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Oral History Interview with Mike and Elizabeth Zúñiga, 1997


Interviewees: Mike Zúñigaand Elizabeth Zúñiga
Interviewer: José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D.
Transcribers: Karen McGee and José Angel Gutiérrez
Date of Interview: August 24, 1997

Location of Interview: San Antonio, Texas
Number of Transcript Pages: 96
Cite this interview as Oral History Interview with Mike and Elizabeth Zúñiga, 1997 , by José Angel Gutiérrez. CMAS No. 122


Mike and Elizabeth Zúñiga

Dr. Gutiérrez: We are in San Antonio [August 24, 1997] at the Holiday Inn West and are interviewing Mike . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Zuniga, Jr.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And.
Ms. Zúñiga: Elizabeth Zuniga.
Dr. Gutiérrez: From?
Ms. Zúñiga: Ballinger.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Texas, right?
Ms. Zúñiga: Ballinger, Texas. That’s right.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, tell us where Ballinger is because we don’t know where, where this is in terms of geography.
Mr. Zúñiga: Ballinger is fifty miles south of Abilene, Texas. Forty two miles, also, southwest of San Angelo, Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Out in West Central Texas, no?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. Uh huh. West Texas, yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Right. And you are consenting to do this interview for the archives for the Center for Mexican-American Studies and you signed a consent form? You are doing this voluntarily?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. We sure are.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Because we are going to put together the history of our people, right?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes we are. We are going to try our very best.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And you are going to help us, aren’t you?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh sure.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Good. Well, why don’t we start off with one of the four components. The four components are biography, early political work, and then, you know, what you have been doing on the bulk of your life, and the last part is issues and ideas of, you know, what’s, what do you think about this and that? What’s going on in your area? Who, who, who is involved? Who is running politics in, in your

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counties around your area and so on? So, who are you? Names of parents; when you were born; grandparents; where they came from; when, and so on?
Mr. Zúñiga: I am Mike Zuniga, Jr. and I was born in Williamson County, Georgetown, Texas. And to my surprise, last night in this Mexican-American Democrat Convention that we had, Georgetown was again mentioned that it is still a very racist community. And those terms, when I was just a little boy, I remember that my dad used to take me to Georgetown and we had the different places where the Mexicanos and the Black Americans drank water in the water fountains at the courthouse. And I remember asking my dad why was that and he was just saying well, that is just the way it is. And through the years then we moved to a little community by the name of Briggs, Texas, where I went to school and there again, I met the same situation where the Mexican-American kids were put in the back seat of the bus. I was just a young chap of about seven or eight years old. In first grade I didn’t understand. It was something that I felt like that needed to change, so once again, I asked my parents. Of course, I didn’t know any English. Told them that we lived in a different world. I didn’t understand what was going on and why we had to stay in the back seat of the bus. And you wouldn’t believe that at those times, the Anglo children would call us little Mexican kids bean eaters and that we smelled like frijoles and stuff like that. I, I recall that very well. But it was a fight from then on that I felt like things weren’t right. And we talked to the school system, my dad went and talked to the school system. It took quite some time to do, but we finally got it changed. I remember that as a scar in our lives; a scar in the history of, of this great country that left on, on our people. And that started me out into a direction of trying to make a difference to every human being

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regardless of their race. That is what I have been doing for the rest of, I guess, my life. Still going on it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, apparently that is very important because that is what you started off with. What is your address at Ballinger?
Mr. Zúñiga: Route 2, Box 386, Ballinger, Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Route 2?
Ms. Zúñiga: Route 2, uh huh.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Box 386. You live out in the country?
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And the zip in Ballinger, que es? (what is it)?
Ms. Zúñiga: 76821.
Dr. Gutiérrez: 76821?
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, you have a little farm or a ranch?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah we do.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How big is it?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, the house sits on about thirteen acres, and then, across the highway we have a hundred and seventeen.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Can I shoot deer from the thirteen across the highways here?
Ms. Zúñiga: Sure. You can kill doves, deer, birds, wild turkeys.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s go to you Elizabeth. Who are your parents; where were they born; when were you born; where did they come from?
Ms. Zúñiga: Wow. My name is Elizabeth Zuniga. My parent’s names were Ray Gonzales and Adelina Morales Gonzales. I was born in Nixon, Texas in Gonzales County and I am the fifth child of seven children from my parents. And at the age of about three, we moved to Winters, and then, from there is where I went to school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What prompted the move?

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Ms. Zúñiga: What prompted the move is that my parents were migrants and actually my daddy and my mother were picking cotton and Winters was a good area. I mean, they already had a lot of good fields and cotton over there. So, we migrated to, to Winters and then we migrated to South Texas, and then, they decided to settle down in Winters. They had their, had enough money, I guess, where they purchased a little home there and that’s where, where actually I was raised. Went to school in Winters Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: The time that I went to school, I didn’t know how to speak the English language either, so I had a very difficult time. And so my, my, I guess strife in life has been to work, I have two children.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What are their names?
Ms. Zúñiga: Michael the III, and then, Eloise Zuniga. And my . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: How old are they?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, Michael is thirty-four and Eloise is thirty-two. And my goal in, in life, as a mother, became the fact that I was going to help in every way possible that I could for my children to have the opportunity and the education, you know, that I could maybe I didn’t have. Especially the opportunity in school where they could be the cheerleaders, where they could play football, where they go to the meetings. We used to have little, I don’t know what you would call them.
Mr. Zúñiga: Student councils.
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh. In school where it, all it costs would be a dime, have different programs in school and you go to the auditorium and, and it just costs you about a dime to get in and you would see all those things. But you see, I, I never did go because I never had the dime. We were very poor. So this is, this was my goal as a mother. I wanted to do everything I could.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And when were you born?

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Ms. Zúñiga: I was born in 1944.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. And your parents’ names?
Ms. Zúñiga: Reyes Gonzales.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I am sorry. You told me the names.
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where were they from? Where was he from and where was she from?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh well, my daddy and mother were both from Texas. They didn’t come from, from Mexico. As far as I know, even my grandfather, his name was Domingo Morales.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where was he from?
Ms. Zúñiga: He was from around Sutherland Springs in La Vernia. That’s as far as I can recall. So, I, they were from . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: So you go back at least three or four generations that you know of?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: In Texas?
Ms. Zúñiga: In Texas, yes.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. And do you remember the, the early school years in Winters?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh yes. I remember the early, yes, very well.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, were you the oldest or the youngest or the middle?
Ms. Zúñiga: No. I am the
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who, who are the other sisters and brothers?
Ms. Zúñiga: I said, I said I was the fifth child of seven.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Yeah, but who, who are the other people?
Ms. Zúñiga: I have,
Dr. Gutiérrez: Your brothers and sisters?
Ms. Zúñiga: I have an older brother.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What’s his name?
Ms. Zúñiga: His name is Chris Gonzales. And then, my sister is Nadine. She is De la Cruz now. Then, I have a sister by the name of Sally Alexander,

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and then, it was Pauline Esquivel, and then, there is me, and then, I have two younger sisters.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And they all live in Texas now?
Ms. Zúñiga: They all . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Are they all scattered all over the country?
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .live in Texas. Well, they are all scattered throughout the state of Texas, but we are still in Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I see. Well, early school years. The first day of school, you didn’t speak English. What happened?
Ms. Zúñiga: I didn’t speak any English. It, it was a strange world to me. I never, I didn’t know that there was a different kind of people. You go in there and they start speaking the language that you don’t know. It is a very frightening, very traumatic.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, the schools in Winters were integrated?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes. When I went to school . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: You didn’t go to zero bola ? (low first?)
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh, no.
Dr. Gutiérrez: No? You don’t know what that is?
Ms. Zúñiga: No.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. All right. You went straight into the Anglo school?
Ms. Zúñiga: I went straight into the Anglo school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Uh huh.
Ms. Zúñiga: And I recall the first day there were instructions given as to that we couldn’t use the, the bathrooms or use the water fountain until they dismissed us. You couldn’t do that while the class was going on. But the fact that I didn't know what the teacher had explained to us, I got thirsty and I decided that I needed to use the bathroom. So, I got up and went. Well, when I got back to my chair, she came up and she was very, very angry at me. She took me and she shook me like that. And I, I started crying. I didn't know what this woman because

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nobody, my parents didn't treat me like that. You know, they didn't come up and shook me all over and hollered at me. And, and I was very frightened. But that, like I said, I did have older sisters that were in school too. So I started crying and I asked for them, you know, that I wanted, in Spanish, of course . . . And they got my sister that was in the third grade to come down and talk to me, to tell me what I was supposed to do in that place. And that’s one of the things I remember. I remember the immunizations that we used to receive too. They used to line us up and of course, at that point in time, we didn't know what was going on, why the inoculations. All I know is that the nurses were there, the parents were there, and they would just would hold you down and everybody was crying and kicking and carrying on and they would give you the shot and it was just like this big fear, you know. And maybe that is one of the things that would, would, like my mother, we were sort of all, had this fear for the medical field. You know, my mother was always scared of the doctors. And I think the biggest problem was because she couldn’t communicate. She just spoke Spanish. And maybe this is one of the things that also my goal was to go into an area and confront like this fear. So, that is why I went to school. After I married, I married young had my two children, went back to high school
Dr. Gutiérrez: You married him when you were nine?
Ms. Zúñiga: I married him. Yes. (laughs). I married young, had two children, went back to, to high school, then I went into LVN school, and then, as my children got older, I went back to the, the university, and I graduated from Angelo State with an RN degree.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK well, you went too fast for me. We, we better take it slow here. And, and we are going to get back to Mike in a minute. But he had his chance and he is just telling us about how angry he got about, instead of telling us his biography. So, did you pick cotton?

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Ms. Zúñiga: Oh yeah. I picked cotton.
Dr. Gutiérrez: After school or on weekends or . . .?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, after school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who did you work for? Do you remember the rancher’s name?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, I don’t.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know what they paid you?
Ms. Zúñiga: I, I think, I think it was like a dollar, a quarter the hundred pounds if you were picking cotton. And I remember that when, like close to Christmas, when you had what they called a la segunda (the second picking), you would go out there. And, and there was just like little pieces of cotton you scattered here and there, then you would make a little more money, but that was always trying, you always tried to do that because that was going to be your Christmas money. Now everybody is going to get there. And out in West Texas and the wind blows. I mean, it really blows. You get cold. And I remember we used to put this, the cotton sack, and that wind. Of course, I was always, always been kind of small and never did weigh a lot. Maybe, I don’t know, seventy pounds, something like that when I was twelve, thirteen years old. And that, that wind would catch that sack and it was empty and it, it was just very difficult to try to, to try to pick that cotton. And that wind was all in that sack in there pushing you back. It, it was pretty rough.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You always had bloody fingernails and bloody hands or did you wear gloves?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, I didn’t wear gloves.
Mr. Zúñiga: You couldn’t afford the gloves.
Ms. Zúñiga: We couldn’t afford the gloves. Yeah . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: You don't remember the rancher’s name?
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .scratches.

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Mr. Zúñiga: Some of them would probably be Walker Radamy, Lorenzo Chapman would be one of them there in Wells.
Ms. Zúñiga: What was that man, Davis?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. Mr. Davis. There were a lot of the Davis’ there. And Dale Davis would be one of them.
Ms. Zúñiga: I don't really remember their names.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Well . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: I guess it didn’t make any difference to me.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .what was, what was your, your week like? What did you do during the week as a child?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, I went to school. I lived like in two different worlds.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Explain that.
Ms. Zúñiga: Huh?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Explain that.
Ms. Zúñiga: OK. I was, I went to school and I was, you know, trying so hard to learn the language so I could communicate with, with the people there. Everything was, was different and the food was different. Well, actually we carry your own little lunch and . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where did you eat your lunch?
Ms. Zúñiga: We ate it under a tree somewhere in the, sitting in the back of the building, of the school building because we didn’t go to the lunch room, of course. And sometimes we would compare our lunches. We would see what everybody was bringing. They were always having the sandwiches and probably potato chips or different stuff like that. We always had our little tortillas with our little frijolitos (beans) in there. And try to . . . Most of the time it was smashed like that, but then, we would try to be, tried to keep them from everybody seeing them.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You were ashamed?

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Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah sure. It was sort of like an embarrassment because what we did and the way we looked and, and all. We weren’t accepted, you know. We were very much not accepted.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you go to the movies?
Ms. Zúñiga: That’s a good question. I went to the movies once.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Because of money, lack of money, or because . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah, lack of money.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .they wouldn’t let you go to the movies or what?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, no they, they would take your twenty-five cents, I think it was at the time.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Make you sit upstairs or on the sides?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes.
Dr. Gutiérrez: In the back?
Ms. Zúñiga: That’s, that’s just it. And sometimes that’s how I feel like. That we are still sometimes are put upstairs.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You mean, is that what happened? I’m just . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh. At this movie, it was called the State Theater.
Dr. Gutiérrez: State?
Ms. Zúñiga: State Theater. And that man, by the name of Mayo, Jim,
Mr. Zúñiga: Bob, Bobby Mayo.
Ms. Zúñiga: Bobby Mayo was his name. He is still there in Winters. I went in there and I paid my twenty-five cents or fifteen, I don’t recall how much it was. They gave me my little ticket and they had the downstairs and the balcony. And I had gone in there and I just gave my ticket and I went down to the downstairs. I mean, I didn’t know about the going upstairs, that I had to go upstairs. I went to sit there. And after a little bit, there was somebody that came with a flashlight, you know, putting this light in my face, and they tell me, they says, "You don’t belong here." And I thought well you know, I paid my money. And he said, "Well, you, you don’t belong here. You belong

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upstairs with the rest of the Mexicans. Get, get, get going. You just get up there." And I thought well, that, that was not nice. It really bothered me because I just thought that if I paid my money that I had the right to sit anywhere like anyone else. But they put me upstairs. And in saying this, sometimes I feel like, even at my age now, the age of fifty-three, that we are still, some people still want to put us upstairs. It is like we don’t belong here, but you have done basically everything any, everybody else has done. You paid your way; you have gone to school; you have sacrificed; and now you should be
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, tell us the last time you felt like that. What happened?
Mr. Zúñiga: Nearly everyday some more . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, give us an example.
Ms. Zúñiga: Well . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: The oppressing employment is one. I don’t think you should leave that out. That’s part of our history.
Ms. Zúñiga: OK. My present employment is with . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Let’s hear it. What’s the story?
Ms. Zúñiga: OK. I work with the Home Health Agency and, of course, I am one of the registered nurses and, you know, there is different areas. You can be a field nurse where you actually go into the patient’s home and, and treat the patient there or you can be in the office where you can take the orders. You can take the, the, the verbal orders to the doctors for them to sign. You can answer the phone. I think that if any problems going out in the field, they call it in and you get the information. At the present time, I, I, I was basically was doing some of the field, I mean office work, because I had broken a foot and they placed me there. But as soon as my foot kind of got better, they decided that they wouldn’t keep me in the office. And I felt very much like I was very capable of taking care of that kind of work instead of just going out into the field. And so, sometimes, yeah, I feel like I have to say.

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As a matter of fact, I have more experience than this present nurse upstairs because I worked with the doctor’s office as an LVN [licensed vocational nurse] because I went back, like I said, to RN [registered nurse] school. As an LVN I worked twenty years in Ballinger as an office nurse. And then, I have gone back to school and had the same degree that this other nurse has, yet when it came to picking the one that should be out in the field . . . And they weren’t going to let me going to keep me in the office behind a desk, it had to be the blue-eyed, blonde, white-skinned person.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Uh hmm. Wow. That’s a story. Going back to when you were a kid. Did you go to church?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What church?
Ms. Zúñiga: Baptist.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Baptist Church? How did that happen? Your parents were Baptist or that was just the closest or what happened?
Ms. Zúñiga: My mother was a Baptist. I think my daddy might have been a Catholic, but probably not a devout Catholic.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Tell us about going to church.
Ms. Zúñiga: We were, we lived a very sheltered life. I mean, we didn’t go anywhere, we weren’t allowed to do very much. We went to church. Every, every time the church door opened, we were there, the revivals, Wednesday afternoon, Sunday mornings, Sunday night. We were taught that we didn’t dance. I never learned how to dance. You don’t dance; you don’t cuss; you don’t drink; you don’t do absolutely; you don’t smoke.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Much less cigars.
Mr. Zúñiga: Right.
Ms. Zúñiga: Nothing. We, we were just very conservative, very strict life. That’s how I was raised. Of course, that in return, gave me the faith that

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there was a God because my mother would always, we would live by faith. And when you are poor and you don’t have much going, you have got to live by faith. Somewhere, somehow, somebody is going to be there and I think that we turned to God. That’s how we made it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: At that time, did you think that God was an Anglo?
Ms. Zúñiga: No. No, I didn’t. I didn’t think anything about ever. No, because my mother spoke to Him and spoke to Him in Spanish, so my belief was that He . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Was Mexican?
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .was Mexican.
Dr. Gutiérrez: But He was a man? It was a "He."
Ms. Zúñiga: He. Yeah. He was "He", yes. But He was, He was a Mexican.
Mr. Zúñiga: He is still Mexican.
Ms. Zúñiga: I still think He is Mexican because I talk to Him and I can talk to Him in Spanish.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, did you live out in the country or did you live in town? How far is it?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, we lived in town when we lived in Winters.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: Anywhere around
Dr. Gutiérrez: How far is Ballinger from Winters?
Ms. Zúñiga: Sixteen miles.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Sixteen?
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh. I can tell you about this experience. It was true when we were going to school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right.
Ms. Zúñiga: We lived about, what did we live, about a mile from where we lived from school?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes. About a mile.

