Adela Mancias oral history

ETHAN WALJE: All right, Good Morning. This is Ethan Walje and Adela Mancias, and we are here

on February 27, 2021, and it is 12:06 PM. Adela, do you give me permission for me to record this

interview on behalf of the Austin History Center? ADELA MANCIAS: Yes.

WALJE: Okay, thank you. Um, could you state and spell your name?

MANCIAS: Adela Mancias. M-A-—Oh I lost you. WALJE: Oh.

MANCIAS: M-A-N-C-I-A-S. I lost video. WALJE: Oh, you did?

MANCIAS: Uh—huh. WALJE: Okay, let's see.

Um, it says mine is on. Can you see me now? MANCIAS: No.

WALJE: Hmm. MANCIAS: I can hear you fine, but I can’t see you.

WALJE: Okay. Uh, let me try stopping it and starting it again here.

MANCIAS: Can you see me? WALJE: Yes, I can see you.

MANCIAS: Hmm. WALJE: Um, huh. What does—what

does your screen look like right now? MANCIAS: Uh, it’s a white screen:

“Login with Google” “Launch Zoom”. WALJE: Oh, um, at the bottom of your screen,

do you see, like, the little—it may have just minimized the window.

Do you see the little Zoom symbol? Maybe you could click it and bring it back up.

MANCIAS: The little Zoom symbol.

Down here? Where’s the— WALJE: Maybe.

MANCIAS: There we go. Oh, okay. WALJE: Okay, can you see me now?

MANCIAS: I can see you. WALJE: All right, awesome.

MANCIAS: I don’t know what that was. WALJE: (laughs) Okay. Um, all right,

so we’ll begin with just a pretty simple question, I guess. Um,

where were you born, and how were you raised? MANCIAS: I’m glad we’re starting with that one.

I was, um, I think context, history and context are important to explain how people got there. Um,

I was born in Plain View, Texas which is in the Panhandle. It’s kind of like, you know,

between Amarillo and Lubbock up there. And, um, how was I raised? My family—my grandparents and

parents were migrant workers way back when. You know, my grandfather had done ranching,

and then they did farming—migrant farming. And they moved around.

They moved out of the valley which is where—my grandparents were born in Mexico, but my parents

were born in the Valley. At that time, it was a very porous border, and people came and went.

And they were both born there. Eventually—they would migrate across, but eventually, they

just settled in Plain View. My grandfather bought—bought a little plot of land—what

was available and what he could afford on really, really meager raises—I mean his salary that

they paid. They paid, from what I could figure—I figured out one time—they got paid like 30 cents

an hour for working in the fields. Eventually, my dad broke out. He learned to weld.

And he still worked in rural areas, but he moved around more because he did, like, irrigation. But

the thing about that is, like, all those little towns were—you know, the Mexican-American people

that lived there—some of them were Mexican. It was also during the bracero era when I

was growing up. The bracero era, I believe, was like from the mid—30s to like mid—60s. And so,

there was a lot of displacing Mexican-American people with, you know, with the bracero—with

people from Mexico, many from Mexico. And it was basically because they paid them hardly anything

even though they were supposed to pay him some money. All this I’ve learned since. I didn’t know.

I had no idea back then. And that’s kind of like my story is—it was real hard not to be clueless

because we just lived, and we just, you know—there was a lot of discrimination

and a lot of what was obvious racism. But I didn’t know the word. I only knew the feeling

that came with it. My parents never said, “Oh, you know, this is racist. This is—".

No, they just, you know, they just worked. And they worked as hard as they could. And

when my dad started moving around, we would go to other little rural places:

like we lived in Kansas for a little bit because he was doing some irrigation pipe welding there.

But everywhere we went, there was always some experience I would have

that kind of ground this feeling of—. Okay, like for example, we would go once a year to visit

family in the Valley from the Plain View to the Valley. And I remember it was a long—okay,

just imagine going from the Panhandle all the way down to the very, very tip of Texas,

which is what we would—(trails off). WALJE: That’s a long trip.

MANCIAS: That’s a long trip. And back—this was like back in the late 50s,

maybe very early 60s, but mostly late 50s. And we would stop and get gas, but we couldn’t go to

the bathroom. And one time I did. I mean, it’s like I needed to go to the bathroom.

