Part of: Cynthia Valadez oral history (5 objects)
Cynthia Valadez oral history - Cynthia Valadez oral history
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- Q: All right, the date is 11/21 -- I mean, November 21,
- and I’m conducting a follow-up interview with Cynthia Valadez. (loud background noise)
- All right. And I guess the first question to start off
- is to follow up on more of the Chicano Movement. I just wanted to ask you
- specifically: what was it like for women in the Chicano Movement, or for
- yourself as a woman in the Chicano Movement? A: Well, it was actually pretty difficult.
- We talked about Chicanismo and Chicanisma. We talked about feminism. We talked about,
- you know, being equal to men. But if you look within our own partido, with our own movement,
- you know, it was very difficult for women, even though we were doing the bulk, what I felt,
- of the heavy lifting, the boots on the ground, the organizing, the talking to people, the knocking
- on doors, the walking, all this work, having meetings, coming up with great ideas on how to do
- strategies and events, and it was still the men that were looked upon as being leaders.
- Okay? And they used to tell us, “Well, this is culturally, you know -- this is a cultural
- deal.” Because, you know, we’re living -- we have -- some of the Mexicanos, or Mexicanas,
- and the -- you know, it’s the machista or whatever.
- And if you go back, if you look at history, and if you go back, you know, back in the old days,
- like my great-grandparents, my great-grandparents thought of each other as equals.
- When my great-grandfather was president of a school board, the La Joya Independent School
- District, we had women -- and his wife, my great-grandmother -- who were equally active.
- And that wasn’t the Movimiento; that was just a reality. That was their historical reality
- down in the Valley at that time. However, the candidates, those that were rising up to the
- leadership positions of their organizations, and then through the partisan politics or whatever,
- the movements, it ended up being mostly men and not women. So that was one of the reasons
- that it was during my tenure, you know, my involvement in the mid-to -- early-to-mid-’70s,
- that during that time period I got to witness my friend Diana Serna’s mother.
- She was one of the first Mexicanas to be a mayor, and she was a mayor in Crystal City. So that is
- an example of what was going on here, even within Raza Unida here in Austin. You know, we had Maria
- Elena Martinez who was doing a lot of work, the organizing. We were always at meetings together.
- And yet it was Paul, her boyfriend, (laughs) who was always -- oh,
- he was going to be the actual Texas coordinator, you know, for Raza Unida or whatever, you know,
- those kinds of things. And that was here in Austin, but that was also statewide,
- because this was a statewide movement. So that is an example. When I -- later on, you know,
- as I said, I had gotten involved with -- I was fortunate to have been very involved with the
- local community, the Austin community, during my time as a student at UT and then after,
- afterwards. And as a part of the Concilio, which -- you know,
- the Concilio’s supposed to be -- was supposed to have been, oh, you know, this groundbreaking
- deal -- Brown Berets, the Concilio, whatever -- in East Austin, as the organizing tool for
- Mexicanos who were coming up, and stretching their political, I guess, (laughs) their political arms,
- to be looked upon as entities to be dealt with, you know, who were going to be taking a seat
- at the table when the decisions were being made and the conversations were occurring.
- Even then, we were doing work as Mexicanas, as Chicanas. And we still had the men -- you know,
- Paul Hernandez, or Marcos De Leon, or, you know, Basco, which is Alfredo -- I’ve
- got -- sorry -- something in my throat -- Rangel, they were viewed upon, looked upon as the leaders.
- They were the leaders. They were the ones that the other persons in Austin that were considered the
- political heavyweights in -- either in partisan politics, or neighborhood politics, or in
- local city, county politics, they would go speak with the guys. They wouldn’t speak with us, okay?
- And it was -- that -- of course, that didn’t keep us from going to the meetings and participating.
- There were several times that -- you know, of course there was Adela Mancias and myself
- and Sally Sanchez, or Julie Garza from Corpus, or, you know, different people. We were all here
- in Austin. And we would go to the meetings, and we would speak out, and we would expect to be
- respected, you know, at least given the same weight, you know,
- for our contributions to the conversation. And that rarely happened. What, in fact, happened is
- we became -- not became ostracized, but we became looked upon as aggressive women,
- you know. Here in Austin, you were looked upon as aggressive, as opposed to assertive. You
- were looked upon as being, well, you must be gay or something because, you know, you’re so
- outwardly -- Q: Outspoken?
