaba
Máximo Aranda (He was named Máximo Aranda)
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Máximo Aranda. OK. So, you got all the groups together
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
To support your
campaign?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Everybody agreed that...Even if they weren't, you know...los bigshots. If
they weren't with me, they would not be against me. Nobody would endorse the
incumbent or any other candidate. There was three Anglo men running against me.
And I kept...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
One of them was the incumbent? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
One of them was the incumbent, Luther
Jones. And we...we...What I told everybody at all of our meetings from
the very beginning...And I laid out a very extensive organizational strategy.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Now, are
these things private or at restaurants or halls or...?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
At my home. I cleared out,
I had a den about like, about the size of that den at my house in
Ysleta, and we cleared it out and it was the strategy room. It
was the camp. It was the headquarters.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So you brought people there to have your
meets ?
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134
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Absolutely. Allí es
donde hacíamos todo. (That is where we did everything.) Every
campaign that I had ever had, that had been my headquarters.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you go visit
these people one on one? I mean, you...
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, no. We brought them...Maybe we visited
them. But we brought them there, you know, to strategize and to take
responsibility for different pieces of the campaign. When the campaign was
growing so much, then it was the first time ever that I had to rent a
headquarters. In January of... I guess -- of '90, I figured that I have got to
have a headquarters porque no teníamos
bastante lugar y hay tanta gente que tenemos. (Because we did
not have enough room and we had a lot of people.) We did a mailout and we must
have had 200 people and these are people who were working on the floor...We
were working in every room in the house. And I said, "You know, we are not
going to be able to conduct this extensive of a campaign here." And so, we
rented a headquarters for the first time ever.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Where was that?
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135
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Every other campaign we
had run there. We rented a nice room in a strip center near Basset Center,
which is in the center of town, off of the I-10.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And the address in
Ysleta? What was that address?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
8741 Old County.
Fuera (Was) headquarters. And, I think...We
had so many rallies and so many people there. We had Carter
there at...was there. I think we went...When people talk about the house and
all the parties and all the rallies and all the events that we had there,
people are kind of...A lot of people in the community were very attached to
that house. When I put up a for sale sign and I got more calls from people that
were upset. They said we should do something with this house...Because...
remember that we had...We had had so many historical things there. We had had
Brisce -- probably every governor since Preston Smith had visited there -- and
with supporters. Preston, Briscoe,
Mark White. On another line, Gary Mauro had
practically grown up there with us. Senator Yarborough...We
had even had Ann Rockefeller there. I mean we had had a lot of
people that had come there. We would entertain them at the house and
Gary Hart was
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136
there for breakfast.
Muchos gentes que habíamos trayedo --
los llevamos a la casa. Y siempre abrimos la casa a la gente.
(We brought many people to the house. And we always had the house open to the
people.) You know, we just felt that...You know, this is the place from where
we come and so it was difficult. But the campaign was too big to stay there
anymore and we just couldn't physically handle it. So, we moved the campaign to
a...to a headquarters on Edgemere Street and began to organize there. And, from
the very beginning, I told people, the only way that we can win is we have got
four gringo gringos to
defeat and we have to defeat them one time. In the first round, I said we can't
go a second round because we can't harness the energy again from the
volunteers. We can't motivate them again 30 days. Either we win the first time,
or we are not going to win. But we have...I said, the numbers are in our favor
for us to win and we just have to work, you know, in getting the people out.
And, I made a prediction, that you know...kind of an assessment of every
precinct of how many votes we had to have in every precinct. And, we had to
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have about a 30 percent turnout in, like 50 of the precincts that
we were working and that we were targeting and we had 28 and we won. When I was
at the headquarters that day of the election and it was 7:00 and people were
calling in and saying, people are still in line voting.
Le dije ya fregamos . (I said we have the
advantage.). "If people are still in line," I said, "That means
that we have the turnout that we need and we are going to win."
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you have an
extensive...?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And the people were still saying there, you know, it is not possible, you
can't win, or you are not going to win and...
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Outright. You can't. All the conventional
wisdom was, you know -- you can't. And I said, "We will! We are going
to."
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How many people did you have involved in this campaign? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Maybe, maybe about 400.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And in the
early voting, absentee voting, how many people did you have working there?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Maybe about a
hundred. That one we worked extensively, the early voting and what we did was,
was we started in January, we sent cards to the elderly for them to apply to
vote at home. Because we felt that
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if they would send the cards
and we did, we targeted all of the people that were over 65 and we said, you
know...If you...And we showed them how they could apply. We sent them a letter,
showed them the card that they were to send out. I mean, they couldn't
understand that why I wanted you know, like 10,000 of those cards to request to
vote at home. And I said, well, you know,...We know what we are going to do
with them. You know...Can you give them to us or do you want us to produce our
own? No, we will give them to you. I say, OK. So, we got them and in fact I
think I called Gary and asked him to get them for me at the state,
porque Helen no las
tenia aquí localmente. (because Helen did not have them here
locally.).
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Gary Mauro? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Mauro. Uh hmm. And, we sent a letter explaining them to
them that they could vote at home; that all they had to do was submit. And we
had already put in everything. All they had to do was sign it and mail it. And,
we had about probably a thousand that voted that way. And we had them, then we
told them, you know, when you get the card, if
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you need help,
call us and then what we did though was that when we knew that they had gotten
the letter, like a week later, we had someone to call them and say, you know
si le van a mandar le podemos
ayudar ...(if you are going to send it we can help you...) And
established a relationship with that group.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So you won the early vote? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, but we were at 35
percent. And if you are up at 35 percent with the early vote, you are going to
win.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK,
so then your victory
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Because we knew that we were splitting with, you know,
there was four of us and if we had 35 percent and the conservatives are usually
the ones that will vote early and the gringos . That wasn't traditionally our vote, so
we were able to get 35 percent of the vote that was not traditionally our vote.
We had done very well. And then we knew what turnout we were getting and I got
to tell you, when they called me at 7:00 and told me, you know, everybody was
reporting, all the precinct captains, and they said all of these precincts were
still voting at 7:00 and they had lines. People voted until 8:00
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Wow!
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|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
They
ran out of ballots and they were telling us that they had run out of ballots
and that they were waiting for ballots to be brought in all of the Lower
Valley and the Southside precincts. We knew that we had done it.
Because we had known that we needed 30 percent turnout and with 30 percent
turnout, we would win substantially. And we had 28 percent. So, we won
narrowly.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How much money did you spend? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
About $100,000. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How did you get it? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Mostly the rich
Mexicanos gave me and
then we did a lot of, of grassroots. Ten dollars. We did a lot of
tardeadas (late
afternoon fund raising parties).