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Ms. Zúñiga: Because this was when I was getting a little bit older. And, you know, you, where at that time, you know, trying to be a teenager and I was in high school and you kind of want to be so much a part of the group or the school. I was never really involved in anything because we never could afford it. But we used to, I had to go school, I mean, we had to, I had to have lunch somewhere. OK, you get a little bit older. Well, you don’t want to be carrying those tortillas around anymore. I mean, it isn’t doesn’t pass, you know. The time that you put the little sack down or whatever and say hey, I don’t want these tortillas no more. I would rather walk. Well, I didn’t walk from school at noon all the way home and back. I ran. I ran. I ran as fast as I could because we just had so many minutes. So I ran, I would run, so I guess I was doing good exercise. Maybe that is whey they have got really big because I, that was my exercise at noon. I would run all the way home and I would have whatever was there. It might still be beans and tortillas, but I ate fast, and then, I ran all the way back and made it back in school. And then, later, it was just like, I mean, this has got to stop. It got to be pretty, you know, when it is raining or if it’s cold and all that, it is just not the thing to do. So, they had some openings in the lunchroom where some of us Mexicans, if you wanted to, you could work there for that one hour and feed, starting from the first grade on through high school, you would feed all these kids that came through the line. They paid you sixty-five cents for that hour and out of that, the lunches were thirty five, so you would pay thirty five cents back and you made like what?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Thirty cents?
Ms. Zúñiga: I don’t remember my math.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Thirty cents is big money.
Ms. Zúñiga: Thirty cents a day. So, what I did, this is what I did. I took a study hall, which covered from like about eleven fifteen or eleven thirty to

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twelve thirty. And I would go in and instead of having a study hall, I would do my lessons at home. And I would go into the lunchroom . . . And, and this is one thing that I really didn’t like to do. I really didn’t want to put my little hair net. I had to put this little hair net. And like I said, I was in high school now. I am thinking, you know, well, there was . . . We had about three or four, four Hispanic boys there, but nevertheless, when you are growing up, you are worried about your self esteem and how you look with a little hair net. That is why I never wear a hair net ever in my life again. But I would serve the beans or serve whatever, rice, I had to serve and...
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, what did you call yourselves then? You just said three Hispanic boys. I am sure they weren’t called that then.
Ms. Zúñiga: No.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What did you call yourselves? I know what the other people called you. You have already told us that.
Mr. Zúñiga: Mexicanos .
Dr. Gutiérrez: But what did you call yourselves? What did you think you were?
Ms. Zúñiga: I guess a Mexican.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: I would accept Mexican. What I didn’t accept was when they said you are a dirty Meskin. You see, this Meskin didn’t, that doesn’t set well with me . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .right now. I mean, call me Mexican or call me Hispanic, call me Spanish.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Were you active in clubs in school?
Ms. Zúñiga: No way.
Dr. Gutiérrez: No?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. None of them would accept you probably.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh.

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Ms. Zúñiga: No way.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. So, no, no, no pep squad, no choral choir, no band, no cheerleader, no Spanish Club? Nothing? When did you start dating or was that not allowed either by your parents?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, it was not, they wasn’t allowed. I might have been about fifteen, I think.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you have a quinceanera? (Fifteen year-old coming out party?)
Ms. Zúñiga: No! No.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s Catholic?
Ms. Zúñiga: That’s Catholic. No, I don’t know if you would even call this dating. I mean, if you met a guy, of course, an en las pizcas. (at the cotton harvest.) You had all these guys that came from South Texas and all this kind of stuff and then you know, you had the theater there. Well, maybe if your daddy would allow you, you might go to town that day. And of course we walked because we weren’t allowed to drive. We didn’t have but one car, but you know, we didn’t drive. And if you met some guy there in town, maybe there was a time you might go to the movies with him or you could . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Still going upstairs?
Ms. Zúñiga: Still going upstairs. Definitely.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you remember when it stopped?
Ms. Zúñiga: No. Do you remember?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. It stopped about 1960. That’s when, about the time that you remember, Mr. Gutierrez, when you went to Winters, whenever they didn’t allow the Mexicans to get haircuts in the barbershops.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that was about ‘68.
Mr. Zúñiga: About ‘68? Well, it must have been about ‘64 when it finally stopped. But I know it was just a few years before that that had stopped. And one of the reasons was there was some trouble there at, at that theater and it became a real issue. And that is when the issues became about

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those years. We tried to make Winters a changed town. Now keep in mind, it might have changed a little bit, but those people are still there. Bobby Mayo owns a hamburger stand right next door to where we worked in the Home Health Agency, so we still see him pretty regular and talk to him. But we never forgot that he was the guy that always put the Mexicanos up on the top of . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Upstairs.
Mr. Zúñiga: . . .their stairs in the theater. We don’t bring it up to him. My wife wants to bring it up to him with a purse one of these days . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: I am.
Mr. Zúñiga: . . .with a purse upside of his head so he can remember. But we talk to him. I call him Robert.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Can we film that? You, you are not forgiving then?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, she has . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: You, your
Ms. Zúñiga: Huh?
Dr. Gutiérrez: You are not forgiving him?
Ms. Zúñiga: No sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Well, let’s finish the, the high school years so we can get to, pick up Mike here.
Ms. Zúñiga: OK.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Occasional movie.
Ms. Zúñiga: Occasional movie.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you go to dances on, on the sneak?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, I kind of sneaked out there a couple of times.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Record Hops or, or Chicano dances?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, there was like a, what they called la plataforma (the platform) that time.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What was that?
Ms. Zúñiga: It was just an open area out there.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: On the Mexican side of town where there are Mexicans?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well yeah. In the barrio . (neighborhood.) In a barrio .
Dr. Gutiérrez: There is a Mexicano side of town in Winters?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh yeah, sure. Barrio . There was
Dr. Gutiérrez: What was the name of the barrio?
Ms. Zúñiga: Uno esta en . . . (One is on . . .) Pierce is where we were raised.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Pierce?
Ms. Zúñiga: Pierce Street.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That was the name of the barrio or that was just the name of the street?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, that was the name of the street. I don’t think que tenia nombres los barrios todos (the neighborhoods had names, everybody) knows they were barrios. I just knew that they were, that was the west part of town tenia barrios Mexicano (had Mexican neighborhoods), and then, the east part of town tenia barrio Mexicano, (had Mexican neighborhood,) and that’s the way it basically is right now.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: And they used to have this, like plataforma (platform), with just a pedazo (a piece), which was a pedazo de (piece of) concrete.
Dr. Gutiérrez: This is like the Mexicano Park?
Ms. Zúñiga: Todo abierto, todo afuera. (All open, all outdoors.)
Dr. Gutiérrez: It is like a park or . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: No. It was era nomas una plataforma. Le decian la plataforma. "Donde va hacer el baile? En la plataforma." (it was a platform. They called it the platform. "Where is the dance going to be? At the platform.")
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, somebody had to own the property or had to . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Who owned the property?
Mr. Zúñiga: Un hombre que se llamaba (A man by the name of) Pablo Perez. No te acuerdas de Don Pablito? (You don’t remember Mr. Pabilito?)

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Dr. Gutiérrez: You think he poured the slab himself? But would he charge or does anybody use the place or what?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, it was just strictly for the dance. I am sure he coordinated those on, on the weekends and they had some musicians that would come.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Were there benches or did they rope it off? How did they . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Era nomas un (It was just a ) slab of concrete, one square. I don’t know. Maybe about the size of this room.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow. So you went whenever you could sneak off?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh yes. And I tried a couple of times how to learn how to dance, but you know, I guess my feet just wouldn’t do right. I was too nervous and too scared to, I figured my daddy might just be driving around town and seeing me. That means trouble. Because I mean, he was pretty hard with us.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Other than Winters, did you go anywhere else like Plainview or Snyder to follow crops or you just stayed in Winters all the time?
Ms. Zúñiga: No. We, we migrated to Mathis.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, south?
Ms. Zúñiga: South. Yes, tambien (also). South.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s a strange. So, you are migrating south.
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, well, because after we started going to Winters and he bought a home, you see, we would still go a las pizcas (to the harvests), so we were always back in time to go to school. That is one thing that we did. My daddy . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: What did he do the regular part of the year?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh, he was a carpenter. He did, well, just manual labor, any kind, anything that came along.
Dr. Gutiérrez: But he was not regularly employed? He just . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, that’s one
Dr. Gutiérrez: It was feast of famine?

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Ms. Zúñiga: Yes. I, I think that is what we did in the, in the summer time when the las pizcas. (the harvests.) We went to Mathis. We, we would work hard. I mean, we never kept any of that money for ourselves. He, we, we made it, we, everybody worked for the family and that was it. And then, we would come back to, to Winters. And I guess he would put his money up and that is what we lived on for the rest of the winter time if there was nothing that came available. He used to work at the drives, putting in drives. He used to be a painter too where they made the fans. I think that place is still there.
Mr. Zúñiga: La matanza. (The slaughter house.)
Ms. Zúñiga: It is there. Oh yeah. He worked at la matanza (the slaughter house) where he would go kill.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Well, what was your best subject in school?
Ms. Zúñiga: My best subject? Spelling.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. So, I guess English would be the, the best subject area that you did well in? Any memorable teachers because you loved them or because you hated them or principals or . . .?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes. I had some teachers that were very kind and nice to me.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, tell us about them.
Ms. Zúñiga: Her name was Mrs. Tatum. I was in the fifth grade and I remember that we were, we were supposed to be drawing names for the Christmas program and, of course, as usual, how was I going to come up with this money? My mother had been real sick and we just didn’t have the extra. I mean, we had enough just to eat and pay the light bills and keep the house and gas in the car and that was it. So, I had gone to, to, to see Mrs. Tatum and I told her, you know, that I just didn’t really know how I was going to be able to draw names and buy a gift because I didn’t have any money. And she took me aside and she was very gentle; she was a very kind person; she took me aside and she said, "Look, you don’t have to worry about it. I know that

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your mother has been sick and I know that you are having a hard time." She said, "But I am going to help you with it. OK?" And so, she got her purse and I mean, she didn’t do this in front of everybody, because she was very kind and very considerate. She gave me fifty cents and she says, "Now, you go buy . . ." And I think his name was Jimmy, if I am not mistaken, little boy that I had drawn name. "You go buy Jimmy his gift and here is your money." And some of the good things that. And there is a Mr. Jim Jones that he was my math teacher and I was having trouble with the circumference of a circle. I didn’t quite know how to come up with figuring that out and he said, "Well, I have a, a study period. Why don’t you come in and we, we will discuss it?" So, he took his time personally to teach me exactly what, how I could figure out the circumference of a circle. In some areas, I had a history teacher and his name was Sumpter. Actually I think it was geography. Anyway he, he always thought I had a very neat handwriting. You know, like my numbers were always neat and I could write. So I . . . And I, I liked to draw. So he would take me when we were going to have our lessons, he would let, would allow me to go ahead . . . And like you had the map and whatever region we would be studying, he would give me the big boards, poster boards and I would draw that for the whole class. And then, I would. And that was like my assignment. I could go ahead and do that. I enjoyed doing things like that. I never have developed, really the talent of, of drawing. I always said when I get older and retire, this is going to be one of the things that I would like to do.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that’s in, in the next century, right?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh, you know, later on. Where I could just take the time and really go back to school and just take classes for art for fun just because I want this for me.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when did you get ideas that, that something was wrong here? That they weren’t treating you right because you were Mexican? When did you get these political concepts going? I mean, obviously you had good feelings for this man at the theater and obviously you knew about the tacos and, and the hair net and you had to go work. I mean, you already know these things are happening, but when did you snap to the fact that you were being treated different and that you could do something about it?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, I think I realized, at a very young age, that things were not quite right. And I think may be the reason I was more acceptable to them was because I was young and didn’t, didn’t bother me as much. I think when it really hit me is when I had my first child.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right, then. Catch us up to that. You, you, when did you think of going to college or you know, when you graduated, did you talk to a counselor; did you have a plan to go to college and be a nurse; did anybody encourage you or mentor you or help you?
Ms. Zúñiga: Like I said, I think, you know, I married young; I had my first child, I think that was when I was really motivated that I was going to do more than just live the life. My children were not going to live, I guess, the life like I lived. Not that I am downgrading my parents or anything like that. I just knew that there had to be an opportunity and that basically it has to really come from within instead of just king of depending on someone else. I just felt I had to open my own doors in other words. Or I had to strive. I had to really . . . And that is when, to me, that is when it, the change come about. That, that’s, because I went back to school and become a nurse and all that after my children were born.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Well, at the time that you were in high school, did your parents say or think or inculcating you that once you finish high school you get married. You go to work or did they say you are going to go

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on to college and you are going to be an astronaut? What, what was the home life about in terms of higher education or when you finish high school?
Ms. Zúñiga: I, I don’t think my parents saw beyond, beyond that. Like you are going to go college. I mean, that was not a word that I think we even knew.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. Well, let’s marry Mike here. When did you meet this gentleman and how did you meet him and why did you marry him?
Mr. Zúñiga: Ohhh, Mr. Gutierrez.
Ms. Zúñiga: Ha ha ha ha. Well, let’s see. I think we met in 1959, was it?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Whoa! Eighth grade.
Mr. Zúñiga: 1959.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Are you a freshman or eighth grade, somewhere like that? High school?
Ms. Zúñiga: I was a freshman.
Mr. Zúñiga: Freshman.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow.
Ms. Zúñiga: 1959 is when I met Mr. Zuniga. And actually, well, they had moved to Winters and his sister, one of the younger, well, she is your younger sister, that started school in high school and I thought hey, una (a) new Mexicana.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I take it you were very few?
Ms. Zúñiga: Very few.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How many in high school?
Ms. Zúñiga: We might have been a total of maybe five or six Mexicanos.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: And then, she told me she had a brother and she wanted me to meet her brother. And, you know, it was like hey, the new boy in town. So, that’s how. She kind of set it up. They were going to be in town that Saturday and I said, "Well sure, I will, I will go to town." And they

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told me exactly where they were going to be, so that is where I met her, and then, she introduced me to Mike.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And how did he go about courting you or how did he go about getting you to, to say yes?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, were you working at the station at the time?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah, we worked in a, a station. We worked for a gringo. Worked in two stations that he owned.
Dr. Gutiérrez: This is gas stations, radio stations?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. Ohhh, we prayed. It was just gas stations.
Ms. Zúñiga: It was gas stations.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Gas stations.
Mr. Zúñiga: Pump the gas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: Mr. Mike has always made very good with words. Kind. So, he made friends with, with my parents right away seeing that they needed to buy gas somewhere and so eran Mexicano y platicaba con Reyes y Adelita , (he was Mexican and he would converse with Reyes and Adelita,) and then, he would come by the house and have coffee. And this is how we kind of . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: We will take a look at the young girl. Get as close as you can.
Ms. Zúñiga: He would come by and visit and that is kind of the way we courted. We actually didn’t do much or...
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, tell us about when he asked you to marry him.
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh, Mr. Gutierrez. I was really in love with this man.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, I am sure you were. You still are. Well, how did it happen? I mean, why? What’s so special about this man other than he was one of the few?
Ms. Zúñiga: Is it going?
Dr. Gutiérrez: It is going. You want to take a little break for you and we will switch over to him. You know, this is your archive. I mean, it, it is your

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record and it is important. I don’t want to press you if you are emotional, but this is part of it.
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes it is. Mr. Zuniga had, had graduated from the, the high school in Briggs.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Briggs?
Ms. Zúñiga: Briggs.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s another town?
Ms. Zúñiga: That’s a little town . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Burnet County.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .in, in, right outside of Austin.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Austin.
Ms. Zúñiga: He, like I said, he was in the new boy in town . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: New in town.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .and sort of, I was sort of like impressed with that high school education. This guy has already graduated from high school because in the back of my mind, and I don’t know when it all started for me, but education I always felt was, was the answer to a lot of the problems. And maybe I didn’t see it as, as an answer to the Hispanic as a whole, but it was an answer for me. I mean, that’s the way I looked at it because like I said, my parents didn’t speak, my mother didn't speak English. And my parents, my daddy did some because he worked with the, the gringo, but I thought that was very important. So, you know, that's one of the things that really impressed me is that his sister was in school. Of course, I was in school and she told me she had a brother who had just graduated from high school. And back then, I mean, that was, that was important.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Important.
Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah. And then, when I met him he was wearing his high school graduation ring. Oh my God. I thought . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Handsome, dashing man. That could talk.

