The Illusion of Inclusion: The Untold Political Story of San Antonio 9780292745124

Citation preview

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The Illusion of Inclusion

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History, Culture, and Society Series Sponsored by the Center for Mexican American Studies The University of Texas at Austin

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The Illusion of Inclusion The Untold Political Story of San Antonio

by Rodolfo Rosales

University of Texas Press, Austin

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Copyright © 2000 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2000 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. ⬁ The paper used in this book meets the minimum require䊊 ments of ANSI / NISO Z39.48 –1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosales, Rodolfo. The illusion of inclusion : the untold political story of San Antonio / by Rodolfo Rosales. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (History, culture, and society series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-292-77102-9 (cloth : alk. paper). — isbn 0-292-77103-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Mexican Americans— Texas—San Antonio—Politics and government—20th century. 2. Middle class— Texas—San Antonio— Political activity—History—20th century. 3. San Antonio (Tex.)— Politics and government—20th century. 4. San Antonio (Tex.)— Ethnic relations. 5. San Antonio (Tex.)—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. f394.s29m57 2000 324⬘.089⬘68720764351— dc21 99-42794

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This is for Those who dared to dream but are not with us anymore Those who still dream and dare to act on those dreams Those whom the dreams are for.

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Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Chapter 1. Introduction 1

Chapter 2. Posing the Correct Questions 19

Part One. The Partisan Era 41

Chapter 3. The Shaping of a Political Agenda and Its Consequences 45

Chapter 4. Coalition Politics: Trench Political Warfare 62

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Part Two. A Period of Transition 79

Chapter 5. The Changing of the Guard 83

Chapter 6. The Transitional Period 104

Part Three. Political Pluralism and Its Consequences 137

Chapter 7. Style and Strategy in San Antonio Politics 141

Chapter 8. The Cultural Is Political; the Political Is Cultural 159

Chapter 9. The Question of Inclusion: A Final Note 178

Appendix: San Antonio Mayors and City Council Members, 1951–1999 191

Notes 197

Bibliography 219

Index 231

Faces of San Antonio through Time: Photographs 123

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Acknowledgments

I would not have finished this project, as important as it is to my life career goals, if it had not been for the support and understanding of so many people. It is so easy to forget when someone is there for you. I hope I do not. Rosa Rosales . . . I cannot begin to thank you for all your love, for all your patience, and for all your understanding. Oh, and for the real life political experience that you and Angela Garcia provided me while I labored. My parents, Arturo y Otilia, and Rosa’s mother, Ramona, whom we have never forgotten and never will. To Rosa’s father, Herminio, who has seen this entire century and is still crisp-minded and still dreams. Rodolfo Rosales Jr., Miguel Angel Rosales, and Gabriel Yaotequia Rosales, for the inspiration and motivation that your very lives and our intellectual and political interaction have provided me. My granddaughter, Bianca Yolanda Rosales . . . for whom the dreams are for. I also want to share this with all of Bianca’s primisas (cousins), many of whom she has yet to meet—Stephanie, April, Alex, Alex, Adriana, Alana, Anja, Lizzy, Teddy, Xavier, Laura, Mariano, Christopher, John, Ernest, Brittany, Nico, Megan, Courtney, Lorenzo, Lanie, Kate, and Lara. For Leticia Monteleone, Bianca’s mother. To all the rest of the family who have patiently waited—Roberto, Betty, Maria, Teresa, Deborah, Arturo Jr., Matzie, John Arthur, Eileen, Melissa, Ma-

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ria Gloria, Valerie, Daryl, Virgina Ann, Joe, Georgina, Joe Arthur, Rene, Joe David, Sylvia, Otilia, Little David, Paul Anthony, Edie, Margarita, John Rudolph, Mary Ann, Tony, Janie, Gracie, Patsy, Debrah, Minnie, Mona, Ernest, John, Yolanda, Arturo, Little Arturo, Melanie, Juanio, Alice, Ricky . . . As with any project, the origins of this one were lost as it developed in complexity and size. What I can say with certainty is I have not lost sight of those who were there for me when it was simply a wisp of an idea. Those teachers and friends in Ann Arbor—Frances Svensen, Ken Langton, Al Meyer, Sylvia Pedraza-Bailey, and Lili Kivisto. I must not overlook the soul of my intellectual experience in Ann Arbor, the rowdy intellectuals in the Association for a Critical Social Studies. Among these very profound rowdies were Rosa, Margarita Salazar, David Rosales, Sylvia Mata, Tony Carrasco, Jose Sanchez, Irasema Garza, Ben Ramirez, Mike Ramirez, John Solis, Ismael Dovalina, Tony Miramontes, Neifa Nacel, Marta Hernandez, Travis Tatum, Terri, Booker, Max, Arthur “Maceo” Powell, Luis Rubalcava, Aida Hurtado, Oscar Morales, Liz Najera Flores, Elda Mendoza, Nenita Torres—and I hope I did not forget anyone. As it developed into its mature and complete form, it did so with a little help from my friends. Mi carnal David Montejano y mi otro carnal Sid Plotkin sat there in my kitchen and with their imagination saw a book in the scribblings that I had compiled. They were consistently there pushing me to clarify and make this project comprehensible as well as to keep it on track. Mis carnales Mario Compean and Steve Casanova at the University of WisconsinMadison, Joe Spielberg and Ricardo Navarro at the Julian Samora Institute at Michigan State University, and Arturo Madrid, Ray Garza, and Ricardo Romo me dieron esquina through their personal support and their financial support, as well as through their various programs where they extended to me muchneeded resources. Gregory Garza has always been there. Emilio Zamora, Jose Sanchez, Sid Plotkin, y Arturo Vega each provided extensive critiques of one of my numerous drafts. At the University of Texas at San Antonio (utsa) I met some very special people who prodded and pushed me to finish this project. La Raza Faculty, whose collective courage changed what would have been an otherwise mundane alien world—the university—into a vibrant extension of the battle for dignity and justice for our people and all people, giving me the fire I needed. My friend Ricardo Gambitta, whose advocacy for students, and in particular for Chicana and Chicano students, has endeared him to me. Mansour Elkikhia, who walks the talk and backs up his friends. The Hispanic Research Center, Jesse Zapata (now Associate Provost), Lalo Valdez, and Eduardo Codina for their support. Acknowledgments

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The students, whose imaginations I tried to stir and they stirred back as I wrote—among them are Ernesto Dueñas, Brenda Peña, Jennifer Mata, Kevin Lopez, Valerie Kay Vaughn, Nadine Saliba, Paul Bryan, Ruben Prieto, Michele Parker, Roberto Martinez, Oscar Valdez, Everett Whitely, Mono Aguilar, George Lara, James Wheeler, Evelio Salinas Escamilla, Maggie Cronin, Laura Castillon, Leslie Beattie, Jessica Cruz, Cecilia Perfecto—their political activism forms the soul of the university. Raquel Favela, Marisol Perez, Marianne Bueno, Nereida Patterson, Marisel De Leon, and Stela Samudio who, besides challenging me to continue, became my dearest of friends. Tahir Kahlon, who provided technical expertise at a crucial moment. Arturo Vega, mi camarada y carnal, who more than anyone constantly prodded and pushed but in a gentle manner. Louis Mendoza, whose political and intellectual imagination is only equaled by the energy he exerts to make utsa a student-oriented intellectual environment. Ben Olguin, Irasema Coronado, and Kamala Platt, an incredible group of intellectuals whose unfailing support and critique of my work coming down to the last stretch proved invaluable. Lorraine Mora y Juan Mora-Torres, mis intimos compañeros de lucha y de cosas intellectuales. Quienes criticaron mi obra y al mismo tiempo me apollaron como nadie más. Of course, I could not forget Able Garza, whose theoretical insights provided me with much to ponder. Oh, and I will never forget that evening when, over coffee with Rosa (my wife), Bob Schulman, Rick Gambitta, and Josefa Campos, the title “The Illusion of Inclusion” was coined. In the community there are too many to list. I would be remiss not to mention all the beautiful people at La Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the incredibly courageous women at Fuerza Unida, and of course, lulac District XV, whose collective but diverse struggle against political injustice and inhumanity is so crucial to our community. I also express my deepest gratitude to those anonymous reviewers of my manuscript for their profound critiques. Last but not least Theresa May, editor-in-chief of the University of Texas Press, whose patience and unflinching support of my work made it possible for me to finish. Even in this painstaking effort to express my gratitude to those who were there at all stages, I know I missed so many. I hope my work lives up to their expectations. As I present this work to the public I must emphasize that I take full responsibility for what finally appears in print. Whatever credit is due, however, and I sincerely mean this, must be distributed first to a community that dared to dream and act on those dreams and then to those friends and intellectuals who were there when I needed some intellectual and human nourishment. x

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Introduction

In 1981, the Chicano community in San Antonio gained national visibility when Henry Cisneros was elected as the first Chicano mayor of a major city in the United States. Throughout the decade of the 1980s Chicano communities across the nation gained political prominence in major urban electoral arenas, such as Denver, Los Angeles, and Chicago. By the 1990s, Chicanas also became very visible in urban politics. Again, the spotlight was on San Antonio, when Maria Antonietta Berriozabal barely lost in her bid to become the first Chicana mayor of a major U.S. city. While she did not win, her bid for mayor represented a major breakthrough for Chicanas in electoral politics. This study focuses on the political process leading to these momentous events. In particular, the focus is on the role of the post–World War ii Chicano middle class in creating a more open political system in San Antonio and in bringing about political inclusion for its community.1 Just as important, the analysis will examine how the changing political environment eventually formed and shaped the political process of San Antonio. The analysis is of a community’s struggle to gain political inclusion and the consequences of that inclusion. The period covered is from 1951 to 1991. The major question in this study, which arises from the continuing social and economic exclusion to this day of major sectors of San Antonio’s Chicana and Chicano working class and poor, is: Can a community mobilize its re-

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sources in the urban electoral arena in its interest, in the face of institutional rules of participation combined with the demands of an urban political economy that have historically favored the interests of business? Can it mobilize power in its own interest? Or is this political prominence simply an accommodation of the Chicano middle class by the Anglo business community into a political process where the political and economic priorities have already been set? While this study may not be able to answer these questions in any definitive manner, hopefully through this analysis we may be in a better position to understand the limitations as well as potential that a community faces in our very complex urban society. The Question of Inclusion

One of the objectives of the analysis in this study is to address the question of inclusion, not only as a political and historical issue, but also as a methodological one. Until the recent political successes, the Chicano community was generally written about as a monolithic group, rural, generally lower working class in nature and politically apathetic.2 The farmworker movement that swept from the California fields into the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in the mid-1960s, and which provided the seeds for the Chicano movement in Texas, ironically perpetuated this image. The reality is that the Chicano community underwent the same urbanizing experience that most groups underwent in the United States after World War ii. In Texas, the urbanization of the Chicano community occurred in the midst of a post–World War ii shift from a rural agricultural economy to an urban service economy, caused partly by the production needs of a war economy and partly by the technological advances in agribusiness which dislocated many of the rural communities.3 This urbanization especially impacted San Antonio, whose total population doubled in the 1940s. In the wake of this shift San Antonio experienced two major changes. First, it set the stage for major political reform in city government. In 1951 the political machine that had dominated politics in the city as well as the county since the beginning of the century was defeated by a well organized Anglo business community.4 In the broader context, these reforms placed San Antonio on the threshold of becoming a major Sunbelt city competing for investments across the Southwest. Second, and more important to this study, the new political arrangements coupled with the growth of the Chicano middle class also had the effect of opening up the electoral process to direct Chicano political participation for 2

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the first time in this century.5 Before World War ii, the Chicano community was mostly poor with a very small middle class and was for the most part excluded from direct political participation; Chicanos were invisible when it came to participation in the established political institutions. The post–World War ii reforms created a more open political environment where the growing Chicano middle class emerged as a visible political force. The new political arrangements brought about by the business community in 1951 were certainly not intended to create independent representation for the Chicano community, and they did not. However, a consequence of this more open political environment was that it set in motion a more competitive political environment that eventually brought about in the 1970s independent political representation for the Chicano community, a situation without precedent in San Antonio in this century. Despite these historical facts, there is virtually no documentation of modern Chicano electoral politics in San Antonio, until, of course, Henry Cisneros was elected mayor of San Antonio. Most, if not all, of the political studies of San Antonio have not considered the Chicano community as a key political sector. Even after Henry Cisneros was elected as the first Chicano mayor of a major city, the focus was on Henry and not on the Chicano community— except maybe as a backdrop. In other words, the analysis in this study not only addresses the political exclusion the Chicano community has faced and how it, as a community, has confronted it; this analysis also is in itself a critique of how the history and politics of San Antonio has been presented. It addresses the total exclusion of the Chicano community in San Antonio’s historical memory. This study is a small step toward recovering that history for the community. The Connections of History

It is important to point out that this study does not in any way argue the old, tired “sleeping giant” thesis. While it is not as well documented as it should be, much work has been accomplished in the last thirty years in documenting the Chicano community’s labor struggles as well as community struggles throughout the Southwest in both rural and urban areas. In San Antonio, there is a rich oral history, some of which has been documented and analyzed, of the intense Chicano labor struggles that occurred throughout the first half of this century. The same can be said of other social movements, especially the struggle for equal education.6 The focus of the analysis in this study is on urban electoral politics—hisIntroduction

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torically a very middle class activity. As a consequence, the Chicana/o middle class plays a dominant role in the effort to gain inclusion in this process. It is important to emphasize that the analysis is of the political process leading to political inclusion; it is not necessarily of the middle class itself. Nor does the analysis proceed on the assumption that the middle class sector was the only sector organizing in the modern post–World War ii period. But a basic premise in this study is that it was the Chicana/o middle class that had the resources and, indeed, were positioned to provide the leadership in the wake of the reforms coming on the heels of World War ii.7 Another very important premise is that the political process that this study focuses on is historically tied to—indeed, is a continuation of—the urban political struggles engaged in by the Chicana/o community leading up to World War ii. As will be shown, the developing political agenda of the liberal Chicana/o electoral mobilization in the 1950s was based on political inclusion, the one issue that characterized pre–World War ii Chicana/o middle class politics. The goal of inclusion, however, was not a realistic goal until social and economic changes were brought about by the pressures of a changing economy and the accompanying intense urbanization of Texas in general. As such, then, the post–World War ii political activity did not simply occur out of the blue, so to speak. While inclusion, as will be shown in this chapter, was a general ideal of Chicano middle class pre–World War ii political activity, the restrictive antiMexican environment dictated concessions as the practical goals of their participation. After World War ii, the various demands were translated into a general demand for inclusion in the decision-making process and not simply concessions as in the past. This historical connection shows that the Chicano community was not simply waiting to be invited in; rather, their activity anticipated these changes. Or put in another way, the giant did not awaken, it was already kicking at the door. The giant could not be kept back any more. In this chapter, I will provide a brief profile of the politics of the small but active Chicano middle class before World War ii and their organizational and political experience in an environment that was very anti-Mexican. Then I will present an economic profile of the middle class before and after the war, leading to a discussion of the dilemma that this growing middle class faced in defining political inclusion as the system finally began to open up. I will conclude with an outline of the organization of this book.

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Race, Class, and the Impact of the Urban Environment

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the establishment of a laborintensive commercial farming economy in Texas had a significant impact on the Chicano community’s race and class position. As David Montejano points out, the introduction “of ready-made farm communities, transplanted societies from the Mid-west and the North (United States)” in South Texas created a class as well as a race struggle.8 In South Texas, where the overwhelming majority of the landless population was Chicano, race began to define the class relations in a much more significant manner. As the political economy shifted to agribusiness in South Texas, a corresponding political order developed that was anti-union and anti-Mexican, generally restricting the Chicano community.9 This segregationist order did not leave San Antonio untouched. Through local initiative, school districts in Bexar County (where San Antonio is found) segregated Blacks and Chicanos from Anglos in schools of obvious inferior quality. Through the 1940s, restrictive covenants in house mortgages isolated Chicanos from most sectors of San Antonio, except the west side.10 This residential segregation had dire consequences for the Chicano community as it grew in numbers but not in space. By the 1930s San Antonio’s barrios had some of the highest rates of tuberculosis, venereal disease, and infant mortality in the United States. Since the majority of Chicanos in San Antonio were working poor or lower middle class, most were directly exposed to the conditions described above in one way or another.11 At the same time, the political machine that dominated city and county politics throughout the first half of the twentieth century excluded the Chicano community politically, although it did provide institutional support for services and jobs for the otherwise alienated and neglected Chicano community. Indeed, the ties to the political machine were so secure that after the poll tax was instituted in 1902 “Callaghan’s political supporters simply paid the poll tax for Mexican American voters who were in turn told how to vote.” 12 This continued through World War ii. However, the political machine did not go unchallenged during this period. Indeed, as far back as 1912, the business community attempted to bring about reform in city politics. But, as John Booth and David Johnson point out, the machine weathered these reform efforts by implementing superficial changes.13 Then in 1939, the political machine was temporarily defeated by the mobilization of both the Anglo and the Chicano communities. Although the

Introduction

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political machine regained its dominance in 1941, this process reflected two very important trends in San Antonio politics during this period. The rise of anti-machine politics in the 1930s, which reflected the reemergence of the Anglo economic elite in electoral politics, gave rise to the first trend: the involvement of the Chicano middle class in electoral politics. As the business community began to feel the need to create a municipal government that would more directly reflect their investment and growth needs, their anti-machine politics provided the opportunity for the Chicano community to play a role in challenging the domination of their community in electoral politics. The already more competitive urban market economy (as opposed to that of rural areas), with its weakened repression coupled with the intense political activity created by the anti-machine movement, provided an environment that enabled the Chicano community to press for concessions and rights as voters.14 The voting patterns within the Chicano community began to reflect more their community interests and less and less the dictates of the machine. Indeed, the changing voting patterns of the Chicano community contributed to the setback for machine politics in that decade. More important, it was in this intense process that the small but active middle class began to provide a visible political leadership in electoral politics. This brought about a second trend, which did not come to full fruition until the 1950s, and that was the recognition by the anti-machine Anglo leaders that the growing electoral power of the Chicano middle class would have to be part of their electoral strategies if they wanted not only to defeat the machine but also to establish their own legitimacy in city politics. The relatively safe assimilationist approach to politics—that is, its involvement in electoral politics— of the emerging Chicano middle class, as opposed to the more militant “disruptive” approach of the organized labor sector of the Chicano community during this period, obviously made them more palatable to the reform-minded Anglo business community.15 These trends would eventually undermine the dominance of the old political machine and lead to greater and more independent participation of the Chicano community after World War ii.16 But this would not have occurred if the Chicano middle class had not already been busy organizing their own community. LULAC and the Origins of a Modern Chicano Middle Class

Richard Garcia’s very important study of the rise of the Mexican American middle class from 1929 to 1941 provides an excellent analysis of the develop6

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ing political consciousness of the Chicano middle class. Garcia concludes that, despite the racial and political obstacles that faced the Chicano community as a whole, they were actively organizing around issues that confronted them; they “busied themselves in making their own worlds in San Antonio, Texas.” 17 The middle class, especially, was busy organizing not only around the issues of education and civic participation, but also protection of its community from the pervasive racism against Chicanos that was blatant during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. Eventually, throughout South Texas, including San Antonio, various middle class civic organizations sprang up during this period. In San Antonio, the most significant one was the Knights of America. However, frustrated with the fragmented efforts that the various organizations represented in fighting racism, several attempts were made throughout the 1920s to consolidate into one united front. Finally, in 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens (lulac) was created through a merger of most of these South Texas middle class civic organizations.18 This newly formed organization reflected the same assimilationist strategy of the earlier organizations as they busied themselves promoting education as the key to success and civic participation as the key strategy in overcoming discrimination. Indeed, its goals reflected the idealistic notion that by learning the English language, and thereby becoming more American, Chicanos would be able to gain inclusion into the “American Dream.” Emma Tenayuca, a militant leader of the pecan shellers strike in 1938, and Homer Brooks described lulac during this period as follows: In the past, its viewpoint was colored by the outlook of petty-bourgeois native born, who seek escape from general oppression that has been the lot of the Mexican people as a whole. It meant an attempt to achieve Americanization, while barring the still unnaturalized foreign-born from membership. It resulted in the glorification of the English language and Anglo-American culture to the extent of prohibiting Spanish within the local societies.19 Thus, the behavior of middle class Chicanos, informed by their experience with lulac, the most visible Chicano middle class organization at the time, kept them from expanding their base before World War ii. Their insistence on proving their Americanism through pursuing education and building a civic-minded consciousness kept them from supporting the militant labor struggles that engaged a significant sector of the Chicano working class of that period. Introduction

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Although harsh in her judgement of lulac, later Tenayuca did correctly point out that in the context of the repressive Jim Crow order in South Texas, which was especially anti-Chicano, lulac sometimes worked with other groups, even labor unions, to confront the discriminatory practices that were prevalent during the period.20 They were also very adamant in maintaining their cultural and social ties intact as Mexican Americans. In fact, lulac represented the first general attempt on the part of Mexican Americans to organize themselves for the purpose of giving voice to their aspirations and needs as citizens of the United States and at the same time maintaining their cultural identity.21 Garcia describes this as the begining of a modern Mexican American consciousness.22 The apparent contradiction between lulac’s idealism and its practices was the result of two major tensions that resided within its goals and the reality it faced when founded in 1929. The most obvious tension existed between its middle class goal of assimilation and its intense cultural pride. While this tension was addressed in different ways, its most general form was found in its advocacy of civic-mindedness as a form of cultural pride. The most profound tension was found in their acceptance of the “American Dream” and the extreme racism that transcended class and continously forced them to coalesce with other groups, even with their nemesis, unions, in the struggle for their basic rights.23 Adding to this tension was the existence of a class of wealthy Mexican expatriates who escaped most of the consequences of the prevalent discrimination. One article on San Antonio, quoted in Garcia’s “Class, Class Consciousness, & Ideology,” points out that for the most part those Mexicans were not “excluded from the social, political, business, or the professional life of San Antonio. They were allowed in the social clubs and in the civic life of the city, although there was some discrimination.”24 Most of them were political and religious refugees from the Mexican revolution and most repatriated to Mexico as conditions changed. However, as Garcia points out, there were commonalities between them and the native Chicano middle class. While the direction and ultimate logic implicit in the overall goals and in many of the ideas of the ricos [the wealthy] did not coincide with those of the lulac sector [the middle class] there was much compatibility. Both were Mexicano, both were patriotic, both worked for the betterment of the poor, and both social sectors opposed the ideology of the Tenayuca-type workers.25

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At the same time that the aspirations and goals of these two sectors were similar, their political and economic realities were not. This is the connection between the middle class and the working poor. Both bore the brunt of discrimination in general without the mitigating relief of political institutional support or of wealth itself. Although the middle class did not have to contend with the pervasively low wages earned by the working poor, they lacked economic opportunity because they lacked access to credit. While Richard Garcia and Cynthia Orozco respectively provide good descriptions of the organizational infrastructure and social mobility of the Chicana/o middle class community, the reality of the middle class during this period was that they were sharply circumscribed by the highly segregated nature of pre–World War ii San Antonio.26 Thus, although they were generally better off than the working poor, they could not avoid the reality of the poverty that surrounded them. This had important consequences for the evolving political role of the Chicano middle class. Their political and economic alienation from the wealthy class intensified their own efforts to organize. On the other hand, their alienation from the working poor because of their middle class assimilationist views and their historical aversion to the intense radical labor activity of that period limited their ability to organize a broad political base. This was especially true in the 1930s because of the intense segregationist order that prevailed. This isolation, however, began to crumble as the economy began to change. The Impact of a Changing Economy on the Chicano Community

As the Texas economy shifted after World War ii from an agricultural economy to a more competitive urban market economy, the economic and demographic changes brought about by this shift had dramatic consequences in the class character of the Chicano community. For example, state-wide, the skilled and professional ranks in the Chicano community grew from 34.5 percent in 1930 to 69.2 percent in 1970 to 71.1 percent in 1980. As would be expected, the growing urban market in San Antonio had even more dramatic consequences for the Chicano community. As San Antonio’s total population grew from 231,542 in 1930 to 785,880 in 1980, the Chicano population grew from 81,040 in 1930 to 341,468 in 1970 (when the Chicano community finally gained majority status as shown in Table 1) to 422,017 in 1980.27 Further, Table 2 shows the Chicano middle class (represented by the attainment of skilled and professional status) expanding

Introduction

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at a very rapid pace during this period of growth in San Antonio.28 The skilled and professional ranks in the Chicano community grew from 42.8 percent in 1928 to 67 percent in 1960, 76 percent in 1970, and 86 percent in 1980. The percentage of white collar workers alone grew from from 16.6 percent in 1928 to 21, 28.5, and 29.5 percent in 1960, 1970, and 1980 respectively. The proportion of craftsmen and foremen grew from 15.4 percent in 1928 to 22 percent in 1960 and held at 26 percent in 1970 and 1980. That of operatives grew from 10.8 percent in 1928 to 24 percent in 1960, dipped to 22 percent in 1970, and rebounded to 30.5 percent in 1980. The percentage of unskilled serviceworkers and laborers, on the other hand, dropped from 43.1 percent in 1928 to 29, 23.5, and 14 percent in 1960, 1970, and 1980 respectively. However, in reading the available statistics on the Chicano community, careful attention must be paid to the various categories and their meanings as well as applications. For example, because of the highly racialized environment that Texas, including San Antonio, found itself in throughout this century, skills did not necessarily complement wage earnings and/or position. Emilio Zamora provides a good analysis of this inconsistency within the federal sector at the local air bases in Corpus Christi during World War ii.29 Further, under the category “skilled,” “operative” tends to be the fastest growing category. But because of the racially defined job descriptions as well as opportunities, to include this in the definition of middle class would be misleading. Equal pay for equal work was simply not a reality for the Chicano community. From this perspective, then, one could easily group together the categories “operative,” “clerical /sales,” and “service worker/laborer” and radically change the picture by showing that by 1980, 60 percent of the community were still locked into jobs that only held out a promise, if that. To further cloud the picture, one would also have to take into consideration how middle class applies to the Chicano community. For example, a “proprietor” of a mom-and-pop grocery store or of a taco stand would be included in the definition of middle class. On the other hand, an “operative” working at the local air base would more than likely be classified under the Wage Board classification rather than the more professionalized GS rating. Moreover, most of these “operatives” and “proprietors” would neither have access to the more middle class neighborhoods nor the accompanying schools in San Antonio until the late 1970s. For our purposes, then, the various categories that are utilized to show the dramatic change in the class character of the community symbolize potential more than real economic and social opportunities. A Kelly job held out a promise more than a reality. In this sense, then, one can see how expectations 10

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Table 1. Total population of San Antonio and percent of population of San Antonio, by race and ethnicity: 1930 – 1980 TOTAL

CHICANO

ANGLO

BLACK

OTHER

1930

231,542

35.6

56.5

7.7

0.2

1940

253,854

40.6

51.6

7.6

0.2

1950

408,442

39.3

53.5

7.0

0.2

1960

587,718

41.5

51.2

7.0

0.3

1970

654,153

52.2

39.2

7.6

1.0

1980

785,880

53.7

39.0

7.3

0.0

Sources: T. N. Picnot, An Economic and Industrial Survey of San Antonio, Texas (San Antonio: Public Service Company, 1942), p. 167. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1950, Vol. ii. Characteristics of the Population, Part 43, Texas, p. 100 –103, Special Reports, Persons of Spanish Surname, p. 46; U.S. Census of Population and Housing, 1960 Census Tracts, San Antonio, Texas, p. 13; Census of Population, 1970 General Social and Economic Characteristics, Final Report PC(1)-45, Texas; Census of Population, 1980 General Population Characteristics, PC 80-1-B45, Table 25, Texas, p. 94.

Table 2. Distribution of occupation by percentage, of Chicano male workers in San Antonio, 1928, 1960, 1970, 1980 1928

1960

1970

1980

Professional /technical

4.5

4

7

7.5

Proprietor/manager

7.6

5

6.5

6.5

Clerical /sales

4.5

12

15

15.5

White Collar

Skilled Craftsman/foreman

15.4

22

26

26

Operative

10.8

24

22

30.5

Serviceworker/laborer

43.1

29

23.5

14

Unclassified

13.8*

Unskilled 4

Sources: William J. Knox, The Economic Status of the Mexican Immigrant in San Antonio, Texas (San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1971), p. 15. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1960, PC(2)-1B, Table 12; Census of Population, 1970, Table 173, p. 45 –1695 to 45 –1696; Census of Population, 1980, Table 219, p. 45 – 492 to 45 –500. *The unclassified 13.8 percent were city and government employees. It would seem likely that given the limited access to white collar jobs, most of these were in the unskilled category. Indeed, the question would have profound consequences for the kinds of political activity and organizing that would occur after World War ii.

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rose dramatically during this period. It proved to be a very powerful material force as it provided the base by which a community began to legitimize its demands for political inclusion. However, occupational distribution is only one indicator of inclusion, real or potential. As the Chicano community grew in numbers as well as occupational attainment, the housing and educational opportunities did not necessarily keep pace with this growth. Richard Jones, in his demographic study, finds that San Antonio by 1980 was still dominated by a service economy, including “retail activities, services, and government; these sectors constitute(d) 70 percent of San Antonio’s labor force, versus 42 percent for the state.” 30 As shown in Table 2, by 1980 the clerical, sales, craftsmen, foremen, and operative occupations made up 72 percent of the Chicano workforce. Given the non-union environment and its concommitant depressed wage scale, residential access, defined in racial and economic terms, was and is still limited for a large sector of these supposedly middle class occupations; as Gambitta et al. conclude in their analysis of educational opportunity in San Antonio, educational access is largely defined through residential access.31 Indeed, the crisis in school finance that the state of Texas finds itself in today, brought about by the Edgewood versus Kirby case out of San Antonio, is based on the relationship of residential access to educational opportunity. What we find is a large gap in educational opportunity and available housing between the Chicano barrios in the south and west sides of San Antonio and the more affluent Anglo north side of San Antonio. Compounding the existing gap in these resources, the already bountiful educational and housing resources in the north side continue to attract residential development at the expense of the south and west sides. In 1980, for example, the three northern series of census tracts in Bexar County accounted for 96 percent of the net population growth in the county. While certainly many middle class Chicanos have in the last twenty years continually moved to the north side, the majority of the predominantly Chicano population in the communities they have left behind, notwithstanding the general improvement in occupational attainment, still face a lack of residential and educational opportunities.32 Despite the statistical evidence of greater occupational access, then, San Antonio’s Chicano community is still largely de facto segregated into unequal educational and residential environments. Thus, rapid growth in population and occupational attainment had a twofold impact on the Chicano community. On the one hand, because of the de facto segregation, the population density in the Chicano barrios intensified (even as these barrios expanded geographically), thus intensifying the already 12

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present urban problems, especially in education and housing. The apparent improved occupational attainment, then, did not shield the majority of the community from the intense urban problems still facing San Antonio. Added to this, the post–World War ii at-large nonpartisan electoral system in San Antonio, along with the still existing poll tax and other obstacles to voter participation, turned out to be a hindrance to their greater demands as their expectations grew with their occupational attainment. On the other hand, this geographical containment of the community enhanced the political conditions that eventually led to the political mobilization of the Chicano community after World War ii: the community was an easy stationary target for political organizing. It is this ironic definition of inclusion that had a profound impact on the political development of the modern Chicano middle class. It is no surprise that it is in this sector where aspirations for greater inclusion intensified.

The Dilemma of Political Inclusion

The question over how to gain political inclusion for Chicanos in pre–World War ii San Antonio was framed in the conflict between the middle class, who were busy trying to establish a base by which to gain inclusion into electoral politics, and the Chicano labor movement, which was busy challenging a racist and exploitative system that had excluded them all of this century. But as the Chicano middle class gained the central role in Chicano politics after World War ii, this same conflict now surfaced in the conflict over electoral strategies. Certainly the municipal reforms of the 1950s represented a watershed for the Chicano community’s electoral participation. From the very first successful reform slate for city council, at least one Chicano was included. But this does not mean that the Chicano community was fully enfranchised or that they fully participated in the electoral process. In fact, the opposite was very much the case. In the immediate post–World War ii period, before the Warren Court rulings on apportionment and the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering and inaccessible polls were still the rule in the barrios. Further, the poll tax remained a formidable barrier to participation. Added to this, the new at-large, nonpartisan rules of participation in city elections made it very difficult for Chicanos to mobilize their community.33 Finally, the municipal reform group was able to consolidate its base by forming a slating group, the Good Government League (ggl), that controlled Introduction

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the nomination of city council candidates, making it almost impossible for any candidate to run independently for city council. The ggl was able to define political inclusion in terms of their class interests, excluding the immediate community interests of the Chicano community. Thus, the Chicano middle class was faced with choosing individual political inclusion at the expense of neglecting the problems facing the Chicano community as a discriminated and impoverished group or challenging the terms of inclusion with little foreseeable success. In broader terms it represented the dilemma of class versus race. This dilemma is best reflected in the different strategies to, and the different definitions of, political inclusion within the Chicano middle class. These conflicting tendencies can best be understood in the political profiles of the two dominant and most visible middle class leaders of the pre– World War ii period, Alonso Perales and Gus Garcia. Adela Sloss-Vento’s biography of Alonso Perales and Perales’s own published works show that the objective of the early middle class was to further the cultural nationalist struggle against racism, economic deprivation, and social inequality. Perales’s analysis, which was not a class analysis, emphasized the political democratic nature of society. It focused on the need of the Chicano community to organize itself as a group and to defend itself. Perales’s ultimate faith in the system, which was shared by most middle class Chicanos of that time, led him to view electoral politics as the most important source of political power. They sought a politics of inclusion, not a politics of confrontation.34 Indeed, the same political orientation that kept the middle class isolated politically became the catalyst for incredible political growth as its numbers grew, giving it greater visibility in a changing economic environment. On the other hand, Gus Garcia, although driven by the same concerns that motivated Perales, challenged the system’s neglect of the Chicano community through the legal process. Besides being involved in the electoral process, he also represented several civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In one particular case, the concept of “class apart” was established in describing the Chicano community in civil rights. While this very important legal precedent would be the basis for the inclusion of the Chicano community in the protections of Title Seven and other civil rights legislation, its most profound political impact was on the question of political inclusion. Albert Peña Jr. pointed out that “this idea scared the more conservative elements of the middle class. It is a shame that we (Chicanos) did not use it for almost 14 years.” Peña, of course, was referring to the political level, where the view that the Chicano community was a separate group—“ a class apart”—was rejected by the more conservative assimilationist sector of the Chicano middle class.35 14

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The different strategies taken by these two individuals do not seem so dissimilar. After all, they represent the different facets of citizenship as defined by T. H. Marshall in his classic lecture, which are civil, political, and social rights; with Perales emphasizing the political rights, i.e., voting power, and Garcia focusing on the civil rights due all people because of their membership in society. But while neither is as subversive or threatening as the third facet, social rights, Garcia’s efforts reflected a more confrontational strategy for gaining inclusion.36 Besides setting the tenor for a civil rights agenda that has pervaded Chicano politics throughout the modern period, his efforts also set the stage for the conflict between the confrontational and the assimilationist approaches to inclusion. These conflicting tendencies would especially have an impact on Chicano politics after World War ii as the middle class expanded and diversified. As the Chicano middle class expanded, however, so did their organizational efforts. These organizations included not only civic organizations in addition to lulac, but also veteran organizations, with the GI Forum being the largest and most active of these; church related organizations; and business organizations, including not only the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, but also the short-lived Pan American Progressive Association (papa).37 The major question that confronted these organizations was the question of political inclusion. A very important point here is that, as opposed to the stereotype of the Chicano community as unorganizable, the reality is, in fact, the reverse: Their proclivity for organization is intense, as shown not only in the post–World War ii period, but also throughout this century. These organizational experiences provided the context where the conflict over strategies for gaining a greater voice in mainstream electoral politics would occur; this conflict would continuously shape and re-shape Chicano politics in post–World War ii San Antonio.38 One example that clearly shows the intensity of this conflict occurred in 1947. In the 1940s, the Pan American Progressive Association, or papa, was formed to deal with the little or no credit extended to Chicano businessmen by local banks. The goal was to set up an alternate financial institution—a minority finance corporation—that would extend much-needed lines of credit to the emerging post-war business sector in the Chicano community. At the same time, its director and organizer, Henry B. Gonzalez, had a broader agenda. He sought to use the issue of credit to politicize the more successful Chicanos and involve them in seeking solutions to the problems facing the Chicano community in general. In a letter recalling his efforts in 1947, Gonzalez states: Introduction

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All during the while, I noted for the first time the formation of a nucleus of relatively young Mexican American businessmen who had become rich during the war. I felt San Antonio had great need for these men to reflect some social conscientiousness about the terrible problems affecting the Mexican Americans generally, and the Mexican American small businessmen, specifically.39 In pursuing this goal, Gonzalez confronted specific issues. Among them was the existence of restrictive covenants in home mortgages which prohibited the sale of a house to Chicanos or Blacks in the more affluent areas of San Antonio. The issue created such a controversy within papa that Gonzalez resigned. Although its goal of creating an alternative institution of finance recognized the existence of racial discrimination, papa was unwilling to confront the financial market over social issues.40 The increased opportunity to enter the mainstream of the urban market after the war, not just as consumers but as entrepreneurs, apparently took priority over social issues and demands for political power for these Chicano middle class businessmen. The delicate balance between gaining entry to the market to gain access to the benefits of an expanding economy, which was supported by the city’s new institutional arrangements, and confronting the intense social problems that the Chicano community still faced thus intensified the middle class dilemma over political inclusion. Was inclusion in the politics of the Anglo business-led group the answer to the political exclusion they had faced all of this century? Or was the establishment of an independent political base the answer? This dilemma intensified as political inclusion would finally become possible after World War ii and, indeed, would ultimately influence the particular electoral strategies that emerged. Organization of the Book

As this chapter has shown, the municipal reform of the 1950s had its roots not only in the needs of the Anglo economic elite, but also in the increased demands of a middle class Chicano political leadership that sought political inclusion. Indeed, the Chicano middle class organizational efforts in pre–World War ii San Antonio anticipated a greater role for the middle class as the electoral arena broadened. Thus, while the post–World War ii municipal reform did not necessarily open up the electoral system to the Chicano community in general, it represented a watershed for modern Chicano middle class electoral politics. 16

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As the political system opened up, the pre–World War ii middle class experience provided the continuity for inclusion in a broader, more mainstream electoral politics. More important, as the rules began to change, so did the concerns of this Chicano middle class. As political inclusion became a real possibility, the question of strategy and approach became a dominant issue. While lulac continued to thrive through the war and remains the oldest and largest active Chicano organization today, the post–World War ii Chicano middle class also grew and its organizational activity expanded beyond lulac. This expanding organizational activity created the environment where an intense conflict over the question of strategy occurred. Out of this conflict a liberal sector of the Chicano middle class developed which challenged the class nature of the ggl’s dominance of city politics. The analysis in this book will focus on the political and organizational activity of the Chicano middle class in the context of post–World War ii municipal reform, leading ultimately to independent political representation for the Chicano community. Chapter Two will present the theoretical and methodological framework. Originally, I felt that perhaps I should not bother the reader with the problems of theory and methodology that I faced in constructing the narrative of this study. As such, I had planned to put this discussion in an appendix, to be read if so desired. However, I have concluded that as important as the narrative is in understanding our political reality today, it is just as important to share with the reader why our political history has been a mystery up until now. The goal of this chapter is to enable the reader to understand the development of the narrative and especially the provocative nature of its presentation. The plan of the book generally follows the chronology of events that eventually lead to the political changes in 1977. The study ends with an analysis of Chicano middle class political activity in the new independent political environment, and an expanded discussion of the role of Chicana middle class women as they gained greater political visibility. The book is organized in three sections. The first section will focus on the activity of the Chicano middle class in San Antonio politics after World War ii. The first chapter in this section (Chapter Three) begins with an analysis of the business community and their successful efforts to implement municipal reform. In this chapter the focus will primarily be on the co-optation of an emerging Chicano middle class. The analysis in Chapter Four will then shift to a dissatisfied sector of the Chicano middle class who, because of their civil rights orientation, challenged the business community’s agenda of growth and expansion. Introduction

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Chapter Five in the second section will begin with an analysis of how the civil rights oriented sector of the middle class was able to build a coalition which could challenge the political domination by the business community throughout the 1960s. Chapter Six will then analyze the emergence of the intense Chicano movement at the end of the 1960s and its role in the political changes in San Antonio’s system of political representation in 1977. Chapter Seven in the third section begins with a case study of San Antonio’s first Chicano mayor, Henry Cisneros, and a contemporary of his, Bernardo Eureste, and their impact on Chicano politics in San Antonio from 1977 to 1985. In particular, Chapter Seven analyzes the impact of the changing political rules on the participation of the Chicano middle class. Chapter Eight in this section focuses on the emergence of Chicana women in San Antonio politics and their impact on the political environment. In this chapter, the roots of the emerging Chicana middle class will be traced to the present. The major focus in this chapter is the difference that Chicanas bring to the political arena. The concluding chapter (Chapter Nine) will discuss the questions of empowerment and the future possible direction of Chicano politics. The chapter will conclude with the posing of issues that still face the Chicano community in San Antonio and how they relate to the broader Latino community in the United States as we enter the twenty-first century.

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Posing the Correct Questions

A major objective of this study is to bring to the surface San Antonio’s darker political reality of exclusion.1 There are some very good political studies of post–World War ii San Antonio as a growing Sunbelt city. In fact, these studies describe the broader political economic context for this study. But these studies, astonishingly, do not consider the Chicano community at all. The Chicano community, it seems, did not exist outside its barrios, until, of course, San Antonio elected its own Chicano mayor. But they did. However, the objective is not to refute what these studies have done; rather, the objective is to broaden the picture of political reality, to document the struggle of a community that refused to stay penned in a little corner of San Antonio. To do this, I had to submerge, so to speak, below the obvious, the visible, in order to gain an insight as to how and what the Chicano community was doing to confront this exclusion. The history—the politics, the events, the actors—was all there. The problem was to uncover that history which was virtually buried, unwritten, and forgotten. The only documentation available was either short critical essays on a particular event or organization, or the typical ethnographic study of the Mexican community in San Antonio and their peculiar but quaint ways.2 There was a particularly acute lack of literature on the political role and development of the Chicano middle class in San Antonio, or for that matter in

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any major urban area. I had to rely on private papers, newspaper reports, and personal interviews. As I pointed out in Chapter One, I have included this chapter on theory and methodology because I felt it important that the reader understand the relationship of the analysis to how the story is told. Even if it is true that political and historical reality are indeed objective, the analysis of history and politics is by necessity based on assumptions and premises which ultimately determine how and where the analysis is applied. This in turn determines the questions asked, how the story is told, what arguments are advanced, and who and what are the important political characters and events.3 The Question of Paradigm

A major issue that persists and has informed this study is the paradigmatic problem of defining the Chicano in the context of United States history. What are the basic assumptions and premises that go into this definition? More important, how do these assumptions and premises assist in the political analysis of this community? One approach is to compare the Chicana/o experience to the image of America as a land of immigrants. The image, or perhaps more appropriately, the myth, is that regardless of how harsh their treatment was or is when entering, eventually through two or three generations most immigrants assimilate into the mainstream of American political and social life. The implicit assumption is that they are able to rid themselves of the ethnic differences they bring to America and, of course, that they are accepted. It is quite obvious that this “immigrant model” does not fit the Black experience, but while not so obvious, it does not fit the Chicano experience in this country either. To begin, unlike other immigrant groups, the roots of the Chicano community in the Southwest, despite the constant waves of new immigrants from Mexico in the twentieth century, predate modern political boundaries. The annexation of lands that formed almost half of what was once Mexico after the Mexican-American War brought with it about 80,000 Mexicans.4 But beyond those numbers, the southwestern landscape at that time was dotted throughout with urban enclaves whose social and cultural infrastructure was Mexican. Indeed, a popular retort to the immigrant question in the Chicano community is that “we didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us.” 5 The main criticism of this definition is that it places the problem of lack of empowerment on the Chicano community’s supposed inability to assimilate, 20

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without taking into consideration the broader historical and political context. Efforts to compare the Chicano experience with that of other immigrant groups cannot account for the historical experience of colonization and its impact on the Chicano community in the Southwest. The definition of the Chicano community as an immigrant community is blind to the political struggles that Chicanas and Chicanos have waged in defending their communities. It is blind to the historical and cultural legacy of the Chicana/o community that predates contemporary political borders; indeed, it has buried their history. Even approaches that are seemingly “sensitive” to the Chicano community—that recognize the political and economic constraints that have historically been imposed by Anglo society—adhere to the illusion that the choice falls back on the community. In a comparative study of the Chicano communities in Los Angeles and San Antonio, Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority, Peter Skerry recasts the immigrant myth and takes it to epic, almost mythological, proportions. Skerry basically argues that the Chicano community is at a crossroads in its politics. They can either take the path described as the “racial minority pattern” or the “immigrant ethnic group pattern.” A self-proclaimed neo-conservative, Skerry, in an interview with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN Home, sketched in classic conservative style the mythical profile of the immigrant: “groups who come here willingly to the United States, know that they came here of their own volition, and choose to become part of American society and make great advances in doing so socially, economically, and politically.” The “racial minority pattern,” on the other hand, is “where the group claims basically to have been historically discriminated against by American society” and, according to Skerry, is best exemplified by the Black community. More importantly, advocates of this pattern assume that “to achieve success in America . . . they need special compensation—affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act—to get ahead.” 6 In his discussion with Brian Lamb, Skerry explained in a very sympathetic manner how he had to mingle with various Chicano leaders and activists in order to gain insight into this dilemma that he purports this “newly emerging” group faces. But his entire discussion is riddled with incredible assumptions. First, he assumes they are “newly emerging” simply because he discovered them. A rather naive and ahistorical assumption. Second, he imposes two ideologically loaded “patterns” and then proceeds to argue that the Chicano community has to fit into one or the other. He imposes these two patterns as the only two possible outcomes with no sensitivity to the diversity that exists within the Chicano community across the Southwest, and especially no senPosing the Correct Questions

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sitivity to the history of domination and violence the community has experienced throughout most of this century. Certainly within this diversity a third pattern could be read from the history of resistance that has been documented in the many revisionist projects that have been produced in the last thirty years. This pattern is where the Chicano community is redefining what it is to be a citizen from a politico-cultural perspective. The argument here, which is advanced by Flores and Benmayor, eds., in Latino Cultural Citizenship, is that “Cultural citizenship refers to the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic process.” The most important argument coming out of this framework is that this politics is in fact redefining what being a U.S. citizen is in general.7 A fourth pattern based on the reading of history from a labor perspective is where the Chicano working class and poor, because of their language and cultural affinity with the Mexican working class from across the border, their increasing alienation from the dominant institutions in society, and the increasing global character of the economy, wage a more international class politics, again transforming the politics at least in this region.8 Certainly there is enough historical evidence that processes similar to both these patterns have occurred and are occurring in Chicano politics in this country. The point is that one could certainly project the various patterns of politics as occurring simultaneously, albeit varying from urban to rural, from border to non-border, and in degree of intensity. The struggle for civil rights will continue as long as there is evidence in the lives of the participants of discrimination and exploitation. Assimilation and accommodation are certainly an ongoing process, perhaps not from an immigrant perspective but, as part of this study shows, from the perspective of a more mobile middle class that is able to negotiate its own interest. The politico-cultural process, represented by but not limited to the political activity of organizations such as lulac, GI Forum, and others, continues to be a basis by which communities are organized throughout the Southwest. Finally, an international politics which counters and resists the exploitation and domination of Mexican and Chicana/o workers, especially but not limited to the maquiladora process along the border, also continues as the global economy impacts the Southwest. But other possible patterns aside, it would have been an entirely different, less ideologically loaded argument if Skerry had simply argued that assimilation is occurring among Chicanas and Chicanos at a high rate and that this would have an impact on their politics. But by locking himself into this imag22

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inary either/or situation, Skerry, along with those who see the Chicano community from an immigrant perspective, continue to apply the “blame the victim” thesis to the Chicano community: it is up to them to either successfully assimilate or become “wards” of the state. The most profound critique, then, of Skerry’s revised thesis, as well as of the traditional immigrant approach, is that it fails to go beyond simplistic explanatory tools and perpetuates the same negative stereotypic images of the Chicana/os as passive objects of history.9 In addition, the contemporary political changes that have produced a prominent role for the Chicano community cannot be accounted for in these approaches, except as a self-fulfilling prophecy. One effort to go beyond these limitations has focused on the broader political and economic system of U.S. capitalism and its expansion to the Southwest. A basic premise in this model is that European, and later U.S., capitalist expansion was based on the colonial domination of the indigenous populations found in the Southwest, including the existing Chicano population.10 This model assumes that a dialectical relationship exists between race and class in the domination of the Chicano in the Southwest. Racial and class domination are intimately related because European expansion overlapped in the New World, where the indigenous populations were subjugated and the capitalist mode of production was established. As a class the indigenous population was exploited as it performed the ignominious tasks of capitalist development for the arriving white populations. As a race it was colonized institutionally and politically.11 As Stephen Steinberg concludes in his discussion of the Chicano experience: As in the case of the Indian, conquest was only a devastating first step in a long history of expropriation. Paradoxically, the fact that Indians and Mexicans have ancestral claims to the land and its resources has not mitigated their oppression, but on the contrary, has given rise to a more extreme form of exploitation and control.12 The application of this “Colonial” model to the expansion of U.S. society to the Southwest produced the “Internal Colonial” model, which argued that the Chicano community was made dependent on white society for its survival. The Chicano was “made to be and feel powerless within the limits of socially approved, sources of power such as the electoral system and the government bureaucracy.” 13 The Internal Colonial model thus gives one a “window” by which to look at the historical experience of the Chicano community after war and annexation in the nineteenth century.14 In the end, however, neither the immigrant nor the Internal Colonial Posing the Correct Questions