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
How did you campaign? Were you on TV, billboards,
posters?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
We had
everything, we had everything that time. The only thing that we didn't use was
newspaper because newspaper no lo lee
nadie aquí. ( one reads it around her.) We had billboards. We
had like...I think we had two billboards strategically...We paid more so that
we would
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have the ones that we wanted, the choice billboards. We
had a big one, kind of going east by Basset, which is the center of town. We
figured everybody coming from the Eastside will see that one and then we had
one here on Sunlamp going that way. They said we catch everybody so that we
figured those two was what we wanted and so we paid the extra money for it. So
that, because we only had two.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Those were off of I-10? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Uh hmm. And we paid for the two big
billboards that we wanted and then we had a lot of homemade signs that were
like four by eight, the paddles, that Joe, my husband and
friends did there at home, there with the silk screen.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I mean, we must have had
clearly over a thousand of those that we put out. And then we had the yard
signs, something like this everywhere. And these we would just have, you know,
like in the thousands for people to have at home. Then we did bumper stickers
as well and then we did another little thing that we had seen, that we produced
ourselves, and we sent out for the early voting and we had...Where it is a
little thing that you hang on your car because people don't like bumper
stickers anymore. And we had a little card that you dangled.
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Like
you dangled a little...you know how people dangle those little mouses or
whatever they have. And it was a little thing that you dangled in your car that
showed and you put it with a little suction cup and that was very effective
because people liked those kind of, something like this hanging on their car.
And, we had people just really excited and motivated. And so, we won with a
very, very narrow, I think like, we won with a fraction of a percent and it is
ironic that I lost with a fraction of a percent.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well let's talk about
either that loss or the middle years. I think we picked. How did you lose?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Or, was that related
to how the four years went?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I think so. When I won, you know, you win and then you
have a whole, you win in April and there is a whole nine month period in which
you are still, in which the incumbent judge continues.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There was no
Republican opponent?
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|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I am trying to think. There was, but it, it was a token
person. It wasn't a significantly Republican. It was Richard
Bowen and he was not particularly supported by the Republicans. He was
kind of a nut that runs for a lot of things. The county judge though, the
incumbent was very bitter. He felt that he had been a good judge and that he
had been maligned by the media and by some of the, a group that was called the
Ankle Biters and he proceeded, out of anger, and he had a court that
supported him because he had one commissioner that he had appointed, and he
spent every penny that was in the county coffers. There had been like a
$24,000,000 reserve. He spent it. So that the day that I took over there was
money to operate until October -- for one year. The year that I had my first
year. In the first budget that I had; I had to do something that. No, that
never had been done in El Paso County. I had to borrow money to operate the
government for three months because there were zero reserves. Plus I had, so I
had to borrow money, plus I had to cut about $40,000,000 out of the budget. But
a lot of it was one time items that he had spent and we just knew, you know,
that we have to don' this and we don't have to do this, you know for the things
that needed done. But we cut the budget from a hundred and forty four million.
No, $137,000,000 which it had been
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in his last year and my first
budget was like $95,000,000. But we had to borrow money for the first two. For
the first six months of operation of that...of my first fiscal year. And that
in itself is a very difficult state because one of the things that they had
been doing was that they had been giving little grants to community groups,
some of the social agencies. And, those were some of the first things that we
had to eliminate. I mean, how do you give money that you don't have when you
have primary responsibility, you know, under the constitution to maintain the
jails, to maintain the juvenile facility detention center, to maintain the
courts and those are primarily the responsibilities of county government. So we
analyzed that and we had to. The other thing that I did was that even with all
of the cuts and even with the borrowing, there was still things that I just
felt could not be cut and so I adopted a tax base...a tax. God, I forgot the
word.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, an increase, |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Upped the rate?
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|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I increased the rate like just
a fraction over the roll back amount. And I did it and believed that, in civic
areas and places that I had talked, I had talked to people about what I would
have to cut out. Like the senior nutrition, like the general assistance, all of
those budgets that I would just have to dramatically cut or eliminate if I
didn't go this fraction over the, the roll back rate. And I felt that there was
community support for it. So, I was able to get the commissioner's court to
agree with me. Well, the first thing that was, one of the groups was a
grassroots tax group, immediately began a petition to create, to have a roll
back election. And they submitted a petition that was short ten thousand votes
for the
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Signatures? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Signatures. They submitted and then when it was examined, you know how you
review it at the election, the election department reviewed it and they had
disqualified a number of names because of all the irregularities, different
irregularities that are valid under the law. Well, they were short, they were
short about 8,000 votes. And then the commissioners, I don't know, by then, two
commissioners were running for reelection, and so they joined with this
commissioner that just really was just negative against me and had said, well,
since they
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were that close, we ought to give them the benefit of
the doubt and call an election. And, I challenged them. I said, you don't have
jurisdiction to do that. You are acting illegally by doing that. And I will not
sign any order to do that. The three of them proceeded to do that. Only one
commissioner supported me and the county attorney's office supported me...that
my allegation...that it was improper for them...You know, that they had no
basis. That if the review of the election...of the petition was that it was
insufficient they had no authority to call the election. They called it anyway.
And the newspapers, who had been, I believed, supportive and understood why we
were going with that tax rate, supported the election and called for people to
vote for the road to roll it back. And just that, cut out more and they won the
election. Very narrowly, but they had a very poor turnout. Less than ten
percent turned out to that election, but I had told them that I was contesting
them and I got a group of plaintiffs and we filed in the court of appeals
challenging their authority to call the election and the court of appeals, no
they had a special judge that came
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in and heard that suit and the
judge said absolutely, they had no authority to call that election and so that
group appealed to the court of appeals and the court of appeals sustained that
they had not authority, so that the roll back election was ruled null and void
and we proceeded pero dejo muchos
(but it left many) sore spots. They said, you know, you used the
legal process just to get your way, you know. And so it left a lot of... It
also left the relationship on the court very tenuous. I am sure you can
see...you know...I challenged what they can do. And, I told them, you know, I
am only doing it to play to these people because you are running for reelection
and you just can't do that because you are not willing to cut anything. I said,
if you all will tell me what you are willing to cut, and vote for those cuts,
then fine. We will rescind the tax rate, but they weren't willing to do that
either and in fact, I had to pass the budget with two votes. Which clearly was
real difficult for that first budget because I had had to cut so much. When I
called them and I told them we had to adopt that tax rate, they wouldn't vote
for the tax rate. They wouldn't vote it, they wouldn't vote it. And then I
called the district judges and I said, you all are going to have to step in and
help me and you know, and mandamus them to establish it. And so, they were
ready to do that. And so, the
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judges sent word that we were
meeting, I was meeting downstairs with the commissioner's court and the
district judges were up there in the council of judges ready to sign the
mandamus for us to pass the tax rate. And so they were very ugly and they said,
well, you have got them up there. You know, well...OK we will sign it. So, they
voted, but then when we had of the adoption for the budget, there, two
commissioners, one commissioner failed to come in. He said he was sick. Another