- A: -- you know, putting yourself -- outspoken, but you’re also putting yours-- holding yourself out
- as an equal to the male counterpart. I remember there was a conversation that was had between
- Marcos De Leon and who was my husband at the time, Orlando Mata, who had run for State
- Representative in District 51. And he -- Orlando’s the one that told me this. That’s -- I was not
- privy to this conversation. Orlando told me this, that we were in front of the Q House. We
- were having some kind of a reception or party for something there, or political event, and
- Marcos was talking to Orlando, and he was sitting there asking Orlando, “Orlando, how do you do it?
- You know, gah, talking to Cynthia is just like talking to a man. You know,
- how do you do it? How can you stand it?” (laughter) And Orlando just laughed, because,
- you know, Orlando’s very secure with himself. That’s probably one of the reasons that he
- married me, or fell in love with me and married me, was because of my outspokenness, and because
- I dealt with you as an equal. I didn’t deal with you as a man. I didn’t deal with you as a
- whatever, you know. That’s -- that was my -- that was within my character. That’s what I learned,
- okay? I was -- that I was an equal, and I was never to feel ashamed, or be shamed,
- and be quiet, and don’t assert yourself, or don’t stand up for what your principles are,
- or if you have an idea or something you speak up, you say it out loud so that others can hear it.
- You know, of course, try to (laughs) hold on to your own ideas, because
- what tends to happen, and what tended to happen, and what did happen,
- is then they hear you say something, it sounds interesting, it sounds appropriate, they take
- it. The words become theirs. So oftentimes you found other people -- and that’s true today.
- That continues to be true to this day. This is not just in the ’60s and ’70s,
- the Chicano Movimiento, the everybody coming out. It has nothing to do with that. I think that’s
- today. You know, there are still people who may not feel the same level of confidence, and their
- ideas of stepping on people’s toes or, you know, as they move up the political ladder or whatever,
- they’ll take credit for things that they themselves did not think of,
- or for things that they did not do. In East Austin, you know, I became active in the local
- community and with local issues. That’s why I was a part of -- I was like the connection between
- the Concilio and the Town Lake Park Alliance, which was formed to -- Town Lake Park Alliance,
- which was a predecessor to what SOS has become, you know, Save Our Springs. It was Save Our Parks
- is what Town Lake Park Alliance was, and, you know, save the -- kick the -- kick the -- kick
- all of the events off of the Town Lake, you know, because we want to preserve the green space.
- We want it to be appropriate for families and children and things like that. And if they’re
- events, they’re not huge, giant events that are those mega events with people destroying the
- grass and the earth, and then throwing trash into the lake, you know, things like that,
- into -- which is actually not even a lake; it’s the Colorado River, El Rio Colorado. But anyway,
- so I became -- I became one of the what I would call leaders with that group. It
- was J. Frank Powell. It was myself. It was -- (clears throat) my throat.
- Ray Reece, Mary Arnold, Susan Toomey-Frost, who became a City Council member -- I mean, a City
- Council member candidate. A lot of other people. J. Frank Powell. I mean, I’m sorry, T. Paul
- Robbins. Some of those people are still active to this day, but in their own arenas, you know,
- like Mary Arnold with the Planning Commission, and Susan went back to San Antonio. She was -- she
- used to laugh and tell me that she used to be married to the bank, because she was a Frost.
- She used to be married to the -- one of the Frost boys. You know, they had put the bank together out
- of San Antonio. But she herself was a what she called -- she called herself a trust fund baby.
- So it also did not -- during that time, it also -- it didn’t know -- they really didn’t look at
- me because of my color, and they didn’t look at me as -- for what I didn’t have, and that was money.