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model can account for change. Thus, while the immigrant model seems to be verified by the reality that today we are witnessing thousands of immigrants arriving from Mexico and Central America, its simplistic approach distorts the historical reality of a people who were in the Southwest before modern political boundaries existed. Worse, the assumptions that it brings into the analysis serve to create stereotypes with which to blame the community for its own exclusion, and cannot at all account for change. The myth of America as a land of immigrants does not explain nor even recognize the historical oppression of the Chicano community generation after generation. As for the Internal Colonial model, the consideration of race and class does not, in itself, lead to an understanding of change. Further, it does not lend itself to an analysis of the community struggles. The account that this model provides is mainly descriptive. While it provides an important critical view of American history, especially as we look at the historical oppression of the Chicano up through the first half of this century, it does not give us a handle by which to understand the present political reality. Neither model focuses on the experience of the Chicano as urbanization intensified in the twentieth century.15 It is the urban political institutional arrangements and the competitive urban market forces that provided the context by which our analysis could then focus on change. For a discussion of this we turn to the historical-sociological analysis of David Montejano and the structural analysis of Ira Katznelson. The Rules of the Game

In his book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, David Montejano poses the problem of race and class as a conflict over land, resources, and control of institutions in the wake of capitalist expansion into Texas.16 His analysis takes into account the uneven development of capitalist relations through history as well as between communities. Montejano begins his analysis of these changing race and class relationships by interpreting the annexation of the Southwest in the context of the expansion westward: “Annexation set the context for the formation of ‘races’ in the Southwest. These divisions were not necessarily an immediate result but were a predictable outcome of the political subordination and economic displacement [of Chicanos] set off by annexation.” 17 When domination of an ethnic community by another within a classstructured society is institutionalized, that group, for all practical puposes, is a racial group in the consciousness of the dominated and the dominating. As 24

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these institutionalized racial restrictions were relaxed by the changing political economic system, class distinctions became more pronounced.18 In other words, race relations are as economic and political as class relations; they both are deeply imbedded in the historical struggle over resources. One does not eliminate the other; indeed, in the Chicano experience one feeds into the other. In fact, in the context of market conditions and the competition that they impose on the various groups in society, both race and class influence that competition. The variable(s), then, are the social and economic conditions; as they change, so does the character of these relations. In the first half of the twentieth century, race generally characterized the relationship between Anglos and Chicanos in Texas because of the farm economy and its “Jim Crow” order that dominated in this period. Race and class relations during this period had all the characteristics of an Internal Colonial model, even in the urban areas. However, in urban centers such as San Antonio, Anglo-Chicano relations “were more relaxed than in areas where growers were more or less in complete control.” First, the city provided greater social, political, and economic mobility for a Chicano middle class, albeit a small one, to develop. Second, Montejano points out that the market forces in an urban, consumer-oriented service economy provided relatively greater freedom of movement for the small Chicano middle class, even in the face of a pervasive second-class status: The new urban elites, in spite of their conservatism, constituted a weakened foundation for Jim Crow. Financiers, industrialists, and merchants had never been as dependent as growers on labor repression. In the absence of repression, an element of competition characterized the posture of Anglo merchants and politicians in their relations with Mexicans.19 As pointed out in the introductory chapter, competitive class relations in the urban market of San Antonio in the 1930s defined the political relationship between the Anglo business community and the Chicano middle class in key electoral races toward the end of that decade. In the context of this more relaxed relationship, the Chicano middle class was able to secure “protection and concessions.” 20 In other words, as the Chicano middle class leadership gained greater visibility, they may not have been able to compete for political office, but they were able to gain concessions from the dominant group in return for their support. Competitive class relations, more than restrictive race relations, now defined the relationship between Anglo and Chicano. From a different perspective, Ira Katznelson, in his structural analysis of Posing the Correct Questions

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the history of American urban politics, stressed that “ethnicity, race, and territoriality, rather than class, questions of production, or work place relations,” have tended to and still tend to determine what is possible politically and what is not.21 In this context, class “has been lived and fought as a series of partial relationships, and it has therefore been experienced and talked about as only one of a number of competing bases of social life.” 22 Further, in this series of partial relationships, ethnicity is one of the forces that separates the community from the work place and that fragments a potential class consciousness. Thus, for example, in a large industrial city, an Irish person will act Irish in her/his neighborhood, but will assume a worker’s consciousness in the work place, especially if the work place is unionized. Historically, this resulted in a fragmented consciousness as this Irish person moved from work place to community to work place. Worse, it undermines the possibility of a broad coalition of workers connecting communities to work places along class lines. In particular sets of conditions and relationships, however, ethnicity/race can bring together class and community. In San Antonio, a Chicano is a Chicano whether she/he is at work or at home, and this is because of the intense anti-Chicano history in San Antonio. At the same time, being a Chicano has historically meant that one was also a worker, whether at home or at the workplace. While this may be changing in modern San Antonio as the middle class grows, it was an important factor in the mobilization of Chicanos before and immediately following World War ii. Nonetheless, it is this fluid movement of race and class that leads to a greater understanding of the Chicano urban experience in San Antonio. On the one hand, in the face of intense racism, race brought the Chicano middle class in San Antonio closer to its working compatriots in its concern for the welfare of the Chicano community. On the other hand, the urban market in San Antonio ultimately and profoundly influenced the strategies and goals of the Chicano middle class; its particular set of class interests separated it from the rest of the community. The founding of the League of United Latin American Citizens (lulac) in 1929 is a classic example of this dilemma (which was discussed in the introductory chapter). Its goal was to upgrade or uplift the Chicano community through the promotion of education and the development of a civic-mindedness in the community. However, its own particular set of class interests (an individualistic assimilation into the urban market, i.e., economic success) brought lulac into direct opposition with the radical labor movement of that period. As a consequence, the Chicano middle

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class’s political struggle of the pre–World War ii period was constantly pulled in different directions by these forces; this would continue after the war. The ability to define the role of the historical subject (the acting subject) in politics lies precisely in the approaches that both Montejano and Katznelson take. Montejano provides the historical and sociological insight to understand why it was the middle class that eventually gained ascendancy in urban politics. On the other hand, Katznelson provides the tools by which to understand the Chicano middle class’s changing political behavior as it gained ascendancy. This insight allows us to see how the Chicano community was able to move toward a politics of inclusion within a restrictive and closed political environment. The most important point stressed by Montejano and Katznelson is that political activity and political change do not occur in a vacuum. They are influenced—limited, if you will—by the existing historical structures and conditions. But at the same time they do, as they act on the world around them, impact those institutions and structures that dominate them. Thus, while the Chicano community, in particular the middle class, was able to impact the urban institutions in pre–World War ii and post–World War ii San Antonio, they did so with different levels of success. Or to put it in a different way, the existing structures and conditions also played a major role in determining the available options and, thus, the outcomes. As these structures and conditions changed through history, so did the possible outcomes. The Theoretical Framework of Analysis

The premise underlying the analysis is that political access is not a given; political access as well as political rights are based on that community’s political mobilization and struggle. The analysis is based on the interaction between institutions and behavior—between institutional structures that tend to influence and to shape political behavior versus the role that political behavior itself has in influencing or changing the institutional status quo. In more concrete terms, the analysis focuses on the dialectics of structure and agency: on the impact of calculated political behavior (agency) on institutions (structure) and their political rules (structure) and the impact of institutional change (structure) on political behavior (agency) as well as on outcomes. This focus on structure and agency allows me to address several very important questions not answered in any of the political studies done on San Antonio. How did the Chicano community get to the point where they could

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elect a mayor for the first time in this century? What were the political changes that made this possible? What role did the Chicano community itself play in bringing about the changes leading to this momentous event? How have these changes impacted the Chicano community in terms of their political behavior and consequently on political empowerment? A most obvious example of the structuring of a community’s behavior are the political rules that existed after World War ii that prescribed how a person could participate. In the 1950s, the placement of voting polls in precincts could be done in an almost arbitrary manner. It is no surprise that the polls in the west side were generally not placed to make it easier to vote; rather, they were placed in one corner or the other of the precinct with the predictable consequence of a low voter turnout. Other inhibitions were the poll tax, the short voter registration period, annual voter registration, and long residence requirement. As a result, the Chicano community in general was excluded not only from representation but also from participation. In addition, city as well as county and state elections were based on an at-large system, inhibiting anyone but those who could then afford to run. The system appeared to most Chicanos as a foreign system belonging only to those who could afford the time and the money to participate. This is not say that the Chicano community therefore remained dormant, asleep, quietly acquiescing. Indeed, throughout the 1950s, Chicano organizations were busy orchestrating poll tax drives throughout South Texas. During this period they were also challenging the fairness and, ultimately, the constitutionality of the poll tax as well as other civil rights violations. At the same time, as will be shown in later chapters, Chicanos were also busy mobilizing within the one institution that afforded them direct participation, at least at the local level, and that was the Democratic Party. As it turns out, the Democratic Party, even though it was dominated by conservative Jim Crow advocates, was the one institution that provided the arena from which Chicanos were able to consolidate and broaden their political base in the face of the seemingly overwhelming political and economic obstacles that confronted them during that early period. Thus, it was not enough to recognize that the status of a community is largely defined by the institutional rules of participation. How did change come about within those rules? The analysis had to submerge below the status quo institutions and its institutional rules to look at the challenges to the status quo in order to document change.

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Communities Make Change but Not as They Choose

The common thread in the analysis in this study is that a dialectical relationship exists between political activity and institutions; they impact each other. But this relationship does not occur in a vacuum. It takes shape in the context of the urban market economy, where even the political options are to a great degree determined. Further, these options have reflected, in various important ways, the larger national and regional political environment. To begin, the implementation of municipal reform by the business community in 1951 was part of a business-led municipal reform movement throughout the South and Southwest leading to structural changes that best addressed their particular urban development interests. In addition, in the 1950s, the involvement of Chicano political activists in Democratic Party politics was part of a larger national trend by minorities to utilize the Democratic Party apparatus in local politics. Throughout the 1960s, the politics of the Kennedy/Johnson years, including the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, were quite visible in the formation of politics in the Chicano community as manifested in the politics of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition. Finally, the national civil rights movement, as well as the farmworker movement led by César Chávez, had a very visible impact on the Chicano movement. Just as important, though, the political process of San Antonio has been neither simply a reflection of these larger forces nor the inert object of an urban market economy. Political actors and their organizations and agendas have been the primary architects of what we find in San Antonio. The Good Government League (ggl) arose in 1951 because of the particular needs of a highly mobilized business community. In the same vein, the Chicano community response, in conjunction with other liberal sectors in San Antonio, was based on particular historical and political needs arising from a community that had been excluded all of this century. While one might be tempted to take one position over the other, it is the interaction of local and external forces that in the end provides the broader picture. Michael Peter Smith, in a seemingly optimistic vein, argues in his book City, State, & Market that it is not simply the structure of the larger political and economic process that ultimately influences local political outcomes.23 In that calculus one must locate the local actors in power as they interact with those larger political forces. The point is that the neglect and deterioration of neighborhoods are not simply products of national politics or market forces but intended policy outcomes of groups in power. Worse, Posing the Correct Questions

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the domination by one group in power over other group(s) is not a byproduct but a necessary part of the relationships in an economy that pits one against the other in the competition for resources. On the agency side, while the Black civil rights movement was certainly an inspiration, as was the farmworker movement, on the Chicano movement in San Antonio as well as Texas, it was local and regional needs and demands that provided the organizing and mobilizing materials. Focusing on the city and its infrastructure, David Harvey in Social Justice and the City outlines the structural elements that dominate the urban space and that maintain the unequal distribution of urban resources. He seems to emphasize the apparent futility of urban movements, in the face of these economic and political structures, that do not go beyond what Katznelson has called the “rules of the game.” 24 At the same time Harvey does provide a complex socialist framework by which cities can govern themselves in more egalitarian ways. The important point that he makes is that urban governance, even from a liberal approach, cannot address these inequities in service, quality of life issues, and ultimately political power without confronting the tendencies of the market economy itself. Manuel Castells, in The City and the Grassroots, traces urban movements across time, space, and cultures, in his study of how urban residents actively defend and thus shape and define their urban spaces. In his premise that conflict is the mode of activity in the shaping of a city, he reasserts Michael Peter Smith’s argument but from a more optimistic perspective: even the poor become through their resistance co-authors of the shape of their urban experience. The pessimism in Castells’s classic study, however, is that while urbanites come to recognize the limitations of their politics in the face of global political and economic forces, they ultimately settle with shaping and influencing their particular little urban space—a rather provincial conclusion it seems.25 As discussed earlier, Katznelson in City Trenches argues that while urban movements do indeed form and shape their environment, they do so dependent upon what he characterizes as the “rules of the game.” 26 Katznelson, however, leaves open the discussion by emphasizing that the particular historical, racial, class, and spatial experiences of communities can undermine any generalizations concerning the outcomes of different urban struggles. Katznelson’s analysis is pessimistic in that the “rules of the game,” which arise from those national as well as regional forces which go into shaping the urban environment, tend to work in the interests of those in economic and political power by co-opting or fragmenting the opposing politics of communities. 30

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The political activities of groups mobilizing and advancing their interests in this context take as a given the capitalist mode of organization in society. His point, which is the most profound and is implicit in the work of other authors, is that as long as the rules of capital itself, i.e., the market economy, are taken as a given, the privileged position, as well as the worldview, of business continues to be secure. Regardless of their conclusions, the implication one can draw from these as well as other urban studies is that conflict is what defines the urban environment.27 Taken as a given are particular groups in power at the local level who, while not free from the influence of larger forces, actively shape their particular environments in their interests. At the same time, it is the activity of grassroots and opposing groups who through their mobilization counter these policies. While the ability of the system to adapt or co-opt the various conflicting groups is or at least has been predictable, these conflicts are not always predictable in terms of particular political or policy changes. Put in a different manner, while the playing field and Katznelson’s “rules of the game” do not guarantee the monopoly of power by any one group in these conflicts, they do privilege the priorities of a competitive market economy in the ultimate shaping of the city. The ominous note in this discussion is that, altruism and idealism aside, while change comes from the hands of those involved through conflict, the results, the consequences, of that change are determined by the game that ultimately engulfs them. It is in this context that we must place the Chicano community in the shaping of the political process that resulted in the changing of the political rules of representation in the 1970s. It was their politics from the bottom that forced the system to make the political changes that ultimately created the open political environment that San Antonians in the 1980s took for granted. The rules of the game, however, continued, even in this more open environment, to privilege the business priorities of growth, expansion, and investment. The view of the city as a market was not changed; simply those who had to now ponder over the issues of growth, expansion, and investment. Further, given that economic and social forces provide the parameters of the politics of communities, these forces ultimately play a role in determining not only the outcome of political change but also of the various actors themselves. It is this dialectical relationship that answers one very important question about the focus of this study: Why the focus on middle class electoral politics? Why not the working class? I must point out that the analysis of Chicano middle class electoral politics in San Antonio did not come about by calculation. In gathering the data on the political mobilization of the Chicano Posing the Correct Questions

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community as it struggled to gain political inclusion, I found that while Castells is quite correct in arguing that urban politics cannot be understood simply through a class analysis, those who have the most resources tend to have the greatest access to electoral politics. Underscoring this outcome, I found a direct connection between the political activity of the middle class of the pre–World War ii period and the dominant politics of the post–World War ii period. In the analysis of the earlier pre–World War ii urban experience in Chapter One, it showed that it was the middle class that not only had the greatest access but also had its own self interest tied to this more palatable, less radical approach. As opposed to the intense, radical labor struggle of the 1920s and 1930s, the middle class adherence to assimilation and its promise thus put it in a position that would only pay off after World War ii. The historical lesson learned from the pre–World War ii period is that it was the middle class, as small as it was, that was in the position to take advantage of those options in mobilizing the community. As the economy changed and the middle class grew after World War ii, their ability to mobilize multiplied, putting them in the center of political activity. The Second Face of Power

Another important concept in analyzing the process of change is the concept of political power itself. To analyze the process of change, the concept of political power had to be expanded for our purposes. A useful method by which to conceptually broaden the concept of power was found in the critique of the pluralist approach to the analysis of power. The assumption in the pluralist model is that not all groups in society are equally involved in the political institutions in terms of political power. This is because of the varied and changing interests of these different groups. As political decisions arise that affect a group or community directly, that group or community will get involved. As such, the pluralist model assumes that not all groups participate in the same decision-making processes. The political process is essentially open; it is not based on the exclusion of any group per se, as participation in the political process is defined by the different interests of any particular group. Political power therefore is democratically diffused along lines of interest. It thus focuses on the decision-making process to analyze political power. The basic problem is that by focusing on the institutional decision-making process to define political participation and power, the pluralist model fails to analyze how decisions arrive at the institutional level. It assumes that the only conflict is that conflict which is visible in the decision-making process. It im32

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plicitly blames those groups for non-participation by assuming that the political process is open to those who define their interest and get involved. In his critique of the pluralist model, E. E. Schattschneider points out that “probably 90 percent of the population cannot get into the pressure system.” 28 The result is that as applied to San Antonio, the pluralist approach leaves us with an imbalanced picture. It therefore excludes a large sphere of political reality and cannot explain how change occurs. As a consequence, by using this model, the analysis would not be able to focus on the Chicano community until that community gained political inclusion into those institutional settings in the 1970s. However, in a similar critique of the decision-making approach, Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz argue that power has two faces. The first, as described by Steven Lukes, “is totally embodied and fully reflected in ‘concrete decisions’ or in activity bearing directly upon their making.” 29 The second face is based on the notion that “to the extent that a person or group— consciously or unconsciously— creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts, that person or group has power.” 30 Bachrach and Baratz call this aspect of politics the arena of “non-decision making.” In more dynamic terms, non-decision making not only describes the scope of decision making, but also describes the arena of conflict in which groups struggle to gain access to the decision-making process. This view broadens the definition of participation as well as power and allows change to be analyzed. The arena of non-decision making is as important as the arena of decision making if one is to understand political reality in its broader context. By engaging this approach, the development of Chicano middle class politics in San Antonio is brought to the surface. In other words, the focus is now not on those who control the decision-making process, the Anglo business community in San Antonio, but on those sectors of the community who are excluded, the Chicano community. At the same time it allows us to remain cognizant of the larger picture. Personal and Organizational Agenda Politics

The most useful concept in capturing the broader political reality described by Bachrach and Baratz was the concept of agenda politics. According to E. E. Schattschneider, “by the time a group has developed the kind of interest that leads it to organize, it may be assumed that it has also developed some kind of political bias because organization is itself a mobilization of bias in preparation for action.” 31 In other words, agenda politics “is formed through the Posing the Correct Questions

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normal struggle of forces. At any point in time it will reflect the existing balance of these forces, or the ‘mobilization of bias’ within a community.” 32 The usefulness of the concept lay in the ability afforded the analysis to pinpoint the political agendas outside the institutional setting. The assumption is that the very existence of a power structure and its status quo institutions implies that there are other groups outside the power structure who are organized or are organizing around their excluded interests. Agenda politics allows the analysis to go beyond the status quo politics and provides a more dynamic picture of political reality than the narrower focus on institutional power. This broader picture permitted the analysis of the political mobilization of the Chicano community in the context of a changing political environment. More important, agenda politics was not simply a tool used to describe political reality; it also reflected the changing styles and approaches to political power as the political environment changed. As the Chicano community gained political inclusion, the kinds of political agendas possible also changed. As such, the process of setting agendas reflected the changing political environment. It allowed the analysis to focus on the impact of a changing political environment on the Chicano community as they gained political inclusion. How agendas are formed and, more importantly, expressed in relation to the institutional rules of participation then became an excellent method to measure the impact of agency on political behavior. To capture this institutional influence, a distinction had to be made in the kinds of agenda politics that evolved in the changing political environment which reflected changing political behavior. Out of this distinction the concepts of organizational agenda politics and personal agenda politics were developed and applied to the changing political environment. The concept of organizational agendas focuses on the conflict beyond the institutional decision-making setting between the militant sector of the Chicano middle class and the dominant business community over the definition of legitimate issues. This occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when the dominant business organization, the ggl, defined growth and expansion as the only legitimate community-wide issues. These issues reflected the municipal reform movement’s narrow view of local government as a business enterprise. Through an organizational agenda that included liberal Anglos, Blacks, unions, teachers, police, and bus drivers, the Chicano-led coalition raised issues that touched various sectors of the community with little or no access to the decision-making process which was controlled by the business-dominated

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ggl. It mobilized the community around an agenda that reflected community and class issues, such as minimum wage, fairer distribution of public resources, and civil rights. It is during this period, which is analyzed in the second section of the book, that we find very few individuals with the ability to develop their own political agenda outside either the dominant Anglo business agenda or the Chicano-led coalition agenda. Most political activists who had their own individual strategies were swayed to one side or the other. Even one of the most charismatic and independent politicians of the period, Henry B. Gonzalez, who rose to prominence because of the social issues that he stood for, was not unaffected. Indeed, he helped the coalition’s agenda with his charisma and was helped in turn by the coalition’s ability to mobilize voters. The significance of this conflict was not that the coalition gained political power, but that the coalition’s challenge to the ggl’s domination of city politics set the stage for institutional change in the 1970s. The concept of organizational agendas documents this important process. Such an analysis would not have been possible if the focus had been on the decision-making process alone. On the other hand, personal agenda politics describes a process where the inherent bias of institutions is not challenged in any comprehensive or organizational manner.33 As San Antonio moved to a more open political system in the middle 1970s, where no one organization dominated, the use of personal agenda politics is used to describe the more individualistic, apparently consensual form of politics that developed. There is still a conflict over issues, but the community is generally fragmented and the issues that face it are not articulated except when community issues coincide with the personal agenda of a politician’s own strategy of inclusion. This connection to the community is indirect because of the independent selection of issues based on political inclusion, not confrontation. As a consequence, greater political consensus is brought about by the influence of independent representation on how policy demands are addressed. In this apparent pluralistic environment the different groups and their demands are subtly co-opted into accepting the new status quo institutions; the order of business is still business. Indeed, the highly individualistic manner by which the various actors get involved in the process then works to defend that bias regardless of their personal politics. The rules of the game become their rules of the game and they become defenders of the status quo.34 Through this new politics the political actor’s primary strategy is individual

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inclusion as opposed to community inclusion. The mobilization of a community bias, the primary tool of organizational agendas, is not part of the new personal agenda politics. Political representatives and leaders are left to their own resources and options in choosing alternative strategies and policy directions. In the absence of a broader articulated agenda, these actors find themselves in a political dilemma in which they isolate themselves politically if they bring up nonconsensus issues. On the other hand, they may simply adapt their goals and strategies to the political environment of consensus and gain inclusion— individual political inclusion. The title of the book, The Illusion of Inclusion, then, is not intended to deny that the political environment has changed—has opened up to historically excluded sectors. Rather, the title is conveying a critique of political change in the context of a market economy. First, it points out that political inclusion has occurred at the expense of the more radicalized community issues that were raised in challenging the system in the first place. Second, and just as important, the title is a political characterization of contemporary electoral politics as a very middle class oriented system where communities are not connected to each other through a broader agenda that could be reflective of the entire city. Thus, third, it speaks to a politics of individualism that has in the end made the various communities in San Antonio spectators, albeit front-row, of a continuing business way of running the city. The distinction in this study, therefore, between organizational agenda politics and personal agenda politics is not that one is organized and the other is not. The distinction is that organizational agenda politics describes the mobilization of community bias; its connection to the community is direct. Where personal agendas dominate, the connection to the community is accidental, coincidental. This distinction does not imply that one excludes the other. The distinction is dominance. Where organizational agendas dominate, personal agendas by necessity dovetail with the broader agenda of political conflict. In this kind of political environment, the issues are broad and are connected to conflicting community issues. The conflict is characterized by a struggle over the rules of the game. In an environment of personal agendas, an apparent consensus prevails because of the lack of any broad organizational challenge to the rules of the game. Finally, this approach broadens the focus on the use of political power. Simply looking at the decision-making process does not explain the existing balance of forces in the community; it ignores the process by which some is-

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sues are ultimately considered and others are not. The concept of agenda politics encompasses nondecisions in analyzing political power; it encompasses the political challenge by the Chicano middle class of the monolithic ggl in San Antonio. It pokes holes in the pluralist approach by anticipating and explaining the causes of change. Taking the analysis one step further, the concept of agenda politics, with its distinction between organizational and personal agenda politics, traces the process as it led to an environment of apparent political consensus. Personal agenda politics describes how, despite the goals of the various change agents, the status quo is able to consolidate its institutional agenda of growth and expansion while provoking only a fragmented challenge from the community below or no organized challenge at all. The role of Communities Organized for Public Service (cops) then, because of its nonpartisan nature of community organization and its nonelectoral participation, challenged the method of distribution of public services but not the orientation and goals of city government.35 In the midst of an environment where the Chicano community still suffers the brunt of poverty, lack of education, poor housing, lack of access to health care, and underemployment and unemployment, the analysis brings us back to the question: Can a community mobilize its resources in the urban electoral arena, in the face of institutional rules of participation combined with the demands of an urban political economy, in order to bring about change that is in its interest? Can it mobilize power in its own interest? Or is this political prominence simply an accommodation of the Chicano middle class by the Anglo business community into a political process where the political and economic priorities have already been set? This study provides a tentative answer to that question in its critique of political change. But more importantly, whether or not the reader agrees with the pessimistic conclusion, through the analysis of change we will be in a better position to understand the limitations as well as potential that a community faces in our very complex urban society. The Feminist Critique

The last, but not least, important issue in the methodological framework that I present in this chapter is the feminist critique. I want to avoid the simplistic and superficial excuse that “my analysis is about the Chicano struggle for political inclusion, not about gender politics.” For if my study is not about gen-

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der politics, then I cannot ignore the “Women Question.” To do so would make my study gender specific, i.e., a study of male politics. At the same time I do not pretend that I can write about women with the same intensity or feelings or with the same intellectual and historical insights that a woman can. I do not want to, indeed, cannot, write about women for women. This study is part of the larger struggle for diversity today to broaden the understanding by not only social scientists but by all participants in, and students of (in the larger sense of the word) politics, society, and history. In other words, it is the responsibility of all of us to be inclusive. This is not a moral imperative, although it has its moral basis; it is an imperative to broaden our knowledge of our world. The historic struggles of oppressed and excluded groups in this country have never been nor will they ever be gender exclusive. Women have always played an integral role in those struggles. If there is any moral imperative for the Chicano community, it is that as an excluded group we must apply this principle of inclusion to the entire community. Methodologically, what I found is that addressing the question is not a radical departure from what I have already addressed in uncovering Chicano politics. The same questions that I raised in addressing the prior research on San Antonio are there when addressing the role of women. The greatest problem lies not in any methodological flaw but in the view of the researcher/writer. Maintaining a self-conscious gendered view in researching as well as writing underlines the pervasive reality of our male-centered universe. Nonetheless, in this study women were there but they were not in the visible positions that men occupied. Perhaps the greatest difference lies in the fact that Chicanas were indeed invisible in political leadership positions, but not in providing the work. In other words, women did not run for office in the 1950s or 1960s, nor did they participate in the precinct conventions. But they did actively support political elections and they were involved in middle class organizations such as lulac or GI Forum, even if sometimes they were allowed only an auxiliary relationship. But as the urban economy grew and as the Chicano middle class expanded, the women in that class gained greater visibility in leadership roles. Thus, the particular strategy that I will use is to weave the question into the narrative of the study. As the study leads into the contemporary period, this will not be a difficult task. In fact, the last section will trace the development of Chicana middle class politics, ending with a profile of some of the most active and visible Chicana leaders.

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Conclusion

While I do not want to bow the reader’s head with an abstract theoretical discussion of the study, I will present in the final chapter a theoretical discussion of the most important and obvious questions that this study raises. It is in this final chapter where I can discuss, critically, the nature of the middle class and its class-based interest in gaining inclusion into San Antonio’s mainstream political arena. It is important that we understand the nature of the middle class, not in static terms, but in historical and political terms, if we are to assess not only the potential but the limitations of middle class electoral politics for the Chicano community. Further, it is important that this critique of the middle class not be taken as “middle class bashing” but rather as an analysis of the pervasive influence of the material basis that provides the context for understanding the dialectical relationship between structure and agency. Thus, the chapter will conclude with two important concerns on this point. The first concern, which is stated at the beginning of this study, addresses the relationship of structure and agency in the form of several questions as they relate to Chicano middle class electoral politics. Can an electoral strategy, in the context of an urban economy that generally pits the interests of a community against the interests of development and growth, create greater inclusion for those who are still excluded? Can the middle class provide the kind of leadership that is needed to address the still pervasive problems of poverty in the Chicano community? That is to say, can an electoral strategy be developed to create an organizational agenda that can unite the broader community, in all its diverse interests as reflected in San Antonio’s demanding urban economy, in addressing the political institutions that govern their lives? The second point of concern is the historic middle class exclusion of women, which I argue is a universal and historical phenomenon cutting across racial, cultural, and class lines. A major question raised is whether the leadership of women will make a difference in terms of the existing gap between the middle class and the working and poor classes which seems so obvious today. Are middle class Chicanas, because of their cultural experience as well as gender position in our patriarchal society, more sensitive to the broader issues of their community, or will their class position ultimately determine their politics? There is no clear or correct answer. I would argue that the answer exists in the kinds of political experience that they have gone and will go through. In the end, the question remains: Will the urban economy and its powerful influence on what a city can and cannot do ultimately determine the politics of both the Chicana and Chicano middle class leadership in the same manner? Posing the Correct Questions

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The Shaping of a Political Agenda and Its Consequences

This chapter describes the consolidation of power by San Antonio’s business community in city hall and the role of the Chicano community in this process. It begins with a descriptive analysis of the process that led to the establishment of the ggl in 1955 and its almost complete control of city government for the next eighteen years. The analysis then focuses on the role of a sector of the Chicano middle class in this process. The chapter ends with an analysis of the political and organizational efforts by Chicano activists to establish a political base from which eventually an independent Chicano political leadership arose in challenging ggl dominance. The Impact of Municipal Reform

In the 1940s San Antonio found itself in the middle of a developing post– World War ii economy that promised economic growth and expansion to those communities in the Sunbelt prepared to take advantage of the new developing industries looking for investment opportunities. David Perry and Alfred Watkins pointed out in their analysis of the Sunbelt city that: In the post war phase of capital accumulation, six new pillars of growth—agriculture, defense, advanced technology, oil and natural

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gas, real estate and construction, and tourism and leisure— emerged as the dominant industries. All have chosen a Sunbelt location.1 During this same period San Antonio experienced a rapid growth in population, from 253,854 to 406,442 persons. This growth produced phenomenal suburbanization in the midst of an undeveloped pre–World War ii economic and public service infrastructure. As a consequence, San Antonio’s economic elite found their city unprepared for these new opportunities. This rapid growth exposed to them the inability of the existing political machine, “notorious already for poor delivery of services,” to meet these new economic challenges.2 By 1951, the political machine was finally defeated, ushering in reforms that set the stage for the development of modern San Antonio. Municipal reform was not unique to San Antonio during this period, nor were the groups that led this reform.3 Municipal reform, especially in the Sunbelt, was brought about by urban economic elites who moved to change what to them was a governmental structure that was too inefficient to meet the demands of the changing economy. To meet these demands these businessmen wanted a local government that could provide “stability; [was] less expensive; [was] devoid of commitment to radical social theories; and assured businessmen a more direct and central role in municipal affairs.” 4 As James Weinstein points out in his analysis of the role of the business community in municipal reform in general: Aversion to graft, alone, was not enough to move businessmen to sponsor reform. Though costly, business had accepted and lived with graft for many years. What converted these men into civic reformers was the increased importance of the public function of the twentieth century city.5 Fitting the pattern of municipal reform, the reform goals of the CouncilManager Association of San Antonio aimed at efficiency, not social reform. Led by local economic elites, the Council-Manager Association called for reforms they felt addressed the governmental efficiency and service improvements needed to meet the demands of a rapidly growing San Antonio. But more important these reforms would put them directly in control of the policy-making process. The successful campaign for reform during the 1951 city election campaign focused on the efficient development of a public service infrastructure which included not only the “development of a coliseum, freeways, airport expansion,” but also improvements in the delivery of electric, gas, water, and 46

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sewer services. This emphasis on efficiency sprang from the association’s concern that “San Antonio lagged behind other Texas cities in its progress, as the gap between the city’s large population and its still underdeveloped economy and public service infrastructure amply demonstrated.” 6 This concern for efficient city services and orderly urban development was based on the need to develop a stable investment environment. Too many unincorporated suburbs had developed with poor planning and inadequate services. Further, because of an effort by white communities to maintain segregation, other suburbs had moved to incorporate during the 1940s, which “threatened San Antonio’s future growth and tax base.” 7 Annexation from this perspective became critical to providing orderly public services to developing areas and forestalling the development of competing municipalities, in order to insure a stable environment for investors and developers. Thus, in its first term, 1951–1953, the city council under the new council-manager government annexed 80 square miles, doubling the size of San Antonio.8 Political stability was the goal the municipal reformers sought with the new rules of participation: nonpartisan, at-large elections (in place of the partisan ward politics of the political machine period). The nonpartisan nature of the elections eliminated the Democratic Party from participating. Excluding the party and its organizational and financial resources limited the ability to mobilize the working poor. This virtually eliminated from competition any politician seeking to mobilize this working class sector in city politics. This new rule, coupled with at-large elections, eliminated for all practical purposes the availability of viable independent candidates.9 Further, the structure of the council-manager government assigned the city council sole responsibility for formulating policy and a professional city manager sole responsibility for implementing that policy. The city council was forbidden by the new city charter to interfere in city administration, except to hire and fire the city manager. This assured that the city would be run like a corporation, avoiding the spoils system of the political machine. This also assured that the city could avoid “radical social theory”; they could better avoid the demands that were being mobilized by the Chicano, Black, and working class communities after World War ii. The goal of these municipal reformers was to assure that those whom they felt had the greatest vested interest in the welfare of the city as a whole—the business community—would dominate in municipal affairs. Certainly, the nonpartisan, at-large elections narrowed the field to those who could afford to run for office. Further, the low salary paid to council members (a token A Political Agenda and Its Consequences

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twenty dollars a meeting) eliminated the professional politician from city government as well as those who did not have an independent means to support involvement. Finally, the structural separation of the policy-making process from the administrative process eliminated the “spoils system” of the past city governments. Although these political rules successfully insulated politics from “radical social theory,” structural reform in itself proved insufficient to assure an agenda that gave priority to growth and expansion. Structural reform did not guarantee that individual politicians within the ranks of the reformers would not mobilize political constituencies around competing agendas that did not address the goals of growth and expansion. It did not insulate politics from those who wanted to use city politics for their own personal agenda of acquiring power.10 During the first four years after the reforms were implemented, Jack White, the first mayor to serve under the council-manager government, struggled with the reformers. Although White was one of the original reformers, once in office, he moved to centralize power in the mayor’s hands. White’s challenge became even more threatening when he was joined by several anti-reform wealthy businessmen, whose estates were included in the first major annexations. Coupled with this anti-annexation support and backed by former political machine figures, White led a slate against the reformers and won handily in the 1953 city elections.11 Almost immediately, White’s personal agenda put municipal reform in a crisis. White and his newly elected slate advocated a return to the old commission government they had just defeated. In 1954 the reformers, in direct response to this threat, moved to consolidate their political base and protect their hard-earned reforms. As John Booth points out, the reformers had learned that depending on individuals to carry out their goals was unreliable: They knew that earlier “reform” mayors had proven reluctant to carry through their promises once in power, and that service- and tax-stingy machines had risen as phoenixes from the ashes of reform. . . . This distrust led to a major structural innovation in city politics. For the first time, reformers created a permanent political organization to transform a history of sporadic and transitory successes into longer-lasting control.12 This permanent organization, the Good Government League (ggl), established in 1954, quickly grew from 60 members at its first meeting to 3,000

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before the 1955 elections.13 After its unanimous victory in the 1955 elections, the ggl was so successful in its nomination of “legitimate,” nonpartisan candidates, that it faced little or no serious competition beginning with the elections of 1955 through the elections of 1971. Its ability to dominate city electoral politics so completely was based on five factors. Along with the new rules of participation, the second factor was the ggl’s immediate consolidation of support in the so-called silk stocking communities of San Antonio. The members of the ggl’s board of directors constituted “the economic and social elite of San Antonio.” This connection supplied immense financial support for its political campaigns. As a consequence, 65 percent of all candidates, including many Chicano candidates, came from the more affluent north side of San Antonio. They were “in short, representatives of the socially prominent and the economically powerful.” 14 This, of course, included appointments to city boards and commissions. The third factor was that the ggl was organized specifically to control the nomination process for city council elections. To establish control they set up a three-tier structure organization that included the mass membership, a board of directors, and a nominating board selected by the board of directors before each election. To control the nominating process, the nominating board and its screening of candidates was kept secret from the public. Its criteria for selection was simple but was strictly adhered to: the candidates had to be prosperous enough to serve at the low pay of the council, demonstrate no political ambition beyond serving on the council, maintain a civic-minded approach to community affairs, and work for the community as a whole. The potential candidates had to “eschew strong partisan or ethnic allegiances and work for growth and economic expansion.” 15 Although there was no officially designated slot for mayor on the ballot, the nominating committee pre-selected their choice for mayor to head up the ticket. This candidate had veto power over the selection of the other candidates. If the ticket won a majority of the seats (which it did until 1973), this candidate was selected by the rest of the council to be mayor. This would assure that the ggl’s agenda would be directly connected at the policy level to the professional side of council-manager government. The ability to present a media image as the guardian of nonpartisanship was the fourth factor. Political issues or candidates that did not represent growth and expansion or address the economic needs of the city were cast by the media as undemocratic and divisive to the community. Underlying this appeal was acceptance of the market logic as the logic of a city. As well as ap-

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pealing to this kind of nonpartisanship, the “ggl manipulated Anglo voters’ fears of political radicals and racial minorities” when challenges arose from other sectors.16 The fifth and final factor was its strategy of extending its political domination into Democratic Party politics as well. In 1965, John Rogers, writing for the Texas Observer, a statewide liberal newspaper, described their pervasive domination: The Good Government Leaguers, who came to power as reformers in 1955, have never lost. The record is 53 to 0. Only in their first term was there an independent voice on the city council, that of Henry B. Gonzalez, whom the ggl did not choose to oppose. Since then the ggl absorbed or killed off opponents one by one until now it exercises absolute control over the machinery of city government, which in San Antonio includes not only the ordinary functions, but also the gas and electric utilities, the water works, the bus system, the expanding urban renewal agency, and the housing authority, which owns and operates 5,000 apartments. It controls the machinery of the Democratic Party through the party chairman, John Daniels, who was a ggl city councilman and now is the attorney for the housing authority and the proposed city-sponsored Hemisfair.17 Thus, it became almost impossible for any independent candidate to break their ranks. The ggl’s success is reflected in its electoral record from 1955 to 1971. In those elections the ggl won 77 of 81 council seats. Although at least one Chicano was always included on its slate (one in 1955, two from 1957 to 1971, and three in 1971), 78 percent of all the candidates were Anglos.18 Political consolidation, accomplished through the tightly controlled organizational agenda of the ggl and its control of the machinery of the Democratic Party, assured the business community a direct and central role in municipal affairs. The harmonious nature of the ggl councils “has become legendary, but it was the harmony imposed and very narrowly defined by the elite-controlled nomination process.” 19 Indeed, the independent Henry B. Gonzalez, who served on the city council from 1953 to 1956, was the only liberal voice on those councils until 1967 when three independents gained positions on city council. While race was still a dynamic force, the consolidation of political power by the business elite was essentially based on class concerns.

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The Role of the Chicano Community in GGL Politics

Although Chicano participation in ggl politics has been referred to as mere tokenism, their inclusion did provide the stable, conservative leadership that the ggl needed to expand its legitimacy into the barrios. This decision to include a segment of the Chicano community was obviously based on their growing direct participation in electoral politics since 1948, when Gus Garcia and G. J. Sutton won seats on the San Antonio School Board and on the San Antonio Junior College Board respectively. Just as important was the growing visibility of a liberal faction in the local Democratic Party, evidenced by the near wins of Henry B. Gonzalez and Albert Peña in their bids for legislative seats in the 1950 and 1952 legislative races respectively. The participation by middle class Chicanos in ggl politics was based on a more “realistic approach” to mainstream politics, as opposed to the confrontational tactics of the civil rights movement of post–World War ii. The proponents of this conservative perspective disparaged confrontation, which they saw as undermining political inclusion. As Alfred Vasquez, the most visible conservative leader of the Chicano middle class, noted: You are much more effective in the inside where you can have a voice in determining policy that can be beneficial to the predominantly Chicano West Side communities than by raising hell from the outside.20 The political goal from his perspective was to use the new prominence of the middle class to gain entry into decision-making positions on boards and commissions and to enter political office by joining forces with the emerging business community’s municipal reform group. When Vasquez, originally from El Paso, first arrived in San Antonio during World War ii, he was appalled by the lack of political participation by Chicanos. After much soul searching, he concluded that it was the Chicanos’ fault “that we were not represented in the political institutions.” 21 Vasquez, a stockbroker, took the position that the business community had a broader vision of public policy. He accepted the nonpartisan nature of city politics in the ideological form that it was presented: a politics free from the corrupt control of the cliquish Democratic Party. He also supported at-large elections because ward politics produced politicians who were only concerned with money and services for their districts. Although he accepted that discrimination did exist, he felt that Chicanos simply had to show the business community that they were responsible and could work within the system. In 1950, after several discussions Vasquez and a few close associates orgaA Political Agenda and Its Consequences

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nized a dinner honoring the most unselfish and civic-minded individual in the Chicano community: someone who didn’t rant and rave, but simply gave himself to the community. The person they selected, Jose Olivares, eventually became the first Chicano on the ggl slate for city council in 1955. According to Vasquez, as word got out about the dinner to honor Olivares, many notables in the Anglo business community wanted to attend. As a consequence, the dinner became a banquet and was a success.22 After this event Vasquez and other Chicano businessmen began to meet with the Council-Manager Association and eventually with the ggl. George de la Garza, a close associate of Vasquez, pointed out that business leaders would frequently pull out of their pockets thousands of dollars when asked to support a campaign for election or for the passage of a bond. From these meetings, the Committee for Community Progress eventually evolved.23 The Committee for Community Progress, or, as it was popularly named, the Westside ggl, was not a true organization. It had no formal public meetings, no formal officers, no roll call at meetings. Middle class Chicanos were probably attracted to this organization out of their concern for electoral representation and because of its involvement with scholarship fundraisers for young Chicano students and other civic-minded activities.24 Anonymity was preferred because of their business interests in the barrio. Until 1969, when an unknown source provided a list to the newspapers, no public list of its membership ever existed. According to Vasquez, the membership was composed of outstanding members of the community, who were either businessmen or professionals.25 The ties between the ggl and the Committee for Community Progress were intimate. Although no single person was responsible for mobilizing and organizing this sector of the community, Vasquez, who sat on the board of directors of the ggl, was a key leader in the strategy to unite the Chicano community in ggl politics. He became the most articulate representative of the Chicano community to enter the inner circles of the Good Government League.26 However, as effective as the ggl was in consolidating its political base, it still did not eliminate challenges from sectors that had been excluded from its agenda. These excluded sectors included white liberals, labor, and the Black community. Another notable exclusion from the ggl agenda was the liberal sector of the Chicano middle class, who defined political inclusion as setting political agendas and not simply as participating in an agenda predefined by the business community.

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What is important to point out here is that the approach to political inclusion was the most visible demarcating line between the conservative and liberal sectors of the Chicano middle class, creating an intense internal conflict. At the same time, though, there was still a constant overlap brought about by the shared concern over issues that directly affected the Chicano community. Emphasizing the “non-organizational” nature of the Westside ggl, some members of the Committee for Community Progress also worked actively with the more liberal Chicanos in various projects. Jose Olivares, the first Chicano on the ggl slate for city council, was also involved in a rally for Adlai Stevenson organized by the liberal sector. A local printer named Felix Treviño, who later would shift to the Westside ggl, also worked with the liberal sector through the beginning of the 1960s.27 The switching of sides was not uncommon, as the debate over the definition of inclusion continued through the 1960s. Chicanos and the Democratic Party

One important result in the elimination of political parties in local city elections was that civil rights as well as labor issues were excluded from local politics. As a consequence, the liberal sector of the Chicano middle class turned to the Democratic Party at the county level to raise these issues. The goal was the development of an independent Chicano political base. But in the context of San Antonio’s nonpartisan city elections, this virtually excluded them from city council elections. However, this more liberal sector viewed political inclusion as more than just the opportunity to participate in established institutions. Through its involvement in Democratic Party politics, it sought to gain an independent political base from which to address the immediate problems facing the Chicano community. A political problem they faced, however, was that Texas shared the oneparty legacy of southern states. Historically, this meant that conservatives as well as liberals were in the same party. The consequences were that the conservatives tended to control the party mechanism across the state. In the San Antonio of the 1950s, the ggl assumed that role. This clearly showed the liberals that they needed a different strategy for giving voters a valid choice. At the state level a coalition of labor, liberals, and minorities was formed. In 1952 they ran a liberal candidate for governor, Ralph Yarborough, but lost in the primaries. By 1956, however, they managed to elect Yarborough to the U.S. Senate.