commissioner left the court and so that left me with three of us, still a
quorum, and so I made the motion to adopt the budget. The one seconded it. Then
we had the vote. There was two for the budget and one against it. So, we passed
the budget, my first budget, with two votes. And it was all the situation that
we had no money. And that they didn't want to cut, but they didn't want to
raise the tax rate. And so, that was the first year in that I had to threaten
them with action with the district judges. I said, I will turn it over to the
district judges, which they have, if a county is declared kind of an economic
emergency or emergency, the council of judges can take
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action and
so I tell them, that is what we are going to do because you all don't want to
do this objectively, you know, but you are not willing to work with the
situation that we have, that we are facing. But then, then we continued. One of
the things I realized was that I didn't have any money locally to do any of the
things or provide any of the relief that I wanted to outside, but I went
outside, I would, you know, I had good friends at the state level. And I was
able to bring in millions of dollars to the
colonias . Both from Henry,
with Henry's support in Washington and with Ann
Richard's support in Austin. I mean, we brought in
millions of dollars and when I left there, there was a plan in place for all of
the colonias to get water ultimately. One of the things that I am very proud
of, and I will show you; I have the first water meter for when we went and did
the first laying of the lines...and for the first water lines to go into the
colonias . And then I
realized that they needed centers and I worked with Bullock and Bullock got the
department, the Texas A & M [University] to plug into their
budget a line item that would establish, that would mandate Texas A &
M School of Agriculture [&] Architecture to spend a million dollars
in each budget year in the colonias
in some manner. And so we worked with the director, the director or
the head of, the chairman of
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the agriculture, of the architecture
department and we designed some community centers. That they would have the
students to do the design and that we would house, because I think that the
first thing that people lived, needed in those isolated areas is a
communication place. A place where they can at least share and commiserate with
each other if nothing else, but also so that you can focus on bringing services
to them. And we established two here in El Paso. One in the
Montana Vista area, which is a very isolated area and then the other in the
Sparks subdivision, which has been the subdivision that was so bad that the
illegals, the originator, it is an illegal subdivision and was the focus even
of the New York Times stories about the conditions
there. Then they were also able to establish some of these in Hidalgo
County and other counties in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley, but Bullock did that to help us. The other
thing is that I went, you know, and strategically worked to bring in some type
of additional presence here. And we lobbied and we were able to get us a state
facility here. And I had never thought about, you know, needing a state prison
here and what it
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represented until a lady came to the office when
I was first in the office and she, when I first took office and she said to me,
"¿Señora Chacon,
quiero que usted me diga donde esta Dilley, Tejas?" Le
dije, "Pues no se. Si quiero, pues dejamos ver" .
("Mrs. Chacon, I would like you to tell me where is this Dilley,
Texas?" I told her, "Well, I don't knokw. But if you want, we
will see.") And, then I looked up [she said]
"Porque mi hijo esta en Dilley, Tejas y yo quiero
saber donde es. Porque son muchos anos que no tengo contacto con el."
(Because my son is in Dilley, Texas and I would like to know where
that is. Because it has been many years since I have been in contact with
him.") Well, he was in a prison in Dilley, Texas and so I
had to explain to her where it was and she, and it got me to thinking, you know
that when people are sent from El Paso County to any of these
prisons, there is no facilities...Could you excuse me?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Her husband was in
the Dilley Prison.
|
| Ms.
Chacon: |
I had never realized what a hardship it is to families, to
mothers, to wives when their husbands, or sons, or relative, or any other
relative is sent to a prison and that from El Paso, it is so far
that they almost lose the connection for that whole period of time. Because
they are financially unable to go and visit with them and maintain a
relationship.
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And so I began to work with the Department of
Criminal Justice on the creation of a facility here in El
Paso. And it took us almost the three years because they finally agreed
that they would build a facility here and also I didn't realize how competitive
the process was to get a state facility because of the economic benefit that it
is to the community when you have a prison. And, when I went the first time
with a group of, with a delegation from El Paso to talk to the authority, I
mean, we were like there with hundreds of other people from other communities
that also wanted facilities. And, but again, we had very strong support from
Lt. Governor Bullock and from others that were supportive of
what we were doing. Paul Moreno was very, very helpful with the Chicano
legislators in saying hey, El Paso is an area that is so
isolated that they need a facility and they have now opened a facility here
about six months ago.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
In these projects, do you think your [Democratic]
Party work has helped you, your loyalty to the Democratic
Party, office holders, or the sheer facts of the stand alone on the
necessity in El Paso or...?
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153
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think it was the... |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
...Your ability
to marshal resources?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I think it was a combination, you know; that I had
established these long relationships of knowing people and...I think, you know,
you cannot put a dollar value to the relationships with people. I had been
working with Lt. Governor Bullock since he was the secretary
of state. I...You know, when I was county clerk, he was secretary of state and
we had some, you know, some relationships and knew each other. Then when he was
the comptroller and so forth, I had helped him in his elections, but I also had
working relationships with him so that for over twenty five years, you know,
you can't put a dollar value to well, what is a relationship, you know, working
relationship worth that has taken 25 years to develop? And the trust that you
have with an individual and I think that was extremely beneficial to that I had
that with him. That I had that with Gary Mauro and that I have
had it with the state AFL-CIO because they were supportive and they
would influence others in Austin for us.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How was it as a woman
because obviously it wasn't being Mexican-American on the commissioner's court
because you had others? How was it, do you feel, as a woman, leading these men?
Page:
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|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
It
was difficult because one of the things, and I don't, sometimes I don't know if
it was just because I was a woman or it is because of the type of woman that I
am and my lifestyle. One of the things that I don't do is that I don't drink. I
am a teetotaler and so I don't go to...to happy hours and those types of
activities that the commissioners would many times do with each other. And they
would go, after the session or after discussions or after any meetings, they
would maybe go to a local bar or a drinking hole and have opportunity to give
and take in discussion and many times when they came to the court, well they
had already had a discussion, either at over drinks or over a golf game or
something that I was not privy to. And that my own lifestyle doesn't lend
itself to that. No ando
compadreando/comadreando con gentes. (I was not socializing
with those people.) So, that hurt me. That they had a different relationship
with each other, not just a working relationship and that my relationship was
strictly a working relationship. And sometimes they would agree with me in
discussions about the need and the validity of a cause or of a particular
matter, but
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155
they would vote against it because they had made an
informal agreement over beers.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
You also said that you weren't sure whether it was
being a woman or this type of woman.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What do you mean by type? What type of woman are you?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I am a
very religious woman and very spiritual and very tied to my family and I don't
go, I don't do a lot of socializing versus that I see some women, you know,
that, that do a lot of socializing, that go to the clubs, that have just a very
different lifestyle than I do. And my lifestyle has always been centered with
my family, my church, and then the activities that I see as helping others. And
so it is, most of my socializing is within my family. And when you have so many
things, I don't go to, I don't go to activities just to be seen. I don't like
that, that thing that people do, even office holders do what they call cameo
appearances. I don't do that. If I agree to go to a function, that is what I am
going to and I am going because I see the validity and the value of helping
them or because I support their cause; I support what they are doing. I don't
go to things to be seen. And that is a very different, I think, you know...from
others.