- They looked at me for being a voice that could go and speak, and wasn’t afraid to speak out
- whenever there was an issue that came before us, before the City Council, that had to deal with
- the neighborhoods, with ha-- the organ-- with the development, things like that. So, you know,
- that was one of the thing-- one of the ways that we benefited. I call myself “we,” as those of us
- that were active in the Chicano arena, you know. And so that was -- it became easier for me to sit
- on various boards and commissions. And so as you do that, as you gain that experience, as you gain
- that knowledge -- because when you’re -- you know, once you sit on a board of commission, you know,
- normally it’s something that you -- it’s within your background, within your area of expertise,
- and so you grow. You develop -- you network. You develop relationships with people that you
- wouldn’t normally maybe even be associating with. And this is your opportunity to work together
- to develop what we were doing, ordinances, you know, rules that neighborhoods, that developers,
- that departments, that the City would adopt and put forth as being their rules or law.
- So that was very important. The development of neighborhood plans, you know, what’s
- appropriate -- an appropriate mix for neighborhood residential and commercial development? You know,
- where do you have the retail space? You know, where do you have the housing? You know, etc.,
- etc. That was -- that became -- it was easy to move up, or it was easy to interact with others,
- but you still, even within the movements -- like, at the same time you have the white women,
- the feminist movement. They called it the feminist movement, but at the time it was basically like a
- white women’s movement, because yeah, they would give you the -- they would have a few token black
- and brown women as part of it, but they never even really con-- they never adopted some kind of
- policy or tradition of, okay, let’s say, you know, we have 10-percent black, or we have 30-percent
- brown, or we have whatever. You know, let us have a leadership that’s reflective of those numbers.
- That never happened, either. And with the feminist movement, it was always about white women.
- It was about white women getting -- becoming candidates, as white women about
- moving up in the socioeconomic ladder. It was white women, you know, not being discriminated
- against, or being discriminated against in the workplace, or anywhere else, but nothing else.
- And so you look at it, and you have to see, distinguish that this had nothing to do even
- with partisan politics. It was just the same everywhere. It didn’t matter -- I guess it’s
- the same in the Republican. I’ve never been in the Republican Party, (laughter) but in
- the Democratic Party it very much was a white person’s world. And so I know we spoke briefly,
- or talked about the patron system, and then how we’ve become a little bit more sophisticated, but
- it’s still very much, within the Democratic Party politics, it’s still very much that same way. And
- they’re very careful to pick, even to this day -- even to this day, after 30,
- 40 years of being involved here in Austin, they still look at you as being -- you know,
- they want to put forth the safe candidate, not necessarily the best candidate. And we’re talking
- about the best candidate that we as Latinos or Mexicanos would determine to be our candidate,
- okay? It’s not that way. It’s they look at who would be a good representative for our population,
- as opposed to we -- this is our candidate and we tell you this is going to be our candidate,
- and this is who you need to get behind. Okay, that hasn’t changed. That still has not occurred.
- That’s one of the reasons I think the Democratic Party is in such a mess right now, (laughter) or
- having some problems, okay? Connecting with the grassroots. Because people see those things.
- They understand what’s going on. And I think that was one of the things, even though I
- wasn’t necessarily a Bernie candidate, I related to everything -- most of what he said. And maybe
- it was because his was more of an independent perspective. And since I had been Raza Unida,
- you know, I could relate to that independent perspective, because you can kind of step back,
- or step out of the box, or step back and see where the real biases are when it comes to
- institutional racism and systemic racism that exist to this day, have forever.
- But it did provide me -- these experiences with community did provide me an opportunity
- to become more active within the City of Austin, or the County, or whatever, and
- make a difference. I felt like I have ma-- I feel as if I have made a difference in my life,
- with respect to issues that have been important to me. And I think that what is needed is to
- have young people step up and learn the -- their history, and learn the history of that particular
- issue, and not act as if it’s inconsequential, or that it doesn’t matter, because, in fact, it does.
- We -- the only way you’re not going to have history repeating itself is if you actually
- know the history. Otherwise, you know, it could be a continuation or a replication, duplication of
- something that may have happened before that we had not learned from. And so I think that
- it’s important that we continue to acknowledge that both men and women, or whatever you are,
- are all to be considered equal, and -- separate but equal (laughs) -- equal, and yet unified,
- in that we need to come together to have those conversations, to have that discourse,
- to make decisions together, maybe a compromise together. And so it may not necessarily be
- everything I want, but it’s going to be the bulk of what I want. It may not every-- be everything
- you want, but you’re going to be -- you’re going to support it, because it contains most of what
- you believe is important, or right. And so I guess a story -- the bottom line for that is
- you have to have a connection to the people that you are -- that you are -- that you are a part of.