And my dad had just gotten gas. And the guy in the garage said, you know, “Yeah?” And I said,

I’m just going to use the bathroom. He says, “You can’t use the bathroom.” And I just kind of looked

at him, and he said, you know, “Mexicans can’t use the bathroom.” And it just kind of like—boom. I

was [like], Okay. You know, when a kid first hears that, and you’re not aware of that—I

mean, you know, we were growing up really, really poor, but I wasn’t aware of that. In the schools,

it was in the schools, but because we just kind of, like, all hung around together and everything,

we just didn’t know it. The only thing about that is we couldn’t speak Spanish even though

that’s the only language we knew at the time, and you were punished for that. But again,

you don’t see that as an injustice. We didn’t know that word. It was just pile—on—pile—on.

WALJE: (Speaking at same time) Right. MANCIAS: Things started kind of just

looking that way. I had a couple of friends that were not Mexican-Americans. I had, like,

a couple little white friends. We were pretty close. And I remember one time we were

going to, like, race across the monkey bars. And I got in line with my friends. They were my friends.

And the kid next to me, or behind me said, “You can’t be in this line.”

And I said, Well, why not? And he said, “Because that’s the Mexican line over there.” And that was,

you know—you would just hear stuff like this. WALJE: Yeah.

MANCIAS: And it didn’t really change. Some teachers had the same experience. We went to—.

My dad eventually got a job in—around the Conroe area, in a ranch around the Conroe

area. Then he was doing ranching; he wasn’t doing farming. And same experience—you know—teachers

would do the same thing. One teacher—this was in Montgomery County. So this was kind of like the—if

you know anything about that area—Washington on the Brazos—it was in that area.

Because we moved from Conroe to West Columbia. And it was kind of like the very seat of the

first Texas government, and those people were—like, they celebrated Texas independence like

nobody’s business. And there weren’t a lot of us. There weren’t a lot of Mexicans—Mexican-Americans.

There were quite a few African Americans, and they were treated even worse. And I think the

only reason we weren’t treated any worse is because there weren’t that many of us. But I

remember sitting—it was middle school—I remember sitting in class—one teacher.

And, like I said, I was the only one that was Mexican there. And she

was doing some lesson—I don’t even know what the lesson was. But she said, “And

if you people ever go to Mexico, you will meet real Mexicans that have money and have good homes.

It’s not like the Mexicans here—you know like the dirty Mexicans around here that you see here.

They have, like, these doorknobs that are made out of real gold,” and it was—(trails off). And I was

already older; I was in middle school. And it was just like this—I just felt myself start getting

hot. And it was anger, and it was shame. And all these feelings just were going in, but I didn’t

have any way to express them to anybody because nobody understood it. Nobody talked about that.

WALJE: There wasn’t really an outlet. MANCIAS: No, and I didn’t really know what it was.

And—but I had my friends and got through it, and at some point just figured out I was going

to—when I graduated I was going to go to school somewhere.

At first, I went to Texas Women’s University. My dad was very

traditional and protective and didn’t want me to go to a school where there were any

men, so Texas Women’s University first year. And then second year, I decided I’d try my hand

at—at the time it was at Southwest Texas. And the next year, it was Austin. I just, you know, I had

kind of just gotten a little more independent just by getting away from home. And it was 1974,

and I came to Austin. And I didn’t come to school. I just got a job.

And I started working for the state. And I worked for a year.

WALJE: (Speaking at same time) What did you do for the state?

MANCIAS: I was a clerk typist. As a matter of fact, when I came to look for a job—I came to

look for a job in January—I decided—. I was in school; I was a journalism major when I started

because I liked to write; I liked to do that sort of thing, so I was a journalism major.

And I would be writing in the newspapers for TW and for Southwest Texas. I wrote in their

newspapers—their school newspapers. And somehow it was like I was starting to get a little bit

just—it wasn’t what I wanted. And so I decided to think about it before I went on.

But I wanted to go to Austin and just think about it there, so I came here,

and I got a job. And the savings—. WALJE: (Speaking at same time) When

you mentioned—oh, I’m sorry. When you mentioned you were typing for some—or you were writing

for some of these school papers, was this before, like, Para La Gente or—?

MANCIAS: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This was while I was still in school. I had just started school.

And so yeah, so this was in my journalism classes and I was writing. And so,

when I got to Austin it was called, it was called the merit system council and that’s

who I was working for and that’s who I applied. I came in and they had told me

that I could apply to the merit system council and get a state job. They in fact hired me.

To this day I cannot type. WALJE: I can’t either.

MANCIAS: (laughs) I’m a horrible typist—I didn’t advance much but, they kept me on. And I worked

there for probably, maybe about a year and then, um, I decided I need to go back to school.

No. That’s not what happened. My roommate from, um, because there was a little place in there.