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Ms. Zúñiga: Very nice, very polite. Very different than most of . . . And I didn’t know whether he was not. I saw him and well, you know, this man, he graduated from school; he must be doing all right. He, he was different. His whole personality and everything about him was different. So, when we met, he was just like, I don’t know what he thought about it because he would tell me ...
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you will hear in a few minutes. We are trying to get what you think about him and . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: I was very impressed. The family was like, OK. And, of course, they were Catholics which was something that, you know, I was raised, like I said, a Baptist, but I, I visit with him for a little while. He used to drive a car too. He has his own car. You were working for Crockett Ford. Weren’t you working at Crockett Ford?
Mr. Zúñiga: Crockett Ford. Yes.
Ms. Zúñiga: He had this fifty . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Seven.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .seven Ford Fairlane 500.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Come on.
Ms. Zúñiga: And that’s, that’s when you would go out there and visit too, go by the house, you know.
Mr. Zúñiga: Had the fender blocks.
Ms. Zúñiga: And, and so, I mean, he had his own job and he was working in town and to me, he had an education and he seems like he would be OK. I mean, and not only did that go with him is the fact that when I saw him I thought he was attractive. And I just, I just, I don’t know.
Dr. Gutiérrez: When did he ask you to marry him? Do you remember?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, let’s see. We didn’t actually, he asked me too very . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you ask him?
Ms. Zúñiga: We just decided that we were going to do it period. We were going to get married. That’s it. It wasn’t like important any...

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you marry at the church or did you run off or . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: We laid low.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .at the back seat drive in or, or one of those things?
Ms. Zúñiga: We eloped. And I think my daddy was behind us with a shotgun right behind us, but we eloped.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why did you do that?
Ms. Zúñiga: What?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Elope.
Ms. Zúñiga: Because I knew that I was young and my daddy wouldn’t have allowed me and if he found out that I was probably this serious about him, it would be like kicking him.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, how old were you? You see, you keep saying you were very young, but you are in high school. You must be between sixteen and eighteen. How old were you when you married?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, actually I think I was sixteen.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, you were still in high school?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes, I was in high school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you finish high school?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, no, I went back. I married and had my baby, and then, I went back to school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you go live at his house or your own house?
Ms. Zúñiga: Oh no. We, well first, Irene, his sister had gotten married and they had a place, so we went and we lived with them for awhile.
Mr. Zúñiga: Shared the house, expenses, and things like that.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How long did it take for your dad to forgive you?
Ms. Zúñiga: About maybe a year or so. See, I wasn’t allowed to go back home after I did that, I pulled that stunt. It was just like you are a bad girl. And it actually took my brother, my brother from San Antonio had gone to visit with Daddy and he is the one that came out to the house. And at that time I was living with his parents. And he is the one that

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came out and when he came out to visit with me, to see how I was doing, that is when I felt like I, I think that I was forgiven by the family.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Pretty tough.
Ms. Zúñiga: Tough.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, we, we’ll take a little break on you and we will go back now. Same kind of questions. Your parents, where they were from, your early childhood, brothers and sisters. Mike, your turn.
Mr. Zúñiga: Let’s see. My dad was Mike Zuniga, Sr. He was born in Guanajato Mexico. [city and or state in Mexico.] He crossed, well they crossed him at the border when he was four years old. And my mother was born in Texas around Austin. I forget where she was born, but anyway, we lived most of our lives around a little community of towns named Briggs, Texas in Burnet County.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What are your parent’s names?
Mr. Zúñiga: His name is Mike Zuniga, Sr.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, his name wasn’t Mike. Es de Guanajuato (He is from Guanajuato), that would be Miguel, no?
Ms. Zúñiga: Miguel.
Mr. Zúñiga: It would be Miguel.
Ms. Zúñiga: Miguel Maurillo.
Mr. Zúñiga: My name is Miguel Maurillo Zuniga also, but when we got here, the gringo had a thing and they called us Mike and it just stayed like that.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And your mama’s name?
Mr. Zúñiga: Alicia, Alicia Martinez Zuniga.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Martinez. And she was from somewhere in Texas.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah, she was from . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you ever meet any of your grandparents on either side?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. Well, my, my grandfather on my dad’s side was named Lupe, Lupe Zuniga. He died.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know when they crossed over?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, that would have been, well my dad was four years old and he is about eighty now. It has been many years when, when they crossed over. He was just a little boy. And he don’t even recall when they crossed over. In fact . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Mr. Zúñiga: . . .they didn't even go aduanas (U.S. Customs) or anything, they just walked across the river and that was it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How did he and your mama meet? Do you know the story?
Mr. Zúñiga: They lived, they met at a dance. They were, you know, Catholics, and they were having, my daddy was a musician. The Zunigas son (are) were musicians. I am the only one that can’t play or sing or do nothing as far as music is concerned. I just never did learn it. I got an accordion at home; I got a guitar at home; I’ve had a fiddle; I’ve had a banjo.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when she goes to art lessons, you can take up music lessons.
Mr. Zúñiga: I still don’t have the patience for it. I never did have the patience to sit down and listen, but most of the Zuniga’s are musicians and he was
Dr. Gutiérrez: What was the band that he played with or . . .?
Mr. Zúñiga: They had their own, they had their own little band, you know, out in the country when they were small, they, the only place that they could have is you would have to learn. He got a guitar when he was just a young child about eleven years old and his other brother got him a fiddle. And there was another man, friend, Carranco’s, Santos Carranco they called him, and he was, he was also a fiddle player. So, they would all get together and have these dances out in the country because there wasn’t anything as far as cars or gas money or probably didn’t even have clothes to go to dances. So, they tell me that, that right up here close to that place named Andice, Texas, little bitty community. They would go out there and they would . . . Also a

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plataforma, (platform) out in the middle of nowhere. And they would have dances and they just tell everybody they want to have one. And they get together and at the early age, the Zunigas became musicians and that’s where, that’s where my daddy learned how to play the fiddle and the guitar and he plays the piano and the other brothers do too. He met my mother. I think they married when my mother was about thirteen years old and my dad was about twenty or something like that, so there was a little difference in age.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, how soon were you born?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I had a, a brother first and he died at birth and then my older sister, she was born, I guess, maybe two, three years after they were married.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What’s her name?
Mr. Zúñiga: Her name is Elvira. She married an Anglo, Elvira Burson. Mr. Burson, he passed away. And, of course, I have a younger sister. Her name is Irene, Irene Guajardo.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where does she live?
Mr. Zúñiga: They live in Winters now. Both of them live in Winters. But we, the reason we went and sort of migrated . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: When were you born?
Mr. Zúñiga: In ‘39. So, we, we, we, the reason we lived in Winters now is we were ranchers and farmers. My dad was also kind of a go-getter. He went ahead and rented some land in the hard, hard core of the Anglo community and became a rancher. A farmer to the third, you know where you go ahead and you take your, the land and whatever you raise, you keep three parts of it and you give one part, the fourth part, to the owner of the land. And you got to own your own equipment. My dad bought him an old beat up tractor and it was a F12 Farmall. And then, he bought him another one and it was Ford machinery. At

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those days, you didn’t know that Mexicans could do it. It wasn’t even feasible that a Mexican could become a rancher or a farmer.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, how did he do it?
Mr. Zúñiga: He just got him a few dollars and bought this little bitty tractor. I, I can still recall it. Like I said, it was a little old F12 Farmall, old model tractor. Had, the wheels was made out of iron wheels then. And he started out with a little patch of land, about a hundred and fifty acres, and then, he went and bought another tractor and it was an F14, little bit bigger. And we got a little more land. We leased about a hundred more acres. During that time, we were working all around Briggs and around Burnet and Bergstrom and plumb to Jarrell, that town that just got wiped out. We worked around there. And . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: How old were you?
Mr. Zúñiga: I was just a young kid. I was maybe eleven, twelve years old then when I worked. We got to learn how to handle machinery. And then we went ahead and went into and bought a bigger tractor. See, when you are ambitious and have a little ambition, you can get there, but you got to work at it. You got to work at it everyday. So, he got him a bigger tractor and those, let’s see, those kind were . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Allis Chalmers. That was when rubber tires and yellow tractors...
Mr. Zúñiga: Rubber tires, yes sir. It was . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Not red. You owned a yellow one?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. Yellow, WC Allis Chalmers. You, you are so right. They were yellow. And he, he got one there, WC. And a fellow named Northington, he was a tractor dealer in Lampasas. And my dad got together and he had a lot of land there in, in around Briggs. Had about maybe a thousand acres of land and my daddy leased that land from him and he bought from a WD then, there was a WC tractor. You go into bigger tractors, just like you see them big tractors now. I don’t see, those things are worth two hundred, two hundred fifty

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thousand dollars apiece. Then, at that time, they were worth whatever, two thousand dollars was too much money if you don’t have it. And we became quite, quite successful in ranching.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What were you all farming? Cotton or
Mr. Zúñiga: Cotton, corn.
Dr. Gutiérrez: watermelons or
Mr. Zúñiga: No, no, no, no watermelons in that part of that country. Cotton, maize. We did get into the broom corn, raised escoba (broom) corn. We raised corn, there was a lot of corn, had maize, wheat, and then, of course, we had to get into the cattle business, you know. Because if you were going to be successful, try the, a little bit more. We leased his pastures and then after that we get into the down point. We were very successful. Then the, in the Fifties, and then, it went through . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, who is we? You had other brothers?
Mr. Zúñiga: My dad and I. Oh no.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, just you and you are the only boy?
Mr. Zúñiga: It was me and my dad. Yeah, I am the only boy. We were juniors, you know.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You and him?
Mr. Zúñiga: He and I went into the business at very young age and brought the crop in.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Mama and the girls stayed at home? They didn’t work any outside the home?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, no, my mother worked and drove tractors. She learned to drove tractors and the girls, they would hoe cotton. They drove the pickups. We had the, the Bracero (Guest Workers) Program. I noticed yesterday in the meeting, they talked about the braceros. We were involved in the Bracero program.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How?

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Mr. Zúñiga: We went in and contracted with the federal government to get the braceros to come and help us farm the land.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How many men did you have?
Mr. Zúñiga: At one time we had about thirty.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow.
Mr. Zúñiga: Thirty bracerso. And, of course, then you didn’t hear too much about, about the bracero program. It was a, a new program that everybody was talking how the Zuniga’s were bringing in the wetbacks. Well, they wasn’t wetbacks. They were legalized, you know, through the federal government and we got them for several years to help us.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you make friends with any of those men?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh yes. We had them from all over the country. We had them, some of them were Indians from up there in Oaxaca, I believe it was. Way up in Mexico. Some of them were from San Luis Potosi, some of them were from Nuevo Leon, Los Colorados, Nuevo Leon. Very good men. Very good workers. In fact, through the years I have gone back and visited with them and we, we learned to dearly love those men that worked hard. They were great people. They sang every night. They were some of the best Mexicans.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did your dad pay them or did you have to pay the government? How, how
Mr. Zúñiga: No, no. We paid them so much. We had to guarantee that they had a restroom for every fifteen and had to go through all the, the policies that the government had. We, we paid them. And they enjoyed coming back every year.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you must have been a, a young teenager when all this happened?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Early Fifties?
Mr. Zúñiga: The early Fifties. I was just a young teenager.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: So, she is talking about that you all arrived in Winters. When did you all up and move and why?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, the drought broke us.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh. This drought going to . . . Before you get there, let’s, let’s go back now and talk about school. I mean, this obviously you did after school or on weekends and summers, but did you go to school?
Mr. Zúñiga: We did.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What were some of the things that went on in school? Your best subjects, your worst experience.
Mr. Zúñiga: I went to school in the little community of Briggs. And I would get up about four o’clock in the morning and go to work. I would drive a tractor until about, oh, seven. I would get in the old beat up pickup and go to school. And I was dirty, had, you know, live out in the farm and most of them was ranchers. The people there, I was the only Mexican by the way at school. It didn’t bother me. I just, we just went, all of us was just, that was the reality, clothes all dirty, we went to work. We all worked. The other kids that worked also. The gringitos that were ranchers, well, we all went just like we were, just todos choriados, (all dirty) dusting off your dirt. Let’s go to school. And we went to school to, to, I think it was four o’clock. And from four o’clock, I went ahead and went to work. Went back to the fields, wherever I had left the tractor, wherever, that is where I would go back. And my daddy expected me to do that. I remember one time I didn’t go and I went Oh, Johnny, Bar the door. First time I ever, I let, I ever seen my dad really lay a hand on me. He had big knuckles. I never will forget that. And those big old knuckles, he laid on top of my head real, one time. Toot! That took care of that. I never did go anywhere else. When that came from my pop as a young man and I went straight to work.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, where did you go?

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Mr. Zúñiga: Well, that day, I think . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: To visit poor Elizabeth?
Mr. Zúñiga: Lord no. We, we just, we went . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: To visit somebody else, out...
Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah. This is way before me. And you are in Briggs.
Mr. Zúñiga: We just went riding and like we picked up a man, me and a couple of old guys. See, we would take that long ride. Didn't think it would take that long. We were, we was just out there until about dark and the tractor didn’t move. Dad wanted to make sure that tractor moved the next time. He certainly got my attention. From then on, it was work. But no, we worked pretty hard and, and my daddy raised us, raised us hard. I loved him dearly for doing it because that gave us the ambition to, to work and to try to make a living. But when the drought hit, it just looked like everything, just all of us, everybody . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: We’ll, we’ll get to the drought. Did you, did you go to church?
Mr. Zúñiga: No sir. No, we went to church, to the Catholic Church in Bergstrom, Texas and that is where I believe I got my communion and my confirma . . .(confirm . . ., you know. I, I, it has been so long I forgot about that because then we went to Andice to Church over there for awhile. And keep in mind, that even then, they talk about gangs now and this and that, but then we had ranchos and en contra de ranchos. (against other ranches.) You know, the rancheros de esta parte de alrededor de Lampasas encontra de otros rancheros de otra parte. (ranchers from this part around Lampasas against other ranchers from other parts.) We didn't get along very well with the rancheros from Andice or the ones from Bergstrom, so it was, it wasn’t a gang situation, it was a, you know, turf. We belonged to another part of the community. And I went into Lampasas one time and . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, are you, are you also talking about Mexicans or . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Mexicans.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .this is just anybody?
Mr. Zúñiga: We were talking probably anybody. Especially, you know, you seen that it was just communities that were part of a community and, and it wasn’t that we had a battle going on. We just liked to stay within our, within our community whether you were Anglo or whatever. But, particularly in the Mexican community, we stayed within our own territory. And I go off up there to a jamaica (church bazaar). I never forget that. La jamaica in Andice, Texas and somebody hit my truck. We had just been working, as usual, work is a, was something you learned at home. We had been working, some of the braceros and I needed to eat. Said, "Let’s go eat supper at this jamaica. We went there and somebody got a rock and throwed it at our old truck. They didn’t hurt the durned thing, but we got words with the other boys and decided that we would just, got pretty upset about it. And here comes the priest. I never will forget that. He run us off. He told me, " Mira, vayanse." ("Look, just leave.") To leave and don’t come back. Well, that angered me because I still felt like there was something wrong. I mean, we were Catholics. What is the difference between the Catholic Church in Bergstrom and the Catholic Church in Andice or Georgetown or whoever? So, that was an experience that I didn’t like. He took the other. Of course, his congregation, his side. We never did sass him, you know. When you are Catholic, you are, learn to reverence the priest to the highest and this made a difference with me. Because I don’t think that we should reverend anybody to the highest. It, it is set in my mind that I just didn’t like the way I was, the way we were treated there, but we didn’t, we didn’t sass him. He told us to get in your truck and leave. So, we left. And consequently I never did go to church back then. My mother was a devoted Catholic. We had a pretty nice sized house there in town, in Briggs. Finally, little bitty town, had a . . . The owner of the ranch there, they called him the