- You have to be -- you have to be able to communicate with them at their level.
- You also have to be able to articulate to them, in words that they will understand, and
- experiences -- you know, I mean, experiences that they may have had, had those shared experiences
- and that shared history, so that you can both be brought up, okay? We improve our skills.
- They are raised up. And only by communication, only by sharing information, only by getting
- involved with each of the various communities, ourselves first -- because we have to really
- organize ourselves in order to be able to go and help, to me, another population, another
- community. We’ve got to get our act together first. And within nuestra gente, within our own
- Chicano community, within our own Mexican American community, we have such disparate
- values -- I guess not necessarily values but principles. You know, something may -- somebody
- may think this is important. Another person may think, no, that’s important. And no,
- I want to carry my gun, and no, (laughs) you know, I want to do my this, or whatever.
- And yet, we aren’t working together as a unit, you know, always pushing forth the
- generic agenda that will benefit all of us. And that continues to be a problem.
- So, I don’t know -- I don’t know if I answered or responded to the question.
- Q: No, you did. I guess I just wanted to ask you: do you think maybe that’s what made a
- difference for yourself is the fact that you are so deeply connected to East Austin
- with the personal connections that you had made that, you know, that made a difference in what
- you -- the activism that you took on at that time? A: Yes, I do. I do believe that, that it -- I do
- believe that, because in talking to people at that time -- let’s talk about the ’70s, you know, and
- even in the ’80s, they were not -- there was not -- or there was very little interaction between
- academia or UT and the Austin community, and, in my case, the Latino and the Chicano community.
- There was not that much interaction. The interaction you may see is at bars, and still
- you would find the students staying separate from what they call the people from the hood, you know?
- You know, there was -- everybody had their own little cliques. Everybody had their own, you know,
- this -- “Oh, this is my world, not your world,” and you know, yeah, they may be in the same place,
- but they’re not really interacting as equals. And they’re not even -- not
- interacting as brothers and sisters in the same community. And that’s what we have to overcome.
- That’s what we have to overcome. Q: And going a little bit back to what
- you were saying about, I guess, being a woman in the Chicano Movement, and then women’s liberation,
- you know -- or not women’s -- well, women’s -- A: Yes, it was. That was what it -- the Women’s
- Liberation Movement, burn your bras, you know, (laughter) feminism. You know,
- that was white women’s call, and for -- because we were both, you know? We got the double whammy:
- We were Chicanos and we were women, okay? Q: I mean, do you think that gave rise to
- the Chicana feminist movement? Or, like, women to kind of start form--
- A: Stay -- yeah, and stand up for themselves, because we were, within our own movimiento,
- we were not being treated as equals. That -- I think that’s what I was trying to express
- earlier. We were not. You know, even -- you look at the case, the classic case of Cesar Chavez and
- the Farm Worker Union, you know, Dolores Huerta was right there organizing and working, too,
- but you rarely heard her name. Ya después de atole,
- you know, oh, yeah, everybody’s remembering Dolores Huerta, you know, but
- back then you didn’t -- you rarely heard -- we knew Dolores Huerta because we were watching that
- as Chicanas, okay? We were watching her. But yet, it was always Cesar who was it.
- And yes, he was the creator of that, but he didn’t do it alone. Dolores was a partner. She
- was a cofounder, okay? And, you know, it didn’t happen -- he wasn’t operating in a vacuum. He was
- working in tandem with her, and she was working in tandem with him, and they were working together,
- they were organizing together, and their families were organizing together, and creating a movement.
- And so that’s -- that is what we need to acknowledge and need to do for ourselves.
- It took them a long time -- it took Dolores -- it has taken Dolores a long time to be recognized as
- an equal. And even now, I don’t know whether she really, truly is, okay? But I can guarantee you,
- she was fighting just as hard as he was, okay? And having to do double duty, because she was
- taking care of her family at the same time that she was organizing in the political arena.