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At the local level, this same tenacity and influence was exhibited throughout the 1950s by liberal political activists. Maury Maverick Sr. (the liberal exmayor) became an opponent of the urban reform group after he clashed with them in the 1941 mayoral elections. Through his activities in the Democratic Party after the war, he began to organize a local liberal group within the party. Ruben Munguia recalls how he was eventually recruited into party politics: Maury recruited me to participate in precinct convention politics . . . I told him I didn’t know what to do . . . He said he just wanted me to participate so as to learn how they work.28 For these activists it was a time to learn. Judge Albert Peña recalls that “Our involvement with the Democratic Party taught us organization; how to take over conventions.” 29 In the 1952 county convention Peña, along with Munguia and Maverick, staged a rump convention. In the county convention a coalition of white liberal politicians, led by Maverick, and Chicanos, led by Munguia and Peña, decided to back a liberal candidate for Bexar County Democratic Chairman. When the labor sector, represented by the afl-cio Labor Council in San Antonio, refused to go along with their choice, members of the coalition refused to vote through several rounds and kept the convention into the early hours of the morning: We knew we couldn’t succeed but we forced the convention which should have finished its business by 8 or 9 o’clock that evening to stay until 3 or 4 o’clock that morning.30 Although they were unsuccessful in taking over the convention, Chicanos were a visible presence in the Democratic Party. In electoral politics as well, Chicanos remained persistent despite widespread discrimination. In the 1950 primaries Henry B. Gonzalez ran for state representative. For the first time in this century, a Chicano candidate advanced to a runoff election in San Antonio for a state legislative office. At the same time, Maury Maverick Jr. also entered a runoff: Maury Maverick, Jr., the son of former New Deal congressman from San Antonio, was in a runoff for another seat in the legislature, too, but had lost the West Side, and Gonzalez says Maverick, Sr., went to work to create a Maverick-Gonzalez partnership in the runoff. Gonzalez and the Mavericks agreed to cooperate—there was a slate card that included Gonzalez and Maverick, Jr.— Gonzalez lost by 2,000 votes out of 33,000 while Maverick, Jr., with the West Side going for him, won by

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600. The day after the young Maury won, he said he owed his election to Gonzalez as much as to anyone.31 Gonzalez failed to gain the necessary support in the Anglo precincts and lost the runoff. To this day some of the Chicanos involved in that particular race feel that the Anglo side of the ticket failed to do its part in the Anglo precincts for the entire ticket. In 1952 Peña was recruited by two white liberal candidates, Charles Lieck and Ed Sheridan, to run a ticket in the Democratic primaries for three state representative positions. Judge Peña recalls that when Lieck’s father (an important figure in Democratic Party politics) protested against Peña being on the ticket, the younger Lieck threatened to run with Peña on an independent ticket. The ticket was saved, but again Lieck and Sheridan won while Peña lost to Frates Seeligson, a ggl-backed conservative.32 The results in these two elections established a trend that affected Chicano political strategy. Although the Chicano precincts generally supported the liberal ticket as a whole, Anglo-dominated precincts did not support the Chicanos on the tickets. The result was that even the liberal Democratic circles lacked faith in the viability of a Chicano candidate. The Consolidation of Liberal Chicano Politics

This lack of faith in the efficacy of a Chicano candidate reinforced the need among the more militant Chicano activists to establish their political base within the party. Despite their losses up to then, the Democratic Party still offered the only opportunity to raise social issues as well as to develop the kind of Chicano political leadership that would use the political power and leverage of the Democratic Party to address those issues. To do so they turned their attention to a political strategy that would increase their role as well as influence in party politics—precinct politics.33 The first step in this direction occurred in 1952, when the Chicano liberal activists formed the Loyal American Democrats (lad), an organization or caucus within the party. The lad organization had two basic rules. The first rule was that elected officeholders could not be members of the organization. This rule was adopted to block politicians from using the organization for their own purposes. The second rule was that members had to be Chicano. Quite explicitly lad was intended to voice the needs of the Chicano community within the party. While the organization had been set up to address the obstacles encountered by Chicanos within the party structure, its primary

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goal was to respond directly to the conservative domination of the party. This effectively blocked the conservative sector of the Chicano middle class from membership.34 lad’s biggest and most visible success occurred when it brought a presidential candidate to the barrios for a rally. This was the first time a presidential rally was held in the barrios of San Antonio. According to Munguia, the idea emerged from an effort to mobilize a movement within the Chicano community to support Stevenson’s candidacy for president.35 In further negotiations, the Anglo Bexar County Democratic Party leadership in San Antonio gave lad permission to coordinate a rally in the west side to precede a nationally televised rally at the Alamo, which is located in the center of the city. On the eve of the proposed rally, according to Munguia, the conservative Anglo party leadership rescinded its support: However, the Friday before Adlai’s arrival in San Antonio at about 9 o’clock Lalo Solis and Albert Peña and somebody else comes in here and they tell me “we have just been notified by Jimmy Knight (and the Spears and what have you) that we are not going to have the rally at Santa Rosa, that they are going to take Adlai Stevenson to Uvalde to meet John Nance Garner and that Maverick is out of the program— he’s not going to be at the Alamo.” I said “Why shhh . . . that’s a crock of stuck!” We had already printed circulars and delivered them, and we were expecting a pretty good crowd. So I get on the damn telephone, and I call Jimmy Knight, and I call some of the other guys and I cussed, and I raised hell, what have you. I make the one threat that I think is something, I says “If you sons of bitches do this, the same thing we have done to arrange the meeting we will do in reverse. We will send telegrams to every Mexican community between here and California, telling them of what you have done and what Adlai Stevenson will do always, and we’ll make them all Republicans.” “Oh oh wait a minute Ruben [Munguia quotes Knight as responding], #@!&*!, if you feel this strong about it, you can have Adlai Stevenson, but we’re not going to give you a platform, you will have no goddamn police protection, you will have no public address system, you guys have the damn meeting any way you want.” 36 The lad rally was put back on Stevenson’s itinerary for San Antonio. On October 18, 1952, after Stevenson was introduced by Jose Olivares, a prominent businessman, to thousands of Chicanos in Milam Square (a park in the near west side of San Antonio), the local newspapers reported that: 56

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Gus Garcia and Dr. Hector Garcia whipped up the Milam Square crowd to the point where they would have whooped and hollered at anything that had any remote resemblance to the word Democrat.37 Almost every known liberal Chicano activist in the Democratic Party participated in the rally. Among those attending besides Gus Garcia, civil rights lawyer, and Dr. Hector Garcia, organizer of the GI Forum, were a number who were or would be important officeholders as well as other community leaders: Henry B. Gonzalez, Albert Peña, Lalo Solis, Jimmy Regalado Flores, Ruben Munguia, Rudy Esquivel, Matt Garcia, and Felix Treviño. According to the local newspapers, the political rally ended after thousands marched to the Alamo: The Charros and Dorados formed a guard of honor for Stevenson at Milam Plaza and the candidate walked to the speaker’s platform between a line of gayly dancing youngsters—little Charros and little Chinas Poblanas. The production was under the direction of “lads.” 38 The lad rally was instrumental in creating a base of political activity in the Democratic Party and marked the beginning of an independent Chicano influence in modern Bexar County Democratic Party politics. However, in itself the rally did very little to assure the Chicano activists a role in party politics. They needed to mobilize the precincts in their barrios in order to establish a voting role in the Democratic Party. In order to accomplish this, they turned to organizations that could mobilize the community. The most visible and viable civic organization in the Chicano community at the time was lulac. Although lulac played a prominent role in defining the issues and mobilizing the Chicano community around those issues, its conservative nature stopped it from fully addressing the major challenge of the day, the denial of civil rights. Nonetheless, its proven stability was attractive to the liberal Chicano middle class. In 1955, Albert Peña was elected president of lulac’s only active local council (council #2) in San Antonio (another council was reactivated in the early 1960s). Peña’s narrow victory was indicative of the conflict over goals and how to reach those goals. Indeed, the conflict was over the lulac political agenda. At stake was the role that lulac would play in the Chicano community’s political struggle for the rest of the decade. As it turns out, lulac played a crucial role in mobilizing Chicano voters in what proved to be the key elections for Chicanos in the 1950s. Immediately after his election Peña appointed a committee, chaired by Munguia, to coorA Political Agenda and Its Consequences

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dinate a poll tax drive that was instrumental in getting Peña elected as county commissioner, Henry B. Gonzalez as state senator, and Albert Treviño as justice of the peace in the 1956 elections. Never before had the Chicano community met with such electoral success. According to Munguia, the council collected the poll taxes but did not turn them in until the day before the deadline for buying poll taxes. The strategy was to surprise the Anglo community in the south side, who bought two poll taxes for every one bought by the Chicano community. The strategy paid off when the Chicano poll tax drive almost reached parity with the Anglo vote. Gonzalez and Treviño won in the primary, and Peña won in a runoff election: Anglos did one thing that Mexicans have always done. You had Callaghan and you had Staffenbach and you had Tim Hart, [they] were all running for the office, and the only one we had over here was Albert Peña. So they split their vote to some degree, and we held our vote solid. Yet even with those advantages of having come in with a large number of votes that they did not expect and also they splitting their vote, we were second.39 These activists were challenging the political rules that determined their political status. In doing so they set up a political base from which they could raise the issues that reflected the interests of their community as well as field candidates who could be held accountable to that agenda. As important historically as the elections of Gonzalez, Peña, and Treviño were, it was the consolidation of Chicano political leadership in Democratic Party politics that was the most significant accomplishment in this period.40 The 1960 National Democratic Agenda

By 1960, Chicano leadership in Bexar County Democratic politics could not be denied. One event firmly established the leadership of this liberal faction of Chicanos not only in Bexar County liberal circles but across the state as well. This was their crucial role in supporting the Texas delegation’s nomination of Lyndon Baines Johnson for president in the first balloting in the National Democratic Convention, held in Los Angeles in 1960. By 1960, civil rights was a major issue for liberal Democrats in Texas. As a consequence, Johnson was afraid that the liberal factions, which included the delegations from San Antonio and Houston, were going to rump the conservative-dominated state convention if their concerns were not addressed. This

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would threaten his chances of consolidating a unanimous Texas vote for his candidacy at the national convention. His first step in consolidating support was to negotiate concessions with the liberal factions.41 In San Antonio’s case, the liberal faction included Black leader G. J. Sutton, and was chaired by Albert Peña Jr. When Johnson solicited the support of these two leaders at the state convention, he struck a deal with the full backing of the delegation. In return for their full support, Johnson promised that labor (Jack Martin), Black (G. J. Sutton), and Chicano (Albert Peña Jr.) representatives would be included in the delegation representing Texas at the National Democratic Convention.42 Johnson also promised that a representative of the Bexar County delegation would be appointed to the national convention’s platform committee and would vote for the majority report on a civil rights platform (the majority report was in favor of the civil rights platform). Finally, Johnson agreed that the majority report would be backed by the Texas delegation. Judge Peña recalls that at the national convention the chairman of the Texas delegation, Governor Price Daniel, supported the minority report that opposed including a civil rights plank in the national platform. In fact, the Texas delegation booed when the majority report was read and clapped when the minority report was read. When Peña informed Daniel that Texas was supposed to support the majority report, Daniel balked, asking Peña, “What do you know about this?” At that time Sam Rayburn entered the convention floor to a standing ovation and Peña pointed to Rayburn and said, “Ask him.” An exasperated Daniel went to Rayburn who, when asked, simply turned around and said, “That’s right” and turned to sit down. The delegation proceeded to support the majority report.43 The power of Johnson and Rayburn in Texas politics was legendary by then. But more significant, Johnson represented the new kind of politician in Texas who did not depend on the old Jim Crow order for political power, but rather recognized the electoral power of a growing Chicano community.44 Conclusion

In the 1950s the economic elite instituted political reform and transformed San Antonio from a political machine–dominated city to a modern Sunbelt city in order to compete for industry and investment. This elite organized a slating group that effectively set a political agenda of growth and expansion at the expense of other community issues. Once established, the ggl, through

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its tightly organized nomination process, was able to demand and get adherence to its agenda of growth and expansion for San Antonio. While obviously personal agendas did exist, the ggl did, however, have to serve a broad constituency and enforce adherence to its goals in order to last the eighteen years that it did. Stated simply, the ggl organized personal agendas around a broader agenda that promised the stability and order needed to further the economic development of San Antonio. As a consequence, ggl politics conspicuously avoided or refused to deal with the social problems facing the Chicano community. The Chicanos who participated had little impact on the organization’s public policy process beyond supporting the ggl agenda of growth and expansion. In all fairness, the Chicanos who advocated this form of participation, especially the Westside ggl, saw growth and expansion as an indirect approach to the problems facing the Chicano community. By creating a more intense economic environment they hoped to enhance the life chances of Chicanos in general. Thus, the marked difference between this new political elite and the old machine politicos was that the political inclusion of the Chicano community was based not on patronage and political payoffs, but on the elite’s successful organization of council slates and appointments to boards and commissions. Further, this inclusion was determined both by class and race. While Chicanos were included specifically to gain support in that community, the successful nomination process excluded any would-be social reformers or radical ethnic politicians. The pervasive social problems still facing the Chicano community were absent from this political agenda. In response, a liberal Chicano sector constructed “political trenches” in the Democratic Party precincts by using lulac organizational resources and county and local state elective offices. Its goal was to build an alternative, independent base of political participation through these precinct “trenches.” These trenches offered Chicanos a base from which to challenge, together with a liberal /labor coalition within the Democratic Party, the domination of local politics by the ggl. By 1956, through their own organizational resources and the Democratic Party, three Chicanos were elected to office. By 1960 in the National Democratic Convention, the political work of these leaders placed them in a key position to insure that Texas supported the civil rights plank in the National Democratic platform. Although San Antonio Chicanos had virtually no input in local city politics, they were able to play a significant role in the shaping of a national agenda.

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The key, however, to this meteoric rise to political prominence was the establishment of a coalition in the Democratic Party in 1959, with the various other disaffected sectors in Bexar County. It is this liberal Democratic Party coalition that was able to challenge the dominant ggl throughout the 1960s. The next chapter analyzes the political struggle between the liberal Bexar County Democratic Coalition and the ggl.

A Political Agenda and Its Consequences

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Coalition Politics: Trench Political Warfare

In the early 1950s, Chicano activists countered the conservative domination of the Democratic Party in Bexar County by working their own neighborhood. It is this grassroots approach to Democratic Party politics that eventually became the base by which they challenged the dominant business agenda in city politics. This chapter analyzes how the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was established. The analysis focuses on the nature of the coalition, the issues that it raised, and the sectors that were part of it. The Building of a Coalition

Activist Ruben Munguia points out that the germ of political activity began in the Democratic Party precinct process.1 It is in the precincts that the Bexar County Democratic Coalition established its political base. In the changing political environment, stable and effective political leadership could only be attained ultimately with the ability to gain and hold political office at the local level. The ability to win elections, in turn, was based on the ability to mobilize votes. The only effective way, then, to challenge the ggl’s vast financial resources in that very middle class process of elections was in the trenches of precinct politics.

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As previously noted, the 1956 state and county elections were the turning point for establishing an independent Chicano middle class political leadership in San Antonio. In that election an independent Chicano slate, using lulac to mobilize its electoral base, successfully gained political offices that had been inaccessible to the Chicano community in twentieth century San Antonio. This unprecedented electoral success was significant in three ways in establishing the legitimacy of Chicano political leadership. Obviously the ability of Chicanos to mobilize their own constituency was a key factor. Although this mobilization did not create the base from which to confront the dominant ggl conservative politics, it did provide the base from which to launch a broader political mobilization. Moreover, this mobilization emphasized the importance of organization over personality in developing and establishing leadership in the broader Democratic coalition. A second factor was the ability of Chicanos to win in county elections. The election, in 1956, of Henry B. Gonzalez to the state senate, and to a lesser extent, the election of Albert Peña to county commissioner clearly established this ability. The victory itself was achieved in part by the intense poll tax drive in the barrios, which was coordinated by Munguia through lulac. This strategy was enhanced by efforts in precinct politics that dated back to the beginning of the decade. It must be noted that the election of Gonzalez was also tied to his personal charisma and following in the Chicano community throughout this period. Gonzalez remained a maverick throughout his political career and did not form any organizational ties except to the Democratic Party in general. Nonetheless, his uncanny ability to compete was a cornerstone in the eventual rise of Chicano middle class leadership by the end of the decade.2 A third factor in establishing Chicano middle class political leadership was that the political mobilization, although tied to highly visible personalities, was based on liberal social issues directly related to the conditions faced by the Chicano community. One could argue that Gonzalez’s charisma was intimately tied to his advocacy of civil rights and liberties as well as his public concern for the Chicano community in general.3 By 1959, the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was organized. The main elements were the four corners: eastside Blacks, westside and southside Chicanos, organized labor, and Anglo liberals, mainly from the San Antonio north side. Others who were part of the old Democratic Party apparatus as well as of the old machine politics were also included, such as Jimmy Knight and

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Maury Maverick. Some of the actors moved in and out of this coalition and some even overlapped with the ggl, but the circle of leadership eventually solidified around these four corners.4 The circle included Albert Peña Jr.; G. J. Sutton, the most visible leader of the Black community in the east side; Jack Martin, president of the San Antonio Trades Council; San Antonio Teamsters Business Agent Ray Shafer; a representative from the police association, the fireman’s association, and the bus driver’s union; with the northeastside liberal Democrats, including Judge Charles Grace, Henry Appel, and Herschel Bernard among others, rounding out that circle. The size of this circle was not as important as its make-up. The general issues or principles that brought this coalition together were that “every man is entitled to a job, decent wages, education, adequate housing, and medical care, with equal opportunities for all.” 5 While some were allied with the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party, and some of the older party activists still maintained their links with the Roosevelt/ Truman party of the Depression, the partisanship of this Democratic coalition was clearly liberal. The coalition’s view of the ggl-dominated city council was also partisan—it saw the ggl as synonymous with the Republican Party. They made no distinction in the ggl membership between the conservative Democrats and obvious Republican Party partisans. In discussing the involvement of the coalition in city politics and its platform, Retired Colonel Richard Owen, the chair of the Northeast Committee (a committee of liberal White Democratic Party activists) stated: Therefore we would demand a platform calling for industrial growth to provide more jobs, a fair employment practices code, an antidiscrimination ordinance, and a minimum wage and hour ordinance. These are the principles of the Democratic Party, and the reasons that we have undertaken the task of unseating the present Republicanconstructed City Council.6 The leadership of the Democratic coalition was based more on the power of constituencies rather than on formal, elective positions; thus, the leadership did not have authority per se over the groups involved. However, the coalition was, as Peña pointed out, “composed of various groups traditionally opposed to one-man rule, but ineffective because they did not have the financial resources commanded by the one dominant group.” 7 Based on this common lack of resources, adherence to a broad-based common agenda became the backbone of the coalition’s ability to counter the dominance of the ggl and its conservative Democratic cohorts. 64

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The coalition’s most important function, which determined its strength, was the ability to screen potential candidates and select a slate of candidates before the Democratic Party primary and then monitor their activities after they were elected. Rudy Esquivel, a coalition state representative, pointed out that “you could be right 364 days of the year [on legislative matters] and goof up one day and they [the coalition] would come down on you.” 8 In defense of the coalition’s screening, Peña pointed out the four advantages of a coalition: 1. The endorsement of candidates and adoption of programs have to run the gauntlet from a variety of interests, each with a vote and a mutual respect. 2. It helps to develop strong candidates, positive programs, and effective leadership. Its leaders need not become the prisoners of any one group but must satisfy many groups, resulting in broader representation. 3. It provides a forum for the exchange of ideas. 4. Because of the variety of interests, ideas, and representation, there is better opportunity to win consent on its policies. Peña said . . . the coalition and the party [are] basically a coalition of interests which “gives the party its special flavor, its inner contentiousness, its rowdiness, its compassion, its closeness to popular concern and popular feeling.” 9 Chicanas in the Trenches

It was also through this grassroots precinct approach that Chicanas, despite the male dominated nature of electoral politics, became an essential part of that strategy. This is not to say that many Chicanas were not kept out of politics because of the prevailing views of where women belonged, especially those who saw themselves as middle class. Indeed, when it came to Democratic Party strategy meetings and convention politics very few, if any, Chicanas participated. They rarely played a leadership role beyond the precinct, nor did they run for office nor officially run a campaign; they were there but in a “supportive” role. They were for all practical purposes invisible, especially when it came to the media of the day. The patriarchal system in the political process, after all was said and done, was still safe and sound. However, not even class could provide a refuge from the neglect the Chicano community was still facing after World War ii. As a consequence, throughout the 1950s, as the Chicano community began to demand inclusion in the system of political representation, Chicanas were found in the trenches Coalition Politics

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—block-walking, recruiting volunteers, coordinating the mail-outs—and were at the heart of the electoral process. They participated in the poll tax drives in the barrios. They also participated directly in Democratic Party precinct politics where the political mobilization of voters took place. In terms of leadership at this more informal grassroots level, Chicanas were quite active and quite visible. Ruben Munguia made the interesting observation that many of the socalled middle class were the mom-and-pop stores and other local small business establishments which were run by both husband and wife. As the husbands got involved in the political process, the wives were the ones who tended to much of the everyday business. But their role then became critical as they had direct contact with the neighborhood people as clients, who generally asked their advice on political issues and candidates. Other than the few Chicana precinct chairs, Mr. Munguia was not aware of any other role Chicanas played except to “support their men.” 10 However, outside the glare of the media, one of the strongest and most active Chicanas in this early period was Olga Peña, wife of one of the most dominant Chicano leaders of that period, Albert Peña Jr. She played a significant role in her husband’s politics. As early as 1952, Ms. Peña participated along with Mr. Peña in the precinct and county conventions of the Democratic Party. She ran his campaign headquarters in his election and re-election campaigns for Bexar County Commissioner, from 1956 to 1972. She was the one who kept the list of the precinct chairs that were part of their coalition and put the call out when they needed to be mobilized on an issue. She memorized all the precincts and knew exactly where all the precinct boundaries were. She also knew and had personal contact with every precinct chair. Perhaps, because her husband was not a local businessman and because she was also in the enviable position of being a middle class Chicana who was not kept in her place by her husband or her “duties,” Ms. Peña had greater access to the process than simply as a support cadre. Her involvement in the political agenda that her husband’s politics represented went beyond simply supporting it: I participated in everything, I wanted to learn. That was the only way I could learn, by participating in the smoke filled rooms, the conventions, the precinct politics. After I got involved in the precinct conventions, it got into my blood. I wanted to learn everything about politics. I remember clearly participating in meetings with Albert, Ruben Munguia, Lalo Solis, and others, where strategy was discussed and, of course, I put in my two cents.11 66

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Beyond her very active involvement in the liberal agenda, she also worked with grassroots Chicanas as well as with the middle class Chicana wives. Gene Rodriguez Sr., one of the key southside precinct leaders and supporter of Albert Peña’s politics, pointed out that his comadre Olga was not only very actively involved in politics, but was also actively trying to recruit Chicanas into the process.12 By the late 1960s, her key role in the process was recognized by most activists, especially the younger Chicanas. Rosie Castro, who began her political career in the late 1960s by supporting many of the coalition candidates through the Young Democrats Club at Our Lady of the Lake University, remembers vividly the role that Olga Peña played in those days: The political machine built by Albert, was really nurtured [by] and much of the framework in the local level, was Olga, his wife at the time. Everybody talked about that, everybody knew it. Everybody had respect for her abilities, and yet there was never any recognition of that, a formal recognition saying “this woman is equal to this man.” 13 Thus, even though women were not visible in the eventual building of a coalition that brought together seemingly disparate sectors of San Antonio, which were dissatisfied with or were left out of ggl politics, they played an intricate role establishing the base by which a common liberal agenda could be formed. Their sophisticated use of precinct politics enabled the liberal forces in Bexar County to mobilize these sectors excluded by the ggl agenda. Johnny Alaniz: The Giant Killer

Not until the 1960 elections and the special election of 1961 did the coalition have an opportunity to flex its muscle locally. In the 1960 elections the coalition successfully fielded the first liberal slate of state representatives to come out of San Antonio and Bexar County after World War ii. In 1961 Henry B. Gonzalez’s election as the first Chicano congressman from Texas was largely the product of Chicano coalition leadership. Out of these elections emerged a liberal Chicano leadership that grew throughout the 1960s. But more important, these elections produced the first organized, liberal legislative agenda to come out of Bexar County since Maury Maverick Sr. and the New Dealers in the 1930s.14 Moreover, part of its leadership came from the Chicanos on that slate. This was the beginning of a liberal and civil rights legislative politics in Bexar County that lasted throughout the 1960s. Among the original liberal candidates was a young lawyer named Johnny Alaniz, who was relatively unknown and had recently passed his bar examiCoalition Politics

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nation. In his successful bid for state representative, Alaniz became known as the Giant Killer, because he defeated a well-established conservative leader in the Texas legislature. By 1960 Freites Seeligson, a wealthy northsider, was chairman of the finance committee in the Texas legislature. Because he had money, experience, and conservative support, he seemed impregnable. He also favored a number of popular projects to enhance the growth of San Antonio. These included funds for establishing a University of Texas medical school branch, for planning the world’s fair, and for building a University of Texas campus at San Antonio.15 He also advocated a sales tax program (a cornerstone of conservative fiscal politics). Alaniz, a liberal Chicano, advocated issues traditionally considered taboo in state politics. He opposed the sales tax, advocated loan shark control, a state minimum wage, and supported unions.16 Alaniz’s victory, which was unexpected by most political observers, clearly showed the strength of a straight liberal platform in Bexar County. His election also showed the electoral power of the Chicano community as a voting bloc. On the evening of the election returns, Seeligson, with only one box out, was ahead by about 200 votes. However, that box was from the largest Chicano voting precinct in the county, appropriately dubbed “Big Bertha.” At the courthouse, where the candidates traditionally met to await the returns, Seeligson asked Peña what his chances were. Peña responded that Alaniz had won. The consensus among seasoned politicos was that Seeligson did not have a chance. With the returns in from Big Bertha, Alaniz won by a 200-vote margin.17 In the next five years Alaniz became one of the most visible Chicano legislators in Texas. His confrontational style of politics fell into step with the emerging civil rights movement. Along with sponsoring numerous proposals concerning labor, civil rights, and civil liberties, Alaniz became the first state legislator in the twentieth century to hire a Black for his legislative staff. He also staged a walkout in a local Austin hotel and restaurant that refused to serve Blacks. In explaining how he arrived at his decision to support an issue, Alaniz explained: “If it’s not good for the majority of the people, it’s not good for me. It’s easy to sit back and say nothing, but that’s not my role in government.” 18 A New Legislative Agenda for Bexar County

Under the leadership of Alaniz and Jake Johnson, an Anglo liberal member of the coalition slate, these Bexar legislators immediately asserted a liberal leg68

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islative agenda. As a consequence, they were constantly in conflict with the ggl, which continually tried to assert its conservative leadership in Bexar and San Antonio politics. In light of the fact that control by the presiding officers of both houses in the legislature over the procedural side of the legislative process was almost absolute, the rural-dominated conservative state Democratic leadership was not much help either in their efforts to advance their social agenda in the legislature. Nevertheless, the coalition’s efforts in the legislature in conjunction with other liberals from large urban areas, such as Houston, were quite visible. In their first session in 1961, they were against a bill to fine sit-ins, which was obviously aimed at the civil rights movement that was beginning to impact Texas. State Senator Henry B. Gonzalez introduced a “political freedom” bill for teachers which strengthened the support of the teachers for the Democratic coalition in Bexar County. He also introduced an anti-discrimination bill for persons over forty-five years of age.19 Another bill introduced by Alaniz would give transit workers the right to bargain collectively; Gonzalez publicly supported that bill. Alaniz also introduced a bill creating a Fair Employment Practices Commission for public employees, which failed to get out of committee. In response to the conservative sales tax program, the Bexar caucus, under the leadership of Alaniz and Johnson, proposed a corporate income tax program that did not go anywhere. Alaniz also supported a state Equal Rights Amendment, which again did not go anywhere, but did gain statewide visibility and support for the coalition. Alaniz’s pet program, loan shark control, which he continually supported throughout his tenure in office, was presented not only to the legislature, but also to potential support groups in Texas.20 The 1963 legislative session was no different. The coalition intensified the liberal challenge to the conservative leadership of the state legislature. At the beginning of the session, Alaniz ran an unsuccessful campaign against the conservative incumbent James Turman for the speaker of the house, garnering only 9 out of 150 votes. In an interview, Esquivel stated that the original strategy was for a liberal state representative from Houston to run. But none agreed, and when Alaniz jumped into the race none supported him. However, the challenge brought a lot of publicity to the coalition in Texas politics.21 Continuing in the same style, the coalition members introduced bills concerning an open-meeting law, legalization of elderly aliens and twenty-year residents, a state 75-cent minimum wage, control of loan sharks, and a collective bargaining bill for transit workers; a resolution ratifying an amendment banning the poll tax; and an anti-discrimination amendment attached to the Coalition Politics

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biennial appropriations bill. While they had no success because of the conservative dominated legislature, their actions, at least in San Antonio, were well publicized. The 1965 session was even more intense. Along with some of the same bills that had failed the last two sessions, they introduced bills establishing preschool English training, setting up a food stamp program, and consolidating special and bond elections with general elections. They also introduced a bill to force landlords to give a thirty-day notice to tenants before foreclosing a contract for sale.22 The coalition’s ability to integrate its legislative agenda with local class and community issues was clearly its greatest strength. Throughout this period they addressed the minimum wage issue as well as issues that affected the community such as loan shark and contract for sale legislation. Its efforts in this type of politics placed in relief the class nature of the coalition’s organizational agenda and had a historic impact on state politics by establishing the Texas legislature as a forum for progressive and liberal issues.23 Also, although the coalition could not impose its discipline on some of the more independent liberals, its actions brought together most liberals in San Antonio in addressing minority and working class issues. In fact, almost immediately, the coalition crystallized the political environment along partisan class lines, subverting racial divisions. As a consequence, it served as the base to elect the first Chicano congressman in Texas. Henry B. Gonzalez: The Maverick

When Congressman Paul Kilday, a Democrat, was appointed to the federal bench by President Kennedy in 1961, he left a congressional seat vacant and sparked a national political event. When all was said and done, Henry B. Gonzalez became the first Chicano to represent Texas in the U.S. Congress by a margin of 10,000 votes.24 Gonzalez, one of the most endeared politicians in the Chicano barrios of San Antonio, took the west side by a ratio of 11.5 to 1 and the east side by a ratio of 6 to 1 and, surprisingly, only lost the north side by a ratio of 3 to 2. How Gonzalez won the election is the story of a highly independent political figure who, despite the intense organization building during this period, always determined his own political course. It was also a major victory for the Democratic coalition in its challenge of ggl dominance. Although Henry B. Gonzalez was not a member of the Bexar County

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Democratic Coalition, his liberal agenda tied him closely to their politics. Indeed, his liberal agenda preceded that of the coalition. As was pointed out in Chapter One, Gonzalez was the organizer of the Pan American Progressive Association in the late 1940s. Moreover, after he won the election to city council independently in 1953, his actions on city council, including his successful passage of an ordinance desegregating all city owned public facilities, endeared him to most liberal causes.25 After his election to the Texas Senate in 1956, Gonzalez continued to address issues of a community and social nature. In that session, his successful filibuster against a dozen segregationist bills set the record for the longest filibuster in Texas history.26 As a consequence, while he did not participate in the organizing of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition, his agenda tied him to the same constituency that provided the political base for the liberal coalition. This link played a crucial part in Gonzalez’s election to Congress. But Gonzalez’s own actions also played a very important role in setting the stage for this election. Although the twentieth congressional district, where the 1961 vacancy occurred, was a predominantly Democratic district, the nonpartisan nature of the special session took away some of the edge that a Democratic candidate would normally have had. The possibility also existed that other Democratic hopefuls would crowd the ballot and give the edge to the sole Republican candidate, John Goode. Indeed, if the election had occurred earlier, Gonzalez may not have been so well situated. However, in 1958 Gonzalez, in what was by then his typical maverick style, had run unsuccessfully for governor of Texas. The race gave Gonzalez a lot of visibility in Bexar County, which was the twentieth congressional district. Then in 1961, a special election was called to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Lyndon Johnson who had become the Vice President of the United States. Seventytwo candidates, including Gonzalez and Maury Maverick Jr., entered the race, which was eventually won by John Tower, Texas’s first Republican senator in the twentieth century. This election proved to be crucial for Gonzalez’s bid for Congress a few months later. According to San Antonio political reporter James McCrory, Gonzalez did not have to run against a field of Democratic hopefuls in the congressional race because of his excellent showing in the Bexar County ballot boxes. Gonzalez’s most important competition came from Maury Maverick Jr. Although Maverick came out ahead of Gonzalez across the state in the senate race, Gonzalez beat him in Bexar County. As a consequence, when Gonzalez

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announced his candidacy Maverick declined to run. According to McCrory, the person who won the support of Vice President Johnson, and therefore cleared the field of other potential candidates, was Albert Peña: Johnson, it must be said, put his muscle where his mouth was and spent three days here campaigning for and with Gonzalez right up to, and including, election day itself. But Peña can be credited with getting Johnson to endorse Gonzalez for the post in the first place.27 Meanwhile, in 1961, the ggl conservative leaders decided that Gonzalez would be dangerous in Congress. They put their best candidate forward, John Goode, a polished and well-heeled Republican businessman and brought Dwight David Eisenhower to personally campaign for Goode. Goode, backed by a solid Republican campaign chest, offered the Chicano barrios more than his share of beer and tamales. After analyzing one of Gonzalez’s strongest westside precincts where Goode served 10 kegs of beer and 200 dozen tamales and only received 16 votes on election day, Gonzalez quipped: “they drink Goode’s beer, they eat Goode’s tamales, then go to the polls and vote for Gonzalez.” 28 The Democratic coalition was crucial in Gonzalez’s election, and, more important, the west side and east side were responsible for the overwhelming number of votes for Gonzalez. Peña, as the Bexar County Democratic Coalition chairman, took a two-week vacation to work on the campaign. As “Don Politico,” a byline in the San Antonio Light, put it, When the chips were down it was the West Side and eastside that supplied Gonzalez with the tremendous margin that insured his victory. Sharing rightly in the Gonzalez victory celebration was County Commissioner Albert Peña, Jr., who mounted one of the most intensive get out the vote efforts ever seen on San Antonio’s westside—the Democrats’ stronghold.29 The night after Gonzalez won, the newspapers covered the dramatic scene in which Peña was carried on admiring shoulders to the platform where Gonzalez was asking for him: County Commissioner Albert Peña . . . was spotted at the fringe of the crowd and promptly carried to the front steps of the headquarters to the cries of “SPEECH, SPEECH.” He [Gonzalez] shook the hand of one of his staunchest supporters, County Commissioner Albert Peña, Jr., and said “Albert, I can’t thank you enough.” 30 As important as Gonzalez’s election was, electoral victories and convention politics did not, however, ensure an independent political base. Rather, 72

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they were the result of an emerging political base that included not only Chicanos, but Blacks, liberals, unions, and others. Just as important, although the election occurred within the context of an organizational agenda that joined forces and made the victory possible, political leadership was crucial in getting Gonzalez elected. The strongest leadership came from the most intense political activist throughout this period: Albert Peña Jr.

Albert Peña Jr.: The Intransigent Leader

While Henry B. Gonzalez became the most visible Chicano liberal to come out of post–World War ii San Antonio, Albert Peña Jr. was the most controversial leader. Peña provided an uncompromising leadership for the assault on ggl priorities. His politics challenged the business order. As a consequence, Peña was at the center of the struggle over the agenda and thus was the target of local, state, and even national conservative politics.31 Almost immediately after gaining the Bexar County commissioner’s office in 1956, Peña demonstrated an unprecedented activism. In his first month in office, Peña set up a precinct newsletter for communicating with his constituency. He did not hesitate to use the commissioners’ court as a forum for taking positions on issues in the community. In the midst of a local strike by garment workers, for example, Peña hotly debated with his conservative colleagues and staged a walkout in support of the striking workers. Indeed, he constantly used his office to defend worker organizations, including the police and fireman’s associations.32 Peña not only supported Chicano community issues, he usually led them. In 1966, Peña used his office and county commissioner’s letterhead to support a boycott of a local business known for its discrimination.33 In 1968 Peña was the first Chicano officeholder in Texas to take a public position against the Vietnam War: “We are sick and tired of slogans that sound good but wind up costing us 25,000 American boys in a little distant country. We are not going to be taken in any more by words and arguments that wind up meaning in fact, that we will brutalize a whole little country and bring down upon ourselves the opprobrium and contempt of the civilized world. “What we want is men who understand that the work of statesmen is to solve problems without violence, and that forced war means that the statesmen have flat failed. In this nuclear age, we cannot afford war making as a substitute for policy-making.” Peña said.34 Coalition Politics

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Because of his outspoken position, Peña was generally opposed by his colleagues on the commissioners’ court and by the ggl; he was eventually opposed by the governor of Texas, John Connally. Throughout these and other personal attacks, Peña continually turned to the issues that were part of the broader liberal agenda.35 However, just as important a characteristic of Peña’s politics was his militant response to the neglect of the Chicano community. This aggressive militant position taken by Peña would provide the drive that pulled together the Democratic Party coalition. What would be referred to later as the “Chicano Question” provided the spark that united most of the liberal sectors in San Antonio. In the Texas Observer, a liberal statewide newspaper, Peña is quoted as saying that: “Perhaps we are in this situation now because we haven’t recognized before who our enemies are.” He mentioned the one-party state, in particular, as the enemy. “We’ve got to determine what to do if they don’t listen to us, if they just pat us on the back. . . . If necessary, we must be willing to march on Austin and demonstrate. La Marcha did more to spot-light the problems of the Latins than any other thing.” 36 Reflecting on his political activism throughout his most intense political period (1948 to 1972), Peña admitted that his most important goal was to politicize the community. As he pointed out, a politicized community will then do the rest.37 Challenging the Rules of the Game

The successes in the special election and in the state legislative races proved to the Bexar County Democratic Coalition leaders that they could win in atlarge elections. However, the ggl, despite these setbacks, remained dominant in city politics. It therefore became quite evident to the coalition that the ggl relied on nonpartisan elections, and secondarily on their at-large character, to maintain its dominance in a predominantly Democratic city. With the coalition’s at-large electoral successes in the 1960s, the ggl’s dominance now hung by one thin thread—nonpartisan elections. In a sense, the battle lines were drawn. Thus Alaniz’s announcement, in January 1963, of a petition drive calling for a county Democratic Party convention to set a slate for the city elections, was the most threatening assault on the entrenched forces of the ggl. The

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Bexar County Democratic Coalition, in an effort to override the objections of the conservative Democratic chair, John Daniels, circulated a petition calling for a convention to name a slate for the city council elections. The drive ended, however, in failure, when Daniels was able to kill the petition by alleging that many of the names were forged. When the petitions were turned in on February 2, 1963, Daniels voided 45 percent of the signatures “as fake, fictitious, or improper.” 38 It became evident that a successful challenge of the rule of nonpartisanship in city elections rested on the control of the chairmanship of the party. This was especially true because at no point did the issue of partisan elections ever become a referendum; voters were never given the option of voting on it. Thus, breaking ggl’s hold on city politics centered on the control of the Bexar County Democratic Party and its chairmanship. Here is where the ggl was able to thwart all efforts to field a slate of Democratic candidates for city council. As late as the 1968 Democratic primaries, when the coalition ran a candidate for Democratic chair, partisan elections remained an issue of concern. The winning candidate, who was supported by the outgoing Daniels, publicly supported nonpartisan elections, emphasizing “that such nonpartisan councils and the council-manager system . . . [have] been responsive to the needs of this community.” 39 The continued challenge of the legitimacy of nonpartisan elections throughout the 1960s represented more than a clash over rules; it represented a clash of organizational agendas advancing different sets of priorities. The rule of nonpartisan elections in the city council elections then was a very real political dividing line between forces that represented radically opposed politics. On the one hand, the ggl’s ability to protect the priorities of the business community to the exclusion of social and community issues rested directly on the nonpartisan nature of elections. On the other hand, while the coalition proved it could win in at-large elections through its “trench” network, it was unable to address these issues in city council as long as nonpartisan elections remained the rule. Conclusion

The liberal challenge by the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was significant for various reasons. First, it reflected the consolidation of liberal politics by U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough at the state level, in a time when conserva-

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tive politics dominated the Democratic Party. Second, the Bexar County Democratic Coalition signaled the coming of age politically of the Chicano community. Through the coalition they were able to mobilize various sectors of San Antonio and establish a solid electoral base in the face of at-large elections. Third, it showed that Chicano candidates, other than Gonzalez, could successfully run for public office in at-large elections. Throughout the decade of the 1960s all of the successful Chicano candidates for state representative and state senator were fielded by the coalition.40 Fourth, just as important in this liberal challenge was the role of Chicanas in establishing the precinct base. While the parameters of this study limited the ability to cover in detail most of their activity, Chicanas, both middle class and working class, played an essential role in the Chicano community’s struggle for political inclusion throughout post–World War ii San Antonio. When the Chicano community in San Antonio was intensely organizing around issues that directly affected their neighborhoods, Chicanas were there. Whether these organizational efforts aimed at the racial discrimination that they faced in their daily lives, or demands for equal education for their children, or demands for better drainage in their neglected neighborhoods, Chicanas played a major role. Thus, when it came to political mobilization, especially when that mobilization was based on issues of social justice as they affected the community, Chicanas were there. While there were no visible Chicanas in electoral politics, Chicanas were intimately involved in the organizing and mobilizing that formed the backbone of the coalition’s precinct strategy. Despite a lack of recognition, Chicanas were at the heart of the grassroots mobilizing efforts, electoral campaigns, and organization building that provided the political infrastructure necessary for the coalition to challenge the ggl. In the end, the organizational agenda, established through the coalition, provided the Chicano middle class leadership the ability to raise issues concerning the community. Their actions, which were considered militant and radical by conservatives, broadly challenged the entrenched power of the ggl. However, the goal of attaining independent political power remained elusive for the Bexar County Democratic Coalition both because of their inability to change the nonpartisan nature of city elections and the ability of the ggl to enter into Democratic Party politics to challenge the coalition on their own grounds. By the end of the 1960s, the ggl, with a little help from the conservative Democratic governor of Texas, John Connally, thoroughly beat back the chal-

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lenge of the coalition within the Democratic Party. This ultimately led not only to the demise of liberal Democratic Party coalition politics in San Antonio, but the demise of the ggl as well. In spite of their demise, however, the clash of these organizational agendas set the stage for further political change in San Antonio’s political institutions in the 1970s.

Coalition Politics

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The Changing of the Guard

As a major urban center in a region where the majority of residents were Chicanas and Chicanos, San Antonio became a major staging area for the many political incursions against a very harsh and anti-Mexican environment. As early as the 1920s, these incursions began where lulac organizers ventured out into the barren rural areas at the risk of their lives. In the 1950s, desegregation efforts were usually launched from San Antonio. In the 1960s a major campaign to assist the community in Crystal City, a rural agricultural town in South Texas, came to symbolize the greatest thrust by urban Chicanos into the rural conservative anti-Mexican strongholds.1 It is this last effort that connected the new guard with the old guard in their political efforts to address the discrimination and exclusion that the majority of Chicano communities still faced in most of Texas. In a certain sense, Cystal City more than any other place represented the “Chicano Question.” The description in this chapter is a description of “Crystal” from the perspective of San Antonio politics. PASSO : A Historical Response

The organization of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was a response by the liberal sectors in San Antonio to the need to establish a political base

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in local politics. However, the problems of discrimination and political exclusion facing the Chicano community went beyond local political boundaries. As the civil rights movement intensified, the need for establishing a firm base from which to address civil rights at a state level increased. The first opportunity to address these problems came when the Kennedy presidential campaign, in an effort to devise a strategy that would link their southwestern states’ political campaign directly to the Chicano community, contacted prominent Chicano political leaders in the summer of 1960. In Texas, the Chicano leadership that was in place to mobilize Chicano electoral support for Kennedy was in San Antonio’s Bexar County Democratic Coalition. The leadership and organizational skills that went into organizing the Viva Kennedy clubs, which were primarily responsible for Kennedy’s close electoral victory in Texas, came from the already established Chicano leadership in San Antonio. After the elections, they successfully transformed the Viva Kennedy clubs into a statewide network of Chicano organizations under the umbrella of the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (passo). passo was made up of various Chicano organizations, but the dominant organizations were the GI Forum and lulac. Because of their key role in the initial mobilization of the Viva Kennedy clubs, the state leadership of passo was dominated throughout the 1960s by the liberal Chicano leadership of San Antonio. What is important to note is the fact that passo and the Bexar County Democratic Coalition cannot be easily separated. First, the Chicano Democratic Party coalition activists played a pervasive role in passo, and second, most of the social issues, including labor and civil rights, that both the coalition and passo were concerned with, were directly tied to the Chicano community.2 passo was the vehicle by which Chicanos could advance an agenda in the Chicano community in Texas that addressed these issues, especially civil rights. In 1965, after returning from an Equal Employment Conference in Washington, D.C., Peña reported to a passo meeting that out of 3,000 delegates to that conference only nine were Chicanos. As a consequence, the thrust of the conference was for equal employment for the Black people, which Peña stated was good. Indeed, the Blacks told the nine Chicanos, who subsequently banded together, “that no one was aware the Mexican Americans have a problem because ‘you don’t raise hell enough, you don’t march and demonstrate.’ ” Subsequently, Peña stated that he told the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations “We are going to have to march and demonstrate.” 3 Thus, the inevitable direction of the Chicano coalition leadership was to84

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ward creating a Chicano independent political base. This made sense in the national political environment, as well as in state and local political initiatives. Organizing passo can be seen in this context as a response to the legacy of historical and political neglect of San Antonio’s Chicano community in this century. More important, it can be seen as a response to the need to establish a broad political agenda that addressed the issues confronting the Chicano community directly. A pamphlet by passo states its militant position on the need for a broad Chicano agenda: If historical precedence is to be the criterion, our rights and needs have priority over those of other nationality groups. Our loyalty to America has been demonstrated time and again in war and peace. Yet, when it comes to such matters as wages or decent streets, playgrounds, education and opportunity following in the wake of these things, the Mexican-American is the “forgotten man.” The very public officials who owe their elections to Mexican-Americans often completely forget election promises and shut their eyes to their responsibilities. This, then, answers WHY there is a passo: To seek out the candidates for public office on ALL levels—regardless of their party, race or creed—to seek out men who will work to give the Mexicano a chance to be a good American. He asks not for charity or abundant welfare. Only for a chance to help himself.4 passo became the vehicle by which this liberal sector of the Chicano middle class extended its influence to areas of Texas basically untouched by the economic and political changes occurring after World War ii. The organizing of passo and its Chicano civil rights agenda was not seen as a move away from the Democratic Party. However, passo was infused with the spirit of a movement and was not motivated simply by gaining political office. The one overarching goal of this movement, as Peña commented in an interview, was “the politicization of the people.” 5 This goal was based on both the historical neglect of the Chicano community and the recognition that only through politicization could the Chicano community be mobilized around the issue of inclusion. An integral part of passo’s strategy under Peña’s leadership was to unite labor and the Chicano community into one political force within the Democratic Party. Much of the political activity organized by passo throughout the 1960s was based on this strategy. It took Peña and passo beyond the boundaries of city politics in their efforts to build Chicano political power. The one event that became the symbol of passo and its strategy to unite The Changing of the Guard

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labor and community together occurred in a small South Texas town, Crystal City. Crystal City is a rural town about 120 miles south of San Antonio and 50 miles from the Rio Grande. It lies in the heart of the Winter Garden area, known for its fertile soil and mild winters. As the “Spinach Capital of the World,” Crystal City produced 80 percent of the total spinach crop grown in the United States, and its economic activity was almost totally dominated by an Anglo elite. The ownership and management of the fields and packing sheds were dominated by a combination of local Anglo growers and the Del Monte Corporation. Chicanos were considered “fortunate because they work, and because, no matter how low the wages, they make money.” 6 For most of this century, Chicanos accounted for only 10 to 15 percent of the registered voters in Crystal City. Thus, although Anglos made up only 15 percent of the population, they dominated the political institutions of Crystal City, from the county courthouse to the school district to city hall. The overlapping of race and class was almost complete: all landowners were Anglo and almost all of the work force was Chicano. Working class was almost always synonymous with Chicano, and owner or boss was the same as Anglo. Further, a large number of the Chicano families in Crystal City were migrant workers, most joining the stream of migrant farmworkers who moved north before city elections were held in April.7 However, on April 2, 1963, in the midst of a virtual police state imposed by the Texas Rangers, five Chicano candidates were swept into office in the elections to city council with a record 95 percent of the total eligible voters in Crystal City going to the polls. Beginning in 1960, passo had been involved, at the request of some of the local Chicanos in Crystal City, in voter registration drives in that town. The trail to this coup was wide and visible: It started more than three years prior to the election, taking its roots in the Viva Kennedy clubs, and being followed up with the organization of the Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations—with poll tax drives and meetings and more poll tax drives and voter education and get-out-the-vote campaigns.8 The takeover was so unprecedented that it caught the attention of not only the state media but the national media as well. According to the passo pamphlet, the population was so excited about the upcoming city elections that most of the families stayed into the regular harvest so that they could vote: The rallies had the effect of keeping migrant Mexican Americans from leaving the city, even though the time for their joining the migrant 86

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stream and traveling northward had come two weeks before, and the night before election day, the largest rally of the campaign was held at the placita with the crowd at 3,000 persons.9 These pre-election events caused near-hysteria in the minority Anglo community. As a consequence, the governor responded by dispatching the Texas Rangers to Crystal City to maintain order and protect property. From the perspective of the Chicano residents in Crystal City, the deployment of Los Rinches (as the Texas Rangers are called by Chicanos in South Texas) was simply one more tactic by the Anglo power structure to intimidate the Chicano voters. Even after repeated complaints that the Texas Rangers, led by Ranger Captain Y. A. Allee, were harassing Chicanos, Governor John Connally and Attorney General Waggoner Carr dismissed the complaints as frivolous. Governor Connally went so far as to commend the Texas Rangers for maintaining peace and order in an otherwise explosive situation. The situation did become so explosive that Crystal City’s newly elected mayor (Juan Cornejo) was whisked out of town by passo to protect him from Allee.10 Even though the five Chicano candidates were defeated or did not run for reelection in 1965, Crystal City planted the seeds of the Chicano movement in Texas, as many Chicano activists refer to the period encompassing the 1960s and the 1970s. By 1970, Crystal City was taken over again (the so-called “second revolution”), this time under the leadership of Jose Angel Gutierrez, who as a young student had participated in the 1963 event. Out of this second takeover, a political party, La Raza Unida (the united people), was organized and eventually participated in elections not only statewide but throughout the southwest United States.11 The events in Crystal City were important for several reasons. First, they represented a link between passo and a youth movement that reached its zenith in the early 1970s (Raza Unida). The roots of this youth movement and its cultural nationalist politics are found in the militant struggle for Chicano political power advocated by the leaders of passo. Second, they brought together labor (the Teamsters), the community (Crystal City residents), and political organizations (passo) in a single political initiative. Bringing these sectors together was a radical act that threatened the status quo. To the Peña forces it represented their ultimate goal: the ability to politicize the sectors of the Chicano community that had historically been separated from each other. Third, the takeover in Crystal City was important because passo was able to show that Chicanos could take political power independently: The Changing of the Guard

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And when the dust had settled from in front of the only polling place in Crystal City on election night, a fresh breath of promise was breathed into every Texas citizen of Latin-American descent. The Citizens Committee for Better Government was announced the victors. The five members of this winning ticket, all of Mexican extraction, stand as a beacon to all others like them, struggling in the morass of discrimination and inequality. For the first time in South Texas the true “majority” ruled.12 In short, the takeover represented the ability of Chicanos across the state to work together. It was part of a much larger movement that made the Chicano community a viable and visible political force that would have to be dealt with by state and national politicians. For passo, Crystal City was important because it signaled the start of an open struggle to define the Chicano political agenda within passo. Throughout this period, passo provided a forum where not only issues were debated but strategy as well: From its founding, passo was split along moderate-militant lines, a tension, which erupted frequently into open conflict at meetings. The moderates and conservatives favored gradual progress using established avenues whereas the liberals urged a more direct action and involvement in local issues.13 In broader terms, it represented a struggle over hegemony within the Chicano community: the assimilationist approach to political inclusion versus the confrontational approach to gaining political inclusion for the Chicano community.

The Consolidation of Radical Chicano Middle Class Politics

One of the most significant middle class recruits into this radicalized Chicano political agenda was Joe Bernal. Bernal, who began his political career with the Westside ggl, defeated Rudy Esquivel, a Democratic Party coalition member, in the 1964 race for state representative. However, Bernal was not married to the ggl’s conservative agenda. According to Bernal’s account, he had two reasons for deciding to run for state representative with the Westside ggl. First, he had been closely associated with the Westside ggl since the beginning of municipal reform in the early 1950s. As Bernal pointed out: “Who wouldn’t be for municipal reform at that time?” Second, he was approached 88

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at a time when his career in an Anglo-dominated educational system was going nowhere. The Westside ggl convinced him that he would be a good representative for teachers.14 Immediately, Bernal as a freshman representative was thrust into a controversial position. The legislature was mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court to redraw district lines (on the “one man, one vote” principle). Perhaps because of his conservative backing, Bernal was assigned to the key redistricting committee of the 1965 Texas legislature. The assignment turned out to be a no-win situation for the young legislator. Both liberals and conservatives protested because the plan only gave one congressional district to San Antonio while carving the rest of Bexar County into districts that extended into the rural areas of South as well as West Texas. The conservatives were upset because the plan reduced their competitive position in Bexar County, while the liberals were upset because it merged other urban working class areas with more conservative rural areas. Bernal was caught in the middle because he did not vote against the plans in committee and then voted against them on the floor.15 The winner in this was Henry B. Gonzalez, who was left with the center of Bexar County, which was the Chicano-dominated, densely populated, urban core of San Antonio. In essence, Gonzalez was given a congressional district in which he could decide when it was time to retire.16 As this episode showed, Bernal was a political novice. So when it came to defining who he represented, especially because he was the only Chicano in the Texas Senate, he rubbed some of the more activist elements in San Antonio as well as in South Texas the wrong way. His conception of political office was simply to represent his district. He did not see himself as part of the Chicano struggle emerging across the state. Then in the summer of 1966, the year in which he ran for and won the race for state senator, the farmworkers in the Rio Grande Valley organized and went on strike against eight major growers in the valley. The strike lasted into the summer of 1967, until collapsing in the face of an intense campaign of harassment by the Texas Rangers. During this period as the farmworker lobbyists incessantly pressured Bernal to intervene for the farmworkers in the legislature, Bernal’s view of politics radically changed.17 Bernal states that he stubbornly clung to his narrow view of who he represented. However, as the harassment of farmworkers by the Texas Rangers grew, he finally got involved with the striking farmworkers. After his proposal in the legislature to form a general investigating committee to probe the actions of the Texas Rangers in the strike was shouted down in the senate, Bernal decided to make a personal visit to the striking farmworkers. It was The Changing of the Guard

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there that Bernal came into direct confrontation with Ranger commander, Captain Allee.18 After this direct and personal experience with the abusive Ranger treatment of Chicanos, Bernal was radicalized. After this incident, Bernal’s trajectory was set. Although the Chicano community, in general, supported the farmworkers, an ideological split was evident. Eventually, because of the Westside ggl’s ideological aversion to what it viewed as radicalism, Bernal was pushed over to Peña’s camp. By 1967, Bernal’s political orientation, as the Texas Observer noted, was clearly focused on the plight of Chicanos in Texas: State Sen. Joe Bernal of San Antonio said that Latinos must discover “where we can weaken the structure that has existed for years. We need to step out of our own group—and change the minds of officials.” 19 A second important recruit was Peter Torres, the first independent candidate for city council to win since Gonzalez’s victory in 1953. Torres, a young lawyer who had been politically involved with the Bexar County Democratic Coalition during its peak, 1963 –1965, ran for and won a place on the city council in 1967. He served on the council until 1971, when he ran unsuccessfully against the ggl’s choice for mayor. During his tenure, Torres challenged the prerogatives of the business interests on the city council. He supported the garbage collectors’ sick-out in 1968 and was key in passing a housing discrimination ordinance. In general his agenda reflected the Bexar County Democratic Coalition’s agenda of social issues such as a minimum wage ordinance, opposition to a city sales tax, and more equitable public services for the neglected sectors of San Antonio.20 Torres’s short but stormy tenure on San Antonio’s city council was the only time that the Bexar County Democratic Coalition successfully penetrated the ggl’s stronghold. For the first time since Henry B. Gonzalez’s tenure, from 1953 to 1956, issues concerning labor, civil rights, and welfare were raised within the city council itself. Torres’s election to city council established him, along with Bernal and Peña, as one of the three most visible Chicano coalition leaders by the end of the 1960s.