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|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So I take it that you don't go to a place and work the
crowd and leave?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You
either go or don't go.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
That's right. |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
If you go, you stay? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
If I go, I stay. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
All right. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
From the beginning to the
end, I don't make,...You know...commitments like to three and four and five
functions an evening. And sometimes, that hurts me. But you know...But I say,
well, what value is it for someone to come and work the crowd and leave? I
mean, what have they gained by that? What is, you know, what does anybody gain?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What about
your relationship with other men? District judges, although in your tenure,
they also got the first Mexican-American
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
District Judge Guadelupe
Rivera.
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157
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
The judges were very supportive of me and the reason that
so many of the district judges were so very supportive of me was because a
bunch of them are young and they ran on my tails.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Or of my skirts. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Was this part
of your team or something?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
We were promoting them at every rally that we went.
Everywhere I would get crowds, I would tell them, you know, it is our time, you
know, and we have the opportunities. And one of my things has always been is
that we have got to bring in a bunch, everybody that we can and we have got to
encourage these young ones to run and we have a wonderful slate and I would
introduce them all.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So this is an informal slate or just your politics?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Informal, it is
an informal slate.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
OK. How about with the sheriff, or with other male
office holders, or with the council of women, or other county judges that were
all the first?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was extremely popular and worked well with the council of governments and
they all really cared for my leadership. Twice I...They elected me of the
Rio Grande Council of Governments which
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is our
area...Our six counties, during the time that I was on the city council, they
elected me their President. And then immediately when I came back as county
judge, they elected me as their president and I served as their president two
of the years that I was the county judge because I relate well to the county
judges and to the rural areas and they, and I supported their efforts and I
supported their needs and promoted their needs along with the needs of
El Paso in Austin and in anywhere that I could.
And so, I think that the district judge, all of my county judges in this area
were devastated that I lost. And, some of them even had, during the campaign,
and during the runoff, they wrote in letters to the editors saying...You know,
we don't understand El Paso, we don't understand what you are
doing.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Were there any, any other... |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
So, as far as that group of men, we were very, very
compatible and worked very well, extremely well and they accepted my leadership
role and appreciated it.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
In...
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159
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
In fact, relied on me. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
In mid term, did you
try to recruit candidates for the commissioner's court?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Not for the commissioner's
court. But for the district judges I did. And some that I didn't, I got blamed
for anyway. And so some of the judges were mad.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What other or significant things do you
recall as your tenure of county judge?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I think, you know, the fact that we
changed the judicial is changed forever. The other thing that I worked on
extensively, and I think it was again, not because I was the county judge, but
because of my long political involvement and working with people, relationship
was what, during that short period that Ann Richards appointed
Bob Krueger as the state, the federal...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
U. S. senator. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
the U. S. senator
and he had to fill some vacancies. He asked me to serve on the selection
committee, the recommendation committee. And we promoted two people from
El Paso very strongly. One
Mexicano , first
Mexicano native born in El
Paso that was selected and he was selected and another young Anglo man,
liberal man who had been very
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supportive, a Jewish fellow and
when we had the committee and so forth, I was able to influence
Bullock to a point. Three El Pasoans to that selection
committee. Krueger...And, Krueger just basically said,
"You tell me who you all want...the three of you want from El
Paso and that is what you have got." And then we worked the
committee. We were very happy, in fact, that that committee because of the
network that I had, it was all friends. There were some people there from
organized labor, the state level, Rosa Walker and others from
the state AFL-CIO, people from San Antonio that I had
worked with in MALDEF, Frank Herrera and others,
and so, you know that we were able to, even within the committee, had Krueger
not said, you know, we are going influence this election, we would have had the
votes within the committee to work the people that we wanted. So, I was very
proud, you know, and excited that El Paso got two federal judges named. Young
ones that are going to be progressive, that understand our community, that have
empathy for our community, and they are
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going to be in there from
now until they are old. And the decisions they make are going to be good for
El Paso and good for Mexicanos .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There was a lot of criticism of the
Governor and of the party for the anointment as opposed to participation in
selecting Krueger. Would you voice any kind of commentary to the Governor or to
anything about that process?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I felt that the governor would have gotten, would have
done better if she had appointed Henry [Cisneros] because I
think Henry was popular enough, but you know, she decided not to and then
Henry...They played kind of a litle game. Henry was waiting to be asked and
Ann was actually, waiting for him to ask her and somehow they
never got together. Krueger, of course, was anxious and
Krueger, you know, people criticize Krueger. He is probably one of the most
decent human beings that we will ever know and that has ever lent themselves to
public service. Es una persona sumamente
decente pero nu fuerte. (He is an extremely decent person, but
not strong) And Henry, I think that pride kept Henry from asking Ann and I
think pride kept Ann from asking Henry.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Why do you think Ann didn't appoint
herself?
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|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I think there was a lot of negatives and I think that she
felt that she, she probably could not win.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you ever talk to her about this? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No. I talked to her
about appointing Henry.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So you did ask her? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I asked her to appoint Henry. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And she told you...
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, that she
would not, that she was not certain that Henry wanted it.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So, implying
uncertainty?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you call Henry? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, I...You know...Now, I didn't talk to Henry directly
but I talked to people close to him and I said, you know, "What is
that?" Well, you know, he feels that all, that after all that he has done
for her and after all that he did for her that she should ask him. And so
se pusieron los moños.
(they put on the bows.) As far as I could see, you know,
se pusieron los moños (they put on the bows)
on both sides.
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163
And, I think that if she had appointed
Henry, I think that Henry would have won it. I don't know, you
know, what that other scandal would have done or where it fitted into that
schedule. Obviously it would have hurt, but I don't think it would have kept
him from winning the Senate.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
All right, let's talk about another problem that
occurred about that time and that is the divisions of MAD based on,
you are still active in the Mexican-American Democrats, I assume?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Uh, and there was a
controversy with the El Paso delegation at a convention in terms
of it's delegates and MAD; these are the two, your comments about
MAD politics and MAD.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I was, that was a very uncalled for division
and but then, you know, I think that I was very unhappy with as MAD
had evolved with some of the leadership that had, that MAD had had.