- And so that’s -- we have to work twice and three times as hard.
- When you’re involved in the movimiento, you’ve got to kind -- hold your family together, and you
- take care of your kids. You need to get them to school, and you participate, and you do this and
- that and the other, at the same time you’re in the community. And oftentimes we have our own family
- members who are sitting there criticizing us because we should be sitting at home taking care
- of the babies. Well, you know, I’m taking care of the babies, but I want to make sure the babies
- have a better life for themselves. And so I’ve got to move forward and speak out and participate
- in order for them to not have to go through the same struggles that we are going through.
- And I’m sure that’s exactly how our parents thought of it, and our grandparents,
- and our great-grandparents, and all the way down through history. Okay? And it’s just that being
- a Chicana in the movimiento was -- it was a good time, because we could all communicate with each
- other. We could sit there and call each other out, and we could call the guys out. But those things,
- those biases existed. And I think, to some extent, they still may exist, but not as -- they’re not as
- obvious as they were before. I think now where some of us are looking at things as being more
- generational, because you see -- I’ve seen so many young kids, and I’ve talked to so many young kids,
- and a lot of them don’t necessarily see a racial difference, you know, and -- amongst them. Yet,
- in fact, there really is, and you sh-- you don’t want to lose sight of who and what you are,
- your identity and your culture. You don’t want to lose that, because once you’ve lost
- that then it’s easy to become kind of homogenous, and everybody’s the same.
- And so I don’t know what you would be replicating as -- I don’t know how you would be maintaining or
- educating the ones behind you about your history and your culture and your pride and your language
- and everything else if you don’t have that -- you know, if you become more homogenized.
- That’s the same story that I alluded to earlier when I was talking about the acculturism and the
- assimilation, which are -- I believe are tactics and strategies put in place to make sure that we
- do become, you know, okay, if we’re all the same we’ll then let the leaders continue to tell us,
- you know, because we’re all going to be treated the same. So it doesn’t make a difference
- if we have segregated -- continue to have segregated schools. It doesn’t make a difference
- that we have only people of one color, or one ZIP code, or one ethnicity, you know,
- as elected officials in an arena, you know, in an arena, either the school board or whatever.
- And we won’t see it as being anything that’s necessarily wrong,
- when, in fact, that is very wrong, and it goes against everything that we fought for
- with respect to civil rights, with respect to educational opportunities, and economic
- opportunities, you know, housing opportunities. With everything that’s supposed to be a
- social determinant of health, it’s not a social determinant -- it’s a social determinant of life.
- And unless we have a firm grasp on what exactly that is, and what that means to us,
- and what that means to generations, and what it meant to those before us, unless we know
- that and can articulate that to those behind us, then we’ve -- we’re losing. We lose a lot.
- I think that’s one of the reasons we have encountered the problems that we are encountering
- right now. You know, many of us are saying, you know, we’ve lost 40 years in civil rights.
- Every day I wake up with a new, you know -- I’m reading the news and wondering, well,
- what else are we going to lose? You know, what else are -- what else? You know, we’re going
- back. I’m waiting for the English only to come back, okay? (laughter) I really am. Because they
- want this to be a homogenized country. That’s one of the rea-- and they’ve sold people onto
- it. They’ve sold blacks into that, buying into that. “Oh, yeah, because they’re taking jobs away
- from us.” (phone drops out) they’re separating -- they have learned to separate and divide
- our communities from those that are here legally, or born here, and those that were not.
- And those are just, again, the same divide and conquer strategies, as if one is more than or
- less than another. And, you know, again, we’ve gone back. So there should be no second-class
- citizen. There should be no second-class status. We’re all humans. We’re all equal.
- And nobody asked any daggum undocumented person who was coming over here on the
- Mayflower or the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, “Show me your papers.” Okay?
- What happened to the Native Americans? They were destroyed.
- They were just scorched earth, almost, and very rarely were there
- opportunities, as history will reflect, where the Native Americans were treated equally,
- and their rights, or of -- their rights being equal to whoever had newly -- been newly arrived.