The Battle of the Political Trenches

Although the so-called radical politics Peña and others espoused at the local as well as the state and national levels gained its energy from the liberal environment of the 1960s, it ultimately depended on political position at the local 90

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level. Further, its ability to challenge the legitimacy of the existing political power arrangements at the local level came from a broader social base than race alone. In other words, the political conflict with the ggl and its conservative agenda was ultimately a conflict over class issues which directly pitted community against business. Thus, contrary to the politics of passo, which was based on a statewide organizational network of Chicano organizations, the Bexar County Democratic Coalition’s ability to mobilize the various sectors excluded by ggl politics depended on the ability to connect with the grassroots neighborhoods— and the precinct infrastructure of the Democratic Party provided that direct connection. Precinct politics became the trenches in which the coalition forces could compete with the wealthier business community. By 1964, the Bexar County Democratic Coalition, through its precinct base, had firmly established itself as a contending force in challenging the ggl’s dominance.21 The heart of coalition politics, however, continued to be the goal of political accountability to and political accessibility for the community by the political institutions that governed their lives. As such, the coalition’s strategy was to continue to raise the issues that led to greater participation. For example, after a successful voter registration drive in the westside precincts, Peña called attention to a proposed water rate hike and a proposed sales tax: I think these people who are talking about a 17% water hike should think about all these voters. And Mayor McAllister should do some reevaluating about his position on the sales tax. A lot of new voters would be affected greatly by a city sales tax.22 The consolidation of special district and bond elections was even more to the point. This bill raised the issue of putting democratic process before the needs of a market. Alaniz, who sponsored the bill, explained that consolidation would make districts work with each other in planning their activities and “would require that they sell their individual programs to the public.” Alaniz’s bill would save election costs, increase voter participation, result in voters being better informed on candidates and issues, and insure better planning for bond-financed public improvements. In response, John Gatti (ggl council member) said that it would flood the bond market with a variety of bonds voted at the same time, resulting in higher interest rates to municipalities.23 The success of the coalition’s politics then was about bringing in those who had not participated in politics before. So when stung by the drop in voter registration in 1964, its immediate attention was on the method of poll tax collection instituted by Charles Davies. The coalition contested The Changing of the Guard

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the new county tax office method of collecting through IBM punch cards rather than through poll tax deputies, because they felt it worked against the West side where the personal touch of poll tax deputies worked better.24 The impact of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was significant. It forced the business community to continue to broaden representation in the city council. Although the coalition was unable to penetrate the ggl stronghold, its efforts forced the ggl to recruit its own minority candidates in order to defeat the Bexar County Democratic Coalition minority candidates. In 1963, Reverend Claude Black, a close associate of G. J. Sutton, the Black Bexar County Democratic Coalition leader, was fielded in the city council elections and barely lost. In 1965, for the first time in its history, the ggl decided to field a Black candidate to counter the Bexar County Democratic Coalition efforts to gain seats on the city council: For the first time the ticket included a Negro, Sam James, who is a Baptist preacher and member of the naacp. Two years ago another Negro minister, Claude Black, certainly more militant and probably more liberal than James, was narrowly defeated by a Good Government League candidate. Black’s 15,429 votes no doubt gave the ggl a good scare. They marked him—and the Negro community—as a threat, as the enemy. As late as January of this year, that opinion had not changed, for the ggl’s chairman told a newspaper reporter he didn’t need a Negro on his ticket “because they won’t vote for us anyway.” Someone or something, perhaps the newspapers, convinced him otherwise. The results were James’s election over three independent white candidates and Black’s defeat by nearly 6,000 votes. Though the Negro East Side gave Black more votes than James, it nevertheless provided James with the margin he needed to win without a run-off. The ggl no longer considers the Negro community its enemy— only Rev. Black.25 In this same election, the ggl also defeated the other Bexar County Democratic Coalition-backed candidate, a former ggl council member-turnedPeña-supporter, Roy Padilla: One candidate who should certainly have been able to obtain financial help if any had been available was Roy Padilla, a small businessman who twice was elected to the council on the ggl ticket. He ran as an independent this time with Peña’s support. Padilla fell out with the ggl when he openly campaigned for Peña for re-election last year in 92

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the county commissioner’s race. Ironically but not surprisingly, the man Peña beat in a runoff, print shop owner Felix Trevino, defeated Padilla.26 The ggl’s power to defeat or absorb opponents with plenty of money and minority candidates in at-large, nonpartisan elections was obvious and pointed to the advantage that the ggl had as long as the existing structures and political rules remained intact. Ironically, one of the coalition’s unintended but most visible political successes, forcing the ggl to broaden its recruitment process, spelled the beginning of the end.

1966: The Beginning of the End

In the period from 1964 to 1966, the struggle for political dominance between the Bexar County Democratic Coalition and the ggl was at a stalemate. The ggl was unable to gain control of the Bexar County party and even lost the county judge position to the Bexar County Democratic Coalition. But it was able to maintain control of the county Democratic Party chair as well as three out of four of the county commissioner seats. Indeed, the stalemate was slanted in favor of the ggl. Even though the coalition could not break the ggl’s hold on the Democratic Party county chair position, it was able to dominate the Democratic Party county executive committee through 1964. In these same primaries, as well as the general elections in the fall, it was also able to elect liberal Charles Grace as county judge in the at-large Democratic Party elections.27 However, in those same primaries, the first gap in the Bexar County Democratic Coalition appeared when internal conflict erupted over the selection of a candidate for a county court-of-law position. The coalition split three ways, with the Black leadership supporting a Black candidate, Anglo labor supporting a labor candidate, and Peña and passo supporting a passo candidate. It seems position now became a contending force. This was something that the coalition had not had to contend with when it first organized.28 Nevertheless, through 1964, both sides were able to hold their own, with the Bexar County Democratic Coalition actually gaining slightly with the election of Charlie Grace as county judge. However, that gain was countered as the San Antonio liberal gains became the target of the state’s conservative leadership. As a result of the militant assault on the conservative agenda as well as the Crystal City incursion, the coalition had already created a deadly enemy in The Changing of the Guard

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the governor of Texas, John Connally. This created a political environment that further forced politicians to choose their sides carefully. Even the Anglo politicians whom the Bexar County Democratic Coalition had endorsed were moving toward the Connally camp: Any lingering doubts harbored by Democrats intent on party unity that Gov. John Connally and County Com. Albert Peña won’t be reaching for each others’ jugular veins in the May Democratic primary were dispelled Wednesday by County Com. A. J. Ploch. “The governor and I talked about the danger,” he said. “He doesn’t want to see the people divided. His idea is we should keep the Democratic Party strong and united, not divided like Peña has very successfully done.” 29 The 1964 elections were important not only because they brought in the governor, but because a new type of campaign began that characterized the business community’s response to Peña’s successful mobilization of Chicano power throughout the rest of the decade and into the early 1970s. Alarmed at the success of passo in Crystal City and at Peña’s ability to mobilize voters, the new type of campaign was aimed at the predominantly Anglo northside voter’s fears of a “Mexican takeover.” In a letter where he identifies the backers of Charles Grace, the Democratic candidate for county judge, as the Teamsters, passo, and naacp, John Goode, a Republican luminary, urged the northside voter turnout with this warning: This is not essentially a race between a Democrat and a Republican, it is essentially a race between an Albert Peña–backed Democratic Coalition and a Republican Crawford Reeder. If the Coalition man wins, we shall have taken a great stride towards another Crystal City in the Bexar County Courthouse.30 The significance of this letter is two-fold. First, it identifies Peña as the ggl’s main adversary. Second, it raises the specter of Crystal City. Obviously, this was a clear reference to racial fears in order to mobilize the northside interests. Although these campaigns based on race were excesses, they followed the pattern that the ggl had continuously followed since its inception in 1954 by branding the issues of civil rights and labor, and the efforts of groups outside its influence to gain independent political access, as undemocratic or demagogic. The difference is that the racial issue was now brought up in a very clear fashion and would continue throughout the decade of the 1960s. However, even the racial baiting and demagoguery were in the context of an intense

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class conflict over how to define the function of city government. The conflict was over the the prerogatives and privileges of the business community. In this context, the call of business to defend San Antonio against the specter of another Crystal City was clearly a call to defend the prerogatives of the business community itself. Thus, when in 1966 the ggl/Connally forces asked the business community to support their candidate for county judge, they emphasized the interests of business: You as a prominent business man and citizen of our community are urged to mark your calendars and attend. It is important that you be apprised, for the problems are here now and can seriously affect your livelihood tomorrow, and, as well, the future of our city. Don’t let us say—you had the opportunity to learn, to advise, and to take action but didn’t. This is your only chance—Plan to attend Thursday, April 7, 2 pm, sasa Auditorium.31 The 1964 race also highlighted a flaw in the strategy of the ggl/Connally forces that would be corrected in the 1966 elections. Up to 1960, the business elite’s domination of city and county government depended on the apathy of the working class and Chicano and Black communities as well as the continued participation of White middle class northside voters. The Bexar County Democratic Coalition, led by an energetic Albert Peña in the south and west sides, G. J. Sutton in the east side, a well organized northside liberal precinct organization, and labor, had countered that since 1960 by using the Democratic Party precinct organizational infrastructure to mobilize an otherwise nonresponsive electorate. The coalition’s precinct organization, fueled by the energies of passo, was an ingenious method of mobilizing political power in the face of an apathy that had deep historical roots in the Chicano experience. By 1966, the elimination of the poll tax was accomplished, and a free registration period was held from March 1 through March 17. After the Bexar County Democratic Coalition registered 58 percent of the eligible voters in key westside areas, the ggl, allied with Connally, doubled its budget for the upcoming county judge election. The stage was set for a major electoral showdown between the two contending forces in 1966.32 The showdown, in fact, marked the beginning of the end of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition as a viable political force in San Antonio politics. The end result was that the coalition lost on almost all fronts— county judge, county commissioner of precinct 2, several state legislative seats—and

The Changing of the Guard

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most important, for the first time in the 1960s, it lost the precinct battle to the ggl.33 In an analysis of the defeat, Peña emphasized the role of Connally and the smear-and-fear campaign, but most important he pointed out that the leadership of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition had “become too exclusive. We failed to communicate with the rank and file.” G. J. Sutton, East San Antonio Black leader, also pointed out that a lot of money was spent by the Connally forces in buying out opponents and “that some of the coalition people who were candidates for committeeman were paid $35 to $50 apiece to get out of the race.” 34 But, in the end, the most significant factor in the demise of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition was the intensification of the “Chicano Question.” Ironically, while it was also the factor that brought Chicano middle class leadership to the forefront, it also isolated that leadership from the other sectors that made up the coalition. It marked the end of a radical Chicano middle class agenda for political inclusion. The Undoing of Partisan Politics

While the Bexar County Democratic Coalition had made inroads in the state legislature raising the kinds of social issues that affected the community in general, the Chicano community still did not have access to independent representation in the local political institutions that governed their lives. By the end of the 1960s the Bexar County Democratic Coalition faced its last days as an effective political force in San Antonio. In 1968 the coalition’s last effort to change the political rules in city elections to partisan representation was defeated within their party by the Democratic Party chair John Daniels, who had direct ties to the ggl. In 1969 young Chicano barrio activists ran their own slate of candidates, the Committee for Barrio Betterment (cbb), for city elections, making it a three-way race. The successful mobilization of broad support in the barrios in the 1969 elections, and especially the 1971 city elections, marked the beginning of a shift from a politics that focused on partisan political power to a politics that emphasized individual political representation. Ironically, this process was produced from the same conditions that produced organizational politics in the first place: a national politics that pitted conservatives against liberals over minority and poor people’s concerns. However, as the War on Poverty policies of the Johnson administration intensified a national politics that was already ravaged by conflicts over the war in Vietnam and especially over civil rights, the Chicano demand for equal represen96

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tation took precedence over any question of partisanship. The basis of this demand arose from the altruistic politics of a Chicano movement that was mobilizing communities throughout the Southwest around the question of self-determination. While self-determination itself is not simply about the question of political representation, in the context of the one-party conservative political environment, politics was now defined from a community and/ or neighborhood based model rather than from a political party model. Further, independent direct political representation was seen as the one political method by which communities that had been excluded all of this century could address their needs. This changing political environment in San Antonio can be traced to the 1965 farmworker movement, led by Cesar Chavez, as it came to the South Texas fields. The South Texas farm strikes in 1967 fired the imagination and inspiration of many of the young activists, who were entering politics during these hectic times. Arising from and in the midst of these hectic times were issues that would capture the time and energy of many activists, such as school finance reform, higher education reform, voter registration, education for the children of undocumented Mexican nationals, prison reform, and many, many, other issues. Texas was truly coming under a Chicano siege. Political mobilization was now based on an ethnic-centered politics that challenged the domination of a political party system that had excluded the Chicano community and the social issues that it represented all of this century. The politics of ethnicity intensified when, in the spring of 1966, President Johnson failed to attend a conference to discuss the lack of Chicano representation on the newly created Equal Opportunities Commission: Termed the opening day for a political revolt by the Mexican-American community, Jones (LA Times staff writer) recalled “it was these ‘young Pancho Villas’ from Southern California who triggered the walkout of 50 Mexican-Americans from a federal Equal Employment Opportunities commission conference in Albuquerque in March to protest the ‘hollow promises’ and ‘lip service’ of the government and the commission which has no Mexican-American members.” Bexar Commissioner Albert Peña Jr., who gave the speech which set off the walkout, led the San Antonio delegation composed of Dr. Joaquin Gonzalez, Father Sherrill Smith and Henry Munoz, in the protest.35 In an ad hoc meeting with many of these leaders President Johnson promised a conference, “agreeing that the problems of this minority group were The Changing of the Guard

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unique and would be treated as such.” 36 Arising out of this protest, Johnson held a cabinet meeting in El Paso, Texas. The meeting was not satisfactory, however, according to the more militant Chicano activists: Johnson had promised that he would hold a White House conference for Chicano leaders, but he feared that Chicanos would walk out of the conference and embarrass him politically. He did not keep his promise. Instead, in October, 1967, he held cabinet committee hearings at El Paso, Texas. Johnson did not bother to invite the leading activists: Cesar Chavez, Reies Tijerina, or Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales. At El Paso he bussed his Mexicans to the celebrations which returned the Chamizal to Mexico. . . . Many Chicanos wondered if this had not been the main reason for the hearings since little else was accomplished. Activists boycotted and picketed the cabinet conference. They called their group La Raza Unida. Representatives of fifty Chicano organizations met at San Antonio and pledged support to the concept of La Raza Unida; about 1,200 people attended. To many observers, it was clear that the lid was about to blow off in the Chicano community.37 Involved in this protest were many Chicana and Chicano activists from San Antonio, including many of the older Chicano coalition leaders. As a consequence, the intense nationalism expressed by these Chicano activists at these meetings had a profound impact on the relationship between the Chicano coalition leadership, who participated in the meetings, and some of its local independent liberal supporters.38 Of particular significance was the conflict with Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez. The irony is that Congressman Gonzalez was one of the leading national spokesmen in Congress on the issues of discrimination and poverty facing Mexican Americans across the Southwest: Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez of Bexar county led a discussion in the House of Representatives on the problems of poverty and discrimination in the Southwest. . . . Noting the natural resources of the southwestern region have served to enrich and benefit some, Gonzalez said, in many ways the Southwest remains an economically underdeveloped area. “The failure of this area to develop its economic potential in a full and balanced manner is keeping millions of Americans in a state of poverty and de facto serfdom.” 39 At the local level strategies and solutions were the deadly swords that would pit leading liberals against each other. As early as 1966, Congressman Gonzalez split publicly with the Bexar County Democratic Coalition forces. 98

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In the 1966 Democratic primaries Gonzalez opposed Alaniz’s unsuccessful bid against Ollie Wurzbach for county commissioner in precinct 2. The break was both traumatic and permanent, as Alaniz stated: “We’re going to have to start unmasking those who call themselves Democrats but play footsie with Walter McAllister and the ggl—the phony Democrat like Henry B. Gonzalez.” 40 Then in 1968, because of his (Congressman Gonzalez’s) intimate political ties with Lyndon Johnson, he publicly challenged the legitimacy of passo as a representative of the Chicano community when passo endorsed the candidacy of Robert Kennedy for the presidential primaries. The break between Peña and Gonzalez was all the more significant given their seemingly intimate political relationship in Gonzalez’s election to Congress in 1961: The days are gone when County Com. Albert Peña will sit in a hotel room and induce a vice president of the U.S. to endorse Henry B. Gonzalez for Congress, slamming the door on other possible Democratic candidates—as Peña did in 1961. In fact, in 1968 Peña wouldn’t even vote for a commissioners court resolution commending Gonzalez on the occasion of Henry B. Gonzalez Day at the World’s Fair Sunday, a resolution that conservative Democrats A. J. Ploch and Ollie Wurzbach and Republican Jim Helland went along with.41 A rift between Anglo labor leaders and Chicano coalition activists over the issue of race was also inevitable. Peña, whose politics was tied directly to labor, soon alienated even this sector as his militancy intensified: Several reasons are given for dissatisfaction by labor leaders, including Peña’s absence from the county for national meetings, his militancy in the Chicano movement and bad feelings created with some union officials when Peña served as uaw organizer.42 Peña, the leading liberal coalition leader, would continue with his activism even though he would shun the state Democratic Party apparatus. Peña said that the state party had failed to implement recommendations from the McGovern Commission on party reform and delegate strength to give minority groups parity delegate strength in proportion to participation in general elections. Dissatisfied with the still entrenched conservative state and county Democratic Party politics, Peña left a process that had been his base for almost two decades to deal almost exclusively with Chicano issues that were related to civil rights, the War on Poverty, and the inclusion of Chicanos in national politics. Declaring he was The Changing of the Guard

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interested in the Chicano Movement and in the La Raza Unida party, liberal Democratic County Com. Albert Peña Tuesday disclaimed membership in either the state Democratic or Republican Party organizations. . . . Peña asserted he considers himself a member of the national Democratic Party, but not the state organization.43 Ultimately the remaining Bexar County Democratic Coalition leaders were sandwiched between a very powerful local conservative power structure, the Good Government League (ggl), and an emerging generation of young Chicana and Chicano activists. On one side, they were caught in the successful race-baiting campaign tactics of the ggl. One of the most insidious campaigns produced by the ggl was a film entitled “Black Hand” with blatantly racial overtones warning northside Anglo voters of an impending radical Chicano takeover of city politics. On the other side, the Raza Unida leaders criticized them for not abandoning what they considered a racist political party and taking a position with the Raza Unida. While the issues were basically the same between the younger activists and the Bexar County Democratic Coalition leaders, the strategies were not only different but were in direct conflict. There was no reconciliation between an old guard who had taken almost two decades to build their politics and a young guard who rejected that process as a failed process.44 The incredible electoral success by the young activists in the barrio precincts as well as the usual ggl electoral strength in the rest of the at-large system caught the coalition in a crossfire from which they never recovered. The coalition was caught between a conservative business power structure that proved to be impregnable and a more youthful movement whose key goal, in the face of a political process that they viewed as racist, was direct political representation for their community. It was the beginning of the end. In the 1971 race, Pete Torres filed in place one, the place traditionally designated by the ggl for their choice for mayor. He pointed out in an interview that if he was going to continue to put time in this thankless job, that he wanted to be where the action was. What followed was an intense political campaign with clear racial overtones. Torres lost.45 In the state elections of 1972, both Peña and Bernal lost their respective elections when caught in a crossfire between La Raza Unida and the conservative Chicano and Anglo forces. Bernal was defeated by Nelson Wolff, a moderate democrat. However, Bernal pointed out that he wasn’t quite sure what did him in—the Raza Unida luring away voters because of their petition drive to institute their convention or the smear letter that was widely distributed by 100

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a group of conservative Chicano businessmen, some who belonged to the Westside ggl and who had never forgiven him for moving over to the Peña camp.46 Peña, the most controversial of all of them, was the most vulnerable in the end. He was vulnerable because of his national politics on civil rights which was used by the opposition to accuse him of not tending to his responsibilities as county commissioner. He was redbaited for his support of the Free Angela Davis committee. And perhaps the most ironic side of his vulnerability was his outspoken position on Chicano issues and support for the younger activists while refusing to reject the Democratic Party label. Just as significant, by 1973 the ggl also lost a majority of its seats on city council. Apparently because of a division that developed in its organization over the direction of economic development, the ggl slate was split. While the ggl was composed of mainly northside elites, the question of economic development had to do more with the conception of how best to stabilize an investment environment that would enhance economic development. While northside development eventually dominated, none of the organizations were ever able to regroup their forces again, marking the end of a period where dominant partisan organizations virtually dictated the political conflicts. But more was at stake. The definition of politics itself was at stake. In the previous era, an intense struggle over partisan political power dominated the electoral arena: the ggl versus the Coalition. The transitional period represented an emerging politics that was driven by a more grassroots goal of empowerment. Organizations did not disappear; they simply did not define the political process and its conflicts as had been done in the past. Interestingly enough, on the surface the Chicano demand for direct representation for the barrios was similar to the northside suburban insistence for autonomy—they both wanted a greater voice in their neighborhoods. The difference, however, was profound. The suburban goal of autonomy was based on a defensive middle class reaction to the working class and poor, as well as a reaction to the growing Chicano enclaves in the inner city east, west, and south sides of San Antonio—the “nimby” (not in my backyard) syndrome. The Chicano goal of direct representation, on the other hand, was in direct response to the exclusion of their barrios from the policy-making process in San Antonio all of this century. Even as local autonomy and empowerment were defined differently, the overall environment was one where no dominant organization could openly dictate political slates or public policy. But more important to the Chicano community, this environment of change unleashed several forces that had been brewing throughout the 1960s. The Changing of the Guard

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Conclusion

Throughout the 1960s in San Antonio, intense political conflict occurred over resources and political power. It was an era where liberal and conservative politics clearly divided the contending groups. As a consequence, organizational agendas dominated politics throughout this period. The dominance of organizational agendas was the result of social and economic forces of a national character and not simply the outgrowth of personal agendas. The ggl and its organizational agenda, for example, were the product of a municipal reform movement that had failed in its previous efforts to bring reform to San Antonio until the political and economic conditions changed after World War ii. The Bexar County Democratic Coalition and passo forces drew their support, political and moral, from a growing national civil rights movement as well as from the liberal assault on poverty by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. This is not to say that strong individuals did not influence the direction of politics or the nature of the broader agendas. In a statement emphasizing the importance of the role of Albert Peña’s leadership, Maury Maverick Jr. in 1963 described him in the following manner: Thousands of persons of Mexican descent who have died from infant diarrhea, of tuberculosis, who have been socially kicked around or paid unequal wages, stand in silent cadre after cadre behind Albert Peña, a man sometimes mistaken, but always possessing a brave heart. We Anglo-Saxons produced Peña through a hundred years of our discriminatory practices.47 As well, the political record of Henry B. Gonzalez highlights the role of individual leadership in the greater scheme of things. Gonzalez’s personal commitment to justice sparked most of his dramatic public actions, including his famous filibuster against the passage of segregationist laws in the Texas Senate in 1957. In turn this kind of public profile fueled and was fueled by the politics advanced by the Bexar County Democratic Coalition. However, the analysis shows how the dominant organizational agendas’ most powerful influence was through their ability to define the issues and the conflicts that arose over those issues. The confrontation between these groups represented a broad community conflict over priorities for determining public policy and distributing public resources. The ggl represented the business community’s priority of growth and expansion within the context of a business-oriented local government, that is, a council-manager form of gov102

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ernment. Both the coalition and passo forces represented a social movement that organized around issues which challenged the business orientation of the existing local political institutions. Thus, while an individual may have benefited from this process and may have had an ideological or even personal stake in city politics, it was the broader agendas that eventually formed the politics during this period. The end to this period was not abrupt. It is in fact a tale of a chaotic transition that raised the expectations of the many excluded sectors of San Antonio. It is the tale of a chaotic transition that brought panic to the business community and intensified its need to maintain influence over a city politics that would determine the direction and growth of the market. But more important, it is a tale of a chaotic transition that was occurring nationwide. The transition was about the ultimate demise of political party partisanship as a strategy to gain political influence and the rise of a nonpartisan, candidatecentered style of politics that has come to pervade every corner of American politics. The next chapter focuses on the local ramifications of that transition for San Antonio and especially for the Chicano community.

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The Transitional Period

The transitional period in San Antonio represented more than simply a transition from one politics to another, as will be described in this chapter. It also represented the coming of age of San Antonio in a period of fierce competition for investors, a goal that was intimately tied to the organizational agenda of the ggl. The ggl had, since it was established, been preparing for this competition in its efforts to establish an infrastructure that would address the needs of investors. In this context, direct representation seemed much more practical than the goal of partisan elections. Stated in a different manner, in the context of development, neighborhoods became more important than the broader question of partisan politics and power. To put it in a not so subtle manner, the political economy of a Sunbelt city ultimately shaped and formed the politics of San Antonio. The Rise of a Sunbelt City

A most important characteristic of the modern city from a political economic perspective is that it must, first and foremost, be a center of profit—with culture, neighborhoods, and social environments seen as resources, products, and beneficiaries.1 Competition for investment, from this perspective, be-

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comes the primary policy goal of cities. In this sense post–World War ii San Antonio was no different. With the implementation of municipal reform in 1951, the great competition for investment began in San Antonio when the municipal reform city council annexed land that doubled the size of the city.2 It was obvious at this juncture in the history of San Antonio that economic development was defined by these municipal reformers as the main function that city government should serve. It is also obvious that the particular growth and expansion that occurred, where the east, west, and south sides of San Antonio were left out, was not a quirk of the market.3 The beginning of the expansion to the north side of San Antonio can be traced to 1955 when the Bexar County Medical Foundation obtained a gift of 200 acres of pastureland in the far northwest side of San Antonio for a medical school and university hospital, paving the way for legislation that was finally passed in 1959 to establish the University of Texas Medical Health Center.4 With the exception of the HemisFair plaza, located in downtown San Antonio and the site of the much-celebrated HemisFair in 1968, most of the investment moved to the north side of San Antonio. By the decade of the 1970s, the national headquarters of usaa (a military insurance company), the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the San Antonio Savings Association, three of the largest concerns in San Antonio, had moved or had been established in the north side. National policy also played a significant role in the growth and expansion policies of the city. As this national policy focused on highways rather than mass transit and continued with its middle class fha subsidies, middle class housing grew like wild ivy toward the north side. Following this growth was the construction of the major shopping malls also mainly in the north side. But even more critical, similar to phenomena occurring elsewhere, “placespecific entitlements, sold as a way to eliminate urban poverty, were spread even thinner to satisfy the imperatives of congressional patronage; effective targeting to needy people in central cities was negated by the logic of the congressional appropriations process.” 5 Put in a different manner, funds aimed at urban poverty areas under the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration were watered down as they converted to block grants under the Richard Nixon administration, enabling suburbs to benefit from much of that federal largesse. The end result in San Antonio was a continued bleeding of resources to the north side not only by investors but by the growth of White, more affluent middle class communities to the north. The bleaker side of the picture, thus, was that in the wake of this growth explosion the central city of San Antonio and the surrounding communities The Transitional Period

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in the west, south, and east sides were left stranded with fewer services and little or no business investment. They were a world away from the university, the hospital and its medical university, and property-rich school systems, as well as from employment and housing opportunities. Economic and social segregation for the majority of the Chicano community was as real and as deadly as when it was legally maintained. In the twenty-year span of municipal reform, conditions for the majority in those sectors of San Antonio had not changed. On the other hand, the middle class sector in the Chicano community slowly but surely began to take advantage of the northside explosion. But inclusion in this process was tentative at best. While many moved into the growing north side, many moved into the transitional middle class communities left behind by the fleeing White middle class, pushing the White middle class farther north. Nevertheless, the newly acquired mobility of the Chicano middle class represented a siphoning away of the kind of political leadership that was so crucial in the days of exclusion. Stated in a different manner, as the spatial arrangements along racial lines changed, it blurred the lines separating the Chicano community from the Anglo community, at least in terms of the emerging Chicano middle class and their concomitant growing social and political power. Just as important, the political process in the 1970s also took different forms. Despite the liberal tendencies of some Chicano legislative representatives, who continued to address issues related to the Chicano community, the political climate was being shaped by a more conservative trend that was influenced less by political parties and/or slating groups and more by individual political agendas. A politics based on a candidate-centered style of politics began to emerge even in the partisan legislative and county elections. Reflective of the national trend, party politics was used less as a tool by which to mobilize the community and more as a jumping-off platform to advance one’s own personal agenda as well as to tap campaign finance resources. Coming into the 1970s, then, with its infrastructure well developed, its growth pattern firmly established, and its political environment more open, San Antonio was in a position to negotiate with investors from far and near. Thus, the chaotic transitional period of the early 1970s seemed to represent an unprecedented opening of opportunities to all sectors in San Antonio. Mobility in an emerging Sunbelt city seemed to be a proven fact. In the midst of these social, geographic, and economic changes, however, the question of political representation became the paramount issue of the decade. As San Antonio reached the threshold as a “Shining Sunbelt City,” its political process was directly affected by the Voting Rights Act as it was ex106

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panded to include language minorities, and as the courts began to look at the dilution of the voting power of minorities. Thus, in the midst of the larger forces discussed above, the Chicano community began the last push in bringing about political changes that allowed direct political representation for their communities. The rest of the chapter describes how this process unfolded. Protest and Confrontation: The Politics of Empowerment

By the end of the 1960s, with the demise of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition, the ggl consolidated its political base in city as well as county politics. The undisputed political power of an Anglo business power structure to the exclusion of all other sectors of the community came under attack from the streets as well as from the courts. Now it was not a question of political power but political rights. It is in this context that the Chicano movement’s goal of self-determination and its impact on San Antonio must be viewed. As stated above, the seeds of the Chicano movement in Texas and San Antonio can be traced to the farmworker struggle as it reached, in 1966, the citrus and melon fields of South Texas where the farmworkers were engaged in an intense struggle against the Rio Grande Valley growers. While the Chicano movement rightfully has been characterized as generally a radical youth movement, the farmworkers’ strike brought together both the old and the young. David Montejano referred to the strike as the catalyst of the Chicano civil rights movement: Although the valley strike failed, . . . [t]he farm worker cause, while the lead element in this movement, was for most of the urban Mexican American population important in a symbolic sense; it ignited a broad resentment among all classes of the Mexican American community. Different agendas and energies were set off, some moderate, some militant. The high school youth boycotted their schools in Del Rio, Uvalde, Kingsville, Alice, Abilene, Pharr–San Juan–Alamo, Laredo, and Robstown, to mention only a few places. College students organized countless protest marches and meetings and provided new ideas and directions as well as energy and impatience. Even the usually proper middle class became radicalized, as they protested employment practices, boycotted companies (at one meeting they burned their Humble Oil credit cards), and filed lawsuits against social inequities.6 By 1967, Chicanas and Chicanos of all ages from all over the state joined in the now famous farmworker march from the valley to the state capital to deThe Transitional Period

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mand basic rights for farmworkers. The Mexican American Youth Organization (mayo) was established in 1967 by young Chicano students (Mario Compean, Jose Angel Gutierrez, Juan Patlan, Nacho Perez, Ernie Cortez, and Willie Velasquez) at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.7 They very quickly set up local mayo chapters thoughout Texas. Through these local chapters, mayo was instrumental in organizing over fifty high school walkouts, including those mentioned by Montejano, throughout the state. The target of these protests were the poor conditions that existed in Chicano high schools because of the racial discrimination that existed in these schools. In 1968, Chicanas and Chicanos from all over the state, led by mayo, marched from San Antonio to Del Rio to protest the unjust treatment of the Del Rio Chicano community. In the fall of 1969 the Chicano community in Crystal City began a boycott of the public schools that resulted in a sweeping victory for the Chicano community in the school board elections. It was widely hailed as the second “Chicano Revolution” in reference to the 1963 electoral takeover of city government by the Chicano community. San Antonio throughout this period was one of the major staging grounds for the emergent Chicano youth movement in the Southwest. In San Antonio, mayo was involved in three school confrontations in demanding an upgraded college-bound curriculum as well as greater representation of the Chicano community’s contribution to this nation in the history and civics curriculum. The three high schools (Sidney Lanier High School, Edgewood High School, and Tech High School), were three of the largest schools in San Antonio which were predominantly Chicano. At Edgewood, the protest march that was organized by young mayo members along with other students was so dramatic that Manuel Garza, an Edgewood student at the time, recalls students jumping out of classroom windows to join the march.8 In the Lanier confrontation, the students were protesting the lack of college preparatory courses, such as biology and algebra. The student leadership, who were part of mayo, were also protesting the violation of the first amendment separation of church and state. Significantly, Senator Bernal was drawn into the controversy by the students: State Sen. Joe Bernal disclosed Wednesday that he had met with restless student leaders both Monday and Tuesday night. The Tuesday night meeting, held in Guadalupe Church, was attended by between 75 and 100 students, he related. Declaring that the students have listed 13 complaints, Bernal said the unrest centers about “one specifically.” This he said, is the constitution of the student council. Still another point involves a request that a moment of “silent prayer” be observed at the be108

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ginning of student council meetings, rather than a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, which students claim is unconstitutional.9 It is through the work of mayo that a theater group was organized in the barrios, “El Teatro Del Barrio.” Through teatros like “El Teatro Del Barrio,” plays and skits were utilized throughout Texas as La Raza Unida Party went statewide in its effort to elect members to the legislature. Economic ventures such as co-ops and other investments with the help of national private foundations were also a common goal. The ultimate goal was the “concientizacion” of the barrios. The amazing thing about mayo was that while it was organized by young college students, mentioned above, its rank and file included many high school as well as college students. Their fearless confrontation with conservative Anglo political authorities in many small Texas towns, and with the infamous Texas Rangers (Los Rinches as they were referred to), made them almost legendary in the short time that they existed.10 Another important issue in the politics of protest during the late 1960s was the anti-war movement. While Albert Peña was very vocal against the war, as were many of the leaders in the youthful Chicano movement statewide, the impact of the anti-war movement was minimal in the barrios. On the contrary, it presented a dilemma there because of the high rate of Chicanos from the barrios who were already in Vietnam. Mariano Aguilar, one of the organizers of Barrios Unidos, a coalition of neighborhood organizations in the near westside barrios, points out that the Anglo vista volunteers working in the barrios never understood that dilemma.11 While the anti-war sentiment of the Chicano movement was based on the prevalent view that it was an unjust war, it focused more on the overrepresentation of Chicanos in the war and in the weekly casualty lists. Especially for the barrio activist, expressing an anti-war sentiment could very well put one outside the reality of a community that historically had been very patriotic. In this case, one form of that dialogue addressed the high rates of casualties versus the low rate of upward mobility for the community in general. One direct outcome of the war was the establishment of the Brown Berets by the returning Chicano war veterans. First started in California, the Brown Berets quickly spread throughout the Southwest. In San Antonio, the Brown Berets caught on quickly, recruiting many gang members as well as young Chicanas. The Guajardo brothers, Ben and Juan, were the most visible leaders in San Antonio. But along with them were some very active Chicanas, such as Diana Montejano and others. Montejano recalls that besides participating in statewide rallies against the war, a great deal of their work consisted of social services in the barrios, including helping the elderly, monitoring police beThe Transitional Period

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havior in the barrios, and providing a mentoring process for young gang members.12 They apparently were influential in turning many of the gang activities outward toward the community, with Chicanas playing an influential role in that process.

Gender and the Politics of Transition

One of the most important characteristics of any transitional period is that the order of social and political relations tends to be the first to come under scrutiny. Even in the most subtle of transitions, this particular questioning of order tends to occur. The San Antonio of the late 1960s and 1970s was no exception. As national and local events and policies converged to provoke changes in how things were done, the Chicano movement gained momentum in its criticism of everything around it. As this process intensified, Chicanas began to gain political visibility in the questioning of the credibility of institutions and practices as they related to their community. One of the most influential national policies of the 1960s on the politics of the barrios was Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. As well as creating opportunities for middle class college-educated Chicanos and Chicanas to gain professional positions in San Antonio, it also created the environment for grassroots women to get directly involved in protest politics. In particular, these grassroots activists got involved in concrete issues such as welfare, housing, health, and education. It was during this time, with the direct support of the House of Neighborly Services, then directed by Martin Garza, that a welfare rights organization in the westside barrios was established in San Antonio. Out of this organization many grassroots women got directly involved in protest politics, including Alicia Martinez, Lupe Ybarra, Elvira Gomez, JoAnn Gutierrez, and many others. Besides confronting the local issues of education, health, and other issues, they were also instrumental in recruiting younger Chicanos into the politics of the day, including gang members. Alicia Martinez recalls that many of their protest marches included gang members from the barrio where the House of Neighborly Services was located. In one march it was the presence of and the leadership of the Chicana Welfare Rights Organization that helped them avoid a disastrous confrontation with another gang as they marched through their barrio: The welfare mothers and I, I’ll never forget, they were trying to do, I don’t remember what the issue was, but it was something at the Good 110

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Samaritan Center. We marched from the House of Neighborly [Services] to the Good Sam, and some of the boys couldn’t march because that was ghost town. So the women had to march around them and that was okay, the ghost town, the gang at that time, so the guys de La Espiga [the gang of young men marching with them] over here where we were couldn’t march with them. And the women, you know, las señoras, marched with them and it was okay then. Los del ghost town los dejaron passar [let all of us pass].13 Except for Alicia Martinez, these grassroots women were obviously not middle class. But their political mobilization led them directly into that middle class process, electoral politics. Besides getting involved in the massive voter registration drives after the repeal of the poll tax in Texas in 1966, most of these Chicanas also got directly involved in precinct politics as well as election campaigns.14 A very visible indicator of the increasing role of women in politics during this period was the changing structure and rules of the Democratic Party brought about by what were known as the McGovern Rules. These rules aimed at institutionalizing parity in the Democratic Party for women and minorities. It was also during this same period that the middle class wives of the Chicano coalition politicians were drawn in greater numbers into the Democratic Women of Bexar County, a predominantly Anglo organization established in the 1950s. Olga Peña, Minnie Garcia, Elie Muñoz, Theresa Vale, Sylvia Rodriguez, and Mary Esther Bernal, among others, were actively involved in this organization when it also became involved in the implementation of the McGovern Rules in 1972. Sylvia Rodriguez, who was elected president of the organization in 1971, recalls how these rules opened up the party apparatus to women and minorities from the county all the way up to the state: We had contact with the state party . . . and the party was looking for groups and organizations to disseminate the information to the locals. Our group, the Democratic Women, became a focal point because we conducted two statewide conferences on the McGovern Rules, where we had workshops on how to get elected as a delegate. So I learned them very well, you know, to where I knew the McGovern Rules from the very beginning. How it was going to work. I started going to the precinct conventions, the state conventions, and with that system, that’s how I first started.15 Sylvia Rodriguez entered politics as a secretary to state representative Johnny Alaniz in the early 1960s. One of the most influential Chicanas in that The Transitional Period

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process in the early 1980s, Rodriguez was catapulted into Democratic Party politics because of her work with state senator Joe Bernal from 1967 to 1972. She pointed out that because the party under the McGovern Rules now had to appoint minorities to the Democratic National Committee, they formed the Chicano Democratic Caucus in 1971 to insure that the party would select who they wanted on the national committee. She was appointed to the Democratic National Committee (dnc) in the late 1970s and served until 1984. During that time, she worked with other Latinos in the United States to institutionalize Latino membership in the executive committee of the dnc. During her term the Hispanic caucus teamed up with the Black caucus to write the by-laws to insure that the chair of each caucus would automatically be a member of the executive committee of the dnc, where all the decisions were made. These rules are still in place today. Rodriguez used the word “Latino” as an inclusive term at the national level to denote mainly, but not exclusively, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. The “Hispanic caucus” also formally denotes the inclusivity expressed by the word “Latino.” It was this cumulative experience that provided the base for Chicanas to get directly involved in the male-dominated political process of the 1970s. Liberals, conservatives, and moderates, middle class and poor, the time had come for women to get directly involved in the political destiny of their community and to take what credit was due. Indeed, the most symbolic and most powerful event to occur in San Antonio, the sasa (San Antonio Savings Association) boycott in September of 1970, served also as a springboard for young Chicanas to gain entry into leadership positions in the intense political process of the period. In the fall of 1969 CBS produced a documentary entitled “Hunger in America.” 16 The obvious theme and focus of the documentary was the still pervasive existence of poverty in America and its impact on children. Because of the very high incidence of poverty and hunger in the Chicano community in San Antonio, San Antonio was selected as one of the major urban areas for the documentary by the producers. The documentary was welcome national publicity on the conditions of the Chicano community in San Antonio. That is, until the mayor of San Antonio, Walter McAllister (who was also president of the San Antonio Savings Association) made disparaging remarks about “our” Mexicans, who were very nice people, but their problem was that they preferred dancing and fiestas to work. The confrontation of racist attitudes, intensified by the reaction to the mayor’s public statements, led to the sasa boycott. In the dramatic showdown in 1970 between the younger Chicano movement activists and the 112

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mayor, Gloria Cabrerra and other Chicanas were part of the committee to coordinate the boycott. They also (wo)manned the picket lines with other Chicano activists, where many of them were hauled off to jail in an ensuing melee caused by the overreaction of the police department.17 The sasa boycott had a powerful politicizing impact on Chicanas and Chicanos in San Antonio, but more important the very visible role of the Chicana leadership thrust them into other leadership positions.18 The Chicano movement thus created the opportunity for many young middle class Chicanas to participate in a much more visible manner. They were directly involved in the marches, the demonstrations, and the various electoral challenges to the entrenched Anglo power structures throughout Texas. Occurring simultaneously but in an almost separate process from the two processes described above, these young Chicanas began questioning everything around them. They represented a new kind of politics that would in the end shape even the politics of some of the older middle class Chicanas, who were finally gaining entry into the Democratic Party politics of the day. How this occurred is an important part of the political history of San Antonio. What were some of the obstacles that these women faced in San Antonio as they entered directly into the drama that “torched” the entire southwest United States, as Chicano communities from California to Texas organized marches, pickets, demonstrations, and walkouts? How were they received in the mainstream electoral politics of the day? What was the political perspective, in general, of these Chicanas? The Question of Women’s Rights and Community in the 1970s

Thoughout her over twenty-year involvement in politics, Olga Peña recognized that the system had always been biased against Chicanas, both along ethnic and along gender lines. However, Peña, who had played a mentoring role for Chicanas since the 1950s and was obviously directly concerned with Chicana participation, was very pragmatic in her approach to politics and the question of gender. Community well-being, for Olga Peña, was the overriding issue facing all Chicanas and Chicanos. Thus, while her focus was always on increasing the participation of Chicanas in the political process that existed, her agenda was based in those twenty years spent on social issues that faced the entire community. She did not see the politics of gender as a separate issue from the politics of the Chicano community in their struggle for political inclusion. Twenty years after Olga Peña got involved in politics, the Chicano moveThe Transitional Period

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ment exploded across the Southwest. Reflecting Peña’s view on gender, if there was any universal perspective at all, it was that the Chicano movement was a community struggle against what they saw as a common bondage of racism against all Chicanas and Chicanos in the United States. Both Chicanas and Chicanos everywhere, at every class level, in every institution, were treated as second-class citizens. This sentiment was certainly not unique to the Chicano movement in the 1960s and 1970s; throughout this century, the struggle of the community against racism has been primary. However, the historical awareness was especially acute among the younger generation of Chicanas and Chicanos, who were experiencing higher education in greater numbers than ever before. They soon realized that they as a people did not exist in the curricula or textbooks of the various institutions that they attended. The culmination of a century of struggle—a struggle that had been erased in the textbooks—had come home through the Chicano movement. In San Antonio, this eye-opening college experience coupled with the fact that there was no escape, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, from the reality of the barrio and its excluded status in San Antonio’s mainstream society, intensified the “Chicano Question.” In different words, the Chicano movement was the mobilization of a community, of its barrios, of all its people. Women’s rights were encapsulated, even worse, suppressed, within the struggle of an entire community. However, a very powerful factor in the Chicano movement was the broad grassroots rejection of the Anglo-exclusive Democratic Party politics of the times. The tenor of the times was liberation from the old status quo politics. But liberation or the struggle for liberation cannot simply be encased within only certain issues. This eventually created conflict between those Chicana and Chicano progressives who had fought so hard for change, but in a man’s world. Rosie Castro, one of the leading Chicana activists during that time, emphasized that it wasn’t an exclusive male process as much as it was a maledominated process. In other words, women were there doing the work that men got the credit for: I mean I can remember coming up with the wives of some of the key Chicano politicians; now here were some women that were always busy in their campaigns, were always doing the work. Not just sitting idly by but being very much a part of the political work, and yet there was no recognition of that.19 The dilemma was that most of the Chicana activists in San Antonio who were involved in the Chicano movement were caught between a “White fem114

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inism” that was not responsive to the Chicana experience and a political reality where they struggled, mobilized, and politicized, but were not recognized in their own right. They were discriminated against both along gender and ethnic lines. The responses of some of those activists interviewed depict the complexity of forging and articulating a specific Chicana feminist agenda as it began to take form within the Chicana political experience. Gloria Cabrerra, who along with Rosie Castro was one of the first Chicana candidates for city council, on the one hand pointed out that it “was not the women’s movement at that point. It was . . . ‘What can I do to advance my people?’ I felt like we were in a deep hole and we needed to get out and we didn’t need to be fighting one another.” On the other hand, she emphasized that women at that time, in the early 1970s, were held back even more so than now, and as Chicanas, “we used to say that we had a double whammy because not only were we women but then Chicana women. It was a very bad time for Mexicanas.” 20 Choco Meza, who came to San Antonio from Eagle Pass at the height of the Chicano Movement in the early 1970s, recalls that after attending a woman’s conference in Houston in 1978, it became apparent that they were not talking about Chicanas. At the same time, while she felt that the Chicana was able to get more involved in the Chicano movement, it was not on an equal footing: The recruitment (of Chicanas into the movement) was really designed to get you to do the work, while they did the talking. Oh no, they loved having you there, but you did the work, they did the talking, they did the interviewing, they did the negotiating. You became the technician, you got the technical stuff down and fed it to them, and they sounded great. . . . But men really did recognize the skill women had, they just like to keep it at a certain place. I think that they never envisioned that technicians end up becoming leaders ’cause they know the material well. I guess in a way they built their own graves in some places where women have taken over, pushing them aside.21 Rosie Castro was highly critical of both the general acceptance by women of the supportive role assigned them, and of the White women’s movement: Now it was a two-way street, many times I remember going crazy ’cause these women wanted to be Mrs. So-and-so, . . . and we were the young ones coming up saying “screw that shit,” you know, be who you are, you got a name, and women bought into that, that was the time period, Rosa would have been Mrs. Rosales, despite whatever she would The Transitional Period

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have achieved. . . . But for us, the women, we’ve always been conflicted, there was a feminist movement coming in. As the feminists made some overtures, we looked at it this way: “Our people cannot come out of oppression unless we do it together.” So [it’s] not sexism . . . it’s a race question. The feminists were basically racist. All they wanted was to co-opt the Chicanas to support the White women’s agenda. The White women’s agenda had some relevance but not at the expense of our people. For example, job discrimination cut across men and women in our community.22 From yet another perspective, Sylvia Rodriguez, who as the administrative aide of state senator Joe Bernal became his political adviser and coordinator, quite candidly points out that she did not encounter any sexism in her political activities. Almost echoing Choco Meza’s insight that the technical skills eventually made them indispensable, Rodriguez enjoyed a respect that she candidly recognized as stemming from her indispensable position: I’ve always believed that the reason that I never felt that I was discriminated [against] because I was a woman was because of the power that I had by working for him [Bernal]; people admitted me and respected me for that reason. I feel like while I’m not putting myself down, I feel like I accomplished a lot of things faster than perhaps any other woman might have . . . because of my position in his office. In other words, I made myself almost indispensable in that office, to where he really needed me there and people knew that I was a big force in the office. Everybody, from lobbyists to senators to whatever, they wouldn’t hesitate to deal with me on issues, on legislation, on appointments, on anything.23 Regardless of perspective or inclination, most Chicanas at that point in the process were saddled with two tasks: first, to enfranchise an entire community; and second (and just as important), to provide the leadership and skills in spite of the obvious suppression of the question of equality for women. Even if they were inclined to a more feminist perspective, White feminism at that point was not relevant to Chicanas who had the “double whammy” of race and gender to address. On the other hand, even if their inclination was not toward a feminist perspective, they still had to contend with the maledominated political reality of San Antonio.