That they had not been assertive enough. That the intent of MAD
initially was to assert ourselves in the Democratic Party and not
necessarily just be assimilated to the [Democratic] Party and I felt
that, in the past ten years, we had just really become just an extension of the
[Democratic] Party and we are taking direction from them instead of
giving some direction to those, especially to those policies that directly
impacted us
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and the issues that we were concerned with. I did not
think that MAD was being effective anymore and I have not believed
that MAD was effective for the past then years. Because
MAD, in fact, I think allowed itself to be sucked into the
mainstream of the [Democratic] Party and to fit in where really if
we are doing what we need to do, we don't fit in. And we should always, we
would probably always will be at odds with them if we are doing our jobs
because we know that the [Democratic] Party tends to, tends to want
to go to the middle, tends to want to go right and play to an audience that is
not necessarily representing our interests. And, particularly because when you
see the need of money in the political process and those that have money have a
larger influence than those that have votes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Who do you think has been the most
effective leader in MAD over the 20 year period?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I don't think anybody was
more effective than Joe Bernal at the beginning.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. What do you think is the role now at least to have Democrats? Are you a
member of that? What are your opinions about...?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I am not a member of either one because I
don't believe that either one is going to be effective if they just continue to
play to the Democratic Party and want to be a part and want to be
invited to the parties.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
All right, let's go back to the county judge. How did
you lose the election?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Uh...a lot of things played in. People were already still
remembering the roll back. Those sores had never really healed. Then when I,
when I, I really deliberated whether I wanted to run again. But then I...And
then I talked to a couple of people about running for the office and they
weren't ready, they didn't want to. They wanted to but not this time. And so I
was kind of left well, you know, so I waited a little too long to announce that
yes, I am running, but then I did it and then I thought well, there is still,
you know, since I had been an incumbent it is OK. It really wasn't. So that was
a mistake was hesitating. The other thing was then other young aspiring
Mexicanos wanted to run
for the judges, for the district judges. There was one in particular, well
there was two. One, David Guarderamo wanted to run
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166
against kind of a do nothing
gringo that had been there named
Herb Marsh and a lot of Mexicanos felt that he shouldn't, that
Guarderamo shouldn't run; that this particular
gringo shouldn't be opposed because he
hadn't really been, that he had been helpful at times. I said, well, I don't,
you know, if he has been helpful, fine, then you know, support him. But I said,
I am not going to tell anybody not to run. It is not my function. My function
and my history have been to tell people to run. And if this guy wants to run
and I think he has got the credentials, he has got the interest, he has got it,
the desire, let him run. I said, it has never been my role to tell people not
to run and I don't intend for that to be my role. I said I will never tell
somebody that I don't think they should run. I don't discourage people from
running. I encourage people to run. So, I...David Guarderamo
came to see me and I told him... He told me that he wanted to run. I told him ,
"¡Dale gas!"
(Give it gas!") I didn't seek him out to run. I didn't tell him not to. I
told him to do it. Then another guy came named Javieir Alvarez
and he said, "I want to run for the county court
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167
at law
against Judge Ferguson." And I said, "Well, if you
want to run Javier and you have support, go at it." And so, then a bunch
of the liberal friends, gringos
, a few of them left, called and they said, you are promoting someone
against Jack Ferguson and Jack Ferguson has been our friend,
he has been there. I said, I didn't tell him to run. I didn't seek candidates.
I said "If Javier Alvarez wants to run and he is
qualified, who should tell him not to? Well, if you don't get him out of the
race, we are not going to support you either. We are not going to work for
you." And I said, "Hey, you guys do what you need to do." I
said, "I don't tell people not to run." And so Javier
Alvarez ran and in fact, Javier Alvarez won. So then, we had this
whole slate, then this young guy, Patrick Garcia, decided he
is going to run against Kitty Shields of...One of the few
gringas judges. And so, the women's people said, "You know, Patrick
shouldn't be running against Kitty." And I said, "Why? You know,
anybody can run. The guy wants to run, let him run. Let Kitty go out and work
for her reelection and so the fact that I wouldn't tell some of these people,
and you know, it is perceived power. You don't really have that power. None of
us do." I didn't have the power to tell or I might have discouraged them
and they might have then been mad at me, but I don't think that I had the
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168
power to tell people, any of these young men especially, don't
run. And so they launched their candidacy and these other supporters of the
incumbents blamed me. And then some of the other district judges, there is only
about three left, de los gringos, entre
todos (of the gringos , among all of them) and they were all
like commenting on, you know, I guess that we are all on the line now, you
know, and she wants us all out of here. And so, it was just this perception
that I was against all of the gringos and that I wanted all the
Mexicanos . And it...So,
I lost pieces of constituencies, I guess, you know...Is what I think...The
white liberals were the few that were left...small constituency but you know, I
lost them. And then, the other thing that had happened is that labor had become
almost impotent. You know, with all the losses that they have had, with all the
things that had happened to them, they weren't the strong group that could
really help me anymore. Then there were other commissioners, other races that a
good friend of mine, that was running for the legislature and she had been my
financial...People that had been involved in my campaign
Page:
169
were
already, I guess, about three of them were running for their own...decided they
would launch their own careers and so I didn't have all of the team assembled
that I had the first time. And, I believed, at first, that we could overcome
that because of the incumbency -- incumbency
valía caca (the incumbency was worth shit.)
when you really, to go and get out the grassroots. Also we hadn't been able to
fulfill everybody's expectations because of the lack of money, because of the
time frame. Like we had the money all lined up for all the colonias but we
didn't have it all in, you know. In fact today, it is two years afterwards and
they still don't have it all in because it takes so long, you know, to do those
major projects. The engineering and all those plans that it takes, so the
people were becoming disheartened, well you know, she said that we were going
to have water; we still don't have water and it didn't matter to them if you
said, hey, but the money is there. We have the money in the county. It is here,
the commitment is here, the plans, that doesn't fly either. So, I was in a...I
got into a situation of a runoff. Oh, and then the group, the group
de (of)
Mattox. Mattox's group was really being engineered by the
Reyes Brothers, Silvestre and
Chuy and they were running that campaign. I have never known
to this day what their gripe is with me,
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170
but obviously they have
one. But, they were the Mexicanos
that were supporting. Visible Mexicanos still stayed with me and though I
think, as I see now, a lot of them had under the table deals, which we hadn't
had the first time, so they broke, they broke us up, the coalition there...in
their solitude. Se cuarteo.
(It cracked.) And they got, they found a
Mexicano , a new person that had retired from
the military, had been here like two years, or a year or so. They got him to
run too, so they split off some votes with me and they forced me into a runoff.
Once they got me into a runoff, I said, you know, the only thing we can do is
we have got to get the vote out. We were not able to energize the people. And
also some of the judges that we had supported,
entre todos they won, you know, in the
first, in the first wave we did a big, good effort. We had a good turnout. We
took like the three of those judges that I told you they won; they defeated
incumbents in the district and county courts but that, those people didn't come
back to help me. And I kind of felt, you know, I was a little bit irked at them
at first because I felt, well you know, they used
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171
my skirts to
get in pero ahora, ya no van a venir
ayudarnos. (And now, they are not going to come and help us.)
The other thing I had gotten into a very bitter dispute over the wage scale for
the county and so the business people were terrified that I was raising the
salaries too high for the unions and that was another ongoing fight. And...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There are
unions in the county employee groups?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
All the unions, what I...The wage rates, the
scales that you adopt for the building trades particularly, that you set a
scale for -- that is then used for all contracts let out in the county and it
influences the city and it influences the schools and you know, so I had
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
El Paso
County employees?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, no, the union. The wage scale for the unions, for the
trade...