- Okay? So we’re still dealing with the same thing. You know? And it doesn’t make a difference
- whether you’re from Texas or California or Colorado or whatever. You know, even though
- our experience may be -- may have been a little bit different, you know, going -- moving west,
- the colonized as opposed to the conquered, you know, it’s still basically the same thing.
- And we need our young kids to learn their history, to maintain their identities, to not lose their
- language, to listen to their elders, and yet model to their brothers -- younger brothers and sisters,
- and to their children and their grandchildren, so that we don’t lose any more than we already have.
- That’s why it was very easy to be active in -- with respect to issues,
- and at the different levels. You had to be at the school district,
- be at the city council, be at the -- you know, in your partisan politics, where you have
- your -- the State of Texas, or national politics, you’re always fighting for the piece of the pie
- that you never had, because you were always having to settle for crumbs.
- And we’re still fighting for that piece of the pie.
- And so we’re never going to get that piece of the pie, unless we learn to work with each other. And
- regardless of what group you’re in -- you know, my group’s as important to me as your group is
- as important to you, though we still need to be able to come together and work together
- and agree on what we think is important, because our resources are finite. And that means
- a lot of things. It could mean the Earth’s resources. It could mean our economies. You know,
- so the economics, the money is a resource. You know, the air quality is a resource. The water
- quality is a resource. The housing stock, a resource. The proximity to stores and retail
- businesses, so that we can get -- go to the doctor or clinic, so we can go to the doctor, and we can
- get a -- go to the department store, buy food, and we can have healthy food, and we can have
- our medicines, and blah, blah, blah. We still have huge spaces that don’t have any of those things,
- and guess who gets thrown there? As al-- as it has always been. It’s going to be the minority
- communities, okay, that are going to get thrown or pushed out to those areas, because
- they don’t have the economic power behind them to be able to state, “No, we’re staying here. No,
- we can” -- because they can’t afford to live. They can’t afford to pay the exorbitant mortgage prices
- or rentals or rents, you know, or things like that here, like let’s talk about Austin, Texas.
- And so, again, you know, here it’s the displacement, the gentrification,
- you know, of communities, as it has always been. As it has always been.
- In Austin. So Millennials and young people coming to Austin for the first time need to learn
- Austin’s history. But they’re not going to know Austin’s history if they don’t go into and learn,
- or if we don’t produce -- and this is one of the things that I’m hoping that you -- people
- like you, as a student for UT, can do what is so necessary, and that is to produce the research
- that tells our stories, okay? To produce that research that tells those stories,
- to get together the statistical information, the data, that prove those stories actually occurred.
- Otherwise, we’re going to be just like those people that deny that Hitler ever did anything
- bad, and that concentration camps ever existed. That’s -- that is -- and that is happening. That’s
- been happening for a while, but there’s -- that -- those that put forth those ideas, you know, have a
- better -- bigger and bigger voice than they did before, because of the political climate. Okay?
- And that political climate has been created by those of us
- who have chosen to remain quiet and to not participate, to not vote when we can, to not go
- to the meetings when we should, to not speak out for what’s wrong, because something else -- “Oh,
- I’ve got to go to happy hour somewhere,” you know? (laughs) That becomes easier to do.
- “Oh, I got to go do this. I got to go do that.” You know, it’s easy to make excuses. It’s hard,
- it’s hard to effect change. You know, that’s one of the hardest things to do.
- So in order to do that, you know, you have to have a really strength of character and a will
- of survival to move forth and do that. You have to have
- courage to do that, because there are going to be people pulling at you from all directions:
- within your community; within your family; within your circle of friends, or who you
- think are friends and they’re really not, because if they were friends they’d be supporting you in
- what you’re trying to do. And that’s another thing (laughs) that people need to understand.
- Are they a friend or are they an acquaintance? Friends are few and far between. Acquaintances are
- many. Acquaintances don’t care what happens here in your life. They don’t care what your issues
- are or are not, and whether you ever achieved your goals. They don’t. Acquaintances don’t.