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The Structure of the Game

While certainly shaped by the broader context of the civil rights movement as well as the anti-war movement, the War on Poverty policies of the Johnson administration had a profound influence on the style of politics that was emerging in the 1970s. In fact, these policies provided the material base for the feeling of territory on the part of many of the younger activists, who by this time were advocating barrio representation. The most important impact of these policies was that they provided a political base that eventually produced different actors in the barrios with different loyalties and different visions, with little or no concern for partisan politics. This is not to negate the impact of the third party, La Raza Unida, and many of its local activists, such as Mario Compean, Nacho Perez, Rosie Castro, and others. But ultimately this third party was based more on ethnicity, as opposed to partisanship. Put in another manner, La Raza Unida represented more of a social movement than just a partisan political party. Equally as important, the War on Poverty did not necessarily produce the kind of open democratic environment that the political struggle represented by the Chicano movement was based on—it was not, after all was said and done, about inclusion despite the rhetoric of “maximum feasible participation.” One of the most consistent complaints by resident activists in the impacted barrios was that the programs were generally controlled by outsiders, especially members of the larger Anglo business community. Throughout the late 1960s, the power struggles over who was to control the various boards, especially the Bexar County Economic Opportunity Board, were waged by various groups. Indeed, the War on Poverty politics (as it was referred to) brought different institutions into the fray, including the Catholic Church and other denominations as well as other professional, business, and community groups.24 Politics, it seems, including the War on Poverty politics, was still a top-to-bottom process.25 As William Benavides pointed out, after his appointment to a committee to decide how the Alazan Creek, which ran directly through the westside barrios, would be designed, the process was a very controlled process. After the committee opted for a green plan for the creek so that the westside residents could have access to a parklike environment, the city council ignored the committee recommendations and voted for a plan that would completely concretize the entire creekbed as it meandered through the neighborhoods.26 But it did bring many of these community activists face-to-face with those who had dominated their barrios all of their lives. Moreover, the conflicts ocThe Transitional Period

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curred in their own neighborhoods because of the “maximum feasible participation” principle.27 As a consequence the issues now reflected their communities directly. More important, the War on Poverty served as the vehicle by which many activists would enter into a politics that eventually went beyond a politics of service to the poor. While the War on Poverty represented Lyndon Johnson’s determination to attack poverty through the efforts of those who were affected directly, in the end it represented a politics with many faces. Far from the stated national commitment, to many in the barrio it represented a way by which they could acquire professional skills. While many who got involved were attracted by the professional opportunities available, it is also safe to say that on a more practical level it represented an opportunity by which many would get involved in a politics that arose directly from and manifested the issues of the barrio. The neighborhood organizations that served as the backbone to the electoral politics represented by the Committee for Barrio Betterment were enhanced if not produced by this poverty agency infrastructure. In the south side, agencies such as the Southside Neighborhood Assistance Corporation, snac, served as the basis by which Congressman Frank Tejeda and many other southsiders began their political careers.28 However, the greatest impact on the future restructuring of San Antonio politics came out of the most densely populated areas of San Antonio, the westside and southwestside barrios of San Antonio. It is out of this configuration of service agencies and political protests that activists such as Rosie Castro, Dario Chapa, Mariano Aguilar, Leo Alvarado, Gloria Cabrerra, and many others emerged. The coalition leaders, including Albert Peña, certainly welcomed the progressive thrust of the War on Poverty policies (in particular the establishment of the Office of Economic Opportunity [oeo] and its principle of “maximum feasible participation”) and its intended impact on the pervasive conditions of poverty in San Antonio. But they never considered these policies as means by which to consolidate their power. More importantly they did not, it seems, anticipate the political impact that these policies would have on the political configurations in San Antonio. The Planting of the Seed

In 1969, the Committee for Barrio Betterment (cbb), led by Barrios Unidos in conjunction with mayo, challenged the Anglo domination of politics in San Antonio by recruiting Chicano candidates from the barrios to run for city council. The cbb was a barrio coalition of neighborhood organizations (in118

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cluding the local mayo organization) which represented a rejection of the middle class politics of the Anglo community as well as the coalition politics of Albert Peña and others. Ironically its leadership, a new and younger generation of activists emerging from both the Chicano movement as well as the War on Poverty politics, were quite intimately tied to the coalition. The major difference was that they took a much more cultural nationalist position, which eventually influenced their electoral strategies as well as their notions of political representation. The dominant Anglo political establishment, the Good Government League, viewed political representation from an at-large, nonpartisan perspective. That is to say, the rules that they had set up through municipal reform dating back to 1951 reflected their insistence that every representative should be elected by and should be accountable to the entire city, and those representatives should not have any political ties or obligations to any political party. The coalition leaders, on the other hand, quite candidly accepted the at-large system but spent their entire political existence challenging the nonpartisan rule. Their view of representation was that partisan elections would bring greater accountability through the political party in power—in this case the Democratic Party. The political strategy of the younger generation of activists took a different turn because of their emphasis on barrio representation as opposed to atlarge representation. But just as important, the emphasis on barrio representation also rejected political party representation because of their rejection of the racist history of the Democratic Party. While their concept of representation arose from a cultural nationalist demand for Chicano representation, the concept was also based on class, in that their insistence on barrio representation was an insistence on a representation that was not filtered through any organization that did not directly arise from the barrios. In other words, a middle class Chicano from the north side was seen as being just as incapable of representing the barrios in the west side as a middle class Anglo. This difference proved to be the decisive political force that shaped the new middle class politics that arose under the eventual single-member district plan that established independent political representation in 1977. The 1969 city elections represented a unique event in San Antonio. The cbb reflected loyalties and attachments that were quite diverse. Some were tied to the Democratic Party, some to La Raza Unida and mayo, and still others were simply activists involved in their own communities. This first slate was composed of three Chicanos from the west side. One, Candelario Alejos, was a local small businessman. Another, Dario Chapa, was a schoolteacher The Transitional Period

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and one of the organizers in the Cassiano Homes, a housing project in the west side. The last one, Mario Compean, was one of the founders and leaders of the mayo organization.29 They came equipped—with a newspaper, El Deguello, published by mayo, and a pervasive network of organizations and activists who worked the campaign with an almost negative cash balance. They filled the air of the west side with an anticipation and excitement rarely seen since the days when Henry B. Gonzalez ran for Congress for the first time, in 1961. The cbb candidates lost, but they managed to send two of the smug ggl candidates, including Mayor McCallister, into run-off elections before eventually winning their respective races. In the 1971 city elections, the cbb fielded two Chicanas and two Chicanos from the barrios for city council. The candidates were Rosie Castro, a young Chicana college graduate from the barrios, Gloria Cabrerra, a Chicana law student and southside activist, Willie Benavides, a neighborhood activist from the west side, and Mario Compean. While they did not win this election, because of the at-large electoral system, as in the 1969 elections, they received the overwhelming majority of votes in the barrios. This time around they were also “seasoned”; they broadened their campaign to other parts of the city, reaching middle class Chicanos as well. Just as important, they set the precedent of running women and men. Chicana women became much more visible in the organizational as well as leadership roles. As pointed out earlier, they were not automatically invited in. Indeed, it was their intense participation in the political struggle shaped by the Chicano movement in general that opened the doors to greater Chicana participation and leadership. Even as they lost in all council places, the cbb’s greatest achievement was in sweeping the Chicano precincts against all the ggl candidates. The voter returns in the barrios showed that they were accepted on an equal basis as the Chicano candidates. Moreover, the cbb elections, especially the 1971 elections, played a crucial role in the eventual maldef (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) suit for single-member districts. Gloria Cabrerra points out that the use of the cbb election returns in the maldef suit was not a lucky accident: The reason that I ran for city council and got involved with barrio betterment was because by this time I was working parttime with the maldef and we were exploring the issue of redistricting and also single member districts for city council. The ggl was so powerful at that time we felt that if we were able to get single member districts that we could get people on the council that were more receptive to us and to

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other parts of town. It would be done by geographic area so that all areas of the city would be represented. So we had started to do research on the possibility of filing a lawsuit on that issue and one of my jobs was to go and interview the different city council people to see whether they were receptive to the idea of single member districts or not. And part of that strategy was for me to run for city council to see which areas gave me the greatest support, so that would give us more information in drawing the lines for the single member districts. And that’s primarily the reason that I got involved in it. We had no expectations at all of winning at that time. But the information that we got was very valuable. The highest area where I got the 21,000 votes was what became the district where Bernardo Eureste first won, District Five of the city council.30 The impact of these elections was the translation of the question of political inclusion into independent barrio representation. The emphasis on barrio representation intensified the focus on the at-large rule of representation. This created the demand for single-member districts as a means by which to gain independent political representation for the Chicano community. The political activity that arose out of this restless Chicano youth movement represented a shift from the precinct partisan politics of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition to a barrio-based politics that included electoral politics as only part of its strategy in confronting the dominance of city politics by the business community. Thus, a major thrust of the Chicano movement was the creation of independent political representation for the various barrios that had historically been excluded. It represented a watershed moment marking a new era in San Antonio politics. Conclusion

As discussed in this chapter, the character of the Chicano movement differed from the organizational politics of the coalition period in various ways. First, the movement was based directly on the “Chicano Question,” which arose almost directly out of the farmworker struggle occurring in the agricultural fields of Texas and California and not out of the Democratic Party precinct politics of the Bexar County Democratic Coalition. Thus, the visible support or participation by the liberal Anglo or union sectors was not there. The movement’s ties, on the other hand, to the Black community were based on the common civil rights struggle. However, because of the lack of publicity

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and historical understanding of the Chicano political struggle, these ties were never very secure. But more important, it represented a rift between the old Chicano coalition leaders and the younger, more militant Chicano movement leaders. This led to a new kind of politics that ultimately undermined the political effectiveness of the Democratic Party in San Antonio. In particular, this new politics was not only a rejection of the Democratic Party as a vehicle to power, but also a rejection of coalition politics in general—it was in essence a politics of identity and empowerment of a community as opposed to a politics of power as defined through the existing political party system. Second, the rejection of, and a liberation from, the status quo political arrangements ultimately undermined the old social rules. As a consequence, women became much more visible organizationally as well as in leadership. One reason, of course, was that many of the young civil rights activists from the local Catholic universities as well as from the barrios were young women. But just as important, many of the “older” Chicanas who had been involved during the days of the coalition gained leadership positions both because of their persistent involvement in party politics and because of their own organizational efforts in the community. This, of course, did not imply that women were invited in with open arms. Indeed, as stated above, it was their own political organizing that opened the doors. Third, this ultimately translated into a question of independent political representation of communities as opposed to the partisan representation that the Bexar County Democratic Coalition leaders had struggled for throughout the last two decades. This distinction was critical in terms of how the political strategies were then effected. The coalition gained its political base through the political party, and as a consequence its primary goal, aside from the liberalizing of the voting franchise, was to eliminate the nonpartisan rule of representation as a means by which to gain political power in city council. The emphasis on barrio representation, on the other hand, shifted the focus to the at-large rule of representation, as a means by which not only to gain independent political representation but to empower the Chicano community. Partisan politics was not an important issue. In fact, partisan politics was seen as part of the institutional framework that had excluded the Chicano community. Thus, the thrust of the Chicano movement on the question of independent representation for the Chicano community was not on the building of a partisan political base but on creating independent political representation for the various barrios that had historically been excluded. The next chapter examines the impact of these changes on how politics would now be negotiated. 122

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Faces of San Antonio through Time

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Adlai Stevenson addressing a crowd at a presidential rally organized by the Loyal American Democrats (lads), a Mexican American liberal caucus in the Bexar County Democratic Party. The rally was held at Milam Square in the west side of San Antonio. Chicano Archives, Hispanic Research Center, utsa. Oct. 18, 1952.

A view of the estimated 5,000 participants at the Stevenson rally organized by lads. Chicano Archives, Hispanic Research Center, utsa. Oct. 18, 1952.

The march by participants in the lads Stevenson rally at Milam Square to the Alamo, where the Anglo leadership in the Bexar County Democratic Party held their rally for Stevenson. Chicano Archives, Hispanic Research Center, utsa. Oct. 18, 1952.

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Participants at the Bexar County Democratic Party Stevenson rally at the Alamo after the lads Stevenson rally at Milam Square. The San Antonio Light Collection, The Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio. Oct. 18, 1952.

An answer to the question: “Where were all the Chicanas in the 1950s?” was the picket line. Chicana garment workers on strike against Tex-Son. The San Antonio Light Collection, The Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio. Circa 1958.

The exclusive political club the Good Government League (ggl) confidently filing for city council. Representative of the Anglo business community, their slate, with some concessions to moderate to conservative minorities, dominated politics in San Antonio from 1955 to 1973. The San Antonio Light Collection, The Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio. Feb. 17, 1963.

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Posing with local businessman Tito Guzman (center) are two of the more visible members of the so-called Westside ggl and the ggl city council majority during the 1960s, Felix Treviño (left) and Herbert Calderon (right). Photo courtesy of Ruben Munguia, Munguia Printers. Circa 1965.

Posing with Valmo Bellinger (left), a longtime eastside political leader, are two of the most visible Black leaders in the Bexar County Democratic Coalition throughout the 1960s, G. J. Sutton (center) and Rev. Claude Black. Photo courtesy of Ruben Munguia, Munguia Printers. Circa 1970.

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This photo of Councilman Jose San Martin posing at a swearing-in ceremony with family and friends could almost serve as a symbol of middle class Chicanos establishing their presence in San Antonio culturally as well as politically. Some significant notables in the photo, aside from Dr. San Martin’s family, are Ruben Munguia (back row, right) and Dr. Willie Elizondo, eventual board president of the San Antonio Independent School District, in front and to the right of Mr. Munguia. Photo courtesy of Ruben Munguia, Munguia Printers. Circa 1975.

Henry B. Gonzalez speaking at a banquet for state officials in San Antonio. Seated at the far left of the table is G. J. Sutton, and next to him is state senator Joe J. Bernal. Photo courtesy of Dr. Joe J. Bernal, private collection. Circa 1972.

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Young Chicanas and Chicanos challenging the north side businessoriented, Anglodominated ggl’s domination of city hall. Pictured at their westside campaign headquarters are the four young Chicano/a Committee for Barrio Betterment candidates for city council, from left to right: William Benavides, Gloria Cabrerra, Rosie Castro, and Mario Compean. La Raza Unida, The San Antonio Light Collection, The Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio.February20,1971.

Albert Peña Jr. being interviewed upon his release from jail after the San Antonio Savings Association boycott and public demonstration, organized by Chicana and Chicano activists in 1970. Photo courtesy of George Velasquez. September, 1970.

Albert Peña Jr. addressing a Chicano rally. Photo courtesy of George Velasquez. Circa 1970.

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Raza Unida march and rally through the barrios of San Antonio. Holding the banner on the left is Andrea Velasquez, and pictured directly behind the banner is Manuel Garza. Photo courtesy of George Velasquez. Circa 1973.

From left to right, Willie Velasquez, Arnold Flores, unnamed official from hud, and Juan Patlan. Juan Patlan was the executive director of the Mexican American Unity Council (mauc), and Willie Velasquez and Arnold Flores were board members of the mauc. Photo courtesy of Ruben Munguia, Munguia Printers. Circa 1980s.

Chicano candidate for the Alamo Community College District Juan Baldit speaks at press conference. Seated to his left is southside Justice of the Peace and former community activist Edmundo Zaragoza, and Al Rhode, former city council member. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. April 21, 1980.

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Andy Hernandez, national director of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, speaking at a rally in support of the rights of immigrants. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

The visibility of Chicano public officials is very apparent in this photo of a city-sponsored public ceremony in Walter Martinez’s city council district in the west side. Behind Walter Martinez, who is at the podium, is Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez. Also pictured are District Attorney Fred G. Rodriguez (two down from Gonzalez), state representative (now congressman) Ciro Rodriguez (in front of the district attorney), and the first Chicano city manager of San Antonio, Alex Briseño (to the right). Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

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City manager Alex Briseño visiting the Guadalupe Community Center in the west side. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

Photo of Ruben Munguia of Munguia Printers, uncle of Henry Cisneros. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

Henry Cisneros, Governor Ann Richards, state senator Carlos Truan, and Maria Antonietta Berriozabal at Ann Richards’s campaign headquarters. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990.

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Congressman Frank Tejeda and his campaign manager Arturo Sanchez at a press conference. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1992.

City council member Yolanda Vera at a public ceremony in her district (7). Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa late 1980s or early 1990s.

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State representative Leticia Van de Putte and Justice of the Peace Richard Teniente at a public ceremony. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1991.

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund legal counsels, Guadalupe Luna and director/attorney Norma Cantu, at a press conference. At the left is Judith Sanders-Castro. Chicana leadership within maldef has been a significant characteristic of maldef for most of its history. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

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Council member Maria Antonietta Berriozabal in the middle of a discussion at city hall. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1980s.

Council member Maria Antonietta Berriozabal introducing her parents at her mayoral campaign rally. To her right is her husband, a professor of mathematics at utsa, Manuel Berriozabal. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1991.

Maria Antonietta Berriozabal speaking at a political meeting between Blacks and Chicanos. To her immediate left is community leader and organizer T. C. Calvert; to her far right is lulac state director Rosa Rosales, with lulac activist Henry Rodriguez sitting between them. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

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lulac state director and public employee labor organizer Rosa Rosales at a meeting. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

lulac officials publicly supporting restaurant owner and community activist Mario Cantu opening a new restaurant in the west side. Seated left to right are Mario Cantu, Rosa Rosales, Henry Rodriguez, and Angela Garcia. Photo courtesy of La Prensa, San Antonio. Circa 1990s.

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Style and Strategy in San Antonio Politics

The analysis in this chapter focuses on the consequences of change in how political representatives are elected to city council. In particular, how politics is negotiated at the electoral level and how that impacts the ability of communities to voice their interests in the decision-making process is looked at. Accountability as well as the ability of communities to define the policy issues facing the city in the context of a dynamic and demanding market economy are the major issues. Stated in a more succinct manner, the analysis explores whether single-member districts, and the advent of independent representation, empower the Chicano community or set the stage for politicians who simply serve as brokers for the business community.1 The analysis begins by describing the consequences of the demise of organizational agendas as the dominant form of political access. It then focuses on the consequences of institutional change on political representation and, more importantly, on the style of politics. A Political Environment in Flux

The city council elections of 1975 were the first elections in this century in which no group was able to capture a majority of the council seats. The traditionally dominant force in post–World War ii San Antonio politics, the

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ggl, had been in disarray since the elections of 1973, when it failed to win a majority of the city council seats for the first time since 1955. The cause of the 1973 defeat was a split in the ggl over whether to continue developing the affluent north side or to redevelop the central city. The so-called new northside money ran an independent slate that won a majority of the seats and thus selected the mayor, who was chosen by the city council from among its members. Significantly, this split in the ggl also reflected a split in the Anglo voting precincts. In November of 1974, San Antonio voters approved an amendment that established a system for the direct election of the mayor by the electorate. This represented the final crack in the ggl’s dominance of city politics. In the 1975 elections, the ggl won the mayoral race, but managed to win only one city council seat. Lila Cockrell, the ggl mayoral candidate, was the first woman elected mayor in San Antonio’s history. The other ggl candidate elected was a relatively unknown young Chicano, Henry G. Cisneros.2 After these elections, different business groups tried to reorganize, but they were unsuccessful. Thus, no organizational discipline or agenda encumbered any particular candidate’s political outlook. The dominant business interests in San Antonio now surfaced in the personal agendas of individual candidates rather than in a slate governed by an organizational agenda. The liberal strategy shifted to community organizing and the use of legal and other nonelectoral means.3 Especially in the Chicano community, Chicano political activists, caught in the rising expectations of this more open environment, were mobilizing forces to fight the still intact at-large system of electing city council members.4 Thus, with the dominant political forces in disarray, the elections of 1975 took place within the first seemingly pluralistic political environment that San Antonio had ever had. More profoundly, however, the emergence of community and neighborhood organizations signalled a changing infrastructure of politics. As pointed out in the preceding chapter, various organizations emerged from and because of the Chicano movement. The most significant of these organizations, Communities Organized for Public Service (cops), was formally organized when it held its first citywide convention in 1974.5 Its grassroots style of organizing melded local Catholic Church parish organizations into a communitywide organization based in the west and southwest sides of San Antonio. This proved to be a very effective strategy by which to force attention to the neglected conditions of its neighborhoods. More importantly, cops provided a community organization model that would be followed by a myriad of emerging community organizations in the 1980s. 142

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This model, based on the Industrial Areas Foundation’s grassroots style of organizing, established an infrastructure of politics that eschewed direct electoral participation in favor of a grassroots lobbying style of politics. It aimed at holding individual politicians accountable to the particular needs and interests of their communities, such as better lighting and drainage in their neighborhoods, as well as greater access to library and health care services in their communities. Clearly electoral politics from this model is structured such that the interests of neighborhoods are at times pitted against those of other communities. As such this new infrastructure of community organizations, along with the taxpayer neighborhood organizations that sprang up throughout the north side of San Antonio, structurally undermined the ability of communities to go beyond their neighborhood self interest. In the midst of this emerging political environment personal agenda politics began to dominate the electoral arena.6 In the same environment that produced this kind of politics, the movement toward single-member districts caught the political imagination of those who wanted their communities directly represented. With the ggl virtually nonexistent, the movement toward establishing single-member districts was irreversible. The process began in 1971 when a Texas court ruling ordered the state to change the system of legislative representation from a multi-member (county at-large) system to a single-member district system of representation.7 With this court ruling, the push for single-member districts in city elections intensified. Another major factor was the 1972 city council’s decision to annex nine far northside, predominantly Anglo, precincts into the city. The annexation was opposed by advocacy groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (maldef), which feared that the inclusion of these communities would add to the neglect of public services for the Chicano communities in the south and west sides of San Antonio. With the overwhelming majority of city council members already coming from the more affluent Anglo north side of San Antonio, annexation would only further insulate the city council from independent Chicano representation and thus disenfranchise the neighborhoods that still badly needed not only decent but more public services.8 Based on this argument, the 1972 annexation provided the means by which to fight the issue of representation legally. In 1976 the Justice Department, acting on a brief on the newly extended Voting Rights Act from maldef, objected to the annexations on the ground that the proportion of Anglos to Chicanos in the annexed territory (approximately three to one) diluted the voting Style and Strategy

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power of the Chicano population in the city. The Justice Department indicated that “unless the city altered its method of electing council members to provide more equitable representation of language and racial minorities, the nine precincts added in 1972 would have to be de-annexed.” 9 In October 1976, the city council was forced to decide whether to de-annex or to develop a single-member district plan of electing officials. City council confrontation on this issue provided the stage by which Henry Cisneros would catapult into political prominence in San Antonio politics. What follows is a near perfect model, almost an archetype, of how the individualistic approach to politics works. While no other politician has to date ever been able to repeat the splendor of Cisneros’s achievements, the pattern of politics was certainly influenced by his success. The Rise of a Political Star

The immediate reaction of some city council members was to take the Justice Department to court and attempt to bar its order. The city council vote on this proposal was split down the middle, with Henry Cisneros casting the deciding vote against taking the Justice Department to court. The city then drew up a plan that consisted of ten districts, with the mayor elected at-large. Cisneros joined in a successful campaign for passage of this referendum; in 1977 the at-large system of electing city council officials was replaced with a system of single-member districts. After this Cisneros was set on a course that eventually gained him the mayoralty as well as national prominence as one of the most visible young Chicano political leaders. Cisneros proved to be a meticulous and astute politician in choosing the steps he had to take and the stages he had to pass through in order to achieve his personal political goals. He did not run for mayor until Mayor Cockrell was out of the picture and he was able to secure the backing of some of the most prominent names in San Antonio business and political circles. In the process Cisneros, who enjoyed the resources and visibility of the ggl establishment without being confined to its agenda, built an image of an articulate, smooth, Harvard and mit educated man that went beyond San Antonio politics.10 His rise to national political stardom was the result of his singleminded, cautious method as well as his unique position as the first Chicano mayor of a major U.S. city. Cisneros’s public agenda for the city consisted of technically advanced ideas that were well received by a media and a public ready to see San Antonio take its place as a major U.S. city. At the same time he criticized institu144

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tions that he felt worked against the common person or consumer. He questioned the viability of governmental structures and institutions and their relationships.11 He was a young leader who could place San Antonio on the map as well as represent the common person, especially the Chicano. However, in spite of Cisneros’s cautious approach, his enthusiasm in filling this complex role several times brought him to the brink of a disastrous conflict with the economic and political forces critical to his political future. In one incident, the conflict arose over proposed economic development over the Edwards underground aquifer, which he consistently opposed. The Edwards underground aquifer is a source of pure water not only for the San Antonio metropolitan area, but for an eleven-county area. Part of the limestone recharge zone that purifies the underground lake lies beneath the area of northern San Antonio, where intensive economic development was taking place. Cisneros supported a comprehensive master plan to regulate expansion, which placed him in conflict with powerful developers and their representatives on the city council.12 In August of 1975, the city council unanimously adopted a resolution that closely controlled development over the recharge zone.13 At the same time, the city council approved, by a five to four vote, a zoning variance to build a shopping mall over the recharge zone. This last action brought together forces that ordinarily did not work together. The Aquifer Protection Association (apa), a liberal upper middle class environmentalist group, allied itself with cops in protesting any development over the aquifer. Cisneros sided with these organizations because he felt that building the mall would threaten the purity of San Antonio’s water supply.14 In February 1976, apa and cops successfully campaigned for the passage of a referendum that would overturn the city council’s zoning variance and ban development over the recharge zone. But the city council, in a vote of six to three, with one absent, voted to keep the zoning variance. Again Cisneros voted against the variance. The organizations apa and cops considered recalling some of the council members.15 Despite his political ambitions and admitted propensity to avoid conflict, Cisneros played a role in this highly risky episode that brought him greater visibility. It further enhanced his reputation as the new kind of Chicano politician who could stand on his own two feet. Another example of Cisneros’s astute ability to use the media and pick the right issues was a conflict over a proposed 30 percent rate hike by the City Water Board. Many community and political activists criticized the City Water Board, whose board of directors was dominated by developers, for consistently subsidizing developers by providing water hookups for northside resiStyle and Strategy

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dential developers at the expense of the ratepayers at large. During a council meeting, as the City Water Board’s general manager, Van Dyke, was explaining the changes in the City Water Board’s master plan, Cisneros reintroduced the proposed hike into the discussion: “They [cwb] want this [supplement] approved, and we want something changed on the rate hike.” 16 Van Dyke retorted that “it makes no difference to us if you adopt this or not.” He was there as a courtesy so that the city could update the master plan needed to secure federal funds. He explained that the supplements to the master plan were engineering studies outlining what the utility must do to serve the fast-growth areas of the city northwest and northeast.17 Cisneros was gaining the image as a populist who knew and cared about the problems of the common person. On several occasions he visited his constituents in their own environment. In June 1975 he collected and emptied garbage cans for about four hours to learn first-hand the problems of the sanitation department. He walked a beat with a police officer and helped ambulance attendants administer first aid. During one of his visits to a family in a public housing unit, he commented that “these are really private enterprise people. . . . They want to work and to better themselves. Their problems are ones that the city can no longer ignore.” 18 Many of the issues that Cisneros supported in his first two terms on the city council (1975 –1979) were controversial, but the context of the conflicts that arose was always carefully articulated to separate them from any radical tinge. Although he challenged some policies that were priorities of the business class, he also placed priority on economic growth and thereby allied himself with those same groups. Cisneros supported protecting the water, but he did not oppose growth and expansion; he supported public housing, but did so as an expression of faith in the free enterprise system. He was gifted in the art of compromise. His strategy was to bring together conflicting interests for the overall benefit of the city. He molded a political agenda that cast him as a leader who was concerned with issues that affected the community, and as one who was committed to making San Antonio a great center of profit. In an analysis of Cisneros’s first successful bid for mayor, the Express-News stated that: Whether it’s called selling out or coalition building, it is nothing new to Cisneros. He owes his status to a large extent to two individuals and a political organization: to himself for seven years of single-minded work toward becoming mayor, to Mayor Cockrell for leading the city through a difficult transition and then resigning at the height of her

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power and to cops for picking a fight that led to a public consensus of extra-ordinary intensity.19 In 1981 San Antonio elected Henry G. Cisneros as the first Chicano mayor of a major city in the United States. In 1983 Cisneros was reelected mayor with an overwhelming 93 percent of the vote. In the presidential elections of 1984 he was among the few politicians considered to run for vice president on the Mondale ticket. In 1985 he was considered to be a potential gubernatorial candidate for the 1986 state elections, although he decided not to run.20 Conflict in City Council Policymaking

The transition to single-member districts created and institutionalized for the first time an independent voice from the various communities in San Antonio’s non-northside areas. The voices were diverse. In the east side, Joe Webb came out of District Two representing the voice of the Black community for the first time in this century. In the midst of a political environment where Blacks only represented seven percent of the population, Webb concentrated on leveraging his position to highlight issues affecting the east side. The generally invisible mixed Anglo and Chicano working class community in the southeast side of San Antonio, District Three, was represented by Helen Dutmer. Dutmer’s sometimes clownish but mostly endearing, homespun style of politics hid a very sophisticated approach to politics that generally mixed working class issues with community issues. In the south side where District Four extended into neighborhoods that were predominantly Chicano but with some Anglo communities in the outer edge of the district, Frank Wing brought a politics that represented an organization in the south side that had been woven together by Frank Tejeda, Bobby Tejeda, Frank Madla, Edmundo Zaragoza, and others, that was generally referred to as the “Tejeda southside machine.” Wing was the most quiet newcomer on the council but was known to be a tough, behind-the-doors negotiator. The most outspoken and angry anti-growth and expansion council member, Bernardo Eureste, however, came out of the densely populated District Five, which was predominantly Chicano and working class poor. It’s also important to note that District Five was the core of the cops organizational infrastructure. In the south and southwest sides of San Antonio, District Six was split almost evenly between a lower to middle class suburban Anglo community and the Edgewood Independent School District, which was heavily populated by poor working class Chicano communities. This district was represented by Rudy Ortiz, who

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brought a particular political agenda that paralleled Eureste’s agenda in its anti-growth and expansion character. Ortiz would play a key role, as discussed below, in bringing to the surface the anger felt by many Chicanos in San Antonio. It would also bring about his early demise as a council member. In the near northwest sector of San Antonio, where middle class Chicanos held a majority, Joe Alderete, in representing District Seven, provided a less explosive but liberal approach to politics. Alderete, whose education was steeped in the student activism emerging in the local universities of San Antonio in the 1960s and 1970s, was more environmentally conscious, and was described years later by Maria Antonietta Berriozabal as the most sensitive of all the males on city council to gender issues.21 In 1981, Berriozabal was elected to replace Henry Cisneros in District One, when he opted to run for mayor. She was the first Chicana to serve on San Antonio’s city council. As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, Berriozabal brought to city council politics goals that sought to redefine how economic development occurred. The northside districts, which were overwhelmingly Anglo and middle to upper middle class, were represented by Phil Pyndus, Glen Hartman, and John Steen in Districts Eight, Nine, and Ten. These three, with Mayor Lila Cockrell, had ties to the old ggl style of politics and its emphasis on economic growth and expansion. An important consequence of this new political environment was that it gave any member of the city council the opportunity to debate any item on the council agenda. On the surface at least, San Antonio politics had finally introduced a pluralistic environment that allowed an important sector of San Antonio to participate formally and independently in the policy-making process. After the first single-member district elections in April of 1977, the two most outspoken and angry councilmen, Eureste and Ortiz, joined Cisneros in publicly challenging what had been routine policy matters concerning rate hikes, annexation, bond issues, and even the relationship of the City Water Board as well as the City Public Service Board to the city council’s governance. The “outspoken anger” exhibited by newly elected council members Rudy Ortiz and Bernardo Eureste concerned some of Cisneros’s friends, who were afraid that it would “stir ugly sentiments among the city’s Anglos.” 22 Cisneros’s populist position seemed to erode in the face of two angry challengers. The issue that finally set these politicians on a collision course was the garbage collectors’ strike of 1978. Apparently out of frustration with the inability and/or refusal to address the garbage collectors’ issues by the existing public employee union, American Federation of State, County, and Munici148

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pal Employees (afscme), the workers organized their own independent union, the San Antonio Refuse Collectors Association (sarca). They soon began to agitate for better conditions, including work slowdowns and sick-outs. Then in the summer of 1978, the city manager, Tom Huebner, fired 300 garbage collectors for illegally going on strike. This occurred over the public objections of Ortiz and Eureste. Cisneros, however, supported the city manager’s action.23 This incident brought into relief the fact that single-member districts threatened the status quo by the entrance of political actors not well rehearsed by a dominant political machine. Rudy Ortiz, however, proved to be the most vulnerable of the two angry council members. In 1979, he was narrowly defeated by Bob Thompson in District Six, which was almost evenly divided between Anglos and Chicanos and between the middle class and lower middle class. For six years after this election the contrasting styles of Henry Cisneros and Bernardo Eureste dominated city council politics. Cisneros represented the highest level of political inclusion for the Chicano community as leader of San Antonio, and Eureste represented the repressed interests of the Chicano barrios. Bernardo Eureste, a product of southside San Antonio and educated at the University of Michigan, was at the time of his election a professor at Our Lady of the Lake University. Eureste served four consecutive two-year terms (1977– 1985) on the city council. His district, which was overwhelmingly Chicano, was the most densely populated, poorest district in the south and west sides of San Antonio. Perhaps because of the combination of barrio background, earlier Chicano activism, and social work education, Eureste brought an intense political activism to the city council which sometimes upstaged Cisneros. Not only did he consistently and loudly pit his district’s needs against those of the more affluent Anglo middle class districts, he also challenged his colleagues over policies concerning growth and expansion, the historic priorities of the business class. As a consequence, Cisneros and Eureste were on the same side on some issues and in intense conflict on others. The conflicts were not only over the kinds of issues that should be raised before the city council, but how they should be approached. These two prominent but contrasting politicians often agreed with each other and even discussed strategies, only to come out publicly with Eureste taking the more radical position on an issue. Eureste’s politics, in contrast to Cisneros’s, was a process of exposing the status quo: I do not believe in hurting anyone physically, but you have to get attention if you want things done. If you expose a situation, you flush out Style and Strategy

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the opposition. If something is wrong, you cannot let it take care of itself. You have to bring it into the open.24 In his first term Eureste quickly gained a reputation as a hothead, but a hothead who could “reason at breakneck speed and back opponents into a corner during his frequent periods of verbal jousting” and who was known “to storm out of a council meeting only to return and fire a salvo at his colleagues over something they have long since forgotten.” 25 He addressed issues at such a rapid pace that even his most avid and diehard supporters could not keep up with him. On different issues the lines between supporters and opponents had to be redrawn. However, from the beginning of his first term Eureste was aware of what he wanted to accomplish and what he had to do to reach his goals. Barely a month into his first term, which was also the first term for single-member districts, Eureste prompted a city staff briefing on the controls that could be exercised over the city’s public services and water board: At his first council session, he flatly told cwb general manager Robert Van Dyke he didn’t like the way the water board was run, adding, the council should make changes, if the utility doesn’t follow directions. He wants CPS under full city control, better drainage for his district, street improvement, parks, libraries, better housing and more social services for the entire city, but particularly in his district.26 Some of the issues in his first term where Eureste was quite visibly and quite vociferously opposed to northside and/or business interests were the Edwards Aquifer moratorium (a council resolution that placed a moratorium on construction over the aquifer recharge zone), a bond drainage election (which pitted the business sector against the southside and westside communities), Central District funding (grants to develop the central city as opposed to the fast-growing north side), and the garbage collectors’ strike mentioned above. By 1978 Eureste had clearly defined himself, with considerable help from the media, as the “Champion of the Underdog.” 27 During his four terms as a city council member, Eureste earned the reputation of being a zealot about lost causes, even at the expense of alienating or embarrassing his colleagues.28 In 1981 he found a million dollars that had been hidden in the city budget. He channeled a large part of it to support Chicano arts as opposed to the traditional arts, such as the symphony and the museum. That same year, he organized weekly community street demonstrations protesting the death of Mexican national Hector Santescoy, who was shot by the police while hiding, 150

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unarmed, under a house. In 1982 Eureste organized barrio activists around the issue of public housing, advocating the construction of public housing units in the northside middle and upper middle class communities. This action created a controversy that polarized the entire community along class lines. At one point in the discussions he was escorted out of the council chambers by the police because of his adamant views on the subject. Eureste energetically took on almost every institution that affected his constituency, including the media when he felt their editorials were too harsh or unfair. Speaking of the San Antonio Light, Eureste asked: Do you think that you have made me weaker in this attack? I do not think so. I have only become more determined to speak out for what is right. The voices of oppression, as I have seen in this editorial and others that you have written, cannot silence the protests of those who have been victimized by this oppression. I would rather die fighting for these causes than to be silenced by the faceless pen of your editorials.29 Through much of this period, most political observers, including the media, rationalized Eureste’s militant behavior as a long overdue compensation for the neglect of the barrios of San Antonio. Although many of the issues Eureste raised polarized the community, the new single-member district structure minimized the impact of that polarization on his reelection bids. In fact, despite his abrasive style, Eureste was popular among many middle class Chicanos and white liberals across the city for the issues he raised.30 He was perhaps, as one newspaper article stated, “the most complicated politician to come out of San Antonio city government in 50 years.” 31 In the electoral arena, Eureste was seen as a politician to be dealt with. In 1977 Eureste won 63 percent of the vote in his first election bid. In 1979, he received 68 percent, and by 1981 he received 81 percent. Just as important, through Eureste’s first three terms Cisneros endorsed his reelection bids. Further establishing his political credentials, he led a successful Democratic primary campaign on behalf of Senator Ted Kennedy in the twenty-first senatorial district “in spite of overwhelming Carter odds.” 32 As a consequence, he caught the attention of many aspiring state office seekers “anxious to stake their claim to a portion of the rapidly expanding Mexican-American vote.” He gained regional prominence as a Chicano leader and spokesman on various issues confronting the Chicano community throughout South Texas.33 Throughout his tenure in office, Eureste continued to gain prominence among Chicano organizations such as the Mexican American Democrats, lulac, and the GI Forum. However, the trajectories of Cisneros and Eureste Style and Strategy

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pointed in different directions. Cisneros was considered by most political observers to be heading for state if not national prominence, while Eureste was seen as a local, ethnic politician: “the Champion of the Underdog.” In his second bid for reelection as mayor, as Cisneros expanded his electoral support to include the most conservative and historically anti-Chicano sectors of San Antonio, Eureste’s militancy perhaps offered him an alter ego. Eureste made Cisneros appear even more legitimate. Cisneros was the serious kind of Chicano who could go beyond what White middle class America considered the “private-regarding” nature of ethnic politics and provide the kind of leadership that would enhance the entire community and allow San Antonio to become a nationally prominent Sunbelt city.34 The Undoing of a Militant

Eureste’s rise to political prominence in San Antonio was not a smooth, wellplanned process. In an article on Eureste in the local media, the interviewer, in trying to portray Eureste’s citywide image, subtitled the article: “Is Councilman Eureste a Racist, a Hero, a Future Congressman— Or All Three of These?” 35 The adoption of single-member districts allowed Eureste to address issues at a citywide level, while being elected by—and answerable to— only one-tenth of the city. Although District Five was predominantly Chicano and lower middle class, it was also the base of cops. Eureste’s position on community issues was supported by the rank and file of cops as well as organizationally, which further strengthened his support in the district. By his third term in office, Eureste’s militant behavior had alienated a large sector of the northside Anglo population, but endeared him to a majority of his own constituents. If he had simply focused on what might be referred to as racial issues—for example, parity in public policy with the northside Anglo communities and police brutality in the barrios—his impact would have been much narrower. Instead, he continuously questioned policies that placed priority on encouraging growth and expansion over solving social problems. Toward the end of his third term, in February 1983, an incident occurred in a local park that brought humiliation and personal tragedy into Eureste’s life. In the early morning hours in Brackenridge Park Eureste was accosted by muggers who discovered him in a compromising situation with his young female aide: a grand indiscretion for a married politician. When Eureste seemingly abandoned the young woman to the muggers to seek the police, however, “both Hispanic macho and South Texas Anglo morality let loose a flood 152

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of outrage. It was easily the worst moment in an already controversial political career, and it was made worse by the fact Eureste faced an election in only a few months.” 36 Eureste recovered from the incident by apologizing to his constituency and charging the police department with setting up the mugging. Whether the charges were true or not was never proven, but Eureste maintained barely enough support to win in a runoff election. The park incident was the beginning of the end for Eureste’s political career. His charges against the police department alienated the mayor, who withdrew his endorsement of Eureste’s reelection bid: “This prince of destruction, this prince of negativism, is not going to be the downfall of our city as long as I can stand up to him.” 37 By the filing deadline of March 2, 1983, Eureste had six opponents lined up against him for the council seat in District Five. The race proved to be the hottest race San Antonio had witnessed in at least 25 years, since the days of the coalition. The difference was that it pitted a Chicano against another Chicano. The main challenger was Jesse Valdez, an urban planner, whose candidacy had the financial support of prominent businessmen throughout San Antonio. Valdez succeeded in entering a runoff election with Eureste. The runoff election was intense and dirty, and it captured the city’s attention. Eureste, who stayed in character by calling his opponent “a homosexual” who was controlled by northside developers, won the runoff easily.38 After his decisive victory over Valdez, Eureste once again seemed safe from outside interference in his district. Cisneros and Eureste mended fences and vowed to work together. However, his erratic behavior continued to create enemies. Even before his reelection bid, he took on the district attorney in a political fight that returned to haunt him in his last bid for reelection. He called District Attorney Sam Millsap a Nazi and accused him of singling out Chicanos in his efforts to crack down on Driving While Intoxicated (dwi) cases.39 This fight continued through Eureste’s last two years on the city council. In August 1983 the council member escaped a civil suit brought against him by the San Antonio Police Association when a district judge ruled that Eureste’s comment “that local police were killers” was privileged because it was said during a city council session.40 In the summer of 1984, Eureste attacked the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center staff for supposedly meddling in the politics in his district. The conflict with the arts center began when Eureste intervened on behalf of a fledgling Chicano theater group that accused the center of not allowing it access to the theater. As reported in the local media, the new executive director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center did not feel obliged to take orders from Eureste. Style and Strategy

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Ironically, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center had been established with city funding made available largely through his efforts. Eureste was also upset that Juan Tejeda, brother of one of the southside politicos, state representative Frank Tejeda, was on the center’s staff. He suspected that Tejeda and Frank Wing, a fellow council member from the deep south side, were moving into his territory. The art center’s board of directors scheduled several meetings to appease Eureste, but the council member refused to budge, declaring “that he was the only one who played politics in his district and that he would throw the Guadalupe out of the west side if he had to.” Shortly afterward, Eureste, the council’s most left-wing member, charged publicly that the arts center was “rife with communists. They had gone to Cuba. They had met with Castro and smoked his cigars. It was a disgrace to the people of District 5.” 41 In this incident Eureste was censored by Willie Velasquez, the director of the influential Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (svrep), who had also strongly disagreed with him during the presidential primaries of 1984. Eureste had initially supported Walter Mondale, but switched sides when the Mondale campaign did not consult him about planning its strategy in Bexar County. Velasquez was a Democrat and Mondale supporter, so when Eureste came out in support of Reverend Jesse Jackson, relations between these prominent Chicano activists became tense.42 When Eureste attacked the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, whose board of directors included some of Velasquez’s close associates, Velasquez joined the board to fight campaign fundraising pressures being applied by Eureste. Accusing Eureste of “strong-arm” tactics, Velasquez said the council member launched his political attack on the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center “because center employees refused to meet his political fundraising goals.” 43 Although the arts center was not influential in electoral politics, it was influential in the Chicano community. Eureste’s estrangement from it symbolized the erosion of his base of support in his own district. Eureste had by this time managed to alienate many of the individuals and groups who had benefited from his style of politics and barrio strategy in the past. Nevertheless, most observers felt that he still had a tight grip on his district. Indeed, his squabbles with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, the southside politicos, Velasquez, and the district attorney seemed to energize rather than subdue him. Throughout these episodes, Mayor Cisneros had remained in the background, but Eureste soon had to test his own strength in District Five in the elections of 1985.

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Sea World and the Flood in District Five

In January of 1985, Sea World Enterprises, Inc. announced, to the surprise of most, its intention to establish a marine-animal theme park in San Antonio. For the mayor and his supporters this was his greatest coup. Sea World promised to place San Antonio at the top of the nation’s list of vacation hot spots, and to attract more investment opportunities to San Antonio. The business section of a local newspaper gave full-page coverage to the Sea World announcement, including a full-blown picture showing the mayor embracing William Jovanovich, chairman of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., the parent company of Sea World.44 In the midst of this, Eureste charged that certain land speculators had gained inside information about the deal months earlier. Despite denials by officials, Richard Klitch, a real estate broker, revealed that the Sea World announcement, although not made public until January, had been common knowledge in the real estate community for months: “That area where Sea World is has been hotter than a rock for the past three months.” The references to suspicious “insider” information kept surfacing.45 Thoughout the following months, while the media trivialized what they called insider intrigue, problems surrounding the Sea World investment continued to surface. First a conflict arose between the developers and a local garbage company that planned to locate its dump near the proposed site. Then a question was raised about the legality of the method that the city was using to finance the deal. Finally, “from way out there in left field charged Councilman Bernardo Eureste, screaming to the top of his lungs about completely unsubstantiated charges of inside land deals and possible federal grand jury investigations.” 46 Eureste managed to capsize the official euphoria by focusing all the headlines on his charges. Eureste’s actions, apparently more than any other element in the complex deal, forced Sea World to back out of its original plans. More significantly for local politics, Eureste had embarrassed the mayor about how the deal had been made. Even though Sea World had publicly promised to move to San Antonio, the secrecy of the whole process became a paramount issue for the mayor. The stage was set for a final showdown in the elections of 1985. The media focused on Eureste as the person who was about to chase away the biggest investment opportunity that San Antonio had ever had. As one byline put it: “The combination of having a dump for a neighbor and crackpot councilman for an enemy was apparently more than Sea World executives could bear.” 47 During the elections an anti-Eureste alliance emerged among various sec-

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tors. This time, Eureste was opposed by Walter Martinez, an ex-state representative who, because of his prior political experience, had grassroots support. The media coverage emphasized the park incident as well as the indictments brought against Eureste by the district attorney for his alleged misuse of campaign funds from prior elections.48 The enemies he had created in the last two years also joined the campaign against him. Finally, the mayor publicly told the voters of District Five that Eureste was no longer a viable representative. The elections were anti-climactic; Eureste was crushed. In the first few months of 1985, before the area’s biggest economic investment was finalized, San Antonio politics experienced some of its most wrenching and exasperating moments. In its wake, political careers were ended, land speculators were left holding devalued property, local residents lost the chance of a lifetime to sell their property at an incredible profit, and a most unique political relationship was severed forever. The event that proved to be the undoing of the controversial but colorful Eureste was the event that capped his political career. If this last grand public anti-establishment bid had occurred at any other time, it might have boosted his political credibility in his district and among his supporters across the city. As it was, the controversy opened unhealed, critical wounds in Eureste’s political profile and became the thread that unraveled his political wardrobe. Indeed, a political era had ended. After Eureste’s political demise, Cisneros was able to defeat a northside voters association challenge in a referendum to cap city spending. The city under his leadership quietly attracted other major investments to San Antonio’s economy. These included a 15 million dollar donation by Dallas billionaire Ross Perot for a biotechnology research park and the announcement of plans to construct a semiconductor plant. In addition, San Antonio attracted a major golf tournament called the “crown jewel of golf,” secured a visit by the Pope, hosted the Alamo Grand Prix, and announced plans to hold an Olympic Sports Festival in 1991. Indeed, the council was touted by Cisneros as being hard-working and farsighted in its views of the needs of San Antonio. The city council worked so well with the mayor that the media characterized the council as a “me too Henry” council; they ironically lamented the absence of Eureste’s ability to place issues in poignant relief.49 Conclusion

The question raised in this chapter is whether independent representation is synonymous with political power. If independent representation is the result of a community’s struggle to gain independent political access, then indepen156

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dent representation does equal the exercise of political power by that community. In the early 1970s, the one issue that mobilized the Chicano community as a whole was the goal of single-member districts. By 1977 this goal had been accomplished. Chicano demands on political institutions thus played a major role in broadening the representation in San Antonio. Furthermore, the election of a Chicano as mayor destroyed the myth that Chicanos cannot provide leadership in a more or less pluralistic environment. In the future Cisneros’s election may be seen as a watershed for Chicano politics in Texas and the Southwest. At the very least, single-member districts have institutionalized Chicano representation on an independent basis.50 Cisneros’s populist position in addressing the social issues that face the Chicano community, although assimilationist, reflected the more pluralistic environment created by single-member representation. The institutionalization of single-member districts made the election of a militant Chicano politician like Eureste possible. Finally, the demands of community organizations such as cops for a fairer distribution of public resources found a voice in the city council because of this independent representation. However, although the change to single-member districts was brought about directly by intense Chicano organizational activity, the business of city council was still about business. Even cops and its greatest advocate, Eureste, found themselves in a business-dominated discourse as they addressed issues that faced their communities. The most important point that the profile of both Cisneros and Eureste shows is that without an organizational agenda providing the leadership in terms of issues and direction of the city, accountability becomes more of a negotiated process than a permanent feature of representation. Stated in a different manner, the nonpartisan nature of politics, that we have taken as a given in the analysis in this chapter, severs the connection to an agenda that could define the sides in a very political manner. Certainly both politicians had to address the loudest squeakers, and cops was loud. But cops was not in the game of fielding their own candidates for office, and as such they were not and could not be partisan. They were anchored in their specific neighborhoods. Their discourse was on particular interests and not leadership. Further, as can be seen, a market economy and its major actors, the business community, do not have to squeak; it is their game and their rules. So has the community been empowered? No. Do the politicians simply act as brokers for the business community? Not necessarily. A different way of stating it is that the system itself—the urban market economy and its political and economic institutions—brokers their needs. Style and Strategy

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After Eureste’s defeat, the community could not easily maintain this same kind of representation without an organizational agenda to provide continuity. The economic and social development issues in the neglected areas of San Antonio that Eureste addressed while on the city council have yet to be resolved. The barrios of San Antonio remain underdeveloped. Intense poverty and lack of opportunity still plague all those areas. For the barrios of San Antonio the quality of life, or lack of, continues to be the dominant theme even as we enter the twenty-first century.