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Pulliam Ranch and Mr. Pulliam had gotten killed or something and they had that house there in Pulliam. He was one of the first men we rented land. By the way, my dad was the, his very first renter. And Mr. Pulliam got old and couldn’t handle that, but going back to that, but he was the one that gave the opportunity to my dad.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I assume that your dad could speak English?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, he was very well versed in English and my mother would have the Catholic priest go in there and have what you call this, the kids, he would gather them up and take them to the house and he would get them prepared for the Cataclysm. Is that right? They call it? Anyway,
Ms. Zúñiga: Catechism.
Mr. Zúñiga: Catechism. You know, I just didn't stay in the place very long, so...
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you go to dances?
Mr. Zúñiga: Some. I didn’t have the time.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What about the plataforma?.
Mr. Zúñiga: The platform. She, she was talking about the . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you couldn’t tractor at night. Now come on.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, they have lights. Don’t forget. Those tractors had some lights. The older ones didn’t, but the older I got, the more . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: You, you stayed out there tractoring until . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: . . .the better they were.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .eight, nine, ten o’clock?
Mr. Zúñiga: We worked day, worked day and night. Yes sir. You worked from, you, you worked in the morning. When you are a farmer, you got to get up there when this dew and this water kind of settling down. When you are baling hay, you know, we baled a lot of hay for the public, it, it dampens the, the hay where you would go in there and go ahead and bale it, get it ready to bale and that was what we did in the morning. And in the evening, we would haul the hay. And when you got through with that day, you didn’t think about dancing. You

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thought about a place to go to sleep because you were going to wake up at four o’clock. And there was a dance, we went about three times to a plataforma in Kyle, Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Kyle?
Mr. Zúñiga: Kyle, Texas. That’s out . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Out of Austin?
Mr. Zúñiga: . . .out of Austin. Yes sir. I remember going there. That was the first time I ever seen my mom and dad dance to tunes. The only time I ever seen them. We went with them. Of course, my aunt, the littlest sister, my mother’s sister, had married a musician named Candido Rangel from New Braunfels. He was a real good accordion player and we went to that dance. It was a plataforma. I think the plataforma still exists. Every time I go through town, I always look to the left going into, into, out, out side of the town on the left. Coming back, it would be on the right. I remember that. It was a big old plataforma too. To me, it looked like a million acres, but I don't... As I see it now, it was very small. But that is where we went about two or three times. And my dancing, I just didn't do it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Movies. Did you go to the movies on, go to the grocery store?
Mr. Zúñiga: No sir. We didn't go to the movies because of one time we got real hot about a western movie. I don’t like western movies. And a lot of you guys might think John Wayne is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don't. Or the western, because they always win. It was about some western movie that my uncle said, "Let’s go." But he was about real light, as you Mr. Gutierrez, you could pass for white, so he could too. We go to Bergstrom, Texas. Well, there I sat, real dark brown, probably out in the sun and my uncle, the other and he was darker than I was and here we go. We get in there and he, he, he was smart. See, he got in. He paid by hisself. Why was Joe doing that? Well, it turned out that he goes downstairs; he sat down; said it was always air

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conditioned. So they sent us upstairs. We liked to burned up and never again did we ever go back to that little town. And I learned that there was a difference right there. Naturally, when we come out, he just laughed. He said, "Well . . ." I said, "Sure was . . ." So anyway, we never did go back to Bergstrom. However, we played in my junior and senior year, we played football and basketball against Bergstrom. That’s some cedar brick country. Rough. We played them. We were, we were more rough type of young people. Remember I said I was the only Mexican kid in that, in that school. With small, small class. There were eight of us. One girl and about seven boys. And Bergstrom had more kids. We gave them hell. We competed with them. We played in Burnet and Georgetown, the bigger schools, Lampasas. They were small schools then, but they were a lot bigger than we were. Then we went to the big, the big town of Lampasas and we were going to go out there and I think we were going to see the movie MacBeth. Is that such a movie as that or something like
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s a big play, yeah.
Mr. Zúñiga: A big play. It was a movie that we, this teacher was a preacher’s wife. She was real good. We are going to see this, this movie so we could come back and have a test on it or something. Well, I told her. I said, "I am going to tell you one thing." I said, "They are going to separate me. They are going to set me upstairs." And I said, "I am not going to put up with that." That was about, that was in my junior or senior year. I said, "If we are going to go through this ritual again, I ain’t going." Says, "Well, you’ll flunk." I said, "Well, that will just, just be it." She said, "Mike you don’t want to make a, a zero." I said, "Well, I will make a zero if I go up there and be embarrassed. I don't like to be embarrassed in front of . . ." She says, "Well, I will go in there and talk to the manager, theater manager." I said, "You do what you want

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to, but I am not going upstairs." And she said, "OK." So, we were over there . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: What year is this?
Mr. Zúñiga: 1958 or ‘59. And we went over there and she went and talked to the manager, saw the manager, theater manager and told him, said, "Now, if he got that one Mexican student . . ." And that is terrible that they would talk about it. I mean, I, I get angry even now thinking about it and sad at the same time because it should never have been. To, to think that the school teacher had to go in there and talk to the manager, theater to let me go downstairs and sit with the white folks. Can you believe that? In this country? Anyway, we did it. And so, she says, "Everything is fine." You know, for sure it was kind of quiet like between me and her. She didn't make it an issue. We went in there to look at that movie and we came back. But that is how we were raised. It wasn't any different in Winters than it was in, in Burnet or Georgetown or Bergstrom. It is that racism existed from the beginning. It has always been there and it hasn’t changed. We can make strides, we can make strides, but you still see it. It exists today.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, tell me about that. Let’s, I, I know that we are skipping here, but you are on it already. How is it not different today? I mean, what is going on in Ballinger and that area today?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, if you look at like we are talking about Ballinger, you don't see people working at the courthouse, Mexicans or Blacks. You take the other communities around Ballinger, Winters, I am talking about small towns like Brady and Mason and all those communities. There is the same thing. The racism is there where you don't see them. You don't see them as police officers, Mexicanos, very rare. Our sheriff department finally got some deputies, but we scalded his hands. We took them and put them, he wanted to get re-elected, he had to do it. But you don't see them in banks. We had to, I had to nearly have a

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one-man riot for the, my banker, our banker where we got two dollars in there, for him to go ahead and hire Mexicanos. And it was very, I guess, kind of an by accident that it happened. That I went in there to deposit a little money or cash a check and told the little girl to deposit the difference. A little blonde, blue eyed girl there at the cashier’s window, she told me, "Look here, if you will fill out your form just right, you won’t have to bother with me." Or something to that effect. So, I went to the barbershop. I was kind of concerned about it and Mr. Picon, who is a community leader in Ballinger, asked me, says, "What’s the matter with you? I said, "Well, I had this experience with the banker." He said, "I have it every day." I said, "I will fix that." I go back up there, went straight into the bank, asked to talk to the president of the bank. And he and I had some words about it, about the way they treated my business. By the way, he said, I asked him if he had any Mexicanas hired. He said, "Well, they never apply." I said, "I will get you as many Mexicanas as you want to." And I also said I wanted to be on the bank board of directors of the bank. And I mean, when I was talking to him, everybody in the bank could hear me. That didn’t happened ten years ago. That happened weeks ago that that happened, but we are going back to why the racism still exists?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, now I am curious. I know you got the teller. Did you get to be on the bank board?
Mr. Zúñiga: No sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Not yet.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, to be honest with you, after I had a man write, write on him, I didn’t even care if I was on the board. It was just a matter that, that we got two Mexicanos hired and that, I forgot about it. I put it on the back burner because it didn't matter that much to me. It, it was just something that I wanted to question him. It was more comical than

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anything else because he had just bought the bank. And he came out of Rotan, Texas. And the way we do it; we, we have LULAC in Rotan, so I, I asked, I called over there about this new banker and they said, "Well, he is a racist." So, I knew a little bit about his background when I went in there. So I was going to try and toy with him a little bit and I, I asked him, I said, "If he had a lot of money." He said, "I don’t know. What are you talking about?" I said, "Well . . ." I said, I was angry, but at the same time, not angry enough to get thrown out of there because I wanted to tell him what I thought about him. I said, "You don’t look like you have got a lot of money here." He says, "Well, we are not here to dress well." I had really kind of insulted the man because he had on this beat up suit. And I thought it was, you, you don't have a thousand dollar suit. And I was just, just toying with him a little bit. Maybe it is embarrassing to say it, but you asked me how it comes and that is how come . . . I mean, I am in business with them. If I go up there and sit down and talk to him, we are going to do it right or we are not going to do it. Because I know that the only way that we can make a difference is for us to stand up. And don't think that we haven’t been put down. The, the system has tried to destroy us, destroy the Hispanic movement, the Mexican movement, whatever you want to call it, but we are still there. Thank God we are still there. But racism exists even at the precinct level in, in the Commissioner’s Court. And I know the Commissioners, they are scared of their own soul. They have no Mexicans whatsoever. And we try to encourage Mexicans to apply. There is racisms there. They look at you; they talk at you; you know, they communicate with you; and when you go back out there to where it really counts, where they can put somebody on the payroll, where they can feed their families; they don’t do it. It is true everywhere.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the numbers are changing in that area, no? I mean, this, this is going to change here like right away.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, we have been, we have been working at it, really hard to try to come by. We have sued for single member districts throughout the country for that. For one, we have Mexicanos on the school board now; we have Mexicanos on city councils all around, but what we need to do is to train ourselves to speak out. I believe that we are still timid when we go up and serve on those councils. To really speak out and this is where we have got to have, we, they call them town meetings, but if we were to have them, I believe they would call it a riot. But we, we are going to start having those town meetings with the precincts where the Mexicano population is and he represents that group, we are going to ask them to meet at city hall to sit down and talk. And that makes a difference.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Let’s go back and tell us about that drought. That, those hit everybody. Got you to meet the lady.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, you want me to meet Miss Zuniga? OK. The drought put us out of business. I mean, I remember that cotton. It just went down to nothing. We had to borrow. Can you imagine, from being so successful, borrow money to leave town? And loaded it all up on a truck and landed in Winters, Texas. In the later part of 1959, we loaded up everything on the truck. And my mother . . . We had a ‘52 Ford that we had bought new, and it was a tremendous experience for us to just say we are going to leave, but we had to leave. We left tractors and plows and everything behind, paid for. We had to leave. There wasn’t a choice. We could move. We left some good tractors there and they just took the tires, just write it off and everything. And I still would go by there two, five, or sixteen years after and they were still out there in the fields. Nobody bothered them. They were still out there where we left everything. Trailers, we just, we had no use

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for them. We didn’t have no money. We just packed up, you know, and moved to Winters. It was . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why Winters? Why didn’t your dad move to San Antonio or the big city?
Mr. Zúñiga: Anywhere. Anywhere. Well, we had to go to work. When you are a rancher, you want to have to find something to, to go in there and do. I said it was ranchers. And gosh, it was very hard on my dad and us, but we, we left and we just, we were going to Dunn, Texas. D-U-N-N, I believe it is, over there by Colorado City. I don’t know if you ever heard of Colorado City. I think you have been there in Colorado City. We were going there.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That cemetery issue.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. But there was a cloud coming as we passed through Coleman, Texas and we got up on that hill and I think I was driving that truck and my dad was in the car behind me and we seen this cloud coming and it was coming on us. By the time we got to Winters, it was really freezing. Oh, it was so cold. So, we went up to the [cotton] gin if there was any, any work or anything. Keep in mind that we didn’t have any money. It all went down. And a man there at the gin said, "Yeah, we know. We can get you a place where you can stay tonight." And my sister had just had one of the little girls named Wunette, the littlest girl, and she would have froze to death that night if we would have stayed. We went and looked at that house, oh, I think they called them city, I mean, gin field hands that went out there and contracted for the hands to the ranchers or farmers or whatever. So he took us up there and that house didn’t have any windows or nothing. My first, my first reaction of West Texas, I thought, was: Are you going to stay here? So, we said, "No. We, we can’t stay here." He says, "Maybe a night." We were, had very limited funds, so we spent the night in a hotel. A little bitty hotel named Rock Hotel,

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we stayed there. And I remember meeting a man, an Anglo man, his last name was McSwan. A very good man and he was crippled. He was disabled and we met with him. And, of course, Mr. Guajardo, who married my sister later, Frank Guajardo and I slept in the truck because we didn't have enough money to pay all of us a room. So, we stayed outside. Like to have froze to death. But anyway, we stayed there and we pulled cotton there, there in Winters for, oh I guess, a month or so. Then we heard . . . You are talking about ranchers, we heard about a ranch named Richard’s Ranch where they hired workers out there and. Seven days a week. Now, we were used to it. No problem. Went out there and worked. I think it was a hundred and twenty five dollars a month, seven days a week, from five o’clock, sunup to sundown. We worked there for about a year, and then, I went and worked as a cowboy up at another ranch named Herring’s Ranch. Stayed there about six months. And then we moved back to Winters.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, you were already a high school graduate?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. I graduated from high school. Oh, that was a terrible thing because I was supposed to go to Texas A & I.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, what prompted you to go to college? Your mother, your father, or did you?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I was going to college. No, it was just a, I had a, a teacher, an Ag [agriculture] teacher that, that encouraged me. He had gone to Texas A & I. I never did apply. But he wanted me to go real bad. But when that drought hit, we had no choice. I had the choice of going and helping my parents, my dad who had been so old and so, well, raised the family or I guess it would be selfish and go to college. I don’t know whether I would have made it or not. But I had the choice right then. It was a choice made. And I made the choice to go help my dad. And I have never regretted it. That, that’s where we

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wound up at. About that time, yeah, I went to work over at Crockett Ford and worked with them. From ranching all your life and knowing as much about ranching as anybody else, as far as that goes, and then, going up and winding up in a, in a Ford house trying to clean up cars and grease cars, change the oil filter, and all of that. Different world. But there is always somebody that will treat you right if you treat them right. I have always said that. There was a fellow named Miller, by the last, last name of Miller. Mr. Miller was a mechanic there. And I didn’t know how to undercoat with those fancy machines, those cars, new cars. So, I, I didn't ask him to help me, but I always worked, worked hard, cleaned up his stall all the time. Mechanics have stalls, so I cleaned up this stall, cleaned up his tools and everything. When it got down to for me to undercoat those cars, he would always, he went up there one day and said, "You know how to do that?" I looked at that silly machine. I said, "No sir." He says, "Well, let me show you." And then, he showed me how to do those things. And to this day, I respect him highly. He is, he lives in Winters. And just last week I talked to him, visited with him, and thanked him for what he done for me in 1959 and 1960. After that my dad went to, went to work in a service station. A man owned two service stations, and then . . . Crockett Ford, James Crockett bought one of the service stations and asked my daddy if he would run it for him. And my dad did. Then we decided that we, you know, pooled the money together, so we bought that service station. And that is when you went over there to visit Winters. We had bought that little service station there. Racist town. When we got to Winters, Texas, they had signs all over town. No servivimos a los Mexiancanos. (We don’t serve Mexicans.) And there in the Sixties, I guess ten thousand, fifteen thousand people would go around there and on Saturdays and Sundays, you couldn’t walk the streets of Winters. There was so many migrants in there. They had

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two, three different car dealers and a lot, a lot of business going on. The migrant left, that town died. Thing got that the migrant left because they had to get educated. They had to do it a different way. They just go out there and, and sweat and give, give their life away, so to speak. Anyway, I met Miss Zuniga about that time and I did have that ‘57 Ford. It had those little . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Fish tails.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh yeah.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Big round taillights.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. Long. The whole thing. And we met and, and that is how we, we got married.
Dr. Gutiérrez: No, you eloped.
Mr. Zúñiga: We eloped. Yes sir. We sure did.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why did you do that? Why didn’t you go talk to the man and say I want to marry your daughter?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I don’t think . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, apparently you saw the example of your dad. He didn't throw out your sister and she had a baby, and then, she got married.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, she, she... No, she married. No. She married, they married before they had the baby.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I missed that somehow.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. No, they were married.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right.
Mr. Zúñiga: My brother in law had joined the Navy and left to the Navy and that’s when the little baby was born.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So why did you elope?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I felt like. We didn't have any money to get married to start with. I mean, where, where you going to get the money to get married? I mean, you, you are talking about a big wedding here. In those days, ten dollars would have been too much, you know. We

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didn't have a house; we didn't have anything. But boy, we thought we were the greatest.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You were in a hurry.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, and mad to be married. Had to be partners. So, anyway we decided that we would elope and the county judge out of Concho County, racist community, I, I forget the judge’s name, but he married us.
Ms. Zúñiga: Peek.
Mr. Zúñiga: Peek. Yeah. Peek. P-E-E-K. Judge Peek. He married us and I didn't have, I had about ten dollars, maybe seven dollars. I gave him five dollars and that is what it took to get married. Mr. Peek was a . . . He and I became close through the years because I had respect for him. He could have charged me twenty five, I wouldn’t have had the money, you know. We would have had to charge it, I guess.
Ms. Zúñiga: I don’t think they charged that much back then.
Mr. Zúñiga: No. He just told us to give him what he, what we thought and he, you know, we have, we just got married. But it has been a struggle. It has been a struggle.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Let’s talk about those struggles. I mean, you, you are married; you are going to raise a family. We got the kid’s names. We got all that on, already on the tape. Why don't you start talking a little bit about, either one or both, help each other out, some of these early struggles? How you started dealing with society on your own because now it is not daddy and mommy anymore and you, you are not in school and you are out on your own? You, you have got to make a change in the world. You got to change the world. What were some of these problems? What are some of the things you have been doing? You have been struggling out there for a long time. Tell us about some of these struggles in organizations or people or issues.