My roommate from Texas State graduated and moved to Austin and she was a teacher,

and I was still working for the state, and that whole year that I was working for the state I

was looking for something to do, and I—I—I wasn’t a social person I wasn’t going out or anything.

I had some friends but I needed something to do I wanted—and I lived across the street

from the state school—the state, the uh, the state hospital actually and I just

went and I started doing volunteer work and I would, and, and that whole year and I worked

in the state—and then I worked in the state school and started doing volunteer work there.

I just wanted to do something. I felt a need to do something. And so um,

after, after a year my friend from Texas State moved here and she said “Look,

you know, come to this school where I’m working and um, there are jobs where you don’t have to

have a degree yet. There are jobs that you can do where you are just working with kids, and

helping them out. So, I went and I applied and I got the job. It was a middle school.

And I did and I uh, she and I became roommates and we were working—worked with these kids that were

the most at risk kids there were. They, you know, they went out and uh,

they weren’t doing well in school. They were getting in trouble, and uh, I just—it was in

East Austin. They were all Mexican American kids—it was at Martin Junior High.

And they were trouble. But I started tutoring them after school

and working with them on weekends. She and I both—my roommate and I both. And I just, you know,

started going, okay, this is what I really want to do. I really want to work with kids. I really

want to, you know, because I saw a change in their attitudes, um, I saw a change in a lot of things.

And then I decided to go back to school. I though, ok well I’m going to go back and get my degree.

And so I went to UT and this was in about, ok, I went back to UT in about, um, maybe 1976.

Something like that. I came to Austin in 1974, you know, went through a couple of jobs, worked

with the kids, then I went to UT in 1974 and that’s when things really started making sense.

I took a class—it was Chicano studies with Armando Gutierrez [who] was my professor. And, you know,

he started talking about things that I had never heard anybody mention about discrimination and

about the history of Texas and about how the land was stolen and about how people, um, you know,

all these things that I had—that I had felt and knew all along since I was growing up all

of a sudden it had a name for that. There was a reason all of it was happening. And all that, um,

you know, pain and shame and everything just bubbled over and I thought okay, this is where

I really need to be doing. So I went and I talked to him and I said I want to get involved—what are

you doing—what can I do something? And he was one of the leaders of Raza Unida at the time.

Raza Unida was a third party and I don’t know if you know anything about it but it

was a third party and um, at the time, they were running a governor—um, a person for governor, and

uh, doing a lot of voter registration, and they had the state newspaper right there at UT—that’s

where it was. And so he said, “Go see if uh, well what can you do?” And I said well, I don’t know. I

can write. And he said, “Well see what you can at the newspaper.” And so I went and I started

working with Para la Gente. I wrote a couple of articles. And they just started asking me to

write and the issues at the time for the party were migrant worker issue and police

brutality issues. There were a lot of police brutality cases going around in the state

and um, and so they just asked me to do some stories on that. And I started doing that and

eventually it went in to doing—just doing more work for the party. And so, we would go to

different rural places, like, in South Texas—Carrizo Springs, Crystal City, Uvalde—all

those little places and we would do door to door voter registration. Me with people helping them

to do their own organizing. And so I learned about community organizing through all that.

And we do marches, and, you know, we—and all this was new knowledge for me but I was learning as

I did it and I was really into it. And then the editor for the paper graduated and so they asked

me if I wanted to do that. And this was still within that year—within about a year and a half

that I’d been doing that. And so I was editor of Para la Gente and wrote and then one day,

we decided to news on—kind of like—local issues, what was going on in Austin—not just state wide.

And so I came to a meeting—I went to a meeting in East Austin. And at the time it was, uh,

they were all meeting about the boat race—the boat races—I don’t know if you know anything

about that. Uh, it was um, Fiesta Garden annually do boat races. About three weeks out of the year.

It was real damaging to the— WALJE: Three weeks?

MANCIAS: Yeah. Weekends WALJE: I didn’t realize

it was that long. Oh three weekends. MANCIAS: At the beginning. Weekends, yeah.

WALJE: I thought it was just a, one event, one event a year. I didn’t realize it was that long.

MANCIAS: Well, it went down to that, but then you know, they continued that but it used to be

like three weekends. WALJE: Wow.

MANCIAS: Yeah, so they would—they would, they were meeting and planning council meetings to

go to city council to protest and so I went to cover for Para la Gente and started getting

more and more involved with the issues and it was like, wow, this is really close to home.