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The Cultural Is Political; the Political Is Cultural

The previous chapter focused on the consequences of independent political representation for the Chicano community in San Antonio. The particular argument in that chapter was that political change in itself is not the sole guarantee of greater political inclusion in terms of how policy is made at the local level. Especially as we take into consideration the broader national and regional political context, as well as the immediate demands of the urban market economy, local political initiatives often become captive to forces and opportunities outside their influence. This is not to imply that a monolithic politics has come out of that experience. It is a process, and the formation of that process is still taking place. As has been pointed out, Chicanas have played a critically important role in the mobilization of the Chicano community throughout this century. The aim of this chapter is to examine the legacy of politics that Chicanas bring to the political arena. I will begin by providing detailed profiles of two of the most visible Chicanas in San Antonio politics today. The profiles will bring out the particular philosophical perspectives that each of the Chicanas selfconsciously, albeit in different ways from each other, articulate in their politics. The significance of the politics of Maria Antonietta Berriozabal and Rosa Salazar Rosales is that they advance an agenda that is, at its core, radically opposed to how politics is played out today.1 The key, as proposed in this chap-

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ter, to understanding their politics is in the translation of the cultural to the political through their continuous connection to community. Simply focusing on “position and power” only gets at individual achievement. It does not get at the current that flows beneath the various descriptions of San Antonio politics. It is there below, where Chicanas are forging a politics that begins with community and remains connected to that community’s issues, sometimes at the expense of electoral or otherwise personal achievements. This is not to say that there are not Chicanos who go beyond the personal agenda model of politics in their efforts to connect back to community, but it is Chicana politics which presents the model more clearly and not as an exception. For example, the election of Mary Roman as district judge in 1991 was seen by Chicana activists, who still see the process as a “male” process, as more than simply an electoral victory. As Rosie Castro so aptly stated, her campaign represented Chicanas’ expression of a need to provide a different paradigm for politics; Chicanas see themselves as able and willing to provide that different paradigm. Tell Me What You Do Politically

Carol Hardy-Fanta, in her study of Latina politics in Boston, discovered that Latina and Latino politics differed significantly in terms of how those politics were forged and eventually played out.2 She points out that a simple question, “Tell me what you do politically,” brought out how Latinas reflected a politics that, while including it, went beyond the notion of “position and power.” Moreover, her study showed how this broader approach also more directly reflected the needs and concerns of the overall Latino community than “position and power” could possibly reflect. Indeed, her investigation revealed a paradigm shift in the definition of politics by Latinas in general. The following profiles reveal not a shift, but a continuance of a kind of politics that arises out of a political experience of exclusion and neglect. For it is not gender itself, but the gender experience that provides the critical difference in a political environment that has historically been able to co-opt those who successfully challenged the system’s exclusionary politics. In fact, the unfolding story in this book has been about a community that mobilized in challenging a politics of exclusion, only to end up playing the same game that they had challenged. These profiles also reveal the forging of a particular kind of politics in the intersection of two patriarchies: Chicano Machismo, arising out of the community itself; and a public racially defined male-dominated hi-

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erarchy (Anglo Machismo?), produced and maintained by dominant Anglo mainstream institutions and processes. The profiles are not a story of heroism, although that may just be the case. Nor are they a story of personal achievement, although that cannot be denied. Nor do they represent the entire spectrum of politics that Chicanas bring to the arena. Rather they represent in a very visible manner a kind of politics that is ignored, whether intentionally or unintentionally, because of the narrow focus by the media and various scholarly studies on the status quo of “position and power.” While Berriozabal’s and Rosales’s styles and constituencies were different, they share similar roots in their eventual involvement in politics.3 Both began in a very traditional environment. Both state their activism had its roots in their parents’ historical experience. As a consequence, both looked to their historical and cultural experience for their unorthodox and intransigent politics addressing the needs of their community. While neither rejected feminism outright, both arrived at a “Chicana feminism” through political practice and experience rather than through the “White feminism” that dominated the educational institutions of the 1970s. In other words, cultural and historical experience was the base, and education simply a tool by which Berriozabal and Rosales formed their understanding of politics and the particular strategies that eventually guided their own involvement as well as their leadership styles. While both gained powerful political positions, one as the first Chicana city council member in San Antonio’s history and the other as the state director of a very male-dominated Chicano civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens (lulac), both exhibited a broader agenda than “position and power.” Culture, Community, and Gender

Maria Antonietta Berriozabal traces her concern for politics to her experience as a Chicana totally immersed in her church and community. In a personal interview she points out that she and other female relatives were willing and able to tackle any task, and they displayed managerial and promotional skills in raising money for various projects. She forestalled marriage, taking on a job at seventeen as a secretary in the Salvation Army “in order to allow her brothers to continue their schooling.” 4 As a consequence, marriage and education—Berriozabal married a Chicano college professor while also gaining her B.A. in political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio— did

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not occur until her thirties. The academic experience for her, however, connected her very strong sense of culture and history with politics: I did not start with the women’s question. I did not start that until late in life. My father raised a very independent Chicanita. That experience emphasized my cultural consciousness. Then when I got to utsa, Rick Gambitta [her political science professor] set me up with independent studies. I became in awe [of ] democracy.5 It was her political studies at the university that brought Berriozabal to focus on women. Dr. Gambitta guided her on a study of why there weren’t any Mexican American women elected officials. In another project, she had to develop an entire electoral campaign for a woman. This period was what she called the “search.” In other words, she connected her political studies with a historical memory of the struggle and the suffering of her people. The academic training was the tool by which Berriozabal brought her cultural values and her political views together and this brought two worlds together, spiritual values and the practical world around her: “For people to experience dignity, they have to have their basic needs met.” 6 She saw politics as a way to equalize things, which she found the church lacking in terms of opportunity to do. To put it in a different way, the spiritual in the abstract cannot in itself meet the needs of a people. But material needs in themselves also do not make a human being. While the feminist movement also caught Berriozabal’s attention, she was alienated from it, as she is today, because it did not relate to her. At the same time, however, one of her main concerns was the exclusion of women from the politics and history of her people: It is a good ole boy network. If we are going to truly tell the story of the Mexican American community, in Tejas, in San Antonio, we are going to have to broaden our definition; if we are truly going to tell the story which is what women are doing, because we can’t leave the women out. I mean the fact that the women weren’t mentioned in the paper or in the accounts or whatever, didn’t mean that they weren’t active, didn’t mean that they weren’t the ones that were forging community for our people . . . for the Mexican American community. The people who are supporting our community, the family, were the women, and maybe they weren’t out there running [for public office], because we weren’t out there yet. But we were keeping this community going, we were getting the votes out, we were getting the letters out, we had a network.7 162

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While Berriozabal became active in Democratic Party precinct politics, her experience in party politics was one of alienation because of its top-tobottom organization. It was not very grassroots and, moreover, it “never welcomed people of color”: I submit that there are more people there, there are a lot of people there at that level if you can see them with those eyes, and not the eyes that say who is supporting you, what big name, Democratic Party or not. “The Democratic Party helped me zero.” I am a Democrat, and I supported Democratic presidential candidates. But they [Democrats] did not support me back. I have never felt a part of the Democratic establishment.8 As a consequence, her activism took Berriozabal outside mainstream politics as well as outside church-related activities. By 1972, she and several other Chicanas founded the Mexican American Business and Professional Women (mabpw) in an effort to elevate the image of the Mexican American woman in the community.9 The organization was immediately immersed in electoral politics as it supported political candidates that were sensitive to the needs of Chicanas. Through mabpw, these women were able to address the problems of isolation and neglect that Chicanas found in not only the business world but also in the professional world. While mabpw’s first recruitment efforts did not include the vast number of Chicanas in clerical and secretarial positions, the organization eventually broadened its recruitment, with the intent of supporting the efforts of Chicanas to break through the glass ceiling that existed for Chicanas in business and professional life.10 Berriozabal’s early experience then was one of questioning and searching for a strategy that would empower Chicanas. After graduating from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1979, Berriozabal was appointed to direct the San Antonio Central Census Office during the census count of 1980. It was during this time that she became familiar first-hand with the broader statistical picture of Chicanas in general, and it was a gloomy picture. Coupled with, or perhaps because of, the fact that Chicanas had no political representation in any of the governing institutions, Chicanas in San Antonio were at the bottom of the ladder economically, occupationally, and educationally.11 The Tortured Path in the Making of a Chicana Politician

In 1981 Berriozabal’s council representative in District One, Henry Cisneros, decided to vacate his council seat and run for mayor. As she recalls, she and The Cultural is Political

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various Chicana activists established an informal group with the goal of recruiting a Chicana that would run for the vacated position. Unlike the various Chicano candidates, who did not hesitate to volunteer themselves, they found themselves in a situation where none of the Chicanas in that group wanted to run. As Berriozabal points out, the problem was never one of egos but rather a deeper concern to field a serious and committed Chicana. In other words, the concern was not about position and power but about political empowerment. The decision to run for city council then occurred in a collective process: Choco, Rosie Castro, Sylvia Rodriguez, and others started to discuss who would run. But most said no. Then they came to me. Mateo Camargo [a popular social commentator on Spanish radio] encouraged me to take up the challenge. Manny [her husband] said “you are afraid, you are afraid to lose” . . . there was no reason not to, there was nothing to lose and everything to gain.12 While a cadre of Chicanas formed Berriozabal’s campaign, which was launched without the blessing of the political honchos of the day, not all Chicanas came to her side immediately. Indeed, three of the most active labor organizers/political activists who later would support her politics, Rosa Rosales, Angela Garcia, and Maria Valenzuela, had already committed to a male candidate. Choco Meza points out that she could not figure out how these women, with their politics and all, could support a male candidate against Maria Berriozabal: There is an affinity with them, very tough, self-righteous, politically indignant about people who don’t do as they philosophically see appropriate and I think they came and kicked some ass in their union work. They did well, so it was beyond comprehension to me how these women who as I describe ended up supporting a male cop against a woman who had been part of the mabpw group, had done the census. You know there was some naivete in Maria at that level, in those early stages, but not enough to justify those women doing that. There is a thing that happens in politics that people can exclude you, when you step out of line, they cut off. But the interesting thing is they were not cut out. Some to their credit because of their tenacity. The other is the fact that people may have been pissed, but there was respect there, basic respect [for Rosa, Maria, and Angie].13 The council race ended in a runoff where she was able to defeat the other male candidate. The significance of her victory is that the Chicanas won (most 164

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of the Chicanas saw the victory as their victory and not simply a victory for Berriozabal) in an election which they organized and they directed. Just as significantly, while another Chicana (Yolanda Vera) eventually was elected to the city council in 1985, it would be the last electoral race in the 1980s where the recruitment of a candidate as well as the managing of the campaign was determined by Chicanas. While the press hailed her as the first Mexican American woman to serve in that capacity, her tenure on city council for the next ten years was not reflective, on the surface at least, of a feminist. But if one looks at the issues and the particular definition of those issues, one can see that Berriozabal brought with her a different approach to politics, one that brought together culture, community, and gender. In one of her first interviews as a city council member she states that: Traditionally, the Mexican American has had economic problems and battles against discrimination. . . . Our women have always worked at what needed doing. Even if they were at home with small children, the women organized schools when there were none or worked through the church or the community to improve their lot. Every mother wants the best for her children. That’s universal.14 As is obvious in her statement above, Berriozabal began her career as a city council representative with some very idealistic notions about the role of not only her tenure but also the role of government. To her the role of government should be as an arbiter between business and the neighborhood, with both having an equal value in the decision-making process. A process where debate occurred was very important to her, especially where public monies were concerned: Public monies should only be given when there is public debate and when the public representatives with counsel from the people sit down with that coming industry to decide what is good for the people of the city. This is a poor city, we need schools, we need education, we need good jobs, we need more than minimum wage jobs. How much are your jobs paying? Where are you going to locate your company? Is it going to be in an area where people will find the jobs accessible? Will they be jobs better than minimum wage? 15 What she found was six out of the ten votes consistently lined up in favor of business: The Cultural is Political

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Once you realize there are great, awesomely powerful money powers in this city who call the shots, you know that the battle is not just the folks sitting around that table. So I found myself being kinda the neighborhood person, and I developed the reputation of being onesided and closed and unbending and so on. But I was forced to do that. You know you make a choice.16 In the ten years that she was on city council, Berriozabal ended up, because of this conscious political choice, on the opposing side of some of the most important development decisions in San Antonio. She opposed the building of the Alamodome (Henry Cisneros’s signature accomplishment to his tenure as mayor); she twice successfully opposed the construction of a water reservoir (Applewhite Reservoir) that would have allowed greater latitude in the development over the recharge zone of San Antonio’s sole water source; and she opposed the tax abatements for Sea World and Fiesta Texas, San Antonio’s two major theme parks and also part of Henry Cisneros’s legacy. This also put Berriozabal in a tenuous relationship with the rest of her colleagues, including the other Chicano representatives on the city council. Ironically, in the early part of her tenure, her relationship with the most visible dissident on city council, Bernardo Eureste, was rocky at best and conflicted at worst. She did feel that Joe Alderete was the most pro-women on the council, but even there they were split in terms of style and approach. In reference to her relationship with Mayor Henry Cisneros, she quite candidly stated that “he [Mayor Cisneros] thinks of me like a sister. But the record will show we were not together on the big issues of our tenure. And that is where our public monies are spent.” 17 With the exception of Applewhite, Berriozabal ended up on the losing side of all the major issues. But her idealistic notions about what her role was in government persisted. When asked what were her major accomplishments, instead of pointing to material objectives, she restated her idealistic philosophy—a philosophy that was based on community principles, that went beyond the more individualistic goals of position and power.18 Indeed, her entire tenure was characterized by her efforts to bring the people she represented to the council chambers to speak for themselves. Whether it was about daycare or housing or water, she consistently allowed her constituents to speak to the issue rather than her. What is even more critically important is that she was consciously aware that she was trading in position and power for the empowerment of the neighborhoods she represented:

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I learned very early on, which is the way women have done, that it [bringing the people to speak for themselves] was empowerment. That’s my favorite definition of leadership . . . when the work was done, the people said we did it ourselves. It’s very inefficient politically, because it’s not having people depend on you as the caudillo, as the one, el jefe o la jefa, que les da cosas [who provides for you]. And you lose power as the world sees it. But you empower people. And that’s what I did for all those years.19

A Chicana Mizzoner 20

Berriozabal’s rise to political prominence, as well as perhaps her eventual loss in the mayoral race in 1991, in large part can be attributed to her different view of economic development and the process that should lead to those kinds of decisions. Immediately upon taking office she emphasized the need to couch economic development within a larger concept of community development: “People all want a good street, a decent house and safety in that house and on that street. . . . We need to work at understanding, to emphasize the common goals of various sectors of the community.” 21 While one could argue that this emphasis was part of the rhetoric of most politicians, it was generally portrayed in a negative fashion by the media as an ignorance on her part of what economic development is about.22 Perhaps, the real issue was that at the same time that Berriozabal defined economic development in the context of community development, her politics was based on the notion that the community had to be part of that process. That is to say, while the primary object of her program was neighborhood development, including “soft” issues such as child care and taking care of the old, the key element of this grassroots politics was that the community, through its neighborhood representatives (not just simply their city council representatives), should play a key role in the development of the vision and the plans for economic development—a very threatening idea to those who looked at economic development from a business perspective. Indeed, this style ironically both brought her to the forefront in mayoral politics by the end of the 1980s and at the same time became the critical point from which her detractors opposed her. In a profile of Berriozabal as a potential mayoral candidate in 1987, a local journal not only questioned her sophistication in matters of economic development but questioned her acceptability to those who determine who can successfully run for mayor:

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“Her heart is in the right place, but not necessarily her head,” says a downtown advocate who works frequently with the councilwoman. “The problem is that she doesn’t completely understand how business works.” “But she would have to,” as the one observer said “become more articulate about economic development” if she had any hope of getting support from the powerful, monied business community. Berriozabal speaks of the need for continued growth in San Antonio, but she also has questions about how that growth should occur and what the priorities should be, as her skeptism about surface water development and the nuclear plant shows.23 Far from being anti-climactic, Berriozabal’s mayoral race in 1991 surprised everyone except perhaps herself and her intensely loyal supporters, which included not only the women who had supported her from the beginning, but a larger circle of Chicanas including the three women organizers who had not supported her in her initial race in 1981. As Choco Meza noted, while there were differences between some of these Chicanas, when it came to the issues that most of them faced as Chicanas and issues that affected the community, they were drawn together.24 Berriozabal was defeated by Nelson Wolff by a narrow three percent of the vote. Ironically, she was successful in her opposition to the Applewhite referendum which was also on the ballot. Her leadership on this critical issue was accepted, but not her mayoral candidacy.25 Just as important, there was not the same support from the northside Anglo women that had been there when Ann Richards won her race for governor the year before, which points to the legacy of a divided San Antonio along racial lines. This was especially disappointing to many Chicanas, who felt that they had given Richards their unconditional support along with the Anglo women, only to see the north side renege when it came to supporting a Chicana candidate. The mayoral race showed that race, and not only gender, continues to be an important force in the perception of Chicanas in San Antonio politics.

Mutualismo and the Making of a Chicana Activist

Rosa Salazar Rosales, on the other hand, came from a family of six sisters, where it was expected that each sibling would go into the work world to provide for the family. Although she graduated twelfth in her class in 1962 from Luther Burbank High School (a southside school), she was never encouraged to go to college by the school officials. As a consequence, after graduation, her 168

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mother found her a job as a bus girl in the St. Anthony Hotel restaurant (a local elite hotel), while she attended business college to prepare herself for a secretarial job.26 However, Rosales points out that as a child she remembers that her parents’ entire social life was taken up in their involvement in the Unión Fraternal Latino Americano, a local mutualista (mutual aid society) established in the southside barrios of San Antonio in the 1930s. As Emilio Zamora points out in his excellent history of Tejano Mexicano workers at the turn of the century, mutualismo was a worldview that arose out of community, and not individual, survival.27 Her father was president, and her mother was president of festejos for almost 25 years. Their activities included most of the traditional functions of mutualistas, such as burial insurance, donation of food to poor families, Christmas and Easter parties for the children of the barrios, and various other ad hoc services when the need arose. For example during the 1970 Farrah strike by Chicanas in the southwest side of San Antonio, her father opened the doors of the union’s hall to the striking women for strategy meetings. Most important, it was a channel by which they maintained their history and culture intact. Rosales recalls that “la unión” was part of a larger network of mutualistas where constant contact was maintained. It was this intense involvement by her parents in the community activities of “la unión” that taught her and her sisters about community service. But even more important, it taught her about the importance of organization. Indeed, Rosales points out that because of this involvement, she and her sisters never thought they were in poverty despite the fact that their father, Herminio, worked at minimum wage all his life.28 After marriage and the birth of her three sons, her life as a housewife and mother changed radically when she and her family moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to attend the University of Michigan. While her husband worked on his doctorate, she finished her undergraduate studies in 1978 with a 3.8 gpa. It was at Michigan that Rosales was able to focus most of her intellectual work on women in general, and women of color in particular, analyzing the status of women in society: “One of the lessons that I learned among the many I learned was that the condition of women of color has a lot to do with their potential political leadership.” 29 It was in this intellectual context that Rosales encountered the politics of third world feminism. As she points out, while the White feminists made overtures to the Chicana students, the general feeling of Chicanas was one of alienation: “the women’s center was White, the programs were White . . . there seemed to be no room for us as Chicanas. They [White feminists] had no inThe Cultural is Political

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kling of who we were or what we were about and they did not seem to care.” As a consequence, Rosales, her political science professor, Dr. Frances Svensen (a Native American, Ogallala Sioux), and other women of color, organized a third world woman’s caucus from which they launched several projects addressing the condition of third world women. The various projects included among them a basic education project for Chicanas and Native Americans in a local woman’s penitentiary and a successful negotiation process with the women’s center over the distribution of resources and services for women of color, as well as the various other politics in Ann Arbor that brought them into coalition with other activist organizations.30 It was at Michigan that Rosales was able to incorporate her childhood mutualista experience and her intellectual activities with political activism. As one local newpaper article stated: “What turned around the traditional Mexican American mother of three, then 29, was her own emerging activism in campus organizations and the role-model esteem she earned among young female students at Michigan. After that, there was no going back, she said.” 31 It was in this intense intellectual and political environment that she developed a style of politics that intimately tied organizing to the heart of any political project, and that emphasized organizing over position and power. Thus, Rosales’s mutualista background, coupled with the intellectual and political exposure which she found so readily accessible in Ann Arbor, formed the basis of her politics as she returned to San Antonio. Going against the Grain

Upon returning to San Antonio in 1978, Rosales immediately was hired as a community organizer in a barrio crime prevention program. After six months on the job she realized that the crime prevention techniques that she was supposed to introduce to the barrio residents were too middle class in nature: “What I found out was that the residents were too busy surviving to worry about protecting their various property items, as important as that was.” 32 But more important, the one most important conclusion that she came away with was that the best crime prevention strategy was job opportunity and job security. Thus, when in 1979 Sam Alvarado, Rosales’s director and a local labor activist, recruited her and two other Chicanas, Angela Garcia and Maria Valenzuela, to organize a public employees independent union they jumped at the chance. upea (the United Public Employees Union which eventually merged with seiu, an afl-cio affiliated union), was organized “because the other 170

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union, afscme, and its leadership, Linda Chavez Thompson, were not addressing the needs of the workers.” 33 While all three women hesitated at first to go against another woman, their decision ultimately was based on their concern for their community, which overshadowed any other concern: “How could we support a woman, even if she was a Chicana, who was only about personal aggrandizement?” 34 Their first effort to incorporate national organization support ended in disappointment. In 1980 they approached lulac, requesting that lulac lend their name to the union so that they could provide the workers national visibility and eventually get various other unions, across Texas first and then nationally, utilizing the name of lulac as an organizing tool. To their surprise, they found lulac was not interested in labor organizing. After that disappointment and after stiff opposition from the city council as well as from afscme, they finally gained dues check-off, establishing their presence in union politics in San Antonio.35 They then branched into the county and into the school districts. About two years after they had established upea, Sam Alvarado left the union for apparent personal reasons. Rosales recalls that at the time they had a hearing scheduled with management over the demotion of a member of their union: We [the three women] looked at each other and wondered who is going to represent the poor worker who faced an unfair demotion. We were near panic, all three of us wanted to cry. Finally, Angie and Maria looked at me and said “You have the education, you have to do the hearing.” But I had never done a hearing, I began to object when Maria almost angily stated “Aguante la vara, you have no choice, besides you are good.” I went home and cried and then the next morning I went to the hearing and I couldn’t believe it, I was able to successfully defend the worker. That hearing did more for my confidence than anything else that had ever happened to me.36 Then Alvarado returned to organizing, but with another union, the National Association of Government Employees (nage). The women concluded that it would be best if they merged with this union, even though they would be excluded: We felt that three unions would only hurt unionism and besides we didn’t have a national organization that would support us. We were devastated. We opened up a thrift shop in the barrios en la calle Guadalupe and stayed involved in community activities. After about a year The Cultural is Political

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though, Sam came back to ask us if we would return. Well, you know where our heart was, so we jumped at the chance.37 It was as organizers that all three women began a tradition that soon became their trademark, wearing hats. As Rosales points out, they began wearing hats because of the intense sun and heat in San Antonio. As a consequence, not only did the workers recognize the hat as a symbol but management as well. To this day they are known as the “Hat Ladies.” But their appetite as organizers did not stop there.

Taking On a Good Ole Chicano Boy Network

Almost immediately after starting the union, upon the insistence of Angela Garcia, they joined lulac, where they could address not only labor issues but also community issues. What they found, though, was that lulac in San Antonio not only did not want to get into labor issues but also avoided controversial issues.38 So they joined forces with Jose de Lara who was seeking the district directorship. Within a short span of time they were involved right in the middle of lulac politics, organizing new councils in the San Antonio area. Jose de Lara, who was elected district director, eventually became state and then national president of lulac. But they soon discovered that while their work was recognized, they were never given the credit. As other Chicanas had found out before them, the men were aware of their skills, they wanted their efforts, but they did not want their leadership: “We were the little busy bees making the tacos and coffee. Men took all the leading roles. . . . They had what you call a ‘round table’ made up totally of men, and they made all the decisions as to who was going to run for office. We very naively went up to those men and asked them— we said we wanted to be part of their round table. The answer was ‘No, no, no.’ When anybody says no to a woman, what does it mean? It means ‘now I’m going to do something.’ ” True to feisty form, the union organizer—she’s executive director of the National Association of Government Employees—ran and won, becoming the first woman to be elected District 15 director. At the group’s annual convention in 1991, she successfully beat out five men to become director of Texas lulac, despite opposition from what she termed “arrogant males.” 39 As state director, Rosales continued to organize lulac councils throughout Texas in every hamlet and town that was ready to organize. Utilizing this 172

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base she was able to address issues that faced her community throughout Texas. In addressing issues such as unequal or no representation on school boards and city councils in West Texas, to police brutality in the Hill Country, to worker issues in Central Texas, as well as national issues such as immigration, civil rights, and nafta, Rosales gained a reputation as an intense and articulate political activist throughout Texas. In her last state convention (June 1994) as state director, she held a press conference where she burned a copy of the Republican “Contract with America,” as an expression of solidarity with poor people and minorities across the country. When asked about her agenda, Rosales stated that one of the most important goals is educational opportunity for her community: “without education one cannot compete in this very competitive society.” However, education alone was not the answer: When I joined lulac I noticed that education was the most important goal for most of the councils. And that is fine, but as long as we don’t confront the obstacles of racism and sexism in our society we will never be able to provide a more just world for our children. For example, we don’t simply want a loan from the bank, we want to be represented in that bank from the board of directors on down. And that goes for the rest of corporate America. And if they do not want to listen to us, then we simply don’t have to do business with them. After all, who makes the money for them if it is not us, the consumer? Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want to boycott this and boycott that, but if that’s what it takes, then that is what I am committed to do as a leader of lulac.40 Rosales points out that sometimes she is embarrassed when out of nowhere, when she is grocery shopping or simply walking down the street, she is confronted by “viejitos as well as jovenes” who want to congratulate her on her position on a political issue: It’s a good feeling when you know that your community notices. But it tells you that our political system still in this day and age . . . the 1990s . . . our people are still not represented in the halls of power. We still have a lot of work ahead of us.41 After losing a close race for national president of lulac to another woman candidate, Rosales finished her tenure as state director and stayed involved in local issues facing the different Chicano communities in Texas as well as organizing workers in San Antonio. But like Berriozabal, Rosales’s visibility in The Cultural is Political

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the community soon brought her into a coalition with other women in challenging the status quo. What If You Had an Election and All the Women Got Together?

In the 1991 city elections, when Berriozabal came close to becoming the first Chicana mayor of a major U.S. city, water was also a major issue before the voters. Indeed, it has been a major issue facing San Antonio since at least as far back as the severe drought in the 1950s when the Edwards Aquifer, San Antonio’s sole water source, dropped well below acceptable levels. Since the 1950s, San Antonio has not only doubled in size with a million plus population, but it has also developed over the recharge zone that purifies the water feeding into the aquifer. In 1975 cops, whose leadership is comprised mainly of Chicanas from the west and south sides of San Antonio, and the Conservation Society, whose membership is composed mainly of Anglo middle to upper middle class women from the more affluent north side, came together and collectively pressured the San Antonio city council to pass a moratorium on construction over the recharge zone. Although it was later set aside by the courts, it represented a potential political clout that has rarely raised its head in San Antonio politics. Indeed, it seems that water is a good mixer. Ironically, while many Chicanas felt let down by the northside Anglo women in Berriozabal’s bid for mayor, they still came together on the water issue. The issue this time was the construction of a surface water reservoir in the south side that would serve as a second water source for San Antonio. The advocates of the project were composed mainly of the Greater Chamber of Commerce of San Antonio as well as most of the mainstream political officials, including Chicano officials. Their reasoning was that San Antonio, considering its size and its need to remain dynamic from an economic development perspective, could not risk finding itself in a position where the aquifer would fall below acceptable levels. A second water source, from their perspective, would assure future investors that San Antonio was stable and could from an infrastructural perspective meet their needs. A second argument was that San Antonio faced a water shortage in the near future if it did not prepare for it in the present. The various objections to it were as distinct as the city of San Antonio is diverse. The objection from Berriozabal was from an engineering perspective as well as a Chicano community one. She argued that from an engineering perspective, pumping from the proposed reservoir would be infeasible; not only 174

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that, but there were no assurances that the reservoir would be available. She argued that in fact during a drought the reservoir would obviously be dryer than the aquifer. Kay Turner, a water and community activist from the north side, on the other hand argued that the reservoir did not make sense from an environmental as well as economic perspective. It did not make sense to focus all of San Antonio’s resources on constructing a second water source when the question was not simply about water shortage but also about protecting a natural resource. Based on that perspective, she argued that it would be much more feasible to augment the aquifer while at the same time protecting it. Indeed, the feeling among most anti-Applewhite advocates was that the underlying objective in the construction of the Applewhite Reservoir was to free up the recharge zone from federal restrictions on development because of its sole water source status. In the 1991 elections, Berriozabal’s and Turner’s outspoken public stances mobilized enough voters to vote down the referendum. In 1994, Mayor Nelson Wolff apparently had a change of heart on his election position in 1991 to abide by the wishes of the voters. He then spearheaded a campaign to present the Applewhite to the voters once again, but this time the plan was to use the reservoir for industrial uses. The pro-Applewhiters, who comprised the same actors mentioned above, then proceeded to collect one million dollars in a campaign chest and put together an elaborate campaign strategy that hit the media full blast. This time, however, an extraordinary coalition mainly made up of women from the north side, the south side, and the west side came together to oppose the second referendum. Judith Sanders-Castro, from the Chicano civil rights legal organization maldef; Carol and Kirk Patterson, northside water activists; Karyn Conley, the only Black woman legislator in San Antonio; as well as Berriozabal, Turner, Rosales, and Angela Garcia, a labor organizer and lulac activist, came together in a coalition with other environmental groups to oppose the Applewhite a second time. With a campaign chest of only $12,000, they were able to resoundingly beat the second referendum on Applewhite. Significantly, while the more affluent, White north side was split over the issue, it was the west-, east-, and southside precincts that overwhelmingly defeated the referendum. Even more significantly, most of the Chicano elected public officials were found on the side of the pro-Applewhiters. It was obvious that the Chicana leadership, which included Berriozabal and Rosales, was very critical in the election outcome. But just as important, the coalition of women needed each other in this incredible feat, as they confronted position and power. Perhaps the most important lesson in this election is that the gender experience provided the bridge by which women, Black, Brown, and The Cultural is Political

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White, from radically different economic backgrounds as well as political persuasions, could come together in the mobilization of the community in the face of an opposing power structure that had awesome financial resources as well as most of the elected officials on their side. Conclusion

In the end, it is not gender itself that determines the difference. Rather, it is the gender experience within the highly structured urban political economy that we face today that has produced the kind of politics that these profiles have shown us. Further, because of the intersection of race, class, and gender, the Chicana experience has not been based solely on the advancement of Chicanas per se. Coming out of a struggle that involved the entire community, the Chicana experience has been shaped by the issues and priorities of a community-based strategy which has brought about a participatory-oriented political process represented not only by Berriozabal and Rosales but also by many other Chicana community activists. These profiles also show that Berriozabal’s and Rosales’s politics were not created in a vacuum. They are connected to a legacy of community politics arising out of the 1950s that ironically was undermined, as pointed out in Chapter Six, by the successful opening up of the system that ultimately coopted those who were ushered in: Chicano middle class men. Most importantly, their politics arose out of the continuing organizing efforts by Chicanas to address the issues that the community still faced in a market-dominated city politics that created individual inclusion at the expense of the community. In other words, Berriozabal and Rosales are not simply expressions of gender politics, they are the most visible expressions of a community that is still excluded. Thus, as community leadership has surfaced again in challenging the mainstream political status quo of San Antonio, Chicanas have been thrust into very visible leadership roles. Finally, while Maria Antonietta Berriozabal’s immovable position on the “soft issues” that reflected her community worked against her in her election bid for mayor, she has provided a powerful message to Chicanas that addresses their political efficacy. At the same time, Rosa Salazar Rosales’s leadership in lulac and union politics reflects a paradigm shift away from an exclusively male status quo politics to an inclusive community-based politics. Under her leadership, lulac has provided a forum from which not only Chicanas but also Chicanos can articulate those issues that reflect a community agenda. However, the question still remains: Will the system open up to provide in176

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dividual inclusion for Chicanas on a class basis without undermining the potential that they bring to politics (as it has done in several instances)? Will the urban political and economic structures of power be able, as well as willing, to adapt to the politics that Chicanas bring to the table through individual cooptation? In other words, as Chicanas gain greater prominence through the leadership that they are providing today, will they be co-opted into a personal agenda politics that ultimately preserves the status quo? Or will their leadership bring about a broader movement (as seen in the Applewhite issue) in the face of the very bad conditions that the Chicano community still faces in the 1990s? Finally, will Chicanos take Chicanas seriously? It is obvious that Chicanas have provided a crucial role in the organizing work that has brought about various changes in the local political arena. It is also obvious that Chicanas have not been given the credit nor the political respect for this work. As political as well as economic conditions worsen at the national as well as at the state and local level, will Chicanos support the lead that Chicanas seem to be providing?

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The Question of Inclusion A Final Note

The story that has been presented is of the political coming of age of the city of San Antonio from an exclusive political system of elites to a broader, more inclusive political system of representation. It is also the story of the political coming of age of the Chicano community of San Antonio as they finally gained independent representation in the decision-making processes of San Antonio. The major question that has concerned this political analysis, however, is the question of inclusion itself. Political inclusion has occurred. The question is, how do we define the nature of political inclusion? Certainly throughout the process, the question of inclusion implied or carried with it expectations of broadening the decisionmaking process to include the needs and demands of all sectors of the community, and not just the needs of the business community. On the other hand, urban communities and their institutions are faced with a situation where their entire fortune rises and falls with private decisions on where to invest. Framed in this manner, the major question is whether urban communities, in this case the Chicano community, can successfully advance their interest in the face of a pervasive competitive market economy that seems to shape everything into its own image across the broader American urban landscape. In addressing the above question, there were two objectives which defined how the analysis would proceed. The first objective was to define the contour

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of politics beyond the more visible and dominant elite economic development agenda, so as to locate those processes and those individuals that Bachrach and Baratz described as the “second face of power,” those who are excluded but do not accept that exclusion.1 To bring this “second face” to the surface, the analysis had to submerge, so to speak, beneath the capitalist structures and processes which tend to make the city of San Antonio almost indistinguishable from other capitalist cities competing in the highly competitive urban political economy that we experience today. The uncovering of this process allowed the analysis to weave together the pieces of stories and anecdotes of San Antonio’s political history into a broader narrative of how communities can and do, in the face of larger and more powerful economic and political forces, bring about change. Not unexpected but nevertheless just as exhilarating, the process that was uncovered spoke clearly to the critical role that the Chicano community has played in shaping their historic town. The second objective was to provide an analysis of what kind of change communities can make in a highly structured urban political economy that depends on larger forces to thrive. This objective narrowed what kind of story could be told. As such, the analysis had to sort through the political history of post–World War ii San Antonio, taking successive selective “snapshots” of a broad and complex process that unfolded over several decades. As we sorted through this history, the camera lens, to continue with the metaphor, did not allow us to address in any detail the various issues and events that confronted San Antonio during this period, except in terms of how they interacted with the main focus of the analysis. The issue of economic development, for example, and its relation to broader community issues affecting the quality of life of San Antonio’s residents has yet to be examined fully. In this context, the conflict over the question of water has yet to be addressed in terms of the limitations of, or the potential for, the economic growth of San Antonio. The growth of a southside politics, symbolized by the late congressman Frank Tejeda and his successor, Ciro Rodriguez, is certainly an important part of the picture, but one which could not be analyzed in any detail.2 As well, the story of community organizations and their impact on San Antonio, such as the grassroots-style barrio organization Communities Organized for Public Services (cops) and its other affiliates, as well as the northside Neighborhood Taxpayers Association, could not be addressed. cops has certainly addressed some of the major issues outlined above, successfully at times. On this point the question is asked: Didn’t their politics represent a continuance of “organizational agenda politics”? The core of The Question of Inclusion

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cops strategy, indeed, of its politics, is its nonpartisan, non-electioneering, grassroots lobbying approach as described in Chapter Seven. As a consequence, their constituency base was and is specific neighborhoods in the west and southwest sides of San Antonio. This interest group approach to politics ultimately kept them from engaging in a critique of the existing order of doing things in their negotiations over specific policy issues. In 1976 they publicly opposed single-member districts because they felt that their neighborhood agenda could fare much better in an at-large electoral system. Further, their insistence on an agenda that only reflected their member communities kept them from coalescing with other groups, except to advance or oppose certain individual policies agreed on beforehand. Indeed, there are literally hundreds of untold political biographies and stories of community mobilizations that make up the history of San Antonio. And most of them figure or are connected in one way or another to the conflict over governance. But it would have taken a historian’s penchant for detail and several volumes to include all the stories with all the political actors in San Antonio’s political history. The analysis had to omit, in a cold and calculating manner, many interesting and important aspects of San Antonio’s political history so as not to distract from the major focus of this study. As stated in Chapter Two, the analysis of history and politics is by necessity based on assumptions and premises which ultimately determine how and where the analysis is applied. However, while the analysis may have raised more questions than could be answered, what can be said is that communities do make a difference— and do bring about change. Further, the particular actors and events did leave their legacy that is present-day San Antonio. That legacy is reflected in a continuing and expanding Chicana and Chicano presence in the political life of San Antonio, certainly connected historically if not brought about directly by a politics of resistance by a community determined to bring about change. The single thread throughout this analysis is how the Chicano community initiated, responded to, and finally adapted to political events and the ensuing political changes (some which they created and some which they confronted). The rest of this chapter will address the context, the consequences, and potential of that legacy. The Intimate Relationship between National and Local Politics

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to gain access to the decision-making process, did not occur in a vacuum. The broader complexity and interaction of national and regional economic and political forces played a definite role in structuring much of the outcome of the process. At times the national and/or regional environment set the context; at other times it directly impacted political activities and political outcomes. It is in the understanding of this broader process and its relationship to what are stories very particular to San Antonio, that we can place San Antonio in the larger American urban picture and make general statements about what can be done in urban areas from a community perspective. Beginning in the 1950s, the business-led municipal reform at the local level was directly tied and shaped by the business-sponsored reform efforts throughout the Sunbelt region to consolidate political power in the major urban centers. It was not a regionally concerted effort per se by the business community to dominate city halls in America’s urban communities. But the economic growth of the Sunbelt region provided the playing field for developers and financiers to corner the market, so to speak, in the emerging landrich Sunbelt cities. From this perspective, San Antonio offered magnificent opportunities for the local chamber of commerce types and their boosters to cash in on growth and expansion. The story of contemporary San Antonio began in this context. In the 1960s, as the competitive urban economy which characterized the emerging Sunbelt region came to dominate the economy at all levels, the legacy of Jim Crow, that Montejano so aptly identified in South Texas, crumbled.3 Thus, as growth and expansion exploded in the 1960s, the context was a political field swept by social and political change that toppled traditions and ways of doing business that assumed segregation as a given. Just as important, while the Supreme Court had begun, in the 1950s, clearing the way for social change, it was the impetus of a national political agenda in the 1960s that set change in motion in local arenas. The national government’s civil rights agenda as well as the War on Poverty policies played a critical role in breaking the stranglehold that the southern tradition of segregation had on Texas and in particular San Antonio. The demographic changes in the 1970s, made possible by these national forces, which occurred as more Chicano families began moving to areas heretofore totally Anglo and Anglo residential areas began shifting northward, set the context for the conflict which resulted in the present scheme of political representation. As Chicano families gained access to nicer, more middle class neighborhoods, their demands as well as expectations began to center on how they were represented. But even more critical, those in the barrios left behind The Question of Inclusion

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began to question the ability of anyone outside their neighborhoods, even Chicanas or Chicanos, to represent their interests in city hall. In the midst of those demographic and political changes, the struggle for independent political representation was ultimately defined by two distinct national processes that changed the nature of electoral politics at all levels of government. The first one, ushered in by the 1974 Campaign Reform Act, was the shift at the national level from a party-centered to a candidate-centered electoral process. The creation of PACs in response to the limits set by the act brought about campaign financing as the focal point in electoral politics, undermining the role of political parties. The consequence of this shift can be seen in the consolidation of conservative politics at the national level because of their greater access to individualized campaign financing. In a sense, campaign reform simply freed up political aspirants to the forces of the market. Politicians now have to sell their agenda to the highest bidders. As a consequence, the idea of broad agendas fell apart. In San Antonio this undermined the role not only of political parties but also of the slating groups that had dominated since the 1950s. The other significant process occurred in the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1975 to language minorities. With the emphasis by the federal courts on voter dilution as opposed to voter exclusion, the at-large method of electing city officials came under serious question. At the same time, the Chicano movement in its consciousness-raising politics throughout the southwestern United States played a significant role in shifting from the demand for partisan elections in the 1960s to a demand for barrio representation by 1975. Eventually Chicano activists, with critically important support from organizations such as maldef, were able to successfully challenge the at-large system of electing city officials. Following a trend not unlike other urban areas, the implementation of single-member districts did bring an immediate change to the nature of political representation and its impact on the status of the Chicano community, professionally as well as politically. In the context of the second objective, however, what kind of change did single-member districts bring about? The Institutionalization of Change and Its Consequences

As one surveys the diversity of the present political representation made possible by single-member districts, the boosters of San Antonio who insist that the San Antonio of today is a place of diversity and opportunity for all of its

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citizens certainly have a strong argument. The San Antonio of the 1990s is certainly different from the San Antonio of the 1950s. In a city where class and race still have a clear geographic and social imprint, single-member districts do provide the opportunity for most sectors in San Antonio to establish independent political representation in the institutions that govern them. The Black community, for example, which composes only seven percent of the population, now has independent access to at least one seat on most of the major elective positions in San Antonio, from city council to the Alamo Community College District board to the San Antonio Independent School District board to the Texas state legislature. As the elections of 1997 show, the Chicano community has finally gained its proportional number of seats on city council with Chicanas and Chicanos taking six out of the ten council seats. The legislative caucus representing the San Antonio metropolitan area, consisting of eleven state representatives and four state senators, is made up of one Chicana and six Chicano state representatives and one Chicana and two Chicano state senators. Indeed, most of the political institutions from Justice of the Peace to County Commissioners Court to the various school boards and the Alamo Community College District board generally reflect the proportion of Chicanos in their make-up. The importance of single-member districts to this greater political inclusion is highlighted by the fact that after Henry Cisneros (1981–1989), mayoral politics, with the exception of Maria Antonietta Berriozabal’s candidacy in 1991, has been dominated by northside Anglos.4 Furthermore, the at-large judicial posts, from county judge to county courts at law to state district judges, continue, with few exceptions, to be dominated by northside Anglos. So change in the way representation is structured has definitely made a difference. Further, this greater political representation has provided, as other political studies on minority politics have also shown, a greater institutional presence of Chicanas and Chicanos in San Antonio’s public institutions.5 The professional presence of Chicanos in city government began to emerge almost immediately after the implementation of single-member districts in 1977. In 1978, Norma Rodriguez became the highest ranking Chicana in city government when she assumed the position of City Clerk. The promotion of Chicanas and Chicanos to managerial and executive positions throughout city government became almost routine. By 1990, Alex Briseño became the first Chicano city manager in San Antonio’s history as well as in any major city of the United States. In this context, perhaps the most important change in San Antonio’s po-

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litical landscape came in how politics is now negotiated. Almost immediately, the vacuum created by the demise of the larger organizational agendas that dominated in the past was filled by a more localized community organizational style of politics. Beginning slowly in 1974 with the establishment of cops in the west and southwest barrios of the city, San Antonio was soon to be filled by a myriad of community organizations and neighborhood associations. The public policy impact on the heretofore neglected barrios brought about by cops’s style of community organizing is now almost legendary. As a result the various communities and their organizations now provide the channel by which to address their social and economic problems. In an ironic sense, however, while the legacy of single-member districts and its new infrastructure of localized politics has brought about a more open political system, the fragmentation of politics represented by community organizations has led to the reconsolidation of the business agenda of growth and expansion. Put in another way, the political negotiation represented by this new community empowerment is, with few exceptions, over neighborhood issues and not in terms of the policy orientation of city hall itself. Their empowerment is turf oriented and not content oriented. In his structural analysis of community mobilization in New York’s Long Island in the 1960s, Ira Katznelson came to a similar conclusion when he found that community empowerment in a very practical sense is more about the dilution of community power over a broader urban landscape, at the expense of any radical challenge to the dominant business-oriented policy status quo.6 In his theoretical discussion of community power, Steven Lukes argued that the broadening of the political arena, in our case represented by the emergence of community organizations, eventually brings about the “third face” of power.7 While Bachrach and Baratz’s concept of “two faces” of power is utilized to focus on the politics of demand found outside the loop of institutional decision making, this “third face” is represented by a multitude of voices such that no broad agenda can surface. The multitude of voices in our instance are not only the emergence of community organizations but also the takeover of local school boards by long disenfranchised communities in the east, west, and south sides of San Antonio. The key point, however, is that without a broader community agenda, the various voices then tend to dovetail with the seemingly more universal and less self-interested business language of growth and expansion. How, then, do race and class issues manifest themselves in this new more inclusive political arrangement?

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The Dimensions of Race and Class in the New Political Arrangements

A major premise in the analysis was that the process beginning in the 1950s leading to the political changes that helped shape contemporary San Antonio’s more diverse political landscape was driven by Chicana and Chicano activists in their effort to gain political inclusion. The analysis provided here has to a great extent borne that fact out. But it must be emphasized that it is not the story of an autonomous heroic feat. Certainly it cannot be argued that the Chicano community did this by itself. The 1950s and 1960s era of organizational agenda politics quite clearly brings this fact out. As well, the role of a changing national political environment also bears witness to this fact. The structural aspects of the analysis show that conditions and events also played a fortuitous role—provided a window of opportunity so to speak—for a community with little political and economic resources to successfully challenge an almost absolute exclusive political system. Finally, the analysis of the impact of the War on Poverty policies, as well as the extension of the Voting Rights Act to language minorities, on political mobilization and political goals certainly attests to the fragile nature of the mobilization of excluded communities. But certainly, regardless of how fragile the mobilization of excluded communities may be, it is a partial verification of one of Manuel Castells’s major hypotheses in his study of social movements in the city that “the process of urban social change cannot be reduced to the effects produced on the city by successful social movements. Thus a theory of urban change must account both for the spatial and social effects resulting from the action of the dominant interests as well as from the grassroots alternative to this domination.” 8 It is a partial verification because of the parameters of this analysis. As pointed out above, much more work needs to be done in analyzing public policy issues involving water and economic development, among others, facing the community. The spatial and social impact of the present economic development toward the north side as dictated by the major economic interests of San Antonio does bring out the fact that racial cleavages are still very much part of the geographic layout of the city. As the tables on the demographic changes in San Antonio show in Chapter One, the growth and expansion of the Chicano community into previously segregated neighborhoods has occurred and is still occurring in the context of the flight of the more affluent Anglo middle class communities to the northern edges of San Antonio and

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beyond.9 Even as more and more Chicano families negotiate their class position and move into the more affluent northside communities, the racial cleavages become more visible as the barrios deteriorate in the face of a lack of investment, with all the attending problems brought about by the resultant shrinking of economic opportunities. Further, as shown in the comparison between single-member and at-large election results, the intimate relationship between race and class continues to be a factor in the geographic representation of politics in San Antonio. While the Chicano population has outstripped the Anglo population in growth, the traditional role of class as a predictor in voter turnout continues to assure the dominance of Anglo candidates in at-large elections. As shown in the mayoral elections, the electoral dominance of the very Anglo and very middle class city council districts in the north side, Districts Eight, Nine, and Ten (representing only 30% of the population of San Antonio!), has basically assured that San Antonio continues to elect an Anglo mayor. What can be said, however, is that race and class is now negotiated in a much more open style of politics. The single-member district system of political representation now assures that even with a traditionally low voter turnout, the barrios can still be represented. As pointed out in Chapter Six, unrehearsed political actors—unrehearsed by the dominant Anglo business community—are now possible, as shown in the challenging of the method of board and commission appointments, historically dominated by the business community, by the newly elected council members from the non-northside districts.10 The result is that both race and class play a significant role in the determination of who has and who does not have access to the opportunities offered by a rapidly growing urban economy. Statistically, it is quite obvious that race continues to define economic and social opportunity. Yet, at the same time, the last twenty years have witnessed the emergence of a more diversified Chicano community in terms of education, income, and social mobility. But this reality continues, to a large extent, to be in the hands of larger forces. The Pessimism of Intelligence; Optimism of Will 11

In the fast-changing global economy that San Antonio finds itself, the ability of a community to organize in its interest seems to be a rapidly fading possibility of the past. As nafta continues to shape the border economy, to which San Antonio is intimately tied, employment and small business opportunities move and sway to the vagaries of an economic sea that knows no borders. 186

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Further, as the conservative national political agenda continues to prioritize business over communities through its particular taxing and spending focus on investment opportunities, as opposed to social spending, cities and their communities find themselves with fewer and fewer resources. Even if the majority of the city council were to find themselves in agreement on a social agenda, the complexity of a fragmented local political arrangement (Bexar County has 27 municipalities and 17 school districts, plus a myriad of other single function jurisdictions), coupled with a lack of resources and a pervasive middle class anti-tax attitude, poses an almost insurmountable barrier. As Paul Peterson concludes in his analysis of the limitations cities face in governing, the function of cities are narrowly circumscribed by the urban political economy. Cities, in other words, are geared to provide for the infrastructural needs of a growing economy and not the social needs of the various communities—that is, needs beyond jobs and economic growth.12 But more importantly, this political and economic environment has had a tremendous impact on not only the resources but the attitude of local officials to what is the function of the city. This speaks to Lukes’s very pessimistic concept of the “third face” of power. Bachrach and Baratz show in their “second face” of power argument that by going beyond the “first face” of power (institutional power), the needs and demands of excluded communities can be found. Lukes’s “third face” of power is the power of the established way of doing things and its impact on the attitudes not only of officials but of communities in terms of what is possible and what is not. A classic example of this “third face” of power is a recent job fair exhibiting hotel and restaurant jobs for the residents of public housing in the west side of San Antonio. The fair was touted as a response to the new welfare reform enacted by Congress and praised in the newspapers as they quoted residents’ hopeful comments for employment opportunities.13 The irony, which is what Lukes’s “third face” of power speaks to theoretically, is that from a practical perspective, the fair provided a much-needed service for residents who otherwise would have to travel all over San Antonio to apply for the positions advertized. On the other hand, given the continuing racial and class geographic divisions where the Chicano community continues to find itself with a legacy of cheap labor jobs, poor housing, and poorly financed school districts, the idea of such a fair is saying to the poor in a very clear manner what their place is; they have defined their needs. In this sense the illusion of inclusion is hauntingly real. Particularly pessimistic is the fact that it took the Chicano community most of the last half of this century to gain a real presence in the politics governing San Antonio, only The Question of Inclusion

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to find that other factors besides elections determine the welfare of communities. It’s as if we finally manage to crawl into the rowboat only to find out that it has a leak, and that the steamship that is rocking our rowboat seems to be too far away to board. But this analysis was not simply about the structures and historical conditions that restrict what communities can do. It was also about the very real possibilities of a community that can mobilize its political will in the face of those overbearing structures and conditions. While the political landscape has changed, the same conditions that drove the Chicano community to organize and mobilize still exist. Even more important, in this new political landscape the struggle for institutional and political inclusion is not the formidable barrier that characterized San Antonio for more than three-fourths of this century. In this context, Bachrach and Baratz’s “second face” of power certainly applies. But in a more profound sense, Castells’s most provincial and pessimistic assessment about communities and their turf-minded politics brings out the content of will.14 What was verified in Castells’s theory of urban change was that communities can mobilize around alternatives to the economic and social powers that dominate what a city does. After all, it is the local and sometimes even trivial conditions that spur communities to define and then mobilize around their interest. Finally, there are some questions raised in this analysis that perhaps cannot be answered except in the acting out of history. The most important question is whether class or gender provides the real historical and material base of experience for Chicanas. From the perspective that class overrides gender as well as race in determining one’s experience comes the question of whether the legacy of community politics that we analyze in this chapter is simply the function of class exclusion. Hence, can the political structures and institutions accommodate and adapt to create a political space for Chicanas, while maintaining their urban market paradigm of making decisions? The analysis does bear witness to the fact that gender exclusion and domination consistently plagued the process throughout. Indeed, this analysis began with a blind spot to the role of Chicanas in this historic process. As the analysis in the last chapter concludes, the gender experience is a critically important factor in the analysis of politics, culture, and agency. While beyond the parameters of this analysis, the impact of gender does point to a possible collective more-inclusive community style of politics that goes beyond the rules of the game as played out today. In this sense, then, the second question raised is whether gender creates the space within the community that can

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span across class lines for a politics that emphasizes participation and the inclusion of the entire Chicano community. In a very real sense, then, the question of gender as is discussed in this study is paradigmatic of exclusion in general. As the Chicana and Chicano activists mobilized their communities in the days of political exclusion, their activity tended to be collective. The issues raised were intimately connected to the community. As the system opened up, it opened up along class and gender lines; it opened up to Chicano male middle class politics. Thus, as we discuss the more collective, inclusive politics of Chicanas, we are still talking about excluded communities. Indeed, if one were to look closely at the public arts funding issue represented by La Esperanza, the environmental justice issue represented by eastside and southside communities, and the corporate responsibility issue represented by La Fuerza Unida (an organization of Chicana activists), as well as the various community issues taken up by the various community organizations, including cops, one would encounter many women organizers and leaders.15 If one talks about community mobilization, one must talk about the politics of women; if one talks about the politics of women, one must talk about community mobilization. The question of intractability, however, still remains. Can alternatives to the dominant mode of running cities find a real basis in community power? Stated in a more concrete way, can communities break down the boundaries of competition and self-interest and collectively approach the question of governance? Or will the more collective, participatory style of politics that characterizes the political strategies of Chicanas and excluded communities to define the city as community, ultimately be suppressed and/or co-opted into a process that continues to assure the business community the upper hand in defining the city as a place of business?