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Mr. Zúñiga: Well, the first struggle that we had in Winters was with the school system. As our kids began to get older, we began to see that the racism was still there and they wouldn't give them the opportunity that, that they were giving the other Anglo children. Our daughter was very good in band. She was very good as a Twirler. From the seventh grade, she was very good and my wife was kind of her mentor. You might want to call it, in taking her to, to school and making sure that she would have that opportunity that she didn't have and it was a battle because you have to go and perform. So, you have to go and perform and had school. And there they were. There were maybe five or six girls competing to be the chief twirlers and my little girl was in the seventh grade. And not . . . I always told, told my kids this until this day, "never take life in a shotgun approach. Take two or three things that you can do good at and then stick to one, two, and three, and do them." And my little daughter, Eloise, was a twirler. She got up there in the barrios, in front of our house. She had a place that looked like a bunch of horses had stomped around the front of the house where she played with that twirler.
Ms. Zúñiga: No, it was a baton.
Mr. Zúñiga: Baton. And she was good. Better or three times better than the other kids. When she went up there to do that, my wife had to really have battles with, with the judges that was judging this contest. One of them, to your disbelief, was a preacher in Winters that was attacking us. A Baptist preacher was attacking. They, they just couldn't see a Mexicana being that good to be the little chief twirler. And my daughter, I mean, my wife and, and daughter both just really stood their grounds. That’s when we began to see that things had to change and my daughter was selected.
Dr. Gutiérrez: This has to be now in the Seventies?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. That was in the Seventies. Oh my.

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Ms. Zúñiga: She was already in high school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Yeah. High school. And then, it went on through school every year. It got to the point that, that at one time they had, Winters, Texas had some kind of a uniform that they used. And because my daughter was going to be the chief twirler that they said, "No Mexican would ever, ever use this suit that has been passed on and on and on through the years." So the school had to change uniforms because if that was what was going to be the case, we don't want to use your uniform. The school had to come up with new uniforms. And those were the kind of things that I feel like that the school system and society owes the Mexicano a great lot. They owe them. They owe, they owe. And I will always stand and I go to my grave thinking that because of those things that happened to our people, the school system still owes. Like I was talking to Lupe Picon the other day, he said, "Mike, can I go back?" And he is a seventy two year old barber. "Can I go back and sue the school system?" I said, "Why?" He said, "Because when I went to school . . ." And it was in Loon, Texas, he said, "They put me out there where they fixed the plows and all that." He said, "I couldn’t hear, couldn’t understand." So I quit. I said, "I wish you could have." I said, "I don't know if you could or not." But those are the kind of things that I still say that
Dr. Gutiérrez: Are you calling him Lupe Picon?
Mr. Zúñiga: Lupe Picon. Picon.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Picon. OK. Go on. I thought Pecan like walnut.
Mr. Zúñiga: No, no. Picon.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Picon. OK.
Mr. Zúñiga: Those are the struggles that we had. Not only
Dr. Gutiérrez: Let me prompt you. A little earlier though because you are in the Seventies and I know that, were you the one that called the MALDEF

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[Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund] about the haircuts and the barbershops?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That, that’s earlier. That’s like ‘68.
Mr. Zúñiga: ‘68.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And in the early Sixties, you had the War on Poverty. I know that you have been involved with the War on Poverty program, so can you back up a little bit and talk a little earlier? I mean,
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. When the War on Poverty came about, my Lyndon B. Johnson came out with those programs, I had a lady friend of mine, I had my wife, she was an old maid. A Republican, by the way.
Ms. Zúñiga: Retired school teacher.
Mr. Zúñiga: Retired school teacher. She owned her little, own service station that she had inherited that. Her name was . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Towner Key.
Mr. Zúñiga: Towner Key. An Anglo, Republican.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Her name was Towner?
Ms. Zúñiga: Towner Key.
Mr. Zúñiga: Towner. Towner Key. Weird name. But she was, she has gone now to be with the Lord. But anyway, she called me. And I used to haul gas for her in a truck out of Big Springs. She called me and she said, "I want to talk to you." I said, "All right." She said, "There is going to be some money that L. B. J. for president is going to come up to help people change lives." And she said, "Keep in mind that I am a Republican. I don’t believe in those programs." She said, "But I want you to be a part of that Great Society and be a part of it." I said, "Well Miss Key, I don't see how I could be a part of it. I just don't have the education. I don’t have . . ." She said, "You just listen and listen to, to the reports and listen to how it is going to come out." I met a Baptist preacher and I have been looking for him ever since then

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and I have never been able to find him. He was preaching in Coleman, Texas. He came up to our service station and he said, "Things are going to change." He said, "Things are going to change. We are going to create an agency to help poor people." He said, "I want you to be a part of it." And I said, "Well, I will tell you the same thing I told another friend of mine. I don’t . . . We will see what happens." Well he was the assistant, so to speak. And in, in our agency there, it started with racism. You know, even if L. B. J. created the programs, you know, we started with retired high school principals, retired superintendents, and it was a bad deal to start with. But he was the assistant. Soon as he got it set up, they run him off. That’s how I found out after the years. So anyway, that’s where, where we started and I just started on the board of directors. Didn't know a thing about boards. I wasn't never raised in serving in a committee, but I, I started serving there. And we had a board that was strictly Anglo. Same old mentality of West Texas. It was all Anglos. I think I had me and another young man and, Black man by the name of General Humphrey, retired
Dr. Gutiérrez: General?
Mr. Zúñiga: General Humphrey.
Dr. Gutiérrez: General? That’s his name?
Mr. Zúñiga: That's his name.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That's not a title?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, it is not a title. His name was General and his last name was Humphrey. Then, he was a Black retired high school principal there in Coleman. They retired him rather than put him in the system. You know, when the, the integration came about. So, the school was there and left and we, we, we started the programs there, but we were the only two minorities on a board of fifty-one. We had no chance. We had no chance. Anything we said, it was out. It took time. I served

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on the board about two or three years, and then, they had some money for some youth programs. And I don’t know whether Mr. Humphrey had applied for the job. And I had applied for the job. And they gave it to him. And I didn't feel bad because he was a, an educated man and he got it. And after that the, Mr. Macmillan from Coleman, who was the chairman of the board says I didn't raise any, any issue about it because Mr. Humphrey was a minority. He said, "I will go ahead and see what we can do for you the next time." So they had another little grant of forty thousand dollars for our program. He asked me if I wanted to work on that and I said, "Sure. I will do it." And I started and I have been here for twenty-eight years there at the same agency. But it was a long hard process to try to change attitudes in communities. You know when L. B. J. would come out with a program, they called them Communist programs and so forth, but we had to deal with that board first.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now you have stopped working at the gas station and you are now working full time . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes.
Dr. Gutiérrez: for the War on Poverty program?
Mr. Zúñiga: War on Poverty program.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Tell, tell us about that and the haircut issues. Whatever?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, we started out with Central Texas Opportunities [name of CAP agency] and it was a long struggle where we had that fifty-one board members. We had to go ahead and little by little take some board members.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You want to bring it up to the roof?
Mr. Zúñiga: Change policies. We changed policies in our agency so we could take that fifty-one board members down to smaller size. Because they used to have . . . Brown County had twelve and the other counties had six. We brought it down to three. And it took us a span of about eight

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years because of the struggle. And the, and the turf fights that they had even amongst judges and amongst mayors and all that to create peace and shorten the small enough board. And we did. But it was, it was an agency that started out with maybe sixty thousand dollars and when we left it was probably about a five million dollar agency or something.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you have or when did LULAC or GI Forum or PASO or Viva Kennedy or any of these things get started in that area? Did they ever reach there?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. The first time I ever heard about LULAC was a gentleman that bought the gin where you are doing cotton right behind the service station that we owned and he had, he was raised in South Texas and he was an Anglo. Blonde headed as he could be and he told me, he said, "You ought to start LULAC here." He said, "As much racism as there is in Winters." Oh, by the way, he didn’t last long in Winters anyway. He stated, "You ought to start LULAC." I go, "What the heck is that?" He says, "Friend you are not a Mexican in South Texas if you don’t have a LULAC organization." So, that’s how we started the first LULAC council some twenty-eight years ago in Winters. We got Judge Willie Serna to help us out. Luis Perez, an attorney, and we started out organizing our district, district 5 LULAC. It has not been an easy path to have a LULAC council or LULAC organization in rural West Texas because you know the opposition that we, that we have and still have it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where did these gentlemen come from? This, this judge. You called him Judge. Serna.
Mr. Zúñiga: Judge Serna comes from Lamesa, Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: He was a judge then or . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: No, no, no. He was, he is a judge now. Judge Serna . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: He is a judge now.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, election judge of the precinct?

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Mr. Zúñiga: He is not elected. He is the precinct. Willie Serna was a man from Lamesa that changed the course of that community. He was a survivor. He was a person that dealt with the Huelga (United Farm Worker’s strike) at a very young age, changing the community. And little did we know that someday he would move to San Angelo and work with the Texas Unemployment Commission for some years. And then, the first time I told him, well, we asked him to come in and get, get a group in, in Winters to organize a LULAC or the Raza Unida Party or anything that we had at those times. Just anything. He came over with some lawyers. And they had to come through three times before we could get in their minds that that was the only way that we could change things is to get a group together of people, organize the movement, and you know, we even organized La Raza Unida Party. You know, when ya’ll were the founders up there. And we were so far away from the main Raza Unida peoples such as Jose Angel Gutierrez, Ramsey Muniz, and all those people. Yet, that we heard about the movement so we decided that we would get into it. And . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: When you say "we", you mean are you getting together at the barber . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Myself, the barber wasn’t involved then, but some other Mexicanos in Winters there.
Dr. Gutiérrez: And how did you organize? Did you meet at homes or did you go to Bingos or go . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: No, we didn’t go to Bingos.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .to a bar or cookouts or what?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, we don’t go to bars. Never cookouts. We met at a house, our house in, in West Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All private?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. What was it? 710 West Pierce Street, I believe, that’s where, where we lived at that house. And we met with representatives of La

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Raza Unida. A fellow named Johnny D., Drade. Johnny Andrade. He was there and told us about La Raza Unida.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Out of Brownwood?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. Out of Brownwood. And we met. We had about, oh, twenty-five, thirty people and very interested about the organizing. So, we went to organize La Raza Unida party and you are talking about a living hell. The Democrats came after us, the Republicans came after us. And I remember the judge, Judge Ramphy called me and he said, "What the heck are you doing Mike? You people ain’t, you been happy with the Democratic party?" I said, "I have not." And he says, "Why?" And I said, "Because you all, you have been judge for twenty-five, thirty years judge . . ."
Ms. Zúñiga: County judge.
Mr. Zúñiga: " . . .county judge and you have never even tried to hire a Mexicano." I said, "We are going to run our own people." And he says, "Well, when ya’ll get off that foolishness, come and see me." I said, "We are not going to get over that foolishness. We are going to do it." My wife was the treasurer of the Raza Unida party. We ran . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: I thought you were secretary?
Mr. Zúñiga: Is our secretary
Dr. Gutiérrez: We didn’t have any money. We had a lot of votes.
Ms. Zúñiga: Or, or maybe both. I don’t remember.
Mr. Zúñiga: But we, we just started out and . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you volunteer or were you volunteered Elizabeth?
Ms. Zúñiga: No, I think I volunteered.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What made you do that?
Mr. Zúñiga: No.
Ms. Zúñiga: I needed it. I, I liked what I heard about the Mexicano needed to do something and we needed to get together. And, and that we were going to have a . . . I knew that we had a candidate that was running for

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governor and, and all that I heard was good. And I thought, yes, we need to do this.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, what experiences did you have along the lines that he is talking about, like when you all were going to buy your first house or when you were, you know, going to do things as a couple or as a family and the school issues? I mean, what are some of the things that you encountered that got you active?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, the first thing, we, we lived with, with the parents, OK? And then, we lived with his parents some, and then, we lived with my parents, and then, I had my first baby. Well, he was about time and that first baby motivated a lot of things, you know, how I thought this baby had to have the opportunity to maybe, I didn’t have. And so, I did a lot of heavy thinking about that. First encounter we started to rent a place and we went to rent this little, oh, it was a cute little house. I thought oh, it is a cute little house, this little, and it was away from the barrio. It is not really in a very nice part of town, but it was away from the barrios. A little white house with a little red, the screen door, you know, the, the wood part of it had a little red in it and it was a cute little house. And I thought well, we are just going to see if we can rent that house. And we went over there and lo and behold the lady said she didn’t rent to Mexicans.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Just flat out?
Ms. Zúñiga: Flat out. This house, we do not rent to Mexicans. I go gee, you know, that’s pretty bad. Didn’t like it at all. And then, we started looking at this other place. We did find a little house by, is it Johnny Wilson’s, when we rent a house?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. He was the deputy sheriff, yeah.
Ms. Zúñiga: It was a little one room house. It had the bathroom and the kitchen. Small, but anyway we rented that. Of course, at that time Michael was born. He was born in 1962. But, you know, life has to be different. I

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mean, life has to be different and I felt like I needed to do something about it. So, I thought internal and said, you know, I am going to go back to school. Because I always had, in my mind, I have always thought education has got to be the answer. It is going to have to open doors. You are going to have to be, make a better life for your children. This was always was my concern. Not so better for me, but for my children. So here we go back to school. I didn’t get enough credits to graduate, but I did go back and I took English and Math and some of the subjects, you know, because I had quit school when I married, and I talked to one of my teachers and her name was Bower. And, you know, I, being a woman, and then, a Hispanic woman, you have like double trouble.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Explain that.
Ms. Zúñiga: Double things to overcome.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Explain it though.
Ms. Zúñiga: One is that a Hispanic woman, the way I was raised, feel they are dedicated to the family. Children come first, right? It seems like you have been geared and programmed that a good mother "takes care of the kids, stays at home, and does all those good things." The other thing if you are Hispanic is that you always know that when you run out there, you are going to run into the opposition that you are a minority. You are Mexican. You are going to have trouble. You are going to be discriminated. So, I spoke to this teacher and I said, "You know, I feel like I need to do something different because I want to be able to provide for my children. I want them to, when they go to school and start the first grade . . ." Like Michael was just born, he wasn’t even ready to go to school, but I was already thinking that way. "I want him to be able to go to school. I want him to be able to have a dime to go to the programs. I wanted him to be able to go to tryout for football, basketball, volleyball, whatever is out there. I wanted him

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to have pencils to write with. I want him to have plenty of paper. I want to have, him to have his books. Whatever he needs for him to help himself. That’s what, that’s what I want." So, I spoke to her and I said, "But you see, this problem, it is just like you decide to go on and try to work outside the home, what happens to the children? Does that mean I don’t, like I don’t love my children? Some people take that I would neglect my children." See, because my mother never worked. She was always there for us and these are the things that I was kind of struggling with in my mind. How do I do this? How do I better the life? How do I help the family, yet keep everything together? Keep the family together. Which to the Hispanic woman or maybe to all women, should be important. It, it was important to me. I mean, number one goal. The family. I mean, it, it is important. So, she talked to me and she said, "Well . . ." She says, "I can tell you this. Love is a wonderful thing to have in a home. You love your children. I can see that." She said, "But when they get hungry, that love is not going to feed them. When they want something to wear, that love is not going to be able to, to cover them. And for the home or whether you want as much love as you can have for those, for your children, it is always going to be that you could do something else. You know, love is a word, it is an emotion, but you have got to add to that." So, she said, "I don’t see anything like if you have a goal that you want to strive for, like if you want to have a job and be able to do all this." She says, "You, you can work to get it to where you can have the time with your children and yet you can provide for them the things that you think they might be lacking in. You know, especially like in going to school." So, my goal was that I wanted to go to nursing school, and so, when I talked to her, I thought yeah, she is probably right. I could probably go to school. And, and, of course, my parents were a lot of the times going to take care of the children. And when they