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You raised them? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I raised them. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What percentage or what bottom? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I raised them and they
were the highest in Texas and still you know, they were worth
it. They should not be down at the bottom and but the business people just got
all alarmed and the contractors were, you know,
haciendo mucho wato , (making a lot of
noise,) so we, I had
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172
them, you know, dogging me and in the runoff
I got 49.6 percent turnout. And Mattox got 50.4 [percent].
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How much
money did you spend in the first campaign?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
In the first one...? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I had absolutely no
problems raising money because I think that even though they were working
against me, the establishment had a perception that I would win reelection, so
they all, when I sent them a letter, they forked over. So, it wasn't as
difficult to raise money the second time.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How much did you spend? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Probably I spent about 80
[thousand dollars] the first, in the first election and then a comparable
amount in the runoff.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Same thing again? The billboards, two or more? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Uh, I didn't have
billboards this time. I had television.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. Uh, Spanish or in English? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Both.
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173
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Which would it be? |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Both? Radio? |
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Was this the first time you have used television and
radio?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
This was
the first time. In the runoff I used it. I had got, I didn't expect to go into
a runoff and so I didn't use it. I didn't spend as much as I should have the
first time. I didn't, I did some radio, very little, the second, in the runoff,
I used much more radio. And used television.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Was it your own voice or your own image or
was it somebody else hired?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, it was different people speaking for me. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And then I would do the
disclaimer because people know my voice. I would do the disclaimer.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. How many
volunteers did you have in your campaign this time around?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Maybe about 300. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. Who helped
you in the Canutillo area?
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174
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
The...Emma, who is a close friend of mine, childhood
friend, and who is an aunt to the Reyes' and then some other friends and family
of hers.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
When you say the Reyes, you are talking about
Silvestre and Jesus?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I didn't realize they
were local.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I
thought they were from the Valley or somewhere.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
They are from
Canutillo.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
OK. Uh, does it also time that you moved to this house
out of Ysleta or?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
About, we had started selling the house when my father
died in '91. We began to, the sisters began to talk abut each of us selling our
homes and moving in together because we were very close. One sister lived
across the street from me and another one lived about three blocks from us,
from me, there in Ysleta and Ysleta had changed so much and we were getting
surrounded really just by, we were in the slums and I had a very large home
that I felt, was anywhere else, would have been
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175
worth about
$150,000 because of what we had added to it and you know; it had four bedrooms
and like four bathrooms and a huge den, big living room. I mean, solid
foundations, adobe home on an acre of land and I was only able to get, you
know, like $90,000 there. And we just felt that it was the time to move on. My
sisters, and we had gotten much closer nursing my father because he died at
home. We took care of him at home all his last year because he was very ill and
we didn't want him to be sent anywhere. We took care of him there and we took
turns with each other taking care of him. The last month that they said he was
terminal, the doctor said we could put him in a hospital, but we are not going
to do it. We can't do anything; it would..He will die in the hospital. "Do
you want him to die over there?" we said. No, he wanted to be at home and
we want him to be at home. So, we had hospice working with us so that my dad
died there at home with all of us there with him. And since then, we began to
talk about each of us, all of our children were gone, and that we need, you
know, that maybe we needed to help each other more. We were older and in doing
that, we said let's put all our homes up for sale and buy one house and then we
will all move in together. We will buy a larger home and we agreed that we
would do that and so all of us put
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176
our homes up for sale. During
the year, the last year, in '90, in '94, no I guess, no, all of the last year
of '94, my house was for sale. It took me a year to sell it. And, I had to take
a substantially less than I wanted because the other two sisters had already
sold their homes and they had, in fact, moved here. We first looked at a house
in Clint. We looked at homes, you know, that would be, that
would accommodate three units, but in one house. And so it has to be a pretty
unique house and this one fits exactly the bill of what we wanted.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There are three
families living here, three sisters?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Yes, and husbands. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This is most unique. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Yes. And husbands. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is it separate
kitchens or you all
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
No, one kitchen. And we take turns cooking. Most all of us
kind of still work except Joe is retired and so he is here all
the time, but two
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177
days each evening one of the sisters cook and
then we share other responsibilities.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This is most unique and I don't mean to
get into personal discussion, but this is very unique.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
That is fine. We think it
is too but we, it has worked and we, we see a particular strength in the
bonding that we did as children.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Have any of the children recycled and moved back here
now that the...?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, they come to visit, but no one has, you know, I think it will also make
it more difficult for them to do that and we really don't want them to do that,
any of us. Like my daughter-in-law is here visiting with her children from
Austin and we have enough space for them. My sister's daughter
was here last week with her children and they have left and then
Becky came and will be with us all this week. And then when
they all come, like at Christmas time, well, you know, we accommodate each
other. The good thing is that when any of them comes, they get to see all of us
in one home. And my brother lives in Las Cruces and when his
children come from out of town, and they come here, they get to see all of us
without making three visits.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Most unique, most unique. Well...
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178
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
And so we...And I think
there was some resentment and the Reyes' and others made a big too do about my
leaving the Ysleta area. You know, I had lived there in the
house for 30 years and then in my family. I guess I come, I had lived there
like 55 years in the Ysleta area and it, a lot of people maybe felt that, you
know, that they were led to think, well, you know, she is leaving you. And
maybe that was a little bit of alienation also that contributed to the loss.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So I take
it that you are not supporting Silvestre Reyes in his campaign to get to
Congress?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
No, I
didn't support him, but it had nothing to do just so much personally as much as
it did philosophically. I disagreed totally with his philosophy on immigrants
and his treatment of immigrants.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
What is your philosophy? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
It is to support them and I think that the
relationship with Mexico, I resent the fact that we accept the
immigrants when it is convenient to this country and we shove them out of the
way when it isn't. And that they become scapegoats to blame all of our ills
when we need someone
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179
to blame; and that politicians use them as
scapegoats simply to get votes. I had a friend that had been working with me
for a lot of years and he was running for the legislature and he said to
me...Nacho Padilla, in fact, is his name, and he said,
"No," dijo...digo...Y le
dije, "¿Pues, tienes que mover mucho la gente para que te ayude,
Nacho?" ("No," he said...he said...I said,
"Well, do you have to move the people to help you, Nacho?)... in this past
election. "No," dijo.
"Tengo todos los gringos de alla del"
...("No," he said, "I have all the
gringo from over there, from...") His
district now has some gringos
. Dijo, "Tengo todos los
gringos con migo." Dije, (He said, "I have all of the
gringos with me." I
said,) "How did you do that Nacho?"