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Appendix

San Antonio Mayors and City Council Members, 1951 – 1999 1951 – 1953

1953 – 1955

1955 – 1957

Mayor

A. C. White [a] Sam Steves [a]

A. C. White [a] R. N. White [a]

J. Edwin Kuykendall [a]

Place/District 1

A. C. White [a]

Emil Scherlen [a]

George Friedrich [a]

Place/District 2

Ruben Lozano [c]

Thelma Stevens [a] (10-13-54) * John Oliver [a]

Roy Baines [a]

Place/District 3

Alvin Schimit [a]

H. J. Shearer [a] (8-9-54) * Herbert Schenker [a] * Walter Rudeloff [a]

Mike Passur [a]

Place/District 4

Harold Keller [a]

Ottis West [a] * H. L. Dillashaw [a]

Elmer Crumrine [a]

Place/District 5

T. N. Trucker [a] (10-16-52) * W. H. Spivey [a]

Raymond Russell [a] * Herbert Schenker [a]

Ralph Winton [a]

Place/District 6

George Roper [a] (7-10-52) * Manfred Gerhardt [a]

R. N. White Jr. [a] (10-21-54)

Edwin Kuykendall [a]

Place/District 7

Mike Cassidy [a]

Ralph Easley [a] (10-19-54) * Glenn Lacy [a]

Joe Olivares [c]

Place/District 8

Nelson Greeman [a]

R. L. Lester [a] (10-1-54) John Daniels [a]

Place/District 9

Sam Bell Steves [a]

Henry Gonzalez [c]

Henry Gonzalez [c] (5-17-56) * Jose San Martin [c]

—

—

Place/District 10 — [a] Anglo [b] Black [c] Chicano/a

*Vacancy appointment

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1957 – 1959

1959 – 1961

1961 – 1963

Mayor

J. Edwin Kuykendall [a]

J. Edwin Kuykendall [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Place/District 1

Edwin Kuykendall [a]

Edwin Kuykendall [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Place/District 2

Ruben Dietert [a]

Ruben Dietert [a]

George Garza [c]

Place/District 3

Mike Passur [a]

Mike Passur [a]

Mike Passur (11-30-61)[a] * Claus Rohlfs [a]

Place/District 4

E. Crumrine [a] (9-3-67) * John McMahon [a]

John L. McMahon [a]

Jack Kaufman [a]

Place/District 5

Ralph Winton [a] (9-18-58) * Max Johnson [a]

Max Johnson [a]

Walter Gunstream [a]

Place/District 6

Melvin Gayoso [a] (9-18-58) * Wayne Simpson [a]

Wayne Simpson [a]

John Gatti [a]

Place/District 7

Joe Olivares [c]

George de la Garza [c]

Roy S. Padilla [c]

Place/District 8

John Daniels [a] (12-30-57) * Theo Pinson [a]

Theo Pinson [a] (Died) * Walter McAllister [a]

Gerald Parker [a]

Place/District 9

Jose San Martin [c]

Jose San Martin [c] (6-2-60) * Roy Padilla [c]

Ronald C. Bremer [a]

—

—

1963 – 1965

1965 – 1967

1967 – 1969

Mayor

Walter McAllister [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Place/District 1

Walter McAllister [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Walter McAllister [a]

Place/District 2

George Garza [c] Herbert Calderon * Herbert Calderon [c] [c]

Herbert Calderon [c]

Place/District 3

Claus Rohlfs (9-12-63) [a] * Robert Jones [a]

Robert C. “Bob” Jones [a]

Robert C. “Bob” Jones [a]

Place/District 4

Jack Kaufman [a]

S. H. James [b]

S. H. James [b]

Place/District 5

Mrs. S. E. Cockrell Jr. [a]

Mrs. S. E. Cockrell Jr. [a]

Mrs. S. E. Cockrell Jr. [a]

Place/District 10 —

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1963 – 1965

1965 – 1967

1967 – 1969

Place/District 6

John Gatti [a]

John Gatti [a]

John Gatti [a]

Place/District 7

Roy S. Padilla [c]

Felix B. Treviño [c]

Felix B. Treviño [c]

Place/District 8

Gerald Parker [a]

Gerald Parker [a]

Gerald Parker [a] (10-31-68) Edward H. Hill [a] (11-1-68)

Place/District 9

Ronald C. Bremer [a]

Ronald C. Bremer [a]

Pete Torres Jr. [c]

—

—

1969 – 1971

1971 – 1973

1973 – 1975

Mayor

Walter McAllister [a]

John Gatti [a]

Charles L. Becker [a]

Place/District 1

Walter McAllister [a]

Carol Haberman [a]

Lila Cockrell [a]

Place/District 2

Herbert Calderon [c]

Edward H. Hill [a]

Jose San Martin [c]

Place/District 3

E. J. Burke [a]

Charles L. Becker [a]

Charles L. Becker [a]

Place/District 4

S. H. James [b]

Robert Hilliard [b]

Claude Black [b]

Place/District 5

Lila Cockrell [a] (6-15-70) * Carol Haberman [a]

Leo Mendoza Jr. [c]

Glenn Lacy [a]

Place/District 6

D. Ford Nielsen [a]

Gilbert Garza [c] (11-11-72) * Manuel Calderon [c]

Clifford Morton [a]

Place/District 7

Felix B. Treviño [c]

Pleas C. Naylor Jr. [a]

Alfred Beckmann [a] (6-13-74) * Bill O’ Connell [a]

Place/District 8

Edward H. Hill [a]

Felix B. Treviño [c] (2-3-72) * Alvin Padilla [c]

Alvin Padilla [c] (2-17-75) *D. Ford Nielsen [a]

Place/District 9

Pete Torres Jr. [c]

John Gatti [a]

Leo Mendoza [c] (12-31-74) * Richard Teniente [a]

—

—

Place/District 10 —

Place/District 10 —

Mayors and City Council Members, 1951–1999

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1975 – 1977

1977 – 1979

1979 – 1981

Mayor

Lila Cockrell [a]

Lila Cockrell [a]

Lila Cockrell [a]

Place/District 1

Phil Pyndus [a]

Henry Cisneros [c]

Henry Cisneros [c]

Place/District 2

Robert P. “Bob” Billa [a]

Joe Webb [b]

Joe Webb [b]

Place/District 3

Henry Cisneros [c]

Helen Dutmer [a]

Helen Dutmer [a]

Place/District 4

Claude Black [b]

Frank D. Wing [c]

Frank D. Wing [c]

Place/District 5

Glen Hartman [a]

Bernardo Eureste [c]

Bernardo Eureste [c]

Place/District 6

Al Rohde [a]

Rudy C. Ortiz [c]

Bob Thompson [a]

Place/District 7

Richard Teniente [a]

Joe Alderete [c]

Joe Alderete [c]

Place/District 8

D. Ford Nielsen [a]

Phil Pyndus [a]

Gene Canavan [a]

Place/District 9

Lila Cockrell [a]

Glen Hartman [a] (1-16-79) * Robert McDaniel [a]

Van Henry Archer [a]

John Steen [a]

John Steen [a]

1981 – 1983

1983 – 1985

1985 – 1987

Mayor

Henry Cisneros [c]

Henry Cisneros [c]

Henry Cisneros [c]

Place/District 1

M. A. Berriozabal [c]

M. A. Berriozabal [c]

M. A. Berriozabal [c]

Place/District 2

Joe Webb [b]

Joe Webb [b]

Joe Webb [b]

Place/District 3

Helen Dutmer [a]

Helen Dutmer [a]

Helen Dutmer [a]

Place/District 4

Frank D. Wing [c]

Frank D. Wing [c]

Frank D. Wing [c]

Place/District 5

Bernardo Eureste [c]

Bernardo Eureste [c]

Walter Martinez [c]

Place/District 6

Bob Thompson [a]

Bob Thompson [a]

Bob Thompson [a]

Place/District 7

Joe Alderete [c]

Joe Alderete [c]

Yolanda Vera [c]

Place/District 8

Gene Canavan [a] (10-15-81) * G. E. “Ed” Harrington [a]

G. E. “Ed” Harrington [a]

G. E. “Ed” Harrington [a]

Place/District 9

Van Henry Archer [a]

Van Henry Archer [a]

Van Henry Archer [a] (1-2-86) * Weir Labatt [a]

James Hasslocher [a]

James Hasslocher [a]

Place/District 10 —

Place/District 10 James Hasslocher

[a]

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1987 – 1989

1989 – 1991

1991 – 1993

Mayor

Henry Cisneros [c]

Lila Cockrell [a]

Nelson W. Wolff [a]

Place/District 1

M. A. Berriozabal [c]

M. A. Berriozabal [c]

Roger Perez [c]

Place/District 2

Joe Webb [b]

Joe Webb [b]

Frank Pierce [b]

Place/District 3

Helen Dutmer [a]

Helen Dutmer [a]

Helen Dutmer [a] (8-2-91) * Lynda Burke [a]

Place/District 4

Frank D. Wing [c]

Frank D. Wing [c]

Frank D. Wing [c] (2-4-93) *Reynaldo Nieto [c]

Place/District 5

Walter Martinez [c]

Walter Martinez [c]

Walter Martinez [c] (1-2-92) * Juan F. Solis [c]

Place/District 6

Bob Thompson [a]

Bob Thompson [a]

Bob Thompson [a] (1-10-92) * Helen Ayala [c]

Place/District 7

Yolanda Vera [c]

Yolanda Vera [c]

Yolanda Vera [c]

Place/District 8

Nelson W. Wolff [a]

Nelson W. Wolff [a]

Bill Thornton [a]

Place/District 9

Weir Labatt [a]

Weir Labatt [a]

Weir Labatt [a]

James Hasslocher [a]

Lyle Larson [a]

1993 – 1995

1995 – 1997

1997 – 1999

Mayor

Nelson W. Wolff [a]

William Thornton [a]

Howard W. Peak [a]

Place/District 1

Roger Perez [c]

Roger Flores [c]

Roger Flores [c]

Place/District 2

Ruth McClendon [b]

Roger Perez [c] * Dolores Lott [a]

Mario Salas [b]

Place/District 3

Lynda Burke [a]

Lynda Burke [a]

Debre Guerrero [c]

Place/District 4

Henry Avila [c]

Henry Avila [c]

Raul Prado [c]

Place/District 5

Juan F. Solis [c]

Juan F. Solis [c] (2-12-97) * Rick Vasquez [c]

Rick Vasquez [c]

Place/District 6

Helen Ayala [c]

Robert Herrera [c]

Jose Menendez [c]

Place/District 7

Bob Ross [a]

Bob Ross [a]

Ed Garza [c]

Place/District 8

Bill Thornton [a]

Robert Marbut [a]

Robert Marbut [a]

Place/District 9

Howard Peak [a]

Howard Peak [a]

Tim Bannwolf [a]

Jeff Webster [a]

Jeff Webster [a]

Place/District 10 James Hasslocher [a]

Place/District 10 Lyle Larson [a]

Mayors and City Council Members, 1951–1999

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Notes

1. Introduction 1. The premise in this analysis is that it is primarily the middle class, as will be discussed later in this chapter, that was in a position to provide the organizational resources as well as leadership in this very middle class activity. 2. Pachon and Moore, “Mexican Americans,” argue that because of “settlement patterns, sharp discrimination and segregation, a historical lack of political opportunities, and depressed economic circumstances,” this highly diverse, mainly urban, group is difficult to classify. However, they concluded that “If we are to avoid another ‘American Dilemma,’ policymakers and community leaders need to take into account the diverse characteristics of the Mexican American population and the strength and resources it provides in this country.” (p. 124). See also the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project’s collection of studies authored by Bob Brischetto and Rudy O. de la Garza. In 1974, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project was founded in direct response to the historic lack of electoral participation by the Chicano community. From this project various studies have been produced in analyzing the voting habits and attitudes of the Chicano community. However, their applicability is limited because their statistical approach is aggregate and is not intended to analyze the process of political development that is the focus of this study. 3. For an analysis of the shifting political economy in Texas, see Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 262 –287. 4. See Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress in San Antonio Politics, 1836 –1970,” p. 8 –27; see Fraga, “Non-Partisan Slating Groups” (Ph.D. diss., 1984) and “Domination Through Democratic Means” (article, 1988) for a good analysis of nonpartisanism as a partisan slating group for the business community and its detrimental effect on minority participation; see also Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal.

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5. The tables in this chapter provide a sketch of an emerging middle class. But it must be pointed out that the exact measurement of a middle class is problematic. First, it can be argued that Chicano middle class status is not the same as White middle class status, especially when the impact of racism is taken into consideration. Second, the middle class role is not dependent on the actual size or exact measurement in financial or even social terms but more in terms of the reality of electoral politics that has historically been a middle class activity. 6. For an excellent historical analysis of the Chicano struggle for education reform in Texas, see San Miguel Jr., “Let Them All Take Heed.” 7. See Castells, The City and the Grassroots, for an excellent theoretical discussion of this point. While electoral politics tends to be a middle-class domain, the actors are not always that definable. Urban political processes, including electoral mobilization as well as other community mobilizations, are not very accessible to a clear-cut class analysis. On this point, Manuel Castells states that when entering the city, one must leave the Marxist analysis at the doorstep. His point, and my point here, is that class is not clearly definable, even as one looks at processes that may be class-defined in terms of who has access and who does not. Thus, while I will focus on what is a very middle-class process, electoral politics, the study does not pretend to analyze the middle class except as it interfaces with this process. 8. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 104; Gonzalez, “America Invades the Border Towns,” p. 473. 9. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 101–257; see also Hinojosa, Borderlands Town. The majority of working class Chicanos by this time were caught in a web of racial restrictions throughout South Texas. 10. Gambitta et al., “The Politics of Unequal Educational Opportunity”; Rodriguez, “Henry B. Gonzalez: A Political Profile.” 11. Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 30 – 62. 12. Hernandez, “Mexican American Voting Patterns,” p. 3; see also Dickens, “The Political Role of Mexican Americans”; and Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress.” 13. Johnson et al., eds., The Politics of San Antonio, p. 10. 14. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 263 –264. 15. For a good discussion on this subject, see Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker; Nelson-Cisneros, “La Clase Trabajadora en Tejas”; and Montejano, “Frustrated Apartheid.” 16. Johnson et al., eds., The Politics of San Antonio, p. 15 –19. 17. Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 62. 18. lulac, “History of lulac.” Marquez, LULAC, and Orozco, “Origins of the League of Latin American Citizens.” 19. Tenayuca and Brooks, “Mexican American Question,” p. 265. 20. Ibid., p. 265 –267; see also Rips, “Living History.” 21. Flores and Benmayor, eds., Latino Cultural Citizenship. Flores’ definition of cultural citizenship fits the lulac model perfectly: “Cultural citizenship refers to the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes” (p. 57). Flores’ study of this phenomenon touches on the very essence of the modern historical experience of the Chicano community. While it can be placed in the larger historical context of the expanding notions of what citizenship is in liberal democratic states, the Chicano experience brings a new perspective in that it does not represent the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist liberation movement nor the immigrant process of cultural negotiation and adaptation. The contribution from this history represents a political and cultural process by a community that is reclaiming its ties (anti198

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imperialist?) to the land but within the liberal democratic tradition (immigrant process?). This dilemma, incredibly, is preserved—frozen—in the lulac paradigm. 22. Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 61. 23. See Marquez, lulac and Orozco, “A History of Mexican American and Mexican Women in San Antonio, Texas.” 24. Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 35; Moquin and Van Doren, A Documentary History, in Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 62. 25. Garcia, “Class, Class Consciousness, and Ideology,” p. 62. In his book The Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class, Garcia adds that the ricos had no policical base, even as they participated in various cultural and political events with and in support of the slowly emerging middle class, because of their loyalty to their prior political base in Mexico. 26. Ibid. Orozco, “A History of Mexican American and Mexican Women in San Antonio, Texas.” Orozco’s historical narrative on Chicanas in San Antonio for a local research project sponsored by the Hispanas Unidas, a local Chicana mentoring organization, is very informative on the nature of the organizational activity of Chicanas. In 1947, the organization papa (Pan American Progressive Association) was busy, under the leadership of its director, Henry B. Gonzalez, addressing the lynchpin of this segregated order, restrictive covenants in mortgages. These covenants specifically banned the sale of the respective properties to Chicana/os. As will be pointed out later, though, the legal solution freed up the middle class and not so much the working and poor classes. 27. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1980 General Population Characteristics, PC 80-1-B45, Table 25, Texas, p. 94; Census of Population, 1970 General Social and Economic Characteristics, Final Report PC(1)-45, Texas; U.S. Census Population and Housing, 1960 Census Tracts, San Antonio, Texas, p. 13; U.S. Census of Population, 1950, Vol. II, Characteristics of the Population, Part 43, Texas, p. 100 –103, Special Reports, Persons of Spanish Surname, p. 46; Picnot, An Economic and Industrial Survey of San Antonio, Texas, p. 167. 28. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1980, Table 219, p. 45 – 492 to 45 –500; Census of Population, 1970, Table 173, p. 45 –1695 to 45 –1696; Census of Population, 1960, PC(2)1B, Table 12; Knox, The Economic Status of the Mexican Immigrant in San Antonio, Texas, p. 15. 29. Zamora, “Negotiating Mexican Workers’ Rights.” Zamora points out that it was generally a myth that World War ii opened up opportunities for Chicanos to gain federal sector jobs. The reality was that a dual labor market existed where Chicanos fit into the less skilled positions regardless of their skills, and they were also paid less in comparable positions. Chicanos did gain jobs but were contained in second class positions. 30. Jones, “San Antonio’s Spatial Economic Structure, 1955 –1980,” p. 30, in Johnson et al., eds., The Politics of San Antonio, p. 28 –52. 31. Ibid., p. 46 – 47; Gambitta et al., “The Politics of Unequal Educational Opportunity,” p. 133 –156. 32. Ibid. 33. Brischetto et al., “Conflict and Change.” 34. Sloss-Vento, Alonso S. Perales; see also Perales, En Defensa de Mi Raza; and Perales, Are We Good Neighbors? 35. Gustavo Garcia, “An Informal Report to the People”; Warren, “Majority Opinion”; Peña interviews. 36. Marshall and Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class. Marshall actually pointed out that at that time, the turn of the century, political rights, i.e., political enfranchisement, were more of a threat than civil rights: “The political rights of citizenship, unlike the civil rights, were full of potential danger to the capitalist system, although those who were cautiously exNotes to Pages 8 –15

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tending them down the social scale probably did not realise quite how great the danger was. They could hardly be expected to foresee what vast changes could be brought about by the peaceful use of political power, without a violent and bloody revolution. The planned society and the welfare state had not yet risen over the horizon or come within the view of the practical politician” (p. 25). But that was in a different society, British, with a different form of representation and it was at a different stage in the development of Western democracies. 37. Stone et al., “Life and Death of the Mexican-American Organization.” 38. Cuellar, “A Social and Political History of the Mexican-American Population.” Cuellar’s analysis shows how the aversion to radical political activity influenced the post–World War ii lulac and GI Forum organization to focus on poll tax drives and voter education to fight discrimination rather than the confrontation tactics that were used to mobilize the Black communities in the South. 39. Gonzalez letter. The letter was in response to an inquiry by Mr. Lico Lopez on the origins of papa. 40. Dugger, “Gonzalez of San Antonio,” Part III, p. 16.

2. Posing the Correct Questions 1. Johnson et al., eds., The Politics of San Antonio; Lineberry, “Equality, Public Policy, and Public Services”; Fleischman, “Sunbelt.” The most comprehensive study to date is the Johnson book. Even this work, which is an edited volume of articles on San Antonio, stops short of thoroughly probing into the major elements of the politics of San Antonio. 2. Woods, Mexican Ethnic Leadership; see also Woods, The Model Cities Program; and Lane, “Voluntary Associations among Mexican Americans.” 3. Indeed, the problem that I confronted was how to sort out the massive historical information that exists on San Antonio. In the end it was my particular political focus that determined what was selected. How I developed the focus then is the discussion presented in this chapter. 4. Meier and Rivera, The Chicanos, p. 70. 5. Richard Santos, a local archivist, coined the phrase in a presentation he gave to the 1965 meeting of the American Archivists. 6. Skerry, Mexican Americans; see also interview with Brian Lamb (C-Span Home, October 3, 1993). See also Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination. For a good rejoinder to Glazer and his anti-affirmative action position see Takaki, ed., From Different Shores. 7. Flores and Benmayor, eds., Latino Cultural Citizenship, p. 57. Included in this edition is a study focusing on the international character of cultural citizenship. 8. Del Castillo, Between Borders. The essays cover the range from theoretical to methodological concerns. The most important point is that Chicana history cannot be seen in a vacuum; it is part of an international context because of the border. 9. Romano, “The Anthropology and Sociology of the Mexican Americans,” p. 13 –26. 10. Almaguer, “Ideological Distortions,” p. 7–28; “Historical Notes on Chicano Oppression,” p. 27–54; “Toward the Study of Chicano Colonialism,” p. 7–21. 11. Flores, “Race and Culture in the Internal Colony”; see also Bailey and Flores, “Internal Colonialism and Racial Minorities in the U.S.,” p. 148 –157. 12. Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth, p. 24. 13. Flores, “Race and Culture in the Internal Colony,” p. 189. War and annexation, as we discuss later in this chapter, were the historical demarcation lines in race relations in Texas

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and in the Southwest in general. It is also this reality that was imposed on the Chicano community in the latter half of the nineteenth century that underlies the continued tendency to use race in describing the Chicana/o experience in the Southwest. Nonetheless in this study usage of race and ethnicity to describe the Chicana/o will move back and forth between these two concepts. 14. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans. 15. A good critique of the “Internal Colonial” model can be found in Barrera, Race and Class in the Southwest; and Almaguer, “Ideological Distortions,” p. 7–28. 16. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans. 17. Ibid., p. 309. 18. Ibid., p. 4. 19. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 254 and 276 –277. See also Green, The Establishment, p. 190, 192, 199; and Cuellar, “A Social and Political History,” p. 36 –37. 20. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 276 –277. See also Hernandez, “Mexican American Voting Patterns.” 21. Katznelson, City Trenches, p. 19. 22. Ibid., p. 6. 23. Smith, City, State, and Market. 24. Harvey, Social Justice and the City. 25. Castells, The City and the Grassroots. 26. Katznelson, City Trenches. 27. See Fainstein and Fainstein for some interesting case studies of community mobilization in other urban areas. 28. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, p. 35. 29. Lukes, Power, p. 16. 30. Bachrach and Baratz, Power and Poverty, p. 7. 31. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, p. 30. 32. Cobb and Elder, Participation in American Politics, p. 71. 33. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, p. 69. For a good discussion of the system as an organization of bias, read Schattschneider’s chapter four, as well as Lukes, p. 16 –19, and Bachrach and Baratz, chapter one. 34. Lukes, Power, “the domination of defenders of the status quo may be so secure and pervasive that they are unaware of any potential challengers to their position and thus of any alternatives to the existing political process whose bias they work to maintain.” (p. 21) 35. cops did in two instances challenge the rules of the market. The first occurred in coalition with the Conservation Society in challenging growth over the Edwards Aquifer’s recharge zone. They were successful until the state district court ruled in favor of the property rights of the developers. At another time they demanded that city government pass a policy requiring every corporation moving into San Antonio to pay a minimum wage of 15 thousand dollars a year. They backed off, but not without some concessions from the city in the form of millions of dollars of public service to their communities.

Part One. The Partisan Era 1. Castells, The City and the Grassroots. 2. Fleischman, “Sunbelt Boosterism.” 3. Katznelson, City Trenches.

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3. The Shaping of a Political Agenda and Its Consequences 1. Perry and Watkins, “Regional Change,” p. 15; see also Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress in San Antonio, 1836 –1970,” p. 19 –25. 2. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 21. 3. Bailey, Radicals in Urban Politics; Trounstine and Christensen, Movers and Shakers. 4. Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal, p. 96. 5. Ibid. p. 95. 6. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 22. 7. Ibid.; Ashcroft and Gibson, “Political Organization.” 8. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 22. 9. Ibid.; Ashcroft and Gibson, “Political Organization,” p. 28; Fleischman, “Sunbelt Boosterism,” p. 154 –157. 10. Fraga, “Non-Partisan Slating Groups.” However, Fraga’s comparative study of Houston and San Antonio concludes that the success of municipal reform “has worked to the systematic disadvantage of working classes and ethnic and racial minorities.” 11. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 22; Fleischman, “Sunbelt Boosterism,” p. 157–158. 12. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 23. 13. Ibid.; Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 52 –55. 14. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 24; also Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 14 –17. 15. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 24; Ashcroft and Gibson, “Political Organization,” p. 6 –7; Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 14. 16. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 24; Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 27– 61. 17. Rogers, “The City Elections,” p. 14. 18. Sanders, “Nonpartisanism.” Even before the ggl was formed in 1954, the business community found it necessary to recruit a Chicano, Ruben Lozano, to their slate. 19. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress,” p. 24; see also Fraga, “Domination through Democratic Means.” In support of this point Fraga finds that the nonpartisan slating group is an organization which serves the same functions as a political party. In a nonpartisan electoral system, it structures the scope of conflict in municipal electoral politics to favor the predominantly upper and middle class White communities. 20. Vasquez interview. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Guest Lecturer series for Graduate Urban Politics class conducted by author in the summer of 1985. 24. Vasquez interview; Sanchez interview; San Antonio Express-News, “Sanchez Hits Public Use of Name,” April 13, 1969; San Antonio Light, “Backing of ggl Denied,” April 13, 1969; see also Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 63 – 65. 25. Vasquez interview. 26. Ibid. 27. Treviño interview. Treviño pointed out to this author that up to 1962 he was closely associated with Peña and other liberal coalition leaders. In 1962, Treviño was chairman of passo (a coalition of Chicano organizations which will be discussed later) when he resigned because of his disagreement with the way that decisions were made. Treviño, who tried un-

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successfully with the support of the ggl to unseat Peña for county commissioner, was eventually elected to the city council with the Westside ggl. 28. Munguia interview. 29. Peña interview; Munguia interview. 30. Dugger, “Gonzalez of San Antonio: Part II,” p. 20. 31. Ibid. 32. Peña interview. 33. Precinct politics is a particular kind of politics that is tied directly to the political party apparatus. It is the foundation for party politics at the local level. But like a building block, it also provides the base by which to gain entry into state and national party politics. 34. Peña interview. 35. Munguia interview. 36. Ibid. Munguia points out that “the Maverick liberal forces which included us . . . dealing with some of the conservative forces which had people such as Spears and some of those in the group agree that with the Adlai Stevenson visit, Maury Maverick was going to have Adlai Stevenson walk through the Alamo and he explain to him the various memorabilia that was there about Texas Independence and what-have-you and we Mexicanos were going to have Adlai Stevenson at Santa Rosa park.” 37. San Antonio Light, “A Rousing Day for Adlai,” October 19, 1952, p. 11-A. Another article on the same day gives an account of the enthusiasm that was witnessed in the Stevenson rally as opposed to the Eisenhower rally. More importantly, the article emphasizes the role of the lads rally: “The veteran police officers estimated Stevenson’s Alamo Plaza crowd matched that of Ike’s, but reported the parade route was somewhat less. What Adlai had that Ike didn’t have, however, was the amazing turnout and reception at Milam Square. So enthusiastic was this predominantly Latin-American crowd, that when the Stevenson convoy moved on to the Alamo a healthy portion fell in behind to march and surge into the Alamo area.” San Antonio Light, “Top Candidates Compared by San Antonio,” October 19, 1952, p. 11-A. 38. Clarence A. LaRouche, “Stevenson Somewhat Like Bullfighter as Spanish Cries, Placards Greet Him,” San Antonio Express, October 19, 1952. 39. Munguia interview. At a meeting the day after the primary, Munguia reports that he received a phone call from the opposition to meet at a secluded bar in the far Southside. There he reports that the opposition tried unsuccessfully to buy them off: “I looked at Sam and I guess there was some kind of secret communication between us. So I take the pile of money that they had uncovered and I push it back to ’em. ‘You pull your man out and we’ll double that money.’ And we didn’t have a damn nickel. ‘Pull your man out and we’ll double it.’ ‘You . . . you’re not going to buy, Ruben?’ I says, ‘No way.’ ‘Well then we’re going to have to go to the bitter end.’ I says, ‘We’ll go all the way.’ I said, ‘Now we got about two minutes left, we’re going to leave before we have any problems.’ And we took off. And we beat ’em.” 40. Valdez interview. Frank Valdez, a past lulac national president, pointed out that because of these kinds of activities, the more conservative Chicanos revived, in the 1960s, council #16, an inactive lulac council. 41. Dugger, “Gonzalez of San Antonio, Part IV,” p. 5. Albert Peña pointed out that, in fact, this was the first time that their delegation had been seated. He quite frankly had no intentions of rumping or walking out. 42. Ed Glosson, “What Makes G. J. Sutton Tick,” San Antonio Light, July 28, 1974; Sharon Watkins, “Top Ten Citizens: Developed Talents,” San Antonio Light, February 6, 1975. In 1948

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Sutton was the Black elected to the Union Junior College District board of trustees. He, along with Albert Peña, later became one of the key coalition leaders representing the Black community. 43. Peña interview. 44. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 276.

4. Coalition Politics: Trench Political Warfare 1. Munguia interview. 2. San Antonio Light, “Don Politico: Henry B. Wins Title, ‘Politico of the Year’,” December 31, 1961. 3. San Antonio Light, “Smear Campaign Rejected as Voters Pick Gonzalez,” Nov. 8, 1956. 4. Peña interview; “Don Politico,” December 31, 1961; San Antonio Express-News, “Oldest of the Pols: He’s Seen It All,” May 30, 1967. 5. San Antonio Express-News, “Peña, Labor Leaders, Enter City Hall Picture,” January 5, 1963. 6. “Peña, Labor Leaders,” January 5, 1963. 7. San Antonio Express, “Peña Defends Coalition against Attacks by Max Allen, Gonzalez,” March 21, 1962. 8. Esquivel interview. 9. “Peña Defends,” March 21, 1962. 10. Munguia interview. 11. In a conversation at Medical Center Hospital with Olga Peña, June 3, 1993, she pointed out that her opportunity to get involved directly in Albert’s campaign came when the person selected to run the campaign headquarters became ill. Albert then asked her if she could take over the position. 12. Gene Rodriguez Sr. interview. 13. Castro interviews. 14. See Davies, “Maury Maverick,” for a discussion of the liberal slate in 1935. 15. San Antonio Express, July 20, 1963. 16. Peña interview; San Antonio Light, “Unknown Novice in Politics Won Ballot Victory Hard Way,” May 13, 1960. San Antonio Express-News, “Alaniz Announces for Wurzbach Post,” October 13, 1965. 17. Ibid. 18. San Antonio Light, “Alaniz Breaks Color Line in Legislature,” January 10, 1963; San Antonio Light, “At Cafeteria: Solons among Pupil Walkout,” February 2, 1961; San Antonio Express, “Alaniz Opens Headquarters, Charges Pressure by Foe,” March 28, 1966. 19. San Antonio News, “Sit-In Ban Held Red Aid,” April 13, 1961; San Antonio Light, “Aid Asked for Teachers, Job Hunters,” February 1, 1961. 20. San Antonio Light, “Rep. Alaniz Bill Debated,” February 1961; San Antonio Light, “San Antonio Transit Bill Advanced,” February 1961; San Antonio Light, “Don Politico: Bus Drivers,” February 19, 1961. 21. San Antonio Express-News, “Jake Johnson: Bexar County’s Ulcer Specialist,” June 6, 1965; Esquivel interview. See also McClesky et al., The Government and Politics of Texas, for a discussion of the conservative domination of Texas politics. 22. San Antonio News, “Alaniz Author of Bill to Consolidate Elections,” March 24, 1965; San Antonio Light, “Editorial,” March 26, 1965 (editorial condemned Alaniz and Spears for

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consolidation bill); San Antonio News, “Cockpit,” March 25, 1965. Contract for sales were the form of mortgages which were usually available to poor people. Under this contract, if the buyer misses one payment, even if they have paid consistently for 15 or 20 years, the landlord can foreclose. 23. An excellent example of a community issue was Alaniz’s work on the legislative committee on textbook selection. Alaniz was able to raise the issue of textbook selection amidst a storm of controversy by addressing the biased nature of the selection process from a Chicano perspective. Again, while not successful in terms of reforming the process, Alaniz’s efforts brought to the public’s eye— especially the Chicano public’s eye—the biased nature of textbook selection, which essentially ignored the needs of the Chicano community. See San Antonio Light, “Textbook Hearing Opens amid Boos,” April 2, 1962; San Antonio Light, “30 Witnesses Due at Textbook Hearing,” June 24, 1962; San Antonio Express, “Textbook Panel Goes into Closed Session after Hassle,” June 26, 1962; San Antonio Light, “Textbook Row Renewed,” June 28, 1962. 24. James McCrory, letter to Albert Peña, March 24, 1986. Cantinflas, a very popular Mexican movie star and comic, joined Lyndon Baines Johnson and Gonzalez in a parade throughout key areas of San Antonio on election day urging the people to come out and vote. 25. Dugger, “Gonzalez of San Antonio,” Part III, p. 24. 26. Ibid., p. 22. 27. McCrory letter. 28. James McCrory, “Labor Bloc Existence Is Denied by Gonzalez,” San Antonio Express, November 29, 1961; San Antonio Express-News, “Gonzalez Is the Winner,” November 5, 1961. 29. San Antonio Light, “Don Politico: Record Vote Turnout,” November 5, 1961; see also San Antonio Light, “Don Politico: Henry B. Wins Title ‘Politico of the Year’,” December 31, 1961. 30. Dick Balmos, “Backers Celebrate: Victory Sweet to Gonzalez,” San Antonio Light, November 5, 1961. 31. San Antonio Express, “Peña, Ploch Trade Oral Jabs over Crystal City,” May 10, 1963; see also San Antonio News, “Peña Discounts Censure: As Hiding Something More Important,” May 10, 1963. 32. San Antonio Light, “Precinct Newsletter Out,” February 27, 1957; Peña interviews; San Antonio News, “Peña Defends Policemen’s Association,” September 18, 1963. 33. San Antonio News, “Mrs. Hance Attacks Peña-Signed Letter,” April 25, 1966; also San Antonio Express, “Peña’s Signature on Protest Hit,” April 26, 1966. 34. San Antonio Express, “Peña Blasts U.S. Position in Vietnam,” June 30, 1968. 35. San Antonio Express, “Peña Hails Bill Banning Closed Meetings,” February 28, 1963; San Antonio Express, “Peña Attacks PR, Legal Fees Spending,” March 9, 1963; San Antonio Express, “Peña Objects to Appeal of Mandamus,” October 4, 1963; San Antonio News, “Air Rule Decision: Peña,” October 3, 1963; San Antonio News, “Precinct Not Represented: Peña Hits Hospital,” June 29, 1964; San Antonio News, “Peña Blasts Coliseum Board Makeup,” December 16, 1964; San Antonio Express, “Peña Blasts Appointment System,” December 17, 1964; San Antonio Light, “Don Politico Says,” June 23, 1963; James McCrory, San Antonio Express-News, “Courthouse Power Aids Peña Campaign Kickoff,” May 26, 1964 (“Peña said he has asked the county judge to appoint a committee to study the feasibility of combining some city and county services without success. He added the district attorney and city attorney offices should be combined, as should the county and city tax collection offices.”); Ted Farnes, “Treviño Debate: Peña Wins a Round,” San Antonio Light, May 29, 1964 (“Peña said he has repeatedly advocated consolidation of the city and county tax offices, city and county clerk offices and the

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district attorney and city attorney offices.”) Even in discussing seemingly unrelated issues, Peña raised issues concerning the needs of the working class. In discussing the proposed financing of a teaching hospital in San Antonio, for example, Peña stated: “I know the teaching hospital will create a lot of jobs, and that’s fine, . . . But they should pay a decent wage, I’m not going to be a party to cheap wages in this town.” (In San Antonio Express, “Helland Charges Peña Reactionary,” July 21, 1966.) 36. Texas Observer, “Mexican American Leaders Hold a Summit Conference,” p. 11. 37. Peña interviews. 38. James McCrory, “Illegal Signatures Kill Demo Petitions,” San Antonio News, February 20, 1963; San Antonio Express, “Full Phone Check on Petition,” February 19, 1963. In 1964 Peña publicly stated that the coalition was considering running a Democratic slate for the 1965 city elections but nothing came of it. (In San Antonio News, “Coalition Might Field City Ticket,” December 3, 1964.) 39. San Antonio Express, “County Democratic Leadership Election Issue Is City Council,” May 29, 1968; also San Antonio Light, “Don Says: Alaniz May Run for Post,” January 7, 1968; and San Antonio Light, “County Chairman Sworn In,” June 8, 1968. 40. Bernal interview. In 1964 the Westside ggl did defeat a Chicano candidate who was fielded by the coalition. Within a two-year term, however, the ggl’s candidate, Joe Bernal, had switched to the coalition.

Part Two. A Period of Transition 1. In this sense, then, the ggl, as a nonpartisan slating group, was everything but nonpartisan. But I am also using the word “partisan” in a more generic sense to describe the taking of sides, especially ideological sides, in how the city would be run. Indeed, because of the legacy of one-partyism in Texas, this kind of partisanship was the rule and not the exception. For a good discussion of this particular issue read also Luis Fraga, “Domination Through Democratic Means.” 2. What is important to note is that passo, as will be described in Chapter Five, was created out of the “Viva Kennedy” clubs in the 1960 presidential election. It was visible throughout South Texas and West Texas. As such it was already having an impact in the rural areas. While Crystal City was the only rural town where passo successfully got involved in its political takeover by the Chicano community, it was enough to create an image of a radical Chicano takeover of towns all over Texas. The symbolism of Crystal City was by far the scariest part of their successful takeover which later would be used effectively in a demagogic manner in San Antonio politics.

5. The Changing of the Guard 1. Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town. Shockley has one of the earliest comprehensive descriptions of Crystal City, but for our purposes, as noted below, we have referred to the passo description as well as the Peña interviews to insure the connection to the San Antonio story. 2. See Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (passo), “Crystal City Story,” for a copy of the telegram from John Kennedy thanking the leaders of the Viva Kennedy clubs for his victory. Albert Peña, lecture on Chicano politics, July 30, 1985; also Rodolfo Rosales, interview with John Alaniz, July 20, 1986. See also Shockley, Chicano Revolt. According to Peña, they accepted on the condition that the Texas movement be linked directly to the 206

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Kennedy campaign itself. They insisted on having direct communication with Bobby Kennedy, who was managing his brother’s presidential campaign. This relationship helped Chicano political leaders develop direct contacts with national political leaders and foundation sources. These contacts proved to be key in setting up the political infrastructure that supported the political advances of the 1970s. The most significant organizations/institutions making up this infrastructure and which still play a significant role today, are the Mexican American Unity Council (mauc—a nationally recognized economic development organization), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, popularly known as maldef, and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project. 3. San Antonio Express, “Peña Seeks Positive Anti-Bias Action,” August 25, 1965. 4. passo, “Crystal City Story.” In an unfinished draft of a speech, “The Mexican American Revolution and the Kennedys” (date unknown), Peña quotes a speech presented by him to a meeting of the minorities division of the national Democratic party in the 1960 national convention. Indeed, Peña was already acutely aware of the need of a broad Chicano agenda in his criticism of the 1960 National Democratic Convention in Los Angeles for not allowing Chicanos to present their views. In this same speech he predicted that Chicanos would organize independent of the Democratic Party. 5. Peña interviews. 6. Samora, et. al., ed., Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers, p. 89; Chicano Almanac (San Antonio: Texas Institute for Educational Development, 1973). 7. Gunpowder Justice, p. 115 and 117; see also San Antonio News, May 9, 1963. 8. passo, “Crystal City Story.” 9. Gunpowder Justice, p. 107; also Goodwyn, “Los Cinco Candidatos.” 10. Gunpowder Justice, p. 124 –130. 11. This first Crystal City “uprising” provides the connection that other analyses do not touch: the coalition, and therefore San Antonio Chicano middle class politics, not only set the stage for but also were the harbingers of La Raza Unida. For a more intimate look at the relationship, see the Jose Angel Gutierrez papers in the Mexican American Studies Archives at the University of Texas at Austin. 12. passo, “Crystal City Story.” 13. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 282 –283. 14. Bernal interview. 15. San Antonio News, “Bernal Is Appointed to Re-Districting Committee,” January 27, 1965; San Antonio Express, “Two Threaten Court Action on Districts,” May 31, 1965; San Antonio Light, “Districting Plan Hit,” May 4, 1965; San Antonio Light, “Bexar Delegation Lash Out Against Legislative Council Plans A and B,” January 13, 1965. 16. Indeed, Henry B. Gonzalez, in August 1997, announced that he would be resigning by January 1998 because of health reasons. Gonzalez had represented Congressional District 20 since 1961. 17. Gunpowder Justice, p. 131–156; Bernal interview. 18. Gunpowder Justice, p. 148 –149. 19. Texas Observer, “Mexican American Leaders Hold a Summit Conference.” 20. Torres interview. 21. San Antonio News, “Cockpit,” April 25, 1965; San Antonio Light, “Don Politico: A Liberally Oriented Democratic Political Machine,” March 28, 1965 (the article cites Jimmy Knight, Albert Peña, James Barlow, Judge Charles Grace, State Senator Franklin Spears, and State Representatives Tim Lee, Jake Johnson, and John Alaniz as key members of the coalition). 22. San Antonio Express, “58% of Bexar Voter Potential in West Precincts,” March 24, 1966. Notes to Pages 84 –91

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23. San Antonio News, “Alaniz Author of Bill to Consolidate Elections,” March 24, 1965; “Bernal Home Rule Bill Sent to Panel,” May 22, 1965. Some of the more publicized power moves included a bill taking power away from the county court of law over condemnation cases and mental health proceedings and assigning it to the county judge, who was a coalition member, and a bill increasing the annual pay of Knight and Hauck (coalition members) to $15,000 and limiting the $16,000 salary of Davies. The issue over who would have judicial power over condemnation cases hit at the heart of contracting services, that is, who controlled the spoils system. San Antonio Express-News, “Bill to Broaden Jurisdiction of County Court At Law #4 to Criminal and Restores to County Judge Original Concurrent Jurisdiction in Land Condemnation Cases and Mental Health Proceedings,” May 6, 1965; San Antonio Express, “Bexar Solon Denies Effort to Punish San Antonio Conservatives,” March 19, 1965; San Antonio Express, “Editorial,” March 26, 1965 (the editorial condemned Alaniz and Spears for the consolidation bill). 24. San Antonio Express, “Campaign Sneaks Up,” March 21, 1965; San Antonio Express, “Alaniz Legislation Forcing Tax Collector Assessor Davis to Deputize Poll Tax Deputies ‘Probably Unconstitutional’,” May 27, 1965. 25. John Rogers, “The City Elections: San Antonio as Usual.” 26. Ibid. 27. James McCrory, “Coalition Captures Victory in Demo Committee Fight,” San Antonio Express, May 8, 1964; San Antonio Express, “Precinct Posts Key to Demo Control,” May 9, 1964; San Antonio Express, “Demo Convention Appeal Possible,” May 8, 1964; San Antonio Express, “Bexar Party Executives Undecided,” May 8, 1964. 28. James McCrory, “Bexar Coalition ‘Weak Links’ Out, Peña Says: Solid Front Splits,” San Antonio Express, September 19, 1964. 29. James McCrory, “Anti-Peña Forces Line Up for May Primary Battle,” San Antonio News, November 15, 1963. 30. San Antonio Express-News, “City Politics Enter County Judge Race,” October 10, 1964. 31. James McCrory, “How Business Men Get to Go to ‘Reeves Rallies’,” San Antonio Express, April 11, 1966. 32. San Antonio Express, “58% of Bexar Voter Potential in West Precincts,” March 24, 1966. 33. San Antonio Express, “Coalition Conceded Defeat Before Start,” May 15, 1966. 34. Ibid. 35. Kay Duarte, “Rumblings of Mexican-Americans,” The Alamo Messenger, June 3, 1966. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. San Antonio News, “Peña Sets Conditions for Going to Hearing,” September 17, 1967; Acuña, Occupied America, p. 307–356, for an overview of Chicano politics during the 1960s. While Acuña looks at the larger picture in the Southwest, he does provide the broader context to the hearings set up by the Johnson administration. 39. Congressional Record, 1968. 40. San Antonio Light, “Alaniz in Dilemma,” March 31, 1968. 41. San Antonio Light, “The Cockpit,” June, 1968. Gonzalez also supported the ggl’s candidate for Bexar County Democratic Party chairman in 1968 and opposed the only coalition candidate, Pete Torres, for city council in 1971. By 1972, Gonzalez successfully campaigned against Peña and Bernal (the last coalition/passo political officeholders). 42. Jim Price, “Three-Man Race Heats Up: Commissioners’ Post Up for Grabs,” San Antonio Express-News, April 16, 1972. 43. Price, “Three-Man Race Heats Up.” 208

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44. San Antonio Express-News, “Potpourri,” March 19, 1971; San Antonio Express-News, “Cockpit,” March 19, 1971. 45. Torres interview. 46. The Westside ggl was not a formal group, nor did it have any public list of members. Moreover, one of the leading activists who produced the letter, which had many signatures from westside businessmen, was Ruben Munguia, who claimed that he never belonged to the Westside ggl, even though by the late 1960s his politics were usually supported by them. 47. San Antonio News, “Peña Supporters Hit Connally Blast,” September 10, 1963.