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would get ready to go to school, the lack of state support, maybe you know, my parents would help me out and they would be like minus somebody to take care of them. So, that’s what I did. I mean, decided to go to nursing school and I graduated in ‘67 from nursing school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where did you go to school?
Ms. Zúñiga: There in Ballinger. They had a vocational program. As a matter of fact, it was a new hospital and I was the first Hispanic person, student at that time and graduated, I think I graduated in a class of. So, I didn’t quite have difficulty getting in. They gave us a test, you know. I could read and, and write. They asked me questions. They said, "Well, yeah, OK." And at that point in time, too . . . Later, I found out that the lady that was the director of nurses knew about all the problems, you know. When we had the, the . . . Remember in the Sixties, ‘67, that she knew that at a point in time, she had to be a little more open to the minorities because you know, we had experience of California, you know . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: The riots.
Ms. Zúñiga: The riots over there and all kinds of stuff. And in the back of her mind, I think she was thinking, well, you know, we can’t be just saying no and just recruit all Anglos. But I think, and she really pushed me hard. I remember that she had a magazine there and I was interviewing. And she said, "Pick up the magazine and read to me and tell me . . ." You know, which is really not part of what she probably did with the other girls, but she did it to me. And I thought all right. So, I picked up the magazine and she said, "Read it." So I read it and I remember what the article was about. And it was an advertisement for Sears, about the curtains. And I picked it up, you know, and it was in white and white and I think aqua, green, different colors, beige, something like that. And the dimension of the curtains and all this kind of stuff, so I told

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her; I put the magazine down and she told me and said, "OK." She wanted me to read, I guess, so she could hear how I was pronouncing my words. And then, they gave, they went ahead and they gave me the test. It has some math and English and it was comprehension. You read awhile, put it away, and then, they asked you questions about what you read, and then, they told me yes, that I had passed the exam. And later I got a letter that said yes, I was accepted into the class. So I felt like boy, you really have to give it a hundred, a hundred and twenty percent or more into this class. Because I felt the responsibility that if this, the hospital has accepted me to their nursing class and I was the first Hispanic, you know, I had the responsibility of it. I better do good because I didn’t want the rest of the people or the rest of the Hispanics to kind of be judged on my performance because I think it was, this was a gift. So, I had to really do good. Well, I went to school, my kids were taken care of, and I graduated, went and took the state boards and passed them. I did, I did well. I think I came in, it was, we had a small class too. It was like maybe eight people, but I think I was like the second or third. I was above the half of them, so I didn’t have any problem with that. Got a job. Well first I was to go to a nursing home. There was lady there in Winters who had a nursing home, wanted to hire an LVN, and so, I went and applied. And she said, "Well . . ." She looked at my application and all that and she said, "Well, come back in a few days and I will let you know." I said, "OK. No problem." And I wanted to work in Winters because we were living there at the time and I think I don’t have to travel back and forth to work in Ballinger. Merle Senior Citizen Home is what it was called. So, the next day I went back and she said, "Well . . ." She says, "I talked to all the, the nurses aides. They are not going to have any problems taking orders from you. The fact that you are going to be LVN, Spanish, Mexican LVN on the floor. And I just

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wanted . . ." First ,she was going to talk to them to make sure they accepted me, taking orders from me. And I looked at her and I said, "Ma’am, I thought you were in need of an LVN, somebody to do the, work on the 3 to 11 shift and take charge of your shift?" And she said, "Well, I am." I said, "Well, the way I see it, you are not hiring an LVN, you are hiring skin color." I says, "In that case, then I don’t think I want to work here." That was just how I felt about it. And I says, "There are other openings and other opportunities that I have had that are available to me that I think you can just keep your job. I don't want it." And I left. And at that point in time, there was an RN that had quit working at a doctor’s office. And he had mentioned, you know, he had seen us work at the hospital. He said, he told our instructors, he said, "Now, there is . . . Diane, is going to be graduating. And there is Liz . . ." And there was another. He said, "You ask them and if they are interested they can come and interview. I will be, you know, be willing to hire an LVN." And so I went over there and I interviewed with the doctor and he said, "Well . . ." And he asked me a couple of questions and he says, "Well, where have you worked?" And I said, "At the hospital." And basically I think he was pleased with, with my performance and he told me about the hours. And that was just exactly what I needed. I needed an eight to five job. I needed to be off on the weekends and holidays because I had to be, I wanted to be home. Not that I had to be, but I wanted to be home with the family. I thought that one works out fine. So, I got hired.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How much did you get paid back then?
Ms. Zúñiga: I think I was getting paid fifty dollars a week. Maybe fifty dollars a week.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What did the other member of the family or the other child think of all of this?
Mr. Zúñiga: It was . . .

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Ms. Zúñiga: Well uh, I, I think I got a little opposition from the in-laws. My, my parents were willing to help me out with the children and going to school and they thought that’s a little . . .. The in-laws, it was sort of like, well, you know, you are going to let the woman out of the house, the next thing you know she will be gone and she will be here and she will be there and all this kind of stuff. You know, sorry, but I am going to work. I am going to provide and I am going to do and that is just the way it is.
Mr. Zúñiga: I didn’t have no problem with it.
Ms. Zúñiga: Whether it was a hundred percent accepted from my father-in-law, that didn’t, well, make any difference to me. I, I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the men, but I had things to do. And I had some goals in my life that I was going to pursue.
Mr. Zúñiga: My daddy was a macho man.
Ms. Zúñiga: And so, that is the way it was. So, I did. And I worked with this doctor for three years, and then, after he left, he moved to Wichita Falls, we had another doctor. As a matter of fact, he was from San Antonio, had moved in there. He was OB/GYN [Obstetrician/Gynecologist] and I went and applied. And there was no problem because he was, he had been practicing in San Antonio and he was used to the Hispanics and he knew that there was a lot of Spanish speaking people there. And in Ballinger, too, and the, the fact that I was bi-lingual was a plus. It wasn’t like a minus being Mexican. No, that was a plus. So, I worked there and I worked there for two years and he died of a heart attack, and then, after that, there was a Canadian doctor. He came to Ballinger and after he heard that, because we were sort of like in the same building, that Dr. Briscoe has passed away, he was interested in, in hiring me. So, I worked there for another ten years and had no problem. And when, of course, by that time, the children were grown, you know. Graduated from high

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school and Michael had joined the Navy. Eloise had decided that she wanted to get married. And then, I started thinking of more, more schooling, more education. At that point in time, it wasn’t like I was just doing it for, for the children, but it was something that in the back of my mind, I was wanting to further my education. So, I decided that I would go and apply at Angelo State. But there I went and got my RN.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when did you all move from Winters to Ballinger?
Ms. Zúñiga: I think there was like a move. Was it ‘85?
Mr. Zúñiga: Around there.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why did ya’ll move?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, because we wanted to get away. Basically, the truth, I wanted to get away from the barrios. I lived in the barrios and I felt like I didn't need to live there anymore. I wanted to move somewhere else.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Were you involved in forming LULAC and those meetings?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh yes. Oh yes. There were . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: You said you were secretary, treasurer of the Raza Unida party and obviously you have been, but that is later, no? Did you go to beauty shops and get discriminated at beauty shops? Were, were you the one that called MALDEF? I am trying to get this haircut story in that you started off earlier, but we didn’t talk about it. Could you go to beauty shops in Winters and get your hair done?
Ms. Zúñiga: I, well, I never did because my hair was very, very long. I never cut my hair, so I just always combed it back or up or whatever. So, I, I now know that I had a problem. I didn’t go, so I don't know.
Mr. Zúñiga: The barber shop incident is Winters, Texas is what where we called MALDEF was that we had a, a fellow by the name of Castillo. And he had a barber shop at his house and when they used to discriminate the Mexicanos and wouldn’t give them haircuts. And it got down where he got tired of cutting hairs and he was going to shut down his shop

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and the Mexicanos didn’t have nowhere to cut his hair. So, one Mexicano ventured into Charlie Foster’s barber shop. He ventured in there. I said he quickly got throwed out. Said, "We don’t cut your hair. Don't come back in here." So, they came to me where I was at the service station and said we should do something about that. And so I talked to Charlie Foster and he said, "No. Not today, not tomorrow, never." So, I had heard of MALDEF, and so, I called them. And I think Olvera . . . Was that his name?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Obledo.
Mr. Zúñiga: Obledo, that used to run or was the Executive Director or whatever of MALDEF. He said, "Well we will send some people over there, young people to go up there and get a hair cut or to see what the problem is." And I believe that is when Jose Angel Gutierrez was sent up there that he was the very first Mexicano in the history of Winters to get a haircut. And that was, from then on, we, we got maybe two or three months later, we got some haircuts there, but it has been a struggle. It wasn’t easy. After that they threatened to cut our throats, threatened, sent messages to me. If you come down here, we want you, so we can cut your throat with the rest of them. They finally settled down and, and eventually they hired a Mexicano barber and by the name of Frank Arroyo. And so, it was, it hasn’t, it was nothing pretty that, that we know because anything that happens in a small community, everybody takes it very offensively, you know, when you are trying to change things.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why didn’t you just get up and go where it wasn’t so bad? Why didn’t you go to the Valley where a lot of good welcome-hearted people that are Mexicans around you instead of fighting these battles everyday?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, keep in mind that we were born and raised in West Texas. We were not aware or acquainted with the South Texas people or

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population until later years. We belonged there and they had to give us the same rights that they give other people. And we felt like moving away or running away wasn’t the answer. And I want you to understand that politically, we have one or two senators in West Texas that would just as soon see us dead, me dead and other people, even right now as we speak. I have very few enemies. I call them adversaries. But he is one of them. I have one bitter enemy out there that needs to be defeated and needs to be gotten out of there and . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Is this a state rep or senator or who is it?
Mr. Zúñiga: He is a state representative.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who is this?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I would rather not mention his name.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you are just going to make me look it up in a map.
Mr. Zúñiga: OK. I will call his name. Bob Turner.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Mr. Zúñiga: Now represents Coleman and all that. I believe he is one of the, the racists that would try anything to destroy any kind of movement that, that has just started. We have another one that he is a guy that laughs at you, and then, right behind, cuts you from the back. And that is Junnell.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh yeah?
Mr. Zúñiga: I always said about Junnell
Dr. Gutiérrez: He is very important in the Appropriations [Committee of the legislature].
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes he is. But he just laughs at you, and then, he cuts you in the back. He is not true blue. We have like Senator Temple just got defeated. That is why they defeated him. Because he was a true person. He was a good senator, a good man. We had one that just got elected that I believe is going to be all right contrary to what the people say about the Republican party. I certainly am not a Republican or a Democrat.

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And, of course, now, not even Raza Unida, but I think our state rep now that we have just got elected. When he came running and wanted us to help him, we asked him a question: Are you going to do us like the other people have been doing? There was Representative Cook who had been there twelve years and never had asked one Mexicano to vote for him. And he had the votes in his back pocket. And he said, "Well, let me try. I am going to run in the Republican Party." I said, "Well I want to tell you something. My friend, if you get in there and you do us the same way that this other guy done, we will get you out." So, we didn't think about it as hard when we were starting a Home Health agency in Del Rio for our bosses. But my brother-in-law, Joe, Joe De la Cruz, went up there and asked him and I talked to him about the votes. And he said, "The Mexicano vote is, I don’t need it. I have been there twelve years. I am a shoe-in." And my brother-in-law, De la Cruz, and said never, ever in his life represented a Republican Party. He is a true Democrat even now. He said, "You mean you wouldn’t ask us for our vote." He said, "No. I don't need you." He called me, you know, this is what happened. I said, "OK. I am going to look at it." And Mr. Cook snuck that day. And again this guy that got elected . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now wait a minute. Let’s talk about that. Who did you call? How did you organize? I mean, who, who, how do you get to defeat this guy?
Mr. Zúñiga: We called the people. We have what you call a . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let me change the tape because I am sure this is a, a good story. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. About how you went about defeating this Mr. Woods.
Mr. Zúñiga: Cook.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Cook. I am sorry.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, we have been organizing for years and we have a network.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, who is we?
Mr. Zúñiga: The Mexicanos.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Where? And who are they?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, we cover from, let’s, let’s talk about District 5 of LULAC. We cover fifty-five counties. And we can call each other and we do constantly. I mean, it is just a tremendous network that we have.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, LULAC is the main organization out there?
Mr. Zúñiga: We would say that. And then, of course, here in the Community Action world, we were very fortunate to have, I was the second elected president of that organization, which covered a hundred and fifty seven counties. And we were very, very fortunate to have contacts everywhere. But when we get within a district of representatives, District 63 covers seven counties, so we are, we are very well hooked with the Mexicanos. Seven counties is nothing for us to travel, all of us, the Mexicanos and communicate. And we talked; we had big meetings; we had meetings in houses to get this candidate. And we never could get Mr. Cook to come and talk to us, but Jim Capper was there at every one of those meetings and we said, "OK." We went ahead and, and worked for his election and he got elected. And to my surprise, I was in Del Rio when he called and left, got one of their telephone number, and he called me at Del Rio and he said, "I got elected. I want you and LULAC to be at my breakfast in Austin." He said, "You all would be there when we begun the election and I want you to be there at the very first step. Be there. Bring LULAC." Which is, it surprises his daddy-in-law because he was out of Dallas. And businessman and other people said, "Why in the world would you bring LULAC in here? I mean, you know, you are starting off on the wrong shoe." He said, "These were the people that supported me. These are the people who are going to, going to be with me." So . . .

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you still didn’t tell me how you all worked. I mean, you just told us about a network. I mean, how did you get people to vote Republican? This guy is a Republican, no?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s, that’s hard to do.
Ms. Zúñiga: You could tell about the barbecue that we had.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, we had barbecues and then meetings. But let me tell you one thing.
Ms. Zúñiga: Got the people involved.
Mr. Zúñiga: People, people will believe if a person is telling the truth or not. They had questions to ask this man. And by means, by the beginning when the . . . Mr. Cook, I don’t care who he was, when he said, "I don’t need you. I don’t want you." And that's why I can’t understand. That’s why I said, "I am not Republican and I am not a Democrat ever again." Because how can you sit there and take a Republican or a Democrat and say, "We don’t want you, we don’t need you." And still sit there and say, "Give me some more? I will take it. Slap my face, spit in my face; I am going to take it." We, we do, we, we shouldn’t. And this is what happened with us in, in the, the representative 63. 7, covers seven counties. Mr. Cook would not come out.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you go personally to each one of these counties and talk or just by telephone?
Mr. Zúñiga: Sure we went. We contacted each other by phone and we traveled through, through communities and we told them one thing. All you have to do, Mr. Cook defeated himself, we didn’t. He defeated himself with the Hispanic community when he said, "I don’t need the Mexicano vote. I have already been . . . I am a shoe-in." So what else is there left to do? You see, it was like taking candy away from a baby. Because once you say: No, we don’t need you. I mean, hey, what are you going to do? Sit there and take it again? Try somebody

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else. I don't care who it is. And this guy, by, by us electing him, I hope that it doesn't prove wrong because we thought you’ll be out. He, he’s got a hard road to hoe because this, this is a Democratic district and he went in there and got it. But he, once he, he invited us; we have been there; he has been in our house; he has been in our community constantly; always stays in contact with the Mexicanos todo el tiempo. (Mexicans all the time.)
Dr. Gutiérrez: How many Mexican votes are there in that district?
Mr. Zúñiga: Uhh
Dr. Gutiérrez: Ten percent, twenty percent, forty?
Mr. Zúñiga: I don't know. It, it, I would say that there would be probably be seventeen percent.
Dr. Gutiérrez: About seventeen?
Mr. Zúñiga: About seventeen percent.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, seventy?
Mr. Zúñiga: Seventeen.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Seventeen.
Mr. Zúñiga: Seventeen. Seventeen. Maybe twenty at the most. But at the same time, he was there also with the Anglo community. The Chamber of Commerce and many of those things. And once you have been in there twelve years, you think you have got it made. You think you are part of the furniture. You don't need to go back and instill in rural communities, you have got to go and shake hands. You got to go tell those people. And this guy has been there time and time again. He just got elected and we’ve seen more of him than we have seen that other guy in twelve years. It is sad to say because most people say, "Well, the Democratic Party is the answer or the Republican party is the answer." I think the man has a lot to do with it. The person. Right or wrong.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Did, did Cook come back and tell you he was sorry or that he learned his lesson?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. He ain’t never, we ain’t never heard of him.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did anybody talk about it as to why the Mexicans got all riled up and?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. The, the Republican people got very excited that, that they thought there was a new movement within the Mexicano community as far as turning to the Republican Party. But we have been very cautious to make sure that if they get elected, they are going to be responsive to our needs and if not, then they won’t get our votes next time.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you have a lot of people there that are not citizens or, or you all have citizenship programs going on?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. We have, we have quite a few, Jose. But the thing now is in a turmoil over this laws, you know. They are scared to death of showing up or. We have a lot of illegal aliens around the country. We were in Mason not too long ago and in a LULAC meeting, to my surprise, I guess it was twenty-five, thirty of them showed up to that meeting, to try to get citizenship papers. We still have a lot of illegal aliens in the country.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you have those programs in your agency for citizenship? Or is anybody doing citizenship classes in that area?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think the Catholic Church is doing some. LULAC is doing some in the bigger towns. There’s some, I think Rios has some pretty good programs that LULAC started.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who?
Mr. Zúñiga: Rios, Rolando Rios. But he is, of course he is a lawyer.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh.
Mr. Zúñiga: He, he is trying to get them out there.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Private.
Mr. Zúñiga: Private, yeah.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, who are the movers and shakers in these counties? Let’s say in Mason, who, who are the Mexicans that are doing things to make things happen?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think that the LULAC organization is one of the strongest in Mason. It is just organized. I think that . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: And who are these people? What are their names?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, like Anna Velez. The Velez family are very strong. There are others. Rodriguez’s or Hernandez’s. You know, there are a lot of, quite a few of our families are together. Keep in mind too that they have been persecuted because of the movement that they are making it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What for?
Mr. Zúñiga: They are very persecuted every where they go. But . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: But they are also winning.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. They are also winning. But do you know that in Mason County, we had in the city of Mason, for the beginning of the city, a mayor, two city councilmen. And LULAC got there and we said, "Oh no. How in the world can ya’ll live like this?" So, we sued them and even before they had a, a council, that Anna Velez signed the papers and I believe her mother or her sister, her, her sister. And to sue the city and now they have four councils, city councilmen, one Mexicana just got elected. Went right to the school board, sued them and they have a Mexicano, a Mexicana who is a LULAC member on the school board, which is doing a very good job. But that's not only happened to one community. There have been many, many, many communities.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s talk about them. What is the other counties that, that you are involved in? Who are the players?
Mr. Zúñiga: Runnels County.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.