"No," dijo. "Si quieres que estén con tigo,
nomas haces bad mouth a
los...a los...Guarenos o dices pareo y ya los tienes ganados." Y le dije,
"¿Pues, como sera ese desgraciado to do that...
que uses la...que seas...que estas
dispuesto hacer eso?" ("No," he said. "If
you want them to be with you all you have to do is bad mouth
the...the...Juarez people or give into them and you have them
won over." And I said, "Well, how can you be so underhanded to do
that...to use the...to be...to do something like that?) You know, It really
galls me that you are so willing to do that; and I really question where you
are if you
Page:
180
are willing to do that, you know, to keep them, you
know, happy. Le dije (I
said,) "I can't think of any circumstances that I would stand up and bad
mouth Mexicanos for some
votes."
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That's the race where this Norma Chavez had won. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, we took down a
little break just to calm down the grandchildren. I was asking about
Norma Chavez, she is very similar in her trajectory than you
were. Uh, she has reacted with IAF, she is a first Mexican-American
woman that is elected to the legislature from here. She certainly is very
Chicana. There is another first, this that you mentioned earlier, the
District Judge Guadelupe Rivera, how do you feel about these
young women and is this a change that we are seeing more Mexican-American women
now becoming leaders?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
I think we still don't, we still don't have enough but I,
you know, I am encouraged that there are more of them, you know, doing it. I
get somewhat discourage in that many of them, you know, good people
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181
when they see how the media and how our own, you know, turn on
each other, that they are discouraged. I think that a lot of people were
discouraged with my loss and felt a real sense of loss when...in the Chicano
community, and felt that it was a setback and a disappointment. And, I have
tried to say, well, you know, this is one person, you know,
se callo un chango, sigue el circo, (a
monkey fell, the circus goes on,) that that has to be our attitude in that we
have to continue. But it was, it is difficult to get more people to join and it
is difficult to get people to want to understand the sacrifice that it is to be
in public service and how much that it impacts on your privacy. You give up
your privacy, you know. Everything about you becomes very public and even
things that you don't do, you are accused of doing and so there is the
perception that you don't necessarily, there is both a positive perception and
a negative perception that you can't control.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You mentioned that El Paso,
in the second race for county judge had changed from earlier years when you
were active. And you talked about the demise of labor, this affects you with
liberals, Mexican-Americans now being anti-immigrant, so who are the new power
structure leaders in the new El Paso in 1996?
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182
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think
there is two and I think that they are both
Mexicanos and I think that they are very
diverse and yet, they are very similar. Jose Rodriguez, I
think, carries the banner of Chicanismo and he is the county attorney and
Jaime Esparza carries the banner for Hispanics and for those
Hispanics that have assimilated and therefore he is more acceptable, the
establishment, the financial leaders like him and relate to him...versus, that
they respect Jose, but they don't particularly like him or include him. In some
ways, I think that we are back to where we started.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No women? You don't
see Elfida Gutierrez or Guadelupe Rivera or
Norma Chavez . . .
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Not in the real leadership because they haven't surfaced
and they have not accepted the responsibility. They have not stepped up to the
plate and I think that one of the things, you know, is that you can be in an
elected position and how do you extend from that influence and assert influence
beyond gestures your particular venue? Lupe has been very guarded about not
extending beyond being a very good judge, so she
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183
has not sought
out or exerted influence in wanting to establish herself as a community leader.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And this
young women Chavez?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
She has wanted to do, to be a very good judge and that she
is.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And
this young woman, Chavez?
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, she is very new. I think that she is, you know, we
have yet to see what she will do.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
I didn't finish the names, I was going to add your name
at the end of the list. What is next for Alicia Chacon? Or why
didn't you mention your name as being involved in leadership?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, because I think that
I have made a, during the, I have been out of public office now, after all of
these years of being in public, in public, in either public or private or party
office since '68. When I left office in January of '95, it was a very difficult
time for me. It was a kind of a weaning away from, from the influence and it
was a time of re-energizing myself and I think, spirit, I grew a lot
spiritually because you always turn to the Lord at those times when you are
feeling like you have been betrayed or left. And, I think, in some ways, I felt
that you know, that a lot of my friends had used me. And I felt like a lot of
these young people had used me to gain their positions and to gain,
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you know, the positions that they wanted and yet, you know, maybe
perhaps, and that perhaps they had been unwillingly, unwittingly, you know, not
intentionally, but that nevertheless that had happened. That each of them had
cost me, you know, them being empowered and them taking position and winning
had cost me a piece of my...a part of my loss. And, then I have been very
active always with the Mujer Obrera helping them in their efforts and in their
financial efforts particularly; and they were doing some fund raising for a
center that they want to create for working women and I made phone calls to
some of these people that I felt had benefited in ways from being associated
with me. And, the most telling and the most hurtful thing is that they don't
take your phone call and they don't answer your phone calls. And that hurts. I
think that it hurts you, your ego to a degree, but it kind of hurts very deep.
But I went through that and after a while you kind of reconcile it. So, the
first year, it was a very difficult year for me. By the second year -- early
this year, I was feeling very comfortable with kind of a semi-retirement or a
dormant period. I was still active with
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two committees, with the
migrant and refugees, services with the dioceses and trying to influence more
support from the diocese for that agency and I was on their board. And, I was
helping the Mujer Obrera and I felt that, you know, that that satisfied me to a
degree; to the things that I feel are important in this community. Then some
friends asked me to...And that would have been fine with me, you know...to
continue to do just that. And then being in a more relaxed manner here at home.
I love gardening and I had really developed a garden. And, but then a group of
friends asked me to submit my name for a vacancy that they had under a United
Way board; as the director of the United Way. And I thought a lot
about it and then I did. And like everything else in my life, it turned out to
be this huge controversial thing that, and the board just had tremendous fights
over, over my eligibility first of all; and then secondly, then over them
naming me. I, they had over a hundred applicants and I surfaced to the top
five. Well, I think first to the five...25 and they asked for additional
information, I submitted it. And I was, you know, they had asked for a degree
but I never, I don't have a degree, I told them I had experience and gave them
the depth of experience that I had. And to a degree, you know, they had been
satisfied. When it got to the top five, they questioned it more.
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The Mexicanos on the
United Way board were offended and angry, that you know, they felt
that the others just simply, it was a philosophical thing or racial thing that
they were, you know, they were saying they wanted a professional United Way
person and the others were saying well, we want a community person. The fact is
that United Way has been floundering in El Paso. It
has been five years since they have met their goal. And they have not been
successful because the majority of the community has not taken ownership of it,
you know. And, when I interviewed with them, that is what I told them and it
offended some of them. Then they, when they did the first vote, they voted to
hire a lady in...from Kansas City... and who was the number one
choice and I was the number two choice. When the number one choice turned them
down, then the others said, well, now...you know, we ask
Alicia and the others said, no, and they had a whole fight
again about it and finally they voted. I think it was 16 to 11 or something
like that, that they would hire me; that they would offer me the position. And,
I took it and I have been there now for two months and it is a new
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opportunity for me and I am very, very encourage by what we can do
with that. And I am handling it very much like you do a political campaign. I
mean, this time we are not going to get votes, but we are going to get money.