6. The Transitional Period 1. Peterson, City Limits. Peterson argues that the only practical function of cities, besides the provision of services to its citizens, can be development or in layman’s language as coordinator of investments. All other things in this particular scheme of things then rise and fall as investments rise and fall. 2. Booth and Johnson, “Power and Progress in San Antonio Politics.” 3. Smith, City, State, and Market. See Chapter Two for a brief discussion of Smith’s argument as it pertains to this point. 4. San Antonio Light, “Medical School Requests Under Study,” September 12, 1962; San Antonio Express, “Optimistic Report Says Med Center Ready by 1965,” June 6, 1962; San Antonio Light, “Master Plan for Great Medical Center Unveiled,” December 13, 1962; Rick Casey, “Medical School Site Still an Open Wound,” San Antonio Light, November 12, 1991. 5. Smith, City, State, and Market, p. 93. 6. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans, p. 284. The incident of burning the credit cards occurred at a San Antonio meeting of the Federation for the Advancement of the Mexican American (fama), a coalition of Chicano groups organized around the issues of misrepresentation of Chicanos in the media as well as discrimination against Chicanos in employment. 7. As will be discussed in this chapter, the fact that no Chicanas were visibly involved in these organizations points to the fact that these organizations sustained some of the same contradictory politics of exclusion. Politics and political leadership was perceived as a male domain. But at the same time, as will be discussed, the very nature of these organizations created the opportunity for Chicanas to begin to assert their own interests and concerns. 8. Manuel Garza interview. Garza, a lifelong resident of Edgewood Independent School District, was elected to the board in May 1996 and has served as chairperson of the board since May 1998. 9. Kemper Diehl, “Lanier Student Walkout Hinted,” San Antonio News, April 10, 1968. 10. Rudy Rodriguez interview; Velasquez interview; and Lozano interview. Also see Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). Freire’s definition of “concientizacion” (or concientizacao in Portuguese) became popular in the Southwest during the 1970s; it revolutionized the concept of education and especially literacy programs for the poor in Latin America and eventually across the world. In defining this concept, he states that it is not simply awareness or consciousness but a critical consciousness that acts on reality. One can see why Freire became very popular in the Chicano movement, especially as it turned to grassroots organizing. See also Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, eds., Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (New York: Routledge, 1993) for an excellent discussion of Freire, his ideas, and their impact on modern pedagogy. 11. Aguilar interview. 12. Montejano interview. Notes to Pages 100 –110

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13. Martinez interview. Martinez eventually sat on the Mexican American Unity Council board, the National Council of La Raza board and others. She points out that when she first went to work with the House of Neighborly Services as a secretary, she was very critical of people on welfare. 14. Anguiano interview. In the south side, another key grassroots activist in the coalition politics of Peña, who has since passed away, was Mamie Lopez. Considered the “political godmother” to many of the young Chicana and Chicano activists getting involved in the Chicano movement in the late 1960s, Mamie, as she is remembered, nurtured, encouraged, and virtually pushed young Chicanas and Chicanos into visible political roles until the day she died. It was through their association with Mamie that many future Chicano and Chicana activists entered into electoral politics. One of the most visible Chicanos directly influenced by Mamie’s nurturing was Joe Alderete, who represented City Council District Seven from 1977 to 1985. Two sisters, Lupe Ybarra and Elvira Gomez, who are to this day, after almost forty years, still active in their barrios, also played similar mentoring roles. 15. Sylvia Rodriguez interview. 16. Castro interviews; Gloria Cabrerra interview. 17. San Antonio Light, “Pickets Return to sasa,” September 11, 1970; San Antonio Express, “Ten Arrested After Melee at Frost National Bank,” September 11, 1970. The list of those risking police brutality and jail is long, including Albert Peña, George and Andrea Velasquez, Nacho and Ofelia Perez, Frank Tejeda (the late congressman), Edgar Lozano, Rudy Rodriguez, and Gloria Cabrerra. 18. Gloria Cabrerra interview. This committee, including Gloria Cabrerra (a Chicana law student), Rosie Castro (the president of the Young Democrats at Our Lady of the Lake College), Mario Compean (one of the founders of mayo and later a gubernatorial candidate for the Partido Raza Unida), Gregoria McCumber (a southside activist), Albert Peña Jr. (county commissioner and coalition leader), and Ruben Sandoval (a Chicano civil rights activist lawyer), discussed in Austin the plan of a boycott. 19. Castro interviews. 20. Gloria Cabrerra interview. 21. Meza interview. 22. Castro interviews. 23. Sylvia Rodriguez interview. 24. Lloyd Larrabee, “Poverty Reorganization Could Be All-Night Job,” San Antonio Express-News, May 6, 1966; Julian Rodriguez, “Poverty War Meeting Again Runs Smoothly,” San Antonio Express-News, May 12, 1966; “Council to Pick Poverty Fighters,” San Antonio ExpressNews, May 12, 1966. 25. Kemper Diehl, “Cleric Sorrowed by ‘Power Play’,” San Antonio Express-News, May 13, 1966; San Antonio Express-News, Editorial “Poverty War ‘Power Grab’ Imperils Program Again,” May 15, 1966. 26. Benavides interview. 27. San Antonio Express-News, “Voice of the Poor Heard as Areas and Groups Served Elect,” May 12, 1966. 28. One of the original founders of snac and a lifelong southsider, Nacho Perez is still involved in community and housing development in South Texas. Perez was also one of the founders of mayo. The impact of the mayo politics to this day has not been measured in any real terms. For a close analysis of mayo see Navarro, Mexican American Youth Organization. 29. A lifelong San Antonio resident, public school teacher, and activist, Dario Chapa also ran for city council in District Five in 1977 but was defeated by Bernardo Eureste. He contin210

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ues to organize public housing residents around tenant rights; from 1989, he has served as director of Mis Casas, a public housing tenants organization. Mario Compean, one of the original founders of mayo and an eventual leader in Partido Raza Unida, a third party, actually began his career as an outreach worker for a poverty agency in the west side. After working on his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he became in 1996 director of a Chicano Studies program at Yakima Valley Community College in the state of Washington. 30. Gloria Cabrerra interview.

Part Three. Political Pluralism and Its Consequences 1. Sanders, “Nonpartisanism,” p. 49 –55. The structural change analyzed by Sanders, as pointed out in an earlier chapter, profoundly affected the role of the Chicano community in urban politics in San Antonio. 2. Castells, The City and the Grassroots. 3. La Esperanza’s suit against the city is based on the constitutionality of the city council’s actions in selecting out La Esperanza from other arts organizations for de-funding, and not on the linking of art to the market. The broader political issue, though, is couched in terms of marketability versus community: must public-funded art be evaluated strictly on its ability to bring in more tourists, as opposed to being art that is aimed at the community and its own aesthetic principles? 4. San Antonio now has four community colleges, three private universities, two University of Texas campuses (one on the far north side of town as well as a downtown campus), and two other universities within 25 miles of the city. Also on the drawing board is a Texas A&M campus on the south side of San Antonio. In the summer of 1996, the students created a network of Chicana and Chicano student organizations spanning the various campuses in San Antonio. While not very active, this network provides a forum for student activism that has not been seen in San Antonio since the Chicano movement in the early 1970s. 5. Castro lecture.

7. Style and Strategy in San Antonio Politics 1. Telephone interview with historian Rodolfo Acuña, April 16 and 19, 1986. Acuña argues that the single-member district plan in San Antonio had actually produced brokers for the business class. Katznelson, City Trenches. Katznelson would argue that the “rules of the game” were simply being applied. 2. San Antonio Express-News, “Direct Vote for Mayor Plan Wins,” November 6, 1974. 3. Esquivel interview. Esquivel points out that the difference between coalition politics and single-member politics was one of agendas. He pointed out that under coalition politics, one didn’t have to worry about raising funds or running a campaign. However, in singlemember district politics, one had to raise one’s own funds and run one’s own campaign. Therefore, agendas were personal in single-member district politics. He preferred the latter. The organizational efforts that surfaced during this latter period were in the form of nonpartisan community organizations, such as Communities Organized for Public Service (cops), the Mexican American Unity Council (mauc, a community development non-profit organization), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (maldef, a nonprofit legal advocate for the Chicano community). 4. Plotkin, “Democratic Change in the Urban Political Economy.” 5. Cotrell interview. Notes to Pages 121–142

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6. See Chapter Two for a discussion of personal agenda politics. 7. Bernal interview. State senator Joe Bernal, a liberal local coalition member, was a plaintiff in the court case that established single-member districts for state legislative positions. Ironically, this led to his political defeat in the 1972 state elections and his subsequent retirement from public office. 8. Brischetto, Cotrell, and Stevens, “Conflict and Change in the Political Culture of San Antonio”; San Antonio Express, “Direct Vote for Mayor Plan Wins,” November 6, 1974. The first challenge to this at-large system, which took the form of a city amendment presented to the voters in the fall of 1974, failed. This failure, however, further strengthened the argument coming from the Chicano community that the 1972 annexations had diluted their voting power. 9. Brischetto, Cotrell, and Stevens, “Conflict and Change,” p. 88. The San Antonio annnexations were subject to review by the Justice Department even though they had taken place prior to the extension of the Voting Rights Act to Texas in 1975. 10. Diehl and Jarboe, Cisneros. Actually, Cisneros received his Ph.D. from George Washington University. However, he earned a second master’s at Harvard, and finished the course work for a doctorate at mit but never wrote a dissertation because he was “three quarters of the way through the one he wrote for George Washington University.” (p. 50) 11. San Antonio Express-News, “Cisneros Fiscal Health Plan Is Valuable City Planning,” June 7, 1976; San Antonio Light, “Fiscal Notes Necessary,” February 20, 1977; San Antonio Express-News, “Cisneros Raps City Garage Criticisms,” August 30, 1975; San Antonio Light, “Cisneros Angered by Firing,” June 17, 1975; San Antonio Light, “Councilman Loses Bid,” June 25, 1975. 12. San Antonio Express-News, “A Compliment Stirs Argument,” November 7, 1975. 13. San Antonio Express-News, “Council Okays Aquifer Protection Plan,” July 18, 1975. 14. San Antonio Light, “San Antonio Revises Budget,” July 24, 1975; “A Compliment Stirs Argument,” November 7, 1975. This brought Cisneros directly into conflict with the Northside Chamber of Commerce president. When the chamber president complimented the council on its decision to build the mall over the aquifer, he noted that the council’s decision permitted orderly growth and progress to continue in spite of attempts by certain pressure groups to use the Edwards Aquifer issue as a tool to redirect the city’s growth. Cisneros responded by asking if Slaughter (the chamber president) meant that any council member who voted against the mall was an opponent of growth in San Antonio. 15. San Antonio Express-News, “Groups Eye Recall of Councilmen,” February 14, 1975. 16. San Antonio Express, “Council Studies cps Controls,” August 22, 1975. 17. San Antonio Light, “Councilman Loses Bid,” June 25, 1975. 18. San Antonio Express-News, “Let puc Know Stand— Cisneros,” September 12, 1976; San Antonio Express-News, “In the Bag,” June 1, 1975; San Antonio Light, “Cisneros Walks to Gumshoe Beat,” November 6, 1975; San Antonio Express, “Cisneros Learns Poor’s Problems,” March 26, 1978. In another incident, Cisneros publicly criticized the state Public Utilities Commission for its favorable review of proposed rate hikes presented by the telephone company. 19. San Antonio Express-News, “The Seductive Henry C,” February 15, 1981. Indications of Cisneros’s “single-mindedness” go back to an unpublished paper he wrote at mit where he describes a new minority voting trend and the kinds of strategies that would be needed to successfully gain electoral power in San Antonio. (Henry Cisneros, “A New Minority Voting Trend—Its Causes and Impact: San Antonio, Texas.”) Indeed, a profile of Cisneros will show that his political orientation goes back to the Committee for Community Progress, an informal arm of the ggl in the westside barrios during the 1960s and early 1970s. Ruben Munguia, 212

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Cisneros’s maternal uncle, even though he denies ever being part of the ggl, was, as a candidate for public office, supported by the ggl various times. 20. San Antonio Light, “Cisneros Won’t Take Envoy Post,” October 19, 1979. Even before he gained national prominence as mayor he was courted by President Carter in 1979 to take a national position; his response was: “My first priority is building San Antonio right now.” 21. Berriozabal interviews. 22. San Antonio Monthly, “Stir Ugly Sentiments among City’s Anglos,” October, 1977. 23. The executive director of afscme, Linda Chavez Thompson, to the amazement of many union activists, sided with the city manager on the firing of the workers. Apparently afscme saw this strike as a turf war rather than as workers organizing for their rights. 24. San Antonio Light, “What Makes Bennie Run?” May 2, 1982 . . . “Some—including himself—view him as the voice of the Hispanic in South Texas. Others see Bernardo Eureste as a bumbling, arrogant, uneducated ethnic bent on destroying the gringo.” (p. 1K) 25. San Antonio Light, “Bernardo Eureste: He’s a Champion of the ‘Underdog’,” November 5, 1978. 26. San Antonio Light, “Eureste to Practice as He Preaches,” May 15, 1977. 27. “Bernardo Eureste: He’s a Champion of the ‘Underdog’,” November 5, 1978. 28. “What Makes Bennie Run?” May 2, 1982. 29. San Antonio Light, “Bernardo Eureste Answers Editorial By Light,” July 19, 1982. 30. San Antonio Express-News, “Bernardo Eureste: Bandit or Savior,” September 13, 1981. 31. Anna Marie Peña and Tom Bell, “Staying Power.” Indeed, while Chicano art advocates were outside city hall serenading Eureste for his heroic finding of a million dollars in the budget, local public employee labor organizers from the National Association of Government Employees were in his office chastizing him for taking that money from the “sweat of sanitation workers.” At the same time those same labor leaders were marching with him in demonstrations, helping him with his re-election campaigns, working with him in barrio-oriented issues, etc. 32. “Bernardo Eureste: Bandit or Savior,” September 13, 1981. 33. San Antonio Light, “Eureste’s Traveling Activism Show Stirs Hornet’s Nest,” January 29, 1983. 34. Banfield and Wilson, City Politics. 35. “What Makes Bennie Run?” May 2, 1982. 36. Peña and Bell, “Staying Power.” 37. Deborah Weser, “Cisneros Lashes Back at Eureste,” San Antonio Light, February 23, 1983; San Antonio Light, “Park Incident Plays Key Dist. 5 Role,” March 23, 1983. 38. Ralph Winningham, “Eureste Has Caused Controversy Since 1977,” San Antonio Express-News, February 20, 1985. 39. San Antonio Light, “Eureste: Don’t Jail dwi Cases,” January 20, 1983; San Antonio Express, “Eureste Claims Hispanics Singled Out in dwi Arrests,” January 14, 1983. 40. Peña and Bell, “Staying Power,” p. 20. 41. Bill Hendricks, “Eureste ‘Hit List’ Target Claimed,” San Antonio Express-News, February 18, 1985. 42. San Antonio Express-News, “Eureste Shifts Support to Jackson Campaign,” January 7, 1984. Despite his many feuds, Eureste supported and successfully brought the Reverend Jesse Jackson to the Guadalupe Theater for a rousing political rally during the primary elections of 1984. Thus, Eureste continued to maintain a degree of political credibility despite his seemingly erratic behavior. 43. Hendricks, “Eureste ‘Hit List’ Target Claimed,” February 18, 1985. Notes to Pages 147–154

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44. San Antonio Light, “Sea World Eyeing City,” January 8, 1985; David Hawkins, “City Deal with Sea World Follows Whirlwind Courtship,” San Antonio Light, January 13, 1985; David Hawkins, “City Manager Lists the People Who Helped Sea World Project,” San Antonio Light, February 1, 1985; Ralph Bivens and Dale Rankin, “Sea World Boosts Area Prices,” San Antonio Express-News, January 11, 1985. 45. David Hawkins, “Sea World Puts Webb’s Campaign on the Rise,” San Antonio Light, January 13, 1985; David Hawkins, “Sea World Deal Names Sought,” San Antonio Light, January 30, 1985; San Antonio Express, “Eureste Asks for Details about Sea World Talks,” January 30, 1985; Dale Rankin, “Land Buy Tip Denied,” San Antonio Express-News, February 20, 1985. 46. Jan Jarboe, “San Antonio Wastes Its 3 Wishes,” San Antonio Express-News, February 24, 1985; David Hawkins, “Sea World Faces Second Controversy,” January 23, 1985. 47. Jan Jarboe, “San Antonio Wastes Its 3 Wishes.” 48. San Antonio Light, “Eureste Calls Millsap Racist; Vows to Continue Fighting,” March 28, 1985. 49. Roger Beynon, “The Plan,” San Antonio Monthly, February, 1983; Carol Cirulli, “Splashing Up San Antonio’s Marketing Effort,” San Antonio Light, March 8, 1987; Charles Boisseau, “Perot Donates $15 Million,” San Antonio Light, March 11, 1987; Charles Boisseau, “Semiconductor Plant Under Way,” San Antonio Light, March 5, 1987. 50. Baylis, “Leadership Change in San Antonio,” and Gibson, “Mayoralty Politics in San Antonio, 1955-79.” Baylis argues that the future does not bode well for another Chicano mayor in San Antonio. His analysis is based on the assumption that Cisneros was an exception, and that after his departure ethnic politics would dominate, eliminating the possibility of another Chicano mayor. Indeed, as of 1997, no other Chicano or Chicana had been elected mayor.

8. The Cultural Is Political; the Political Is Cultural 1. In selecting the profiles my critieria were that they be presently active in politics and that they have a broad political visibility in the community. I selected Berriozabal because she was the first Chicana city council member in San Antonio, and because she continues to maintain her linkage to her community through various channels. I selected Rosales because she was the first Chicana to break the male hierarchy in the local lulac organizational structure, and because she continuously integrates community and cultural issues with policy issues in a very public manner. [Her selection was more difficult because of our relationship; we have been married since 1966.] Finally, a more in-depth study of Chicana political views and participation needs to be conducted. These profiles simply serve as models of the potential politics that exists from an excluded gender position. 2. Hardy-Fanta, Latina Politics, Latino Politics. In her introduction, Hardy-Fanta points out that there was a consistent difference along gender lines in the pattern of responses to the question, “Tell me what you do politically.” The consistent difference was that the Latina tended to be more philosophical and much broader in terms of how one would define politics in the first place. The Latino, on the other hand, tended to define politics in the narrow confines of “position and power.” While the Latina included position and power in her definition, her concerns were too broad to be confined to that narrow a definition. Thus, she would include in her definition the question of view, of “making connections,” of participation, and most certainly of empowerment. While Hardy-Fanta did not argue that it was a biological thing, her study pointed to the social, political, and psychological experiences that go into making that difference. (Introduction, p. 1–14)

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3. Constituency may be the wrong word to use for both women. They both are very much involved in organizing and not leading. This is also a very important characteristic in the style of politics that these women represent. Leadership to both seems to be more of a situational thing rather than a positional thing, even as they both sought positions of leadership within their respective politics. 4. Carolyn Elliot, “Today’s Woman in San Antonio: A Tradition of Involvement,” San Antonio Light, May 10, 1981. 5. Berriozabal interviews. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Elliot, “Today’s Woman in San Antonio.” Berriozabal points out that Luz Escamilla and 26 Mexican American women organized mabpw because there was no organization which welcomed the increasing numbers of Mexican American working women. In addition to goals established by the national Business and Professional Women’s Federation, mabpw added the goal of elevating the image of the Mexican American woman in San Antonio. 10. Gloria Cabrerra interview. Cabrerra recalls that when mabpw was first organized, their concept of membership excluded secretaries and clerks. That obviously changed as more and more Chicanas found that the glass ceiling for them during the 1970s was not in some mid-management position but at the level of clerks and secretaries. 11. Berriozabal interviews. 12. Ibid. 13. Meza interview. 14. Elliot, “Today’s Woman in San Antonio.” 15. Berriozabal interviews. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. In her December 8, 1992, interview Berriozabal outlined the following ten principles that she followed: 1. go in with an ideal that this position belongs to the people—focus on development of neighborhood leaders; 2. use your resources as a woman all over this country to make Latinas more visible; 3. hang to your guns in a team that has some very negative sanctions for someone who doesn’t go along; 4. nurture and educate your constituents; 5. organize the people around the issue of children and families to where there is a lobby, so that at least there are people that fend for children; 6. develop a vocabulary that was not there before, such as affordable housing and human capital investment; 7. have the courage to stand 10 years voting against the biggest issues of this city and then dare to run for mayor on those very issues. 19. Ibid. 20. Jeff Franks, “Mizzoner: Councilwoman Maria Berriozabal Succeeded Henry Cisneros Once, Can She Do It Again?” San Antonio Monthly, March 1987. The term “Mizzoner” obviously is a play on the male usage of the word “Hizzoner,” which refers to the formal manner by which the mayor is addressed, His Honor, Her Honor. 21. Elliot, “Today’s Woman in San Antonio.” 22. Franks, “Mizzoner.” 23. Ibid. 24. Meza interview. 25. Since the election Berriozabal has stayed active in community issues as well as Chi-

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cana issues. The Hispanas Unidas Conference has been the key organizational structure by which she has maintained this activism. In 1994, Hispanas Unidas was granted funding to provide a broad profile of Chicanas in San Antonio. She was also appointed to the Organization of American States Committee on Women by President Clinton, where she actively participated in the Fourth World Conference on Women held in September 1995 in Beijing. 26. Rosales interviews. 27. Zamora, The World of the Mexican Worker. 28. Rosales interviews. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. Dr. Svenson, who was denied tenure, attended law school and continued working on Native American issues. Most of the Chicanas/Latinas in this group eventually got their Ph.D.’s or law degrees. 31. Marina Pisano, “Don’t Take No for an Answer, Activist Tells College Students,” San Antonio Express, March 2, 1993. 32. Rosales interviews. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Dues check-off, where the employer deducts the union dues from the employee’s paycheck, is essential for a union to survive. Otherwise they spend most of their time trying to collect dues, neglecting the organizing and defending of workers. 36. Rosales interviews. 37. Ibid. 38. Marquez, lulac. For an excellent analysis of the formative years of lulac, see Orozco, “The Origins of the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in Texas, with an Analysis of Women’s Political Participation in a Gendered Context, 1910 –1929.” 39. Pisano, “Don’t Take No for an Answer.” 40. Rosales interviews. 41. Ibid.

9. The Question of Inclusion: A Final Note 1. Bachrach and Baratz, Power and Poverty. 2. Both Frank Tejeda and Ciro Rodriguez played significant roles, especially in the transitional period of the early 1970s. One could safely say that it is this period of activity that formed the basis of their political trajectories. Ironically, while they were political foes throughout Tejeda’s life, when he passed away in the summer of 1997 Rodriguez ultimately succeeded him. 3. Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans. 4. In 1989, Lila Cockrell was re-elected as mayor of San Antonio. Then in 1991, Nelson Wolff squeaked in by a three percent margin over Maria Antonietta Berriozabal. In 1995, Bill Thornton was elected mayor and then in 1997, Howard Peak was elected. 5. Polinard, Electoral Structure and Urban Policy. 6. Katznelson, City Trenches. 7. Lukes, Power: A Radical View. 8. Castells, The City and the Grassroots, p. 291. 9. See Chapter One, p. 11. 10. In the 1997 elections an entire new slate of city council representatives took over city 216

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council because of the two-term limitation rule in the city charter. For the first time since single-member districts were implemented, seven out of the eleven representatives (ten singlemember districts and the mayor) were minority (six Chicanos and one Black). Immediately upon taking their seats, the minority faction challenged the geographic representativeness of the boards and commissions, showing an independence from the northside monied interests rarely seen before in San Antonio politics. Further, it was not only a direct challenge to the dominance of the north side in these boards and commissions, but a direct challenge to the business community’s dominance in these appointments. But then when it came to deciding on the funding for the arts, they seemed to have succumbed to the economic development notions of the north side as they went along with the equation of arts with economic development. As a consequence, most of the Chicana and Chicano arts programming seems now to be in jeopardy. Indeed, the agenda and the economic development language accompanying it seem to be secure enough. In the first case this agenda was not challenged; rather, the issue was inclusion in that agenda, and certainly in the second case the clear subordination of other issues and needs to the needs of economic development comes across loud and clear. 11. Rostengarten, Letters from Prison, p. 299. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian revolutionary who was in the united front against Fascism and was jailed because of his revolutionary politics in Italy at the time of Mussolini’s rise to power. In a note to one of Gramsci’s letters from prison, the translator explains: “(T)his is one of Gramsci’s mottoes, customarily associated with him but that he probably borrowed from the French writer Romain Rolland (1866 – 1944). Rolland used the aphorism ‘pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will’ in a review of Raymond Lefebvre’s Le sacrifice d’Abraham published in L’Humanité (March 19, 1920): ‘What I especially love in Lefebvre,’ Rolland wrote, ‘is this intimate alliance—which for me makes the true man— of pessimism of the intelligence, which penetrates every illusion, and optimism of the will.’ Rolland was active in the campaign to secure Gramsci’s release from prison in the mid 1930s. In June 1935, in Moscow, he met with Gramsci’s two sons who, accompanied by Eugenia Schucht, thanked him for his efforts on Gramsci’s behalf. For further information on Rolland and Gramsci, see David J. Fisher, Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). However, some people believe that Gramsci borrowed the aphorism ‘pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will’ from Francesco Saverio Nitti, who in his turn is said to have borrowed it from the French writer Benoit Malon.” (note 1, p. 300) 12. Peterson, City Limits. 13. Lorena Figueroa, “saha Job Fair Draws 500 Applicants,” San Antonio Express-News, August 15, 1998. Choco Meza, chairperson of the San Antonio Housing Authority board, the sponsor of the fair, stated that it “was designed to help low-income people living in public housing get jobs, a response to the new welfare reform.” The article further points out that “more than 50 people applied for clerical, housekeeping and food-service jobs at the hospital district’s booth.” The event, which brings out Lukes’s “third face” of power perfectly, maintains a routine where even those who are exploited are taught how to enter into the process in a proper manner instead of opposing the exploitative and cheap wage side of service employment. The community does not operate on its own needs, but on the needs and requirements of the market economy. 14. Castells, The City and the Grassroots. 15. La Fuerza Unida was organized by the Chicanas who were laid off by Levi-Strauss when that company moved its operations to Latin America seeking a lower wage scale. The women have continued to lobby and politic against Levi-Strauss in Congress, as well as in communities from coast to coast that invite them to speak. Notes to Pages 186 –189

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Rocco, Raymond A. “The Chicano in the Social Sciences: Traditional Concepts, Myths, and Images.” Aztlán Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts. Vol.1 no.2 (Fall, 1970): 75 –97. Rogers, John. “The City Elections: San Antonio as Usual.” Texas Observer. Vol.57 no.8 (April 16, 1965): 14. Romano V., Octavio Ignacio. “The Anthropology and Sociology of the Mexican Americans: The Distortion of Mexican American History.” El Grito: A Journal of Contemporary Mexican American Thought. Fall, 1978. San Antonio Library Vertical Files (on San Antonio Light and San Antonio News and Express articles). San Antonio Vertical File: Bexar County: Senators—Henry B. Gonzalez. ———. San Antonio Vertical File: Cisneros, Henry G. ———. San Antonio Vertical File: City of San Antonio— City Council, May, 1975 –April, 1985. ———. San Antonio Vertical File: Gonzalez, Henry B. Bibliography—1962 –1983. ———. San Antonio Vertical File: Mayors— Cisneros, Henry G., files 1–7. ———. Texas Vertical File: Bexar County: Democratic Organizations. ———. Texas Vertical File: Bexar County Commissioner: Peña, Albert—Precinct 1, January 1, 1957–December 31, 1972. Stone, O’lene, Ed Castillo, and Frank Trejo. “Life and Death of the Mexican-American Organization.” San Antonio Light. December 14, 1980. Tenayuca, Emma, and Homer Brooks. “The Mexican Question in the Southwest.” Political Affairs. (March, 1939): 257–268. Texas Business. “Texas’ Great Hispanic Hope.” June, 1981. Texas Observer. “Mexican American Leaders Hold a Summit Conference.” Vol.58 no.25 (January 20, 1967): 11–12. The United States Law Week. “Opinion Announced May 3, 1954.” Vol.22 no.42 (May 4, 1954): Section Four. Us. “Break Through Mayor.” August 4, 1981. Warren, Earl. “Majority Opinion, Hernandez v State of Texas, No. 406.” In United States Law Week: Supreme Court Opinions. Vol.22, no.42 (May 4, 1954). Weiss, Stuart L. “Maury Maverick and the Liberal Bloc.” The Journal of American History. Vol.57 no.4 (March, 1979): 880 – 895. Yoes, E. D., Jr. “Cops Takes on City Hall.” Texas Observer. Vol.68 no.22 (November 12, 1976): 3 –5.

Unpublished Papers, Theses, and Dissertations Ashcroft, Robert, and Tucker Gibson. “Political Organization in a Non-Partisan Election System.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southwestern Political Science Association, Dallas, April, 1977. Cisneros, Henry G. “A New Minority Voting Trend—Its Causes and Impact: San Antonio, Texas.” Typescript. Political Science 246, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, Spring, 1970. Communist Party. “Resolution on Mexican Work.” Approved by Texas State Convention, July 7, 1940. Cordova, Theresa. “Latino Politics in Chicago.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September, 1990. Cuellar, Robert. “A Social and Political History of the Mexican-American Population of Bibliography

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Texas, 1929 –1963.” Master’s thesis, State University, 1969. Reprint: San Francisco: R&E Research Associates, 1974. Davies, Ronnie C. “Maury Maverick: The Rise and Fall of a National Congressman.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1966. Dickens, Edwin Larry. “The Political Roles of Mexican Americans in San Antonio, Texas.” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1969. Fraga, Luis. “Non-Partisan Slating Groups: The Role of Reformed Parties in City Electoral Politics.” Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 1984. Garcia, Gustavo. “An Informal Report to the People.” Newsletter reporting the case to the community, 1954. Gonzalez, Henry B. Letter to Lico Lopez. 1986. Gutierrez, Jose Angel. “La Raza and Revolution: The Empirical Conditions of Revolution in Four South Texas Counties.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1968. Hernandez, Andy. “Mexican American Voting Patterns in Bexar County: 1928 –1941.” Typescript. Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, San Antonio, 1975. Lane, Robert Hart, Jr. “Voluntary Associations among Mexican Americans in San Antonio, Texas: Organizational and Leadership Characteristics.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1968. (Available through University Microfilms, Inc.) lulac pamphlet. “History of lulac.” 1984. Madla, Frank L. “The Political Impact of Latin Americans and Negroes in Texas Politics.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1964. McCrory, Jim. Letter to Albert Peña. March 24, 1986. Orozco, Cynthia E. “The Origins of the League of United Latin American Citizens (lulac) and the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement in Texas, with an Analysis of Women’s Political Participation in a Gendered Context, 1910 –1929.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992. Peña, Albert, Jr. “The Mexican American Revolution and the Kennedys.” Unfinished draft of speech. Personal papers of Albert Peña Jr., n.d. Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations (passo). “Crystal City Story.” Organizational Pamphlet. Ca. 1963. Rodriguez, Eugene, Jr. “Henry B. Gonzalez: A Political Profile.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1965. Sanders, Luther Lee. “Nonpartisanism: Its Use as a Campaign Appeal in San Antonio, Texas, 1961–1971.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1974. Santillan, Richard. “Political Economy of Barrio Politics.” Paper delivered at the Symposium on Political Economy, Power, and the Chicano Community, the University of California at Los Angeles, March 5, 1977. Sierra, Christine Marie. “Contemporary Latino Politics.” Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September, 1990. Vega, Arturo. “Mexican Americans and Internal Colonialism in Texas.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1983. Voigt, Kathleen Bratton. “Texas Politicians, Political Philosophies, and Constituencies.” Master’s thesis, St. Mary’s University, 1968. Zamora, Emilio. “Negotiating Mexican Workers’ Rights during World War ii: The Fair Employment Practice Committee at Corpus Christi, Texas.” The Hispanic Research Center’s Cross-Cultural Lecture Series, March 28, 1996.

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Personal Interviews Aguilar, Mariano, March 13, 1993. Alaniz, John, July 20, 1986. Alvarado, Leo, May 10, 1993. Anguiano, Roberto, March 17, 1993. Benavides, William, February 9, 1993. Bernal, Joe, January 28, 1985. Berriozabal, Maria Antonietta, December 8, 1992, and April 27, 1993. Cabrerra, Roberto, April 5, 1993. Cabrerra, Gloria, August 31, 1992. Cantu, Norma, September 22, 1992. Cardenas, Blandina Bambi, April 2, 1993. Castro, Rosie, August 19, 1992, and August 24, 1992; lecture, Chicano politics class, University of Texas at San Antonio, August 15, 1993. Compean, Mario, January 23, 1993. Cotrell, Charles, March 30, 1993. Esquivel, Rudy, December 12, 1985. Flores, Arnold, February 23, 1993. Garza, George de la, lecture, St. Mary’s University Urban Politics class, July 16, 1985. Garza, Manuel, September 22, 1992. Gonzalez, Pancho, April 14, 1993. Guerra, Carlos, September 19, 1992. Herrera, Jesse, January 16, 1985. Lozano, Edgar, February 15, 1992, and February 22, 1992. Maldonado, Andy, January 8, 1994. Martinez, Alicia, September 28, 1992. Meza, Choco, January 3, 1993. Montejano, Diana, March 22, 1993. Munguia, Ruben, December 10, 1984. Murillo, Gil, March 7, 1985. Patlan, Juan, October 10, 1992. Peña, Albert, Jr., lecture on Chicano politics, St. Mary’s University Urban Politics class, July 30, 1985; series of lunch interviews, San Antonio, May 7, 1986 through January 24, 1988; lunch interview, Michigan State University, November 16, 1989. Perez, Nacho, September 23, 1992, and April 2, 1993. Rodriguez, Gene Jr., June 14, 1993, and June 21, 1993. Rodriguez, Gene Sr., June 14, 1993. Rodriguez, Rudy Flaco, September 19, 1992. Rodriguez, Sylvia, June 12, 1993. Rosales, Rosa Salazar, July 16, 1993, and a series of informal interviews. Sanchez, Ray, December 19, 1984. Torres, Pete, January 4, 1985. Treviño, Felix, March 6, 1985. Valdez, Frank, January 15, 1985. Valdez, O. J., January 20, 1985. Vasquez, Alfred, August 16, 1986. Zaragoza, Edmundo, September 29, 1992. Bibliography

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Index

Acuña, Rodolfo, 208, 211 afscme, 171, 213 Aguilar, Mariano, 109, 118 Alaniz, Johnny, 67– 69, 74, 91, 99, 205 Alderete, Joe, 148, 166, 210 Alejos, Candelario, 119 Allee, Y.A., 87 Almaguer, Tomas, 201 Alvarado, Leo, 118 Alvarado, Sam, 170, 171, 172 annexation, 47 apa (Aquifer Protection Association), 145 Appel, Henry, 64 Aquifer Protection Association (APA), 145 Bachrach, Peter, 33, 179, 184, 187, 188 Baldit, Juan: photo of, 129 Baratz, Morton S., 33, 179, 184, 187, 188 Barrera, Mario, 201 Barrios Unidos, 109, 118 Baylis, Thomas A., 214 Bellinger, Valmo: photo of, 126 Benavides, William, 117, 120; photo of, 128

Benmayor, William V., 22 Bernal, Joe J., 88 –90, 100, 108, 206, 212; photo of, 127 Bernal, Mary Esther, 111 Bernard, Herschel, 64 Berriozabal, Manuel “Mannie,” 164; photo of, 164 Berriozabal, Maria Antoniette, 1, 183, 214, 215; cited, 148; compared with Rosales, 173; and feminist movement, 162; photos of, 131, 134; politics of, 159, 161, 163, 165 – 168, 176; and San Antonio City Council, 163 –166; and water issue, 174 –175 Bexar County Democratic Coalition (“the coalition”), 29, 42; demise of, 94 –96, 100; forming of, 62 – 65; and election of Henry B. Gonzalez, 72; and ggl, 61, 74 – 77, 79, 80, 81, 102 –103, 119; in the legislature, 67–70; liberal role of, 75 –76, 83, 90, 102, 118; and partisan politics, 119, 122; and passo, 84, 91 (see also passo) Black, Rev. Claude, 92; photo of, 126 Booth, John, 5, 48 Briseño, Alex, 183; photos of, 130, 131

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Brooks, Homer, 7 Brown Berets, 109 Cabrerra, Gloria, 118; and mabpw, 215; and maldef, 120 –121; photo of, 128; and sasa boycott, 113, 210; and women’s movement, 115 Calderon, Herbert: photo of, 126 Calvert, T.C.: photo of, 134 Cantinflas, 205 Cantu, Mario: photo of, 135 Cantu, Norma: photo of, 133 Carr, Waggoner, 87 Castells, Manuel, 30, 32, 41, 138, 185, 188, 197 Castro, Rosie, 118; as cbb candidate, 120; and Chicana politics, 139, 160, 164, 210; and Chicano movement, 114, 115; on Olga Peña, 67; photo of, 128 cbb. See Committee for Barrio Betterment cbs (Columbia Broadcasting System), 112 Chapa, Dario, 118, 119, 210 Chicanas: as cbb candidates, 120; and Chicano Movement, 110 –116, 122; and gender politics, 188 –189; and maldef, 133; and mayo, 108, 209; photo of, 125; political role of, 18, 38 –39, 65 – 67, 76, 81, 139, 159 –177 passim Chicana Welfare Rights Organization, 110 – 111 Chicano Democratic Caucus, 112 Chicano movement, 107, 113, 114, 121–122, 182 “Chicano Question,” the, 80, 96, 121 Cisneros, Henry, 1, 3, 18, 148, 163, 183; Berriozabal and, 166; education of, 212; and Eurestes, 149, 151–154 passim, 156; and ggl, 142; and minority politics, 212; and Northside Chamber of Commerce, 212; photo of, 131; political rise of, 144 –147; political significance of, 157; and President Carter, 213; and water issue, 145 –146 Citizens Committee for Better Government, 88 City Water Board (San Antonio), 145 –146 coalition, the. See Bexar County Democratic Coalition Cockrell, Lila, 142, 146, 148, 216 Committee for Barrio Betterment (cbb), 96, 118, 119, 120; photo of candidates, 128 232

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Committee for Community Progress, 52, 53. See also Westside ggl Communities Organized for Public Service (cops): and business-dominated discourse, 157; Cisneros and, 147; organization of, 142; politics of, 179 –180; role of, 37, 138, 184, 201; and water issue, 145, 174, 201 Compean, Mario, 108, 120, 210, 211; photo of, 128 Conley, Karyn, 175 Connally, John, 74 –76, 80, 87, 94 Conservation Society, 174 cops. See Communities Organized for Public Service Cornejo, Juan, 87 Cortez, Ernie, 108 Council-Manager Association (San Antonio), 46 Crystal City (Texas), 83, 86 – 88, 108, 206, 207 Daniel, Price, 59 Daniels, John, 50, 75, 96 de la Garza, George, 52 de Lara, Jose, 172 Del Castillo, Adelaida R., 200 Democratic Party, 28, 29, 55, 56, 111. See also Bexar County Democratic Coalition Democratic Women of Bexar County, 111 “Don Politico,” 72 Dutmer, Helen, 147 Edgewood High School, 108 Edgewood Independent School District, 147 Edwards aquifer, 145 El Dequello, 120 Elizondo, Willie: photo of, 127 El Teatro Del Barrio, 109 Esquivel, Rudy, 65, 69, 88, 211 Eurestes, Bernardo, 18, 57, 121, 147–158, 166, 213 Express-News (San Antonio), 146 –147 Fainstein, Norman I., 201 Fainstein, Susan S., 201 farmworkers, 89, 97; strike by, 107–108 Flores, Arnold: photo of, 129 Flores, Jimmy Regalado, 57

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Flores, William V., 22, 198, 200 Fraga, Luis, 197, 202, 206 Freire, Paulo, 209 Gambitta, Richard A., 12, 162 Garcia, Angela “Angie,” 164, 170, 172, 175; photo of, 135 Garcia, Gus, 14 –15, 51, 57 Garcia, Hector, 57 Garcia, Matt, 57 Garcia, Minnie, 111 Garcia, Richard A., 6 –7, 8, 9, 199 Garza, Manuel, 108, 209; photo of, 129 Garza, Martin, 110 Gatti, John, 91 ggl. See Good Government League GI Forum, 15 Gomez, Elvira, 110, 210 Gonzalez, Henry B., 51, 58, 67, 120; achievements of, 102; and Bexar County Democratic Coalition, 35, 98 –99; elections of, 54 –55, 70 –73, 89 –90; and ggl, 208; and papa, 15 –16; photos of, 127, 130; and San Antonio City Council, 50; and Stevenson rally, 57; and Texas State Senate, 63, 69; and United States House of Representatives, 98 –99, 207 Gonzalez, Joaquin, 97 Goode, John, 71, 72, 94 Good Government League (ggl): and Bexar County Democratic Coalition, 76 –77, 79, 91–95, 100, 101, 119; and business, 29, 34, 50, 59 – 60, 75, 79, 95, 101, 102, 104, 107, 148; Chicano role in, 14, 42, 51–53, 60; as conservative group, 53, 64, 69; demise of, 101, 142, 143; dominance of, 59 – 60, 74 –77, 107, 120; maldef and, 120 –121; and municipal reform, 13 – 14, 102, 119; photo of, 125; and racial issues, 14, 92, 94 –95, 100; role of, 13 –14, 17, 29, 34 –35, 42, 43, 45, 48 –50, 59 – 60, 79, 102, 206 Grace, Charles, 64, 93 Gramsci, Antonio, 43, 217 Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, 138 Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, 153 –154 Guarjardo, Ben, 109

Guarjardo, Juan, 109 Gutierrez, JoAnn, 110 Gutierrez, Jose Angel, 87, 108, 207 Guzman, Tito: photo of, 126 Hardy-Fanta, Carol, 160, 214 Hartman, Glen, 148 Harvey, David, 30 “Hat Ladies,” 172 Hernandez, Andy: photo of, 130 Hispanas Unidas, 199, 215 Huebner, Tom, 149 “Hunger in America,” 112 Inclusion, 36, 138 Internal Colonial model, 23 –24 James, Sam, 92 Johnson, David, 5, 200 Johnson, Jake, 68, 69 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 58 –59, 71, 72, 97–98; War on Poverty of, 96, 110, 117– 118, 181 Jones, Richard, 12 Jovanovich, William, 155 Justice Department (United States), 143 –144 Katznelson, Ira, 24, 31, 43, 184, 211; cited, 25 – 26, 27, 30 Klitch, Richard, 155 Knight, Jimmy, 63 Knights of America, 7 lad. See Loyal American Democrats La Esperanza, 138, 189, 211 La Fuerza Unida, 189, 217 Lanier High School, 108 La Raza Unida, 87, 98, 100, 109, 117; photo of, 129 League of United Latin American Citizens. See lulac Lieck, Charles, 55 Lopez, Mamie, 210 Loyal American Democrats (lad), 55 –57, 124 –125, 203 Lozano, Edgar, 210 Lozano, Ruben, 202 Lukes, Steven, 33, 184, 187, 201 Index

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lulac (League of United Latin American Citizens), 17, 63, 83; Chicanas and, 172, 176; and labor issues, 171, 172; as middleclass organization, 7– 8, 26; photo of, 135; role of, 26, 57, 176 Luna, Guadalupe: photo of, 133 mabpw (Mexican American Business and Professional Women), 163, 215 Madla, Frank, 147 maldef (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund), 120, 143, 206; photo of, 133 Marshall, T.H., 15, 199 Martin, Jack, 59, 64 Martinez, Alicia, 110, 111, 210 Martinez, Walter, 156; photo of, 130 mauc (Mexican American Unity Council), 206 –207 Maverick, Maury, Jr., 54 –55, 71–72, 102 Maverick, Maury, Sr., 54 mayo (Mexican American Youth Organization), 108 –109, 118 –119, 210 McAllister, Walter, 112 McClesky, Clifton, 204 McCrory, James, 71–72 McCumber, Gregoria, 210 McGovern Rules, 111 McLaren, Peter, 209 Mexican American Business and Professional Women (mabpw), 163, 215 Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (maldef), 120, 143, 206; photo of, 133 Mexican American Unity Council (mauc), 206 –207 Mexican American Youth Organization (mayo), 108 –109, 118 –119, 210 Mexican Chamber of Commerce, 15 Meza, Choco, 115, 116, 164, 168, 217 Millsap, Sam, 153 Montejano, David, 5, 24 –25, 27, 107, 198 Montejano, Diana, 109, 181 Moore, Joan, 197 Munguia, Ruben, 62, 63; and Chicanas, 66; and ggl, 212; and lulac, 57–58; and Maverick, 54, 203; photos of, 127, 131;

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and Stevenson rally, 56 –57, 203; and Westside ggl, 209 Muñoz, Elie, 111 Munoz, Henry, 97 mutualismo, 168 –170 nage (National Association of Government Employees), 171 National Association of Government Employees (nage), 171 Nelson-Cisneros, Victor B., 198 Nitti, Francesco Saverio, 217 Northeast Committee, 64 oeo (Office of Economic Opportunity), 118 Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo), 118 Olivares, Jose, 52, 53, 56 Orozco, Cynthia E., 9, 199, 216 Ortiz, Rudy, 147–149 Owen, Richard, 64 Pachon, Harry, 197 Padilla, Roy, 92 –93 Pan American Progressive Association (papa), 15 –16, 199 papa (Pan American Progressive Association), 15 –16, 199 passo (Political Association of SpanishSpeaking Organizations), 206; and Bexar County Democratic Coalition, 91, 93, 94, 95, 103; and Chicano Movement, 206; and civil rights movement, 102; and Crystal City, 85 – 88; Gonzalez and, 99; importance of, 83 – 85; politics of, 91, 103; Treviño and, 202 Patlan, Juan, 108; photo of, 129 Patterson, Carol, 175 Patterson, Kirk, 175 Peak, Howard, 216 Peña, Albert, Jr., 51, 58, 64, 95, 203 –206 passim, 210; and Bexar County Democratic Coalition, 64, 65, 91, 93, 94, 96; cited, 14; as county commissioner, 73 –74, 97; and Democratic Party, 54, 59, 99 –100, 207; elections of, 55, 63, 100 –101; and GGL, 94; and Henry B. Gonzalez, 72 –73, 99;

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Rayburn, Sam, 59 Raza Unida. See La Raza Unida Rhode, Al: photo of, 129 Richards, Ann, 168; photo of, 131 Rodriguez, Ciro, 179, 216; photo of, 130 Rodriguez, Fred G.: photo of, 130 Rodriguez, Gene, Sr., 67 Rodriguez, Henry: photo of, 134, 135 Rodriguez, Norma, 183 Rodriguez, Rudy, 210 Rodriguez, Sylvia, 111–112, 116, 164 Rogers, John, 50 Rolland, Romain, 217 Roman, Mary, 160 Rosales, Rosa, 214; and Berriozabal campaign, 164; and lulac, 172 –173; as organizer, 170 –172; photos of, 134, 135; politics of, 159, 161, 168, 170, 176; and water issue, 175; and women’s issues, 169 –170

Sanders, Luther Lee, 211 Sanders-Castro, Judith, 175; photo of, 133 Sandoval, Ruben, 210 San Martin, Jose: photo of, 127 San Miguel, Guadalupe, Jr., 198 Santescoy, Hector, 150 Santos, Richard, 200 sasa (San Antonio Savings Association), 105; boycott of, 112 –113 Schattschneider, E.E., 33, 201 Sea World Enterprises, Inc., 155 Seeligson, Frates, 55, 68 Shafer, Ray, 64 Sheridan, Ed, 55 Shockley, John S., 206 single-member district system of government, 137–138, 141, 143, 147–148, 157 Skerry, Peter, 21, 22 –23 Sloss-Ventos, Adela, 14 Smith, Father Sherrill, 97 Smith, Michael Peter, 29, 30 snac (Southside Neighborhood Assistance Corporation), 118 Solis, Lalo, 56, 57 Southside Neighborhood Assistance Corporation (snac), 118 Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (svrep), 154, 197, 206 Steen, John, 148 Steinberg, Stephen, 23 Stevenson rally, 203; photos of, 124 –125 Sunbelt era, the, 79 Sutton, G. J., 51, 59, 64, 92, 95, 203 –204; on Connally smear-and-fear campaign, 96; photos of, 126, 127 Svensen, Frances, 170, 216

Salazar, Herminio, 169 San Antonio (Texas): annexation in, 47; Chicano middle class in, 2 –3; colleges and universities in, 211; demographics of, 9 –13; political reform in, 2; singlemember district system of government in, 137–138, 141, 143, 147–148, 157 San Antonio Savings Association (sasa), 105; boycott of, 112 –113 Sanchez, Arturo: photo of, 132

Takaki, Ronald, 200 Tech High School, 108 Tejeda, Bobby, 147 Tejeda, Frank, 118, 147, 179, 210, 216; photo of, 132 Tejeda, Juan, 154 Tenayuca, Emma, 7– 8 Teniente, Richard: photo of, 133 Texas Observer, The, 50, 90 Texas Rangers, 86, 87

and lulac, 57; and passo, 84, 85; photo of, 128; praise for, 102; and Seeligson, 68; and Stevenson rally, 56, 57; and Vietnam War, 109; and War on Poverty, 118 Peña, Olga, 66 – 67, 111, 113 –114, 204 Perales, Alonso, 14, 15 Perez, Nacho, 108, 210 Perez, Ofelia, 210 Perry, David, 45 Peter, Leonard, 209 Peterson, Paul E., 187, 209 Ploch, A.J., 94, 99 Political Association of Spanish-Speaking Organizations. See passo Pyndus, Phil, 148

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Thompson, Bob, 149 Thompson, Linda Chavez, 171, 213 Thornton, Bill, 216 Torres, Peter, 90, 100 Tower, John, 71 trench politics: defined, 43 Treviño, Albert, 58 Treviño, Felix, 53, 57, 93, 202; photo of, 126 Truan, Carlos: photo of, 131 Turner, Kay, 175 Unión Fraternal Latino Americano, 169 United Public Employees Union (upea), 170 –171 upea (United Public Employees Union), 170 –171 Valdez, Frank, 203 Valdez, Jesse, 153 Vale, Theresa, 111 Valenzuela, Maria, 164, 170 Van de Putte, Leticia: photo of, 133 Van Dyke, Robert, 146, 150 Vasquez, Alfred, 51–52 Velasquez, Andrea, 210; photo of, 129

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Velasquez, George, 210 Velasquez, Willie, 108, 154; photo of, 129 Vera, Yolanda, 165; photo of, 132 Viva Kennedy clubs, 84, 86 Voting Rights Act, 105 War on Poverty, 96, 110, 117–118, 181 water issue, 174 –175 Watkins, Alfred, 45 Webb, Joe, 147 Weinstein, James, 46 Westside ggl (Committee for Community Progress), 52, 53, 60, 88 – 89, 90, 206, 209 White, Jack, 48 Wing, Frank, 147, 154 Wolff, Nelson, 100, 168, 175, 195, 216 Women’s Rights, 113 –116. See also Chicanas Wurzbach, Ollie, 99 Yarborough, Ralph, 53, 75 Ybarra, Lupe, 110, 210 Zamora, Emilio, 10, 169, 198, 199 Zaragoza, Edmundo, 147; photo of, 129