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Mr. Zúñiga: We have, in Runnels County we have a, a very big group. LULAC is very much organized. We, we have individuals that have been come for the forefront.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Such as?
Mr. Zúñiga: A registered nurse, Mexicana, that we had in Winters, I mean in Ballinger. What is his name?
Ms. Zúñiga: Alex.
Mr. Zúñiga: Alex. But he ran
Dr. Gutiérrez: Alex what?
Ms. Zúñiga: Luera.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Mr. Zúñiga: And he, he ran and he organized the community big time to go ahead and got the candidates ready to run.
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, first he filed for single member districts.
Mr. Zúñiga: In the city, when we got it all out, he also gave LULAC the, the, the credit. Of course, we don't work for credit. You know, I, I think that LULAC was very strong in doing it and, and somebody had to do it. And my wife and I were the ones that signed the papers against the city of Ballinger and against the school. You know, when the suit came out? That was we filed.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, is Rolando Rios doing all these suits or is it MALDEF?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Or is it South Texas Legal Services?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. Rolando Rios did all of them.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. All right. Give me another county because there are seven counties, for example, in this district of the state representative. Who are the other people that are active in the other counties?
Ms. Zúñiga: The, well, the counties, but there are also like different school districts. Wasn’t Winters . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Winters.

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Ms. Zúñiga: . . .here filed?
Mr. Zúñiga: Filed a suit. We filed a suit against the city of Winters and won here.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What county is that in?
Mr. Zúñiga: That’s in Ward County.
Ms. Zúñiga: Ward County.
Mr. Zúñiga: And also
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do what?
Ms. Zúñiga: School district.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Wellness?
Mr. Zúñiga: Winters and, and the school.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, what’s the county?
Ms. Zúñiga: Runnels.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Runnels. The same county.
Mr. Zúñiga: And Rotan. That is in Fisher County.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Fisher.
Mr. Zúñiga: They didn't have, they tried for years and years to get elected and they were very discouraged, very small community.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who led that fight there?
Mr. Zúñiga: LULAC led that fight. But the community, they have organized a LULAC council and . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who are some of these people?
Mr. Zúñiga: Martinezes, there is a young man over there, Tellez, that they signed the contract of the suit.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What is his first name?
Mr. Zúñiga: I forget what his first name is.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What is Martinez’ first name?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think one of them is Joe Martinez, but there, there is so many people we deal with that names just and mostly keep in mind that I go by last names. I hardly ever call anybody by their first name.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You go to have a rolodex. You got to have phone numbers.

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Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. When I go out to the man, I will say Mr. somebody by their last name and but I have them, of course, in, in and I have all the, the files on them, kind of where they sent them to us. But as far as me ever going up and saying, "Hey Joe." I don't do that. I learn their last name. I never maybe think about their first name because or try to learn it unless it is in writing over here in the little list of who the members are. But this was a young guy and I remember that he is a union, some kind of union, and he is supposed to be in Dallas. But he, he did a tremendous job as far as organizing the people. And the suit was easy. Now they have two city councilmen and one school board member in Rotan, Texas. The story goes on and on.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK. That’s four counties. You have still got three more to go.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, in Eastland we don’t have enough, we don’t have enough Mexicanos to build in one district. And one district and go ahead and get in there and in Coleman, we didn't have but we had representatives. We have groups that are working, councils that are working.
Dr. Gutiérrez: LULAC?
Mr. Zúñiga: In LULAC. Yes sir.
Ms. Zúñiga: How about Brady? What ya’ll have done with Brady?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, Brady.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Brady?
Mr. Zúñiga: Brady, Brady was sued by a different, different groups. It had to be MALDEF that did it in Brady in McCullough County. Bill Lopez, one of the strongest leaders there. And Lupe, but he is McCullough County. Keep in mind that it has been a thirty, thirty-five year struggle. We didn't get there overnight. And we still got to keep on going. It is an everyday . . . You go in there and you try to sue the Chamber of Commerce and soon you find out that it is going to be LULAC or some other organizations there to, to hold them. Our

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meetings are to try to discuss issues that won’t let them know. One of the bank buildings, the Mason, they can’t find a place to, to have a banquet in, to have a dinner in; the Mexicanos.
Dr. Gutiérrez: That sounds like a good business opportunity.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. Somebody is going to have to get it, I guess.
Dr. Gutiérrez: A good salon (meeting hall) instead of a plataforma. (concrete slab for dances).
Mr. Zúñiga: I think we are going to have to go through the school when we have. We are going to have our next district meeting, our next LULAC district meeting in Mason in November. And I think that we are going to have to go and probably get the school cafeteria or something to have it because they have tried two or three times for that matter. But we will probably prevail over there.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, tell us about LULAC politics. I mean, you have got the first national president is a woman; the state directors are women in LULAC. How do you get along with these people? Have you been supportive of, of these people that are in office in LULAC? Have they been supportive of you?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes. I think that when our national president ran for office, she was a candidate, of my choice, their choice, in our district, District 5; I, I think that she done a good job. I think that women have a role to play not only at the home, but I have always been if you believe in equal opportunity, my God, you certainly got to believe that the women have got to be a part of it. I remember when LULAC used to have the men separated up here. The LULAC Council for the men and another LULAC Council for the women. Twenty eight years or thirty years ago, we, when we first got into it, I go, "What’s this?" I mean, discrimination, racism. Our discrimination was within our ranks. I mean, why have the women over there and the men over here? Why can’t we have them together? And when we organized our LULAC

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Council I said, "We won’t have it." We said, "The women has got to be together. And the women has got to go ahead and be a part of it. And . . ."
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now, did you all decide that as men or did the women decide that and tell the men . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: No, we decided.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .that you all are wrong?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. We decided that as the men. I have always been like that. And I have always felt like . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s true, Elizabeth?
Ms. Zúñiga: He decided that, yes. It was understood, and then, said that if we were going to have a council it was going to be together.
Mr. Zúñiga: That’s right. Or else we won’t. I mean, what’s this about separating men now? Financially we used to have separated council. Now, we don’t have one now. We don’t, we don’t do that. I mean, you are married to them. I mean, they are married to you and you married her, what, what’s this? So, anyway we went at it and started that and you are going back to the next president. I think she is going to do a good job. I think Angie is doing us a fair job. I think sometimes she gets a little bit slow. And I have told her time and time again, "Angie, let’s get on with the program." I think that our district director, we have had two women, and I think that Yolanda Flores is doing us a real good job. She had no opposition this last time from anybody which is she is doing a good job. Now, I firmly believe that she was a candidate for the, for the second election and the way we feel in, in the District 5 and some of the other districts don’t do it the same way, but we work it like that. We feel like a good candidate and is doing a good job, we don’t need to change. We don’t go into battles and, and we will try to defeat somebody else and try to play, play, play the back

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alley politics. I never believed in that and won’t believe that tomorrow. And that is the way that we hold it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s go back to some event that occurred. For example, the war in Viet Nam that many young Mexicanos became causalities in that area.
Mr. Zúñiga: I think the war in Viet Nam was a very sad war. I was drafted three times, but I can’t see and can’t hear right. In fact, I volunteered and I was drafted a couple more times and never did get to make it. I know of a lot of Mexicanos that went back. I know a family, my pro . . . the Rocha’s, in Winters, their, they had three, three sons which would be that and all three went. And I think two of them fought in Viet Nam. When they came back they couldn’t even find jobs. That was sad. So many Mexicanos went and, and fight in our wars and when we get back, they are still in the same way, that they don’t give them the opportunity that they give other, other veterans. But thank God Mr. Rocha got a job with the post office now and is very successful. I, you asked me if that war should have been? I live in America. If it is good enough to live in, it is good enough to fight for. That is what I believe. Now, I don’t, not everybody might believe it like that and I have always raised my family like that. If you believe in something, fight for it. And that is America. Whether it is right or wrong, like the Viet Nam War, I wouldn’t want to get into saying it was wrong that our country got involved. The only thing I say is that we should have went in and whopped them and wiped them out and come back out. We could have won it very quickly. It was a political war. Everybody knows that.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did the G. I. Forum ever follow up and try to help those veterans? Is there any influence in that area?

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Mr. Zúñiga: G. I. Forum is not as strong as, as LULAC is. I don’t know why. It just never did, very, very small organization in San Angelo. But as far as being organized throughout, it is just not very strong in West Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: How about Southwest Voter? You know, I mean, the Raz Unida Party did things for, for Mexicanosfor themselves instead of doing it for Democrats or for Republicans, these white candidates. We were doing it for ourselves. One of the important things is Voter Registration and then along came Willie Velasquez, Southwest Voter. What is the impact of Southwest Voter in your area? Have they ever funded Voter Registration campaigns?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes they have. They were, they were two or three different areas that Willie Velasquez or and, and the Southwest Voter put some money into it and a lot of, a lot of Mexicanoswere, were registered. I think it’s, it is a must that we keep doing it. I think that the great Willie Velasquez, one of the very few or one of the greatest men as far as having his heart in the right place toward getting people to get registered and not build his opinion. I don’t guess I ever heard him give his opinion about any sort of candidate that I know of. And that was good. I believe like that. If you are going to go up there and, and register people, then let the people decide on their own where they are at, our communities.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Now this Johnny Andrade that you talked about, has he ever come back and, and contributed things in the community in that area?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, he . . . Wait, he left. Johnny Andrade left years ago from Brownwood. He has got his Doctor’s degree. I was reading a newspaper not too long ago where he was a consultant and been in one of the main speakers or consultant in California and to my surprise, you know, he did well. And I think he worked in the [President] Carter Administration and we were very proud of him. He, he would be a great, great leader in that part. I have got, he and I, he

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was the chairman of the board of CTOs for, I think, two years. But he would go out there and we would go to Dallas to talk about a program, he would go up there and borrow a typewriter and he just whistled Dixie on it. I mean, he just typed that stuff and got up, whipped out that stuff. Very sharp. I mean, he was, he would make it, make it big someday. He had a tremendous mind. I always told him that Johnny is going to make it big someday.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Are, are we talking about the same fellow? I think he is in Chicago, isn’t he? Wasn’t he always . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. He was, he got . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .the, the equivalent of the Southwest Voters, but this is Midwest Voters?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. You are right. He is in Chicago, yes sir.
Dr. Gutiérrez: We are talking about the same guy?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. We are talking. When you don't hardly even remember him, but no, that’s him.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Andrade. You said De Anda.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yep. Johnny Andrade was another one and Johnny De Anda is the other one. But Johnny De Anda was also from Brownwood. He was also very much involved in the Raza Unida Party.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Mr. Zúñiga: And he was very tremendous in many, many, he was a very active in the Mexicano cause, which he is very sick now. I found out that he had sugar diabetes and is very sick. He is still . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: There were two Johnny Diaz.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. He was on our board.
Ms. Zúñiga: Tambien. (Also.)
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah he was.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when are the numbers going to make a difference here in, in that area? I am sure that the Mexicano population must be at forty, forty five, fifty percent in all those areas, those towns.
Mr. Zúñiga: The numbers could make a difference today if we, the Mexicanos, would get together more and more. And I have always been critical about ourselves like this that if we get a good job and we kind of seem to, you know, want to get in our own little world. And we stay there. Just like the other day I had a Mexicano that worked at Haliburton and he is from Sonora. Very active, they have got a strong net there and had our LULAC organization, but he got hurt and I asked him, "Where have you been all this time?" He had been with Haliburton working, making good money. We have got to get our people to think that we have got to work together. It is so easy to divide us and you said, "Why, why is it divided?" Because we can get our feelings hurt so easy. We are different. We can get our feelings hurt together for one another. We don't come back. That dang Gringo, he always comes back. He always heals himself no matter how sorry or how good he is, he wants to get his eligibility back, shake hands, and forget it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the two magic words of solidarity: I am sorry.
Mr. Zúñiga: I am sorry. I am sorry. La zorra (The fox) my daddy says, "The Gringos give you that zorra and everything is fine." I am sorry. And that is it. And we don't. You know, we stand and we, we, we don’t let that person come back and, and get us again. And whether we are saying well, are you saying that you should let that person get you again? No. I am saying that we should meet halfway and sit down and talk about our issues, but not let it divide us. No, we could make a difference today.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, why don't you review some of this history? What are some of the significant changes that have occurred here in the last twenty five,

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thirty years, say from, from the time you all got married to the present time? You have seen a lot of changes out there. What are some of those changes? What has not changed?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I think some of the changes are that the Mexicano has asked, every time something happens, he has asked what am I going to get, where am I going to fit in to? That is one of the big changes I see in communities. We are not sitting there anymore and saying it is going to come to us. We go out and hit the front and not only we, I say, but in every community there is leaders whether they be a small group, they are already looking at what’s going to happen. I think there is the biggest movement of Mexicanos. And I was telling our staff the other day there at the Home Health agency that they are all Anglo women. They don't understand why I am up here, where I am at. I told them, "There is the biggest, biggest movement that we ever heard in the history of the Mexicanos, right now. Everywhere you go, in every community we go to, people are hungry to hear about changes that are going to come." I see it. And it is going to come in the next five years. We, we will see some changes. I thought I would never see them in my lifetime, but I feel that everybody, wherever you go, Mexicanos are getting together to see the difference that have come about. They see things that are helping us. I see different people in, in this MAD [Mexican American Democrats] organization that was here today, of the last two days. There is different groups of people from the grass roots that are coming and saying: No more of this. And lots of changes are coming. And we didn’t see, the four or five years ago the Reps. and all those guys that have already got it made. And, and they care less. They get elected and reelected and so far on. And I think these people, as they come up and build this, this strength that they can put together, that change will come.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you think, obviously, then that the big civil rights push is the, the frontier out in West Texas?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh yes. I think the civil rights movement is, is very much alive. I think the only thing that keeps us down right now is ourselves. We have got to keep moving every day, every minute. And I think about what the Gringo always said. You know, give a Mexicano a beer and a woman and he is satisfied. That is wrong.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I never heard that part, but . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: It never existed.
Dr. Gutiérrez: I’ve heard about the fajitas (beef skirts) and the pachangas (political party rally), but . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. That was a . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: In West Texas, it is a beer and a woman?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. A beer and a woman or a bottle of tequila. They said it is fine. That is not true. But anyway, we . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s a good beginning though.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, it’s a good beginning, but, you know,
Ms. Zúñiga: What a life.
Mr. Zúñiga: No, I think that we, we got this, got to ask for more.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What should we ask for?
Mr. Zúñiga: We should ask for more pay when we do a days work. We should ask for better jobs. We should ask to sit in and at city council, city councils, not only as representatives, but to sit down and, and, and, and say, "We need this for our community." And county commissioners the same way. The county commissioners still have their meetings in little bitty rooms where the four county commissioners fit in and county judge sits there in a little bitty corner. I think we should say, "You need to make bigger rooms for us, for all of us to fit in there, the poor people." That is some of the things that we should ask for.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Who do you think has been our most effective leader of all time?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh my. What an unfair question. Some of . . . Mexicanos you mean?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Yes.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, I think you yourself have been a tremendous leader.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, thank you. But other than me.
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, other than you, we have, I think we have a lot of, a lot of small, smaller, smaller, small little scale. When you are looking at Jose Angel Gutierrez, he is head and shoulders above all of us and, and with all due respect, that is true. Because you have done so much for us. But then you come down and we have the Garcia, Angie Garcia, and then, you have the Mike Zuniga’s and you have the Henry Guevara’s and you have the, the, the judge of, Serna, now. You have thousands of Mexicanos like that. But keep in mind one thing. We wouldn’t have been there if we hadn’t had the Jose Angel Gutierrez and, and the other people and maybe you can look at the reps, some of the Reps. Gonzalo Barrientos, in his own little way, is a good leader. The Mexicano Reps from, what is that other one from, that other Rep that, I think is from . . . State representative? It’ so unfair to him not to think about his name.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, what town? Maybe I can help you.
Mr. Zúñiga: He’s from the Valley.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, there is Jim Solis, there is Richard Ramon, there is . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Gosh almighty. He has been a spokesman throughout and I think he will run for governor someday. The other one is Mayor, ex mayor from, from San Antonio. I think he is a Mexicano, was the mayor.
Ms. Zúñiga: [Henry] Cisneros.
Mr. Zúñiga: Cisneros was a good, good, good leader. I think that in his own way, everybody has their own way of doing things. And if you take everybody’s way and make a whole out of it, a whole package, then you can, you can begin to put it together. But as far as me saying, like