And I am taking, I am developing very much in the same grassroots type of
fashion.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
So, this is what you are doing with this agency here? |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
It is about a $1,000,000
that stays in the agency and their total goal and their total money is not
quite $4,000,000. They raised $3,000,000, seven hundred, and some thousand
dollars last year. My goal is to raise four and a half million this year.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Let me ask you
now, just last minute housekeeping kind of questions and tie in questions.
Other than MAD and the Democratic Party, have you ever
belonged to, and the church organizations, have you ever belonged to any of the
Mexicano civil rights
groups?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Which
ones?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Well, I
was on the board, I have been on the board of the National Council of La
Raza twice. Once kind of at the beginning, when it was forming with
Maclovio and that group. And then in the 80s, I guess that I have been with
them a total of six years. At different times...six
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years, I have
served on the National Council of La Raza board and
MALDEF, I have had an ongoing relationship with them most of, you
know, my adult life and I was on their board from 19...from 1990, I guess,
through '95 and their chairman the last two years. '94 and '95, I was the
chairman of MALDEF. I had also been active with
Wille on the Southwest Voter Council...the
Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project. I served briefly with Wille
on that and some of the most rewarding work that I did was with that in the
formation of it and doing the voter registration projects that we did across
West Texas.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Your leaders in the Mexican-American community? Who are
they? Who do you look to for leadership in the Mexican-American community? At
any level you wish to discuss.
|
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
At any, well, I guess that locally, the one that I think
is the strongest is Paul Moreno, whom I respect and whose
corazón (heart) is
totally with the people and who has never floundered and never has to think
twice about what is the right place to be and sure enough, when, you know,
think when the water all settled, he was absolutely correct. I have
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respect for Henry [Cisneros] for what he has
done and I think that it is mutual. Early in his career we have had some
differences. He did not support the bi-lingual education bill. He did not
support the extension of the Voting Rights Act at times that I did. So, very
early we had some differences, but I think that as he has developed, you know,
and maybe as I have mellowed, we have kind of found some common ground and we
respect each other and I think that he is attempting to do a good job and is a
respected spokesman. But sometimes I would like to see him be a little more
aggressive, but you know, he has his style. And I guess for longevity and for
just persistence and continuance and staying there is Raul
Yzaguirre. Raul is tireless and is just always, always being present,
always doing and I think in the past years that he has become somewhat more
assertive and more, more certain of himself as a person and therefore take
stronger positions without a whole lot of agonizing over what...over what he
has to do.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No woman leaders? |
| Mrs.
Chacón: |
Well, Antonia is a very capable leader at
the national level and I like Antonia, but I think, you know...I get impatient
with Antonia. Antonia is not a risk taker.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is this Hernandez or
Novello?
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. What are the most
segment issues at the moment facing the Mexican-Americans?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
How we reconcile and how
we work out the positions on immigrants and immigrant rights and what
protections immigrants are going to have in this country. And, in particular,
that the immigrants from, you know, from the Latin American countries. And, I
think that if we can't heal that relationship and come to some common ground of
respect of basic human rights for these people, we are in serious trouble.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What should
Chicanos do with Mexico?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
With Mexico? I think that we
can have a healthy relationship. I think that they don't know much about us and
we don't know much about them. At least a lot of people don't. I think that
those of us here on the border maybe know a little bit more, but there has been
some effort to try to do an acercamiento (an attempt to get closer) and I
have been involved in some of those efforts. I think I saw you at one of those
efforts that they, that the Mexican government has attempted and I do
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appreciated that the Mexican government has undertaken that
effort to identify closer and at least to understand us. But I think, on the
other side, that we need to try to influence them and have them to understand
some responsibilities for, not necessarily for us, but for their own
citizenship, and citizenry.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
The future of the Democratic Party and it's
leaders, what do you see here in Texas?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I am very concerned with
the Democratic Party and it, and what I see is a moving to the, not
necessarily to the center, but to the right and I think that it is unfortunate,
and I think, that from the national perspective down to the state, there seems
to be a turning to the right in a mistaken belief, I believe, that they are
going to extend their base; and that they are going to get the middle class
white voters that have been perhaps disenchanted, but and they are leaving
behind an agenda for the working poor and the poor.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Last question. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
They are abandoning
that agenda and in my opinion that is a serious mistake.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Victor
Morales. He is a phenomena in this particular election.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
Absolutely.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Your comments, your analysis, your projections for the future. |
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I am optimistic and I do
believe that he is going to win. I think that people have been totally
disenchanted with the behavior, the personal behavior and the outrageousness
and the hypocrisy of Phil Gramm and that they are looking for
a very clean individual and I think Victor projects that. And, I think that
Victor also projects and appeals to the independent voter and maybe the working
people. Not necessarily just those that have been [Democratic] Party
loyalists and I think that that is working to his benefit.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Alicia
Chacon has been a Mexican-American leader, woman all her life. What do
you say to Mexican-American women who want to get into politics; the problems
that you have had to work on; or the advisement that you can give; or the
analysis of the situation; why so few Mexican-American women in politics; and
so few Alicia Chacons?
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I think probably because of our commitment
to the family and that you don't always have the support of the family to do
things that I have done. And I have been fortunate that I had a very strong
family and a
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family that supported my doing the things that I
have done from my parents to my sisters, my siblings, my husband, and my
children. But it is difficult and you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of
your personal, your self, your persona to the efforts and to the things that
you commit to. And the rewards, the rewards are there, you know. In seeing,
maybe not immediate results, but you know, ten, fifteen years, you begin to see
the fruit of the seeds that you planted.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Alicia, thank you for
the generous amount of time that you gave us. This was an excellent interview.
You have been most gracious in sitting here and lingering through all this. It
is an archive.
|
| Mrs. Chacón: |
I am giving you some stuff that I have prepared for you that I have some
from older elections; some from newer, the newer elections; as well as some
work that has been done by different people because I do feel blessed that I,
that many have recognized the work that I have done. This particular item is
one that I am proud of. It is a little story that was done with a grant and it
was done by the Ysleta School District and it is a story of me for
fourth graders and it particularly focuses on my childhood. And so I will be
giving you that to keep with your file as well as with some photos. A couple of
years back, a friend of mine did a calendar that she titled
"Timepieces" and she
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included me as one of the people
that she admired. She had selected a different El Pasoan that she admired for
each month and I asked her to be November because that is the month of my
birthday and she did a little story and then she sold me as a project, as a
fund raising project for an agency that she was working for. So, I am going to
give you a few other momentos that hopefully, others that might be interested
will see, because I think that many times we see and we labor and we labor and
we say, you know, that nobody notices all that we are doing and then kind of
when you get maybe as old as I am, you do see some results and you get
recognition that maybe you didn't expect and you didn't really do the things
that you did for recognition but it sure feels good that you are recognized.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This is an
archive that it can be augmented. As you move things into the garage, please
don't. Send them to UT Arlington. Again, thank you very much. This
concludes the interview.
|
|