- So it’s important from the time -- that we model, that we teach our children,
- that we teach our -- those around us, you know, to be able to have the strength and the courage to
- speak out, to maintain, to be able to develop relationships, to network, and to never be afraid
- of the negative that may come your way because of your political activism, because of your need to
- articulate what you perceive to be true.
- Okay? That’s very hard. People don’t want to talk about truth, what is truth. Because it forces one
- to take a position. And a lot of times people don’t want to take a position.
- It’s easier to remain silent and quiet. So -- but that’s the only way we’re going to change things.
- And I’m grateful to you as a student for reaching out. And I’m grateful for you to also recognize
- that you yourself have a goal that you want to achieve. You go get that goal. You go achieve
- that goal, even if it’s -- we’ll do it -- you -- whatever it is, you go achieve it, you do it,
- but don’t forget there -- we need you in there, just like we need other people in other areas,
- and we need us all to come together, and to -- as Chicanos, as Latinos, to be able to push forth our
- agendas, and work with the powers that be, so that we may one day be a part of that power -- we are
- part of the power. We are the power that be. (laughs) So that we will -- we are the power.
- We are the power that is. So Texas -- the demographics in Texas is proving that we should be
- accomplishing and achieving -- accomplishing our goals and achieving much more than we really are.
- And so that’s why I say we’re losing ground. But we -- it’s salvageable,
- and we can turn things around. We can do it within one generation.
- We just have to do a better job of communicating and connecting with each other,
- regardless of where you come -- regardless of your stat-- your position on the socioeconomic ladder.
- So -- Q: Mm-hmm. Is there
- anything else you would like to add? Any -- A: Be proud of the positions you take.
- And own your ideas. Because it’s so easy to not, or to have them taken away from you.
- Okay? I deal with that all the time. I’m dealing with that right now, people taking credit for
- things that -- suggestions that I made, and the justifications for why it should be a certain way.
- So we just need to stand strong, and stand true to ourselves. And to stand up.
- Sorry about my daughter in
- the background. (laughs) Q: It’s fine. It’s fine.
- A: Gloria hates me to be on the phone, you know, but I have a special-needs daughter who’s
- medically fragile, you know, and chronically ill, and that doesn’t mean that I can’t be
- active in my community. That just means I have a little bit more difficult time. (laughs)
- But she hates for me to be on the phone. But I know I had to do this, and I appreciate you
- even taking the time, Marissa, to do this. Q: No, thank you so much. It means a lot
- to me for taking the time to speak to me. A: Well, there were some things I wanted
- to say, and I’ve already forgotten them again, (laughter) that I hadn’t said,
- that I wanted to. But oh well. [Spanish] Q: All right, well, if you really want to
- you can call me up and tell me. (laughter) A: I will, or write it down and send it to
- you. Andale, mija. You have a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you go spend time with your family,
- and also some time with your friends, especially if you have friends that don’t have family to
- spend time with, okay? Andale. Do you have anything else that you want to ask of me?
- Q: No, I think that’s really what I wanted to dig into was as far as your perspective
- as being a woman in the movement, and, you know, the Chicana feminist part, and so --
- A: Yeah, we get the double whammy. (laughter) And it was from our own Mexicanos, you know,
- and our own culture, and what’s perceived to be our culture, presumed to be our culture,
- and then also from the others, you know, those that have positions of power. The positions
- of power were white women. It was, you know, white men. Then it was white women. Then it was
- everybody else. (laughs) And I think Chicanas were down at the bottom. And I think part of that may
- have been because if -- because of our language. You know, many of the African Americans or blacks
- had their language taken from them a long, long time ago, and so the English speakers -- so within
- the school systems, one of the things that I saw as being a problem was that it became,
- then, an anti-language -- almost an anti-language issue, okay? So if you spoke a language other
- than English, then that became the tool to divide you, or to make you feel like you were less than.
- That’s why I always say, you know, we should be -- if we were in Europe, you know, you would be
- praised for speaking more than one language. Here in the United States, you know, you’re demeaned
- for speaking more than one language. So, anyway, hold on to your language and your culture, okay?
- Q: Okay. A: Andale, mija.
- Q: All right, bye. A: Thank you. Bye.
- Q: All right, thank you. Bye.