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for instance, if Cisneros, maybe he didn't hear about the convention. But I think that the people that this convention here was history in the making last night. They should have or then today, there should have been people here, eight or ten or fifteen elected official Mexicanos and to my, my surprise, there weren’t. That’s sad because they should have been here and listening. There was enough here to create because without those people they are not going to get elected.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Who do you think Elizabeth, is the most effective leaders ever in our community?
Ms. Zúñiga: I don't know who, who is to tell you the truth.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Most effective organization.
Ms. Zúñiga: I think LULAC is really effective. And maybe when I say I didn't know, it was not like a put down to you. No, I have to go back and I have to say that I think that the Raza Unida Party had a tremendous effect on some of the people as far as West Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Why?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, it was just the fact that we had to, we had to know that being together, being united, even though we were in a different part of the state where the population, the Mexican Americans are not as great, it doesn’t make any difference. If we were united throughout and that we have leaders that believe that what we can do something together wherever you are and whatever you have it, you can contribute as a whole. You know, we’ll have, we have the movement, so we have to take great men like you to be able to . . . I mean, yeah, there is a battle out there. You have to be a very brave person because I am sure that you encountered a lot of opposition. It is almost like you had to almost stand alone and somebody is going to have to kind of knock you down, you might say.
Mr. Zúñiga: And then get up. You gave us hope. La Raza Unida Party gave us hope.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Why do you think it failed?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think that one of our candidates got in trouble. And when he did, a lot of people judged us about one person’s mistake. It, it could have been, it could have been very strong. But at the same time, keep in mind that this country is made on a two party. There has never been a third party that came in and was successful. La Raz Unida was very close to being a successful party. It would have had to have created interest within the Anglos and the Blacks and brought them in for us to really have won in time. And it could have been. It is just that it was too fast, too soon, too quick. And it just failed.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Victor Morales almost became the U. S. Senator. What was the response to him in your area?
Mr. Zúñiga: He is great. And as I listen to our leader here saying that he was Mexican American Democrats that, that was a great movement for Victor Morales, I agree, but I also disagree. Because of the fact that once Victor Morales was a Mexicano, he is going to be the same thing as Dan Morales. Dan Morales might make a few mistakes, but he is a Mexicano and a Mexicano will vote for him. Well, the Republican Mexicanos might not, but I know a lot of them that are. So, once you are a Mexicano and you are a good candidate, that’s Victor, of course, had the charisma to put the people together. And he came at the right time. And people were going to vote for him. It wasn’t any one certain person, person that or one certain group that was a success, success for Victor Morales. I think it was everybody. And that is why he was so, so good. We seen him in Ballinger. We seen him in Del Rio and we have seen him everywhere and like last night, you know, where we, we spoke. People just rallies to him.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What is going to happen in your area in the next ten years?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, I hope we have a lot of change because we are going to work hard at it.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: What kind? I mean, what’s going to happen?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think that we are going to have to get more Mexicanos elected to office. I think we are going to have to get the right Mexicanos elected. Economics is not going to be any more greater because we are so small in numbers in community, but I think that we are going to have to get our children more involved, our young people more involved in what's going on.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Are your kids involved?
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You, the Zuniga family, you know, two things, actually they are three. You are going to pay, you know, you are going to file the income tax. And you are going to be a LULACer. And, of course, you are going to be a Zuniga. To be a Zuniga you have to be those things. And, you know you are going to die. That’s the way we are. They are very much in LULAC; they are very much involved, and we are proud of them for being involved. I think our kids have been involved ever since because they have seen the need and we showed them the need through the years. And, and they are very sensitive toward communities.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Elizabeth, you said a minute ago that it takes great men to do some of these things, but what I have heard you all say is that there is a lot of great women. In Mason you talked only about women being involved. Were the leaders, your district director, your state leader, your national leader of LULAC are all women, so it takes some great women here. Are women doing all the work now in, in that area? The political work?
Ms. Zúñiga: I think they are doing a lot of it. I don't say that they are doing all of it, but yes, I think that they are being more involved.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, being truthful, I mean, it used to be only men that got involved and get these things and went to meetings and they talked in bars or ranchos (farms), you know, or, or outside in the pool hall or in a truck

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or off the farm. Now, women are right there and as you pointed out. And most of the work in, in campaigns is done by women. Voter registration campaigns, those drives, Southwest Voter is mostly women. I, I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I am trying to find out what is happening and who is doing it in, in your area. Role of women.
Ms. Zúñiga: That’s a tough question. I am sorry. I don’t think I have the answers.
Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. What are you going to be doing ten years from now?
Ms. Zúñiga: Finish my mail. Basically I am looking at having my . . . Are you talking about the, the politics?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Whatever you, you, you . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Or are you talking personal goals or . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Elizabeth Zuniga.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .family?
Dr. Gutiérrez: How about all three?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, personally I think I am going to be, I am looking at going into business for myself. Number one. My children, like my son right now is at the age where he wants to be involved with LULAC and I am going to be one there that will support him a hundred percent. And not only LULAC, but if he wants to run, like he is thinking about maybe even running for a city council or he thinks that there is a possibility and I think it is too, for him to be the mayor of Ballinger, Texas one of these days. Things like, like that is, I mean, this is just talking about family, but a lot of times we have to think about what we can do with our family because this is what we can think about other people being able to do too. Right? You expect, I don't expect the changes to happen out there if you can’t change within here. That's the way I look at things.
Dr. Gutiérrez: OK.
Ms. Zúñiga: So,

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Dr. Gutiérrez: What changes do you see in your area over the next ten years?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, I, I think with LULAC working in a single member district, and all the law suits that we have had . . . I think there is going to be more Hispanic people in, and it might be women or they might be men, that will be encouraged that they can run for those offices. And I don't think that we have very many council women or board members at the school and things like that que sean mujeres. (that have been women.) But I think if they get up there and start getting involved in, in the politics that they will call the, the, be willing to take the challenges into going up there and doing some of that themselves. OK. It is just not completely for the men to do, because they do a lot of the work. I mean, women are organizers. It is just like, I had to compare that with, with home, you know. The women takes care of a lot of things. You, you are everything. You are a chauffeur, you are the baby-sitter, you are the cook, you are, you are everything. And I think, and I think that women are, are persons that can do a lot of things. I mean, you can still take care of home and you can do all these things and you can still go out there and be just like a man can be and you can do the speeches; you can run for office, you can run the city. You can run the country one of these days too.
Mr. Zúñiga: Also too, women are more sensitive. The word was said yesterday and this comes to mind, that they are more sensitive than men are. You said why? What do you mean by that? Well, we have the first elected judge, county judge mujer (woman) in Runnels County. Judge Egan is very good at the job.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Edith?
Mr. Zúñiga: Egan.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh Egan. What’s her first name?
Ms. Zúñiga: Marilyn.
Mr. Zúñiga: Marilyn.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Marilyn Egan.
Mr. Zúñiga: We had, we had another one in Commanche County. One of the most racist counties in the state of Texas.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Was it Wanda something?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. I forget. Allen. Judge Allen used to be there and in Commanche.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Because when I was a county judge, there was a woman in West Texas and they used to call her Wanda Woman.
Mr. Zúñiga: Wanda Woman?
Dr. Gutiérrez: And she was a county judge because her name was Wanda something.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. But this woman, this woman got elected. And in the first, for the first time in the history of the county judge’s office, she hired her a Mexicana worker immediately, immediately. She didn’t go out there and ask the commissioners and all this stuff. I knew this, that girl had been working there on, on a little program and I think she was a VISTA worker. The, the state had the VISTA program and she hired her. She took her off the VISTA program and hired her as a secretary. Darn gone it. As soon as she retired or didn't run, what happened? The Anglo men went in there, Anglo secretary. Let the girl go. They placed her somewhere else. So you see, women are more sensitive of all, all races to think more about helping others that are Mexicanos. I think Mexicanos, we still have other means, still have a macho image that we sometimes think that the Mexicanos, the man is the only one that can do it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Were you involved in the Viva Kennedy movement?
Mr. Zúñiga: In the who?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Viva Kennedy. 1960.
Mr. Zúñiga: Yes sir. I was. Uh huh. I was very much involved with Kennedy Clubs. I think we have come a long ways with helping them out.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What, what did you do back then? Do you remember?
Mr. Zúñiga: We registered a lot of Mexicanos.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s poll tax time.
Mr. Zúñiga: They took them to, took them to the, you know, called them. Funny. When we didn’t work, a lot of the group that we had, we didn’t work the polls and the Mexicanos didn't vote. And we get on the phones, people would vote.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Were you in that Del Rio march?
Mr. Zúñiga: No sir. Never did go. I never did make it. I had an opportunity to go, but I think we were doing something else and didn’t, didn’t go.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you help any of the school walkouts in West Texas?
Mr. Zúñiga: Yeah. We have helped, we helped some. Not recently. Recently we had a kind of a protest march in Colorado City where they have done this the last two years or three years ago.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Was that the cemetery issue?
Mr. Zúñiga: No. It was over school hiring.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What, what was going on?
Mr. Zúñiga: Well, they don’t, they don't hire Mexicanos. The school system still don't hire Mexicanos. You can get all kind of education, prepare yourself, school board, they ignore you. And they didn't hire a qualified Mexicana who taught school and we went out there and had a little march in front of the, the school for them.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Any results?
Mr. Zúñiga: I think they were very sensitive of us. A Mexicano got elected to the school board and I think that since then that we, they have changed school superintendents. And we have never been involved in, well, I hate the word confrontation, but we have never been involved trying to sensitize the school, that the school superintendent had done with his job. LULAC would go in there and we could sit there and talk with them and talk to them and Eaton, Texas superintendent called them. Sonora superintendent called him. Stanford superintendent called him. We go in there and we try to reason with, with the

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superintendents, but they make mistakes and they tried to cover them up. By that time, a real issue will come up and they are already goners. I know that in Eaton, you got some bad Democrats and I, a couple of the guys, but mostly he and I, and he’s, his son got discriminated in basketball. So, we made an issue to go over there and look at it because the kid was a good, good basketball player. And we talked to the superintendent, had meeting after meeting. I mean, packed house, and they wouldn’t do anything. Finally the superintendent was losing ground and he finally got us together in a small office and we were going to have, we all had our tape recorders and everything, in this building. And I went up there and he told, told me, said, "Mr. Zuniga and Mr. Lopez come into my office and let us talk to you." He said, "I got a chief of police that is going to arrest you. If you go on through with this meeting." Said, "You have been threatening us and they are going to arrest you." And I thought, boy here’s where we find out what you are made out of Mr. Lopez. Mr. Lopez says, "We might as well get arrested." And we go back to that meeting and after that is when I went back to the office, I had the secretary type a letter to HHS and all that stuff about the blackmail that I had seen by that superintendent and he is gone.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You didn’t get arrested?
Mr. Zúñiga: Of course not. No way he could arrest me. He was just threatening, so that come back. But again, that is one of the things that we are talking about. That the steady going out and said OK, I am going to hire her and one or two Mexicanos, give them an opportunity. They are stubborn. They don't want to do it and they would rather lose everything. Consequently, they lose their job. Sad to say, but that is the way it is.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: We have covered a lot of ground. What have we forgotten? What do you want to talk about that we didn't cover? Or something that you need to say that I didn't have the sense to ask you?
Mr. Zúñiga: No, I don't have anything. That I only appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this tape and I hope that it did enhances somebody else’s thinking somewhere down the line.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you, you know what is obvious about this? I, I mean, I am sure you figured it out. By doing enough of these tapes, we are reconstructing an entire history.
Mr. Zúñiga: Right.
Dr. Gutiérrez: So, all of this will be a history and you will be part of that because you are the history. I mean, you all have been making that history and are continuing making of it. You will get a copy of the tape, but you have got to come get it. And it will be transcribed in, in print form. You will get that too. But you have got to come get it.
Mr. Zúñiga: Where is that at?
Dr. Gutiérrez: Arlington, when we have a reception honoring all the people that did the interviews.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, we will come and get it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: You have to trek up there. I don't know how soon I can get this done, but if you, if I do it soon enough, you will be part of the group in October. If not, you will be part of the group in February.
Mr. Zúñiga: That will be fine.
Ms. Zúñiga: What part of October?
Dr. Gutiérrez: 23rd, 22nd, 24th, somewhere around there. It is a Thursday. I don’t know the exact date.
Mr. Zúñiga: Why don’t you put, yeah, why don’t you put us maybe in February because she is going to . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: Yeah. I am going to Honduras.
Mr. Zúñiga: She is going to the Honduras to do some work over there.

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Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, go ahead. Tell us about that. You are expanding your horizons to Central America.
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, yeah, Central America. I have been to South America also. It is an opportunity that I have had with a group of plastic surgeons. This is a medical mission to them from Austin called Docs for Smiles and I have been going for the last, maybe, six or seven years. I have been to Quito, Ecuador and I have been to El Salvador, El Salvador, El Salvador and our next mission sight is going to be Honduras.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What, what is it you do?
Ms. Zúñiga: We are
Dr. Gutiérrez: You fix children’s faces or mouths?
Ms. Zúñiga: Uh huh. We do the, the lip, the cleft palate . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: For the cleft palate?
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .repair. Uh huh.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Free?
Ms. Zúñiga: Yes. And I volunteer my time. Of course, I take a week’s vacation and I travel with a group. Every, everything is, is free. I mean, we volunteer. Everything, we take all of our surgical instruments, all the medical supplies.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Is this for some church group or . . .
Ms. Zúñiga: No.
Dr. Gutiérrez: . . .is it a private organization?
Ms. Zúñiga: No. This is called Austin’s Smile. It’s a . . .
Dr. Gutiérrez: Austin’s Smile?
Ms. Zúñiga: Austin’s Smile. Yeah. Because what we do is we, we, we repair the lips, so we give that child a perfect smile. And so, I have, that has been one of my opportunities I really felt real strong about.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you do any of that work in, in your area because there are a lot of kids around here that can’t afford it either?

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Ms. Zúñiga: Well, no. We, we don't. I think that maybe the plastic surgeons there in Austin do some, but you see, they don't have the, the incidents of the cleft palate are not as great in the United States as they are, especially like in South America.
Dr. Gutiérrez: What’s caused that?
Ms. Zúñiga: Well, they have a couple of theories. The one of them is that they think it is a genetic defect and that that comes from the Mayan Indians. The other is that maybe the nutrition, no prenatal care, poor nutrition for the mother can cause it.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the first one can’t be true because there is a lot of Anglos that are not Mayan and have cleft palate.
Ms. Zúñiga: And, and no, I, I don’t.
Dr. Gutiérrez: It must be the nutrition.
Ms. Zúñiga: I don’t know. They say, that’s what they say. It is just a genetic defect they say that came from and they think it was from the Mayan.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Hmmm.
Ms. Zúñiga: The thing is that over there, I think the incidents are so great because those people are poor and they don’t have much of a way to travel, so they have, they kind of marry second, third, fourth cousins, so it is more . . .
Mr. Zúñiga: Intermarriage.
Ms. Zúñiga: . . .because they are more...
Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, all right. Well, then we’ll include you in February.
Mr. Zúñiga: OK.
Dr. Gutiérrez: We can get you out of that West Texas cold and bring you to the, to the North Texas cold. I want to thank you for your time. I, I don't know if you realize it, but I got three hours out of you. Henry sitting out, I mean Mike Zuniga and Elizabeth, you were in a hurry, but I got three hours out of you. I thank you.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh my God. What time is it now?

Page: 96
Dr. Gutiérrez: It is a quarter to twelve.
Mr. Zúñiga: Oh, my God. We better go check out and get out of here.
Dr. Gutiérrez: Thank you.
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