And so um, I started working there and eventually I once again stopped—I was only going to school

part time and I put it aside for a while and I decided to do this more. At the— by then,

the whole Raza Unida thing, uh, the races were over. José Ángel—who was the leader—was uh,

he’d gotten into some trouble and Ramsey Muñiz who was running for governor had gotten into some—it

was political, and it was a self—inflicted wound and uh, and so, it just kind of

stopped. And I left and I came and I started working in East Austin. I started working in

East Austin. And doing kind of the same things. I started—there was a newspaper but it was kind of

sporadic and it was just kind of like, you know, kind of people—whoever could write it—there was

a couple of women who wrote in it and they were very good—they were very dedicated but just about

anybody could come in and do an article—which was good but there wasn’t a sense of, um, okay how do

you reach your audience? How do you get them to read it because there was a lot of like—you know,

so I started kind of like working with that. And, uh, that paper was called La Conciencia

and started putting that out. It wasn’t a weekly. It was a whenever we could get it out and um,

and there was a group called the Brown Berets and they were like the um, more, um, militant

arm of the whole community organizing structure. But they were doing the work. They were doing the

footwork. And organizing protests and organizing demonstrations and having meetings with people.

I mean there was a lot of criticism because

not everybody was on board—not everybody in the community was on board but

a lot of people were and nothing else was going on. And at that time the boat races

were going on we had, we had, some, some meetings about that and then the final one the finally

happened when it was the last one was when people were beaten and uh—severely—arrested and beaten.

And it was, you know, and that was the last boat race. They didn’t have them anymore after that.

And I continued to work with, you know, what I was doing because there were other issues. At the time

this would be like, in the um—let me see I wrote down some dates because I knew I would forget.

Um, yeah, this was like at the beginning.

The 1980s, like the late 1970s, 1978 I think was the last boat race.

WALJE: Ok MANCIAS:

Around the 1980s there started to be a lot of interest, uh, speculation,

around East Austin and there was some pretty, you know, wise people that kind of knew what

was going on. They um, they figured out—because what was going on in other places in the country

what was, uh—it was the beginning of gentrification but nobody used that

word—we didn’t know that word we just knew that people were coming in and um,

and there was some downtown interests, uh, downtown revitalization.

And you know, as you know, downtown is adjacent to the East Austin neighborhood and uh, but people

were looking beyond downtown because other places were starting to get gentrified and Austin was

starting to go that way too. So we started, you know, again, organizing and that direction and

just telling people, let’s look at our community, let’s see what’s been going on and see if um,

if we can’t bring improvements and also, try to um, you couldn’t tell people—you can’t tell people

of something that’s going to happen that they can’t imagine—you know, what’s going to happen.

But what we were trying to do is get people interested in the community and sort of, like, get

a sense of power over the—over the— over their own community. Like for example on East 3rd Street,

there’s a bunch of condos and all kinds of shops and things that, you know, that go

East 3rd Street and to the railroad tracks and, you know, 4th and 5th. And all that used to be

a huge junkyard. It was just, like, scrap metal and um, people couldn’t get loans for

houses you know like to—if they wanted to fix their house, their house, because you know,

they bought their house 40 years ago and they need to do something to it—they couldn’t get

a loan for it. They wouldn’t loan them any money. The banks would not loan them any money.

So um, even if they could afford it they couldn’t do anything. So houses were starting to just get

kind of, like, more decrepit and uh, they were places because the zoning at the time

was mixed industrial zoning. That had been a blanket zoned—zoning that had happened, um, way

back in the 1930s I believe that they just blanket zoned the whole neighborhood

and so, they didn’t have the residential zoning that they needed for this. And so we started

talking about, ok we need to get rezoning. We need to do the things that it takes to

be able to revitalize our own neighborhood that other people coming in here that are starting to

do that for us. And then also, we’ll start losing control of that. So, we started organizing there,

and, uh, and I did that for you know, the next two or three years. That’s where I—and I wasn’t,

of course, the only one doing it—it was a group of people doing it, but I did join the Berets.

WALJE: I was wondering, was the Brown Berets the ones involved there? With organizing, like,

the zoning laws and stuff like that? MANCIAS: Yes. Yes—well it was partly

Brown Berets. The Brown Berets were doing a lot of the organizing and I did join that organization

but there were a lot of like, just community people, older people, that became very

supportive—and leaders themselves and they were the true leaders of the community. We helped

because members of the Brown Berets knew how to organize. I knew how to organize. I had learned

that from my experiences doing other things and so, like, but, we were helping people—and that was

one of our main purposes is like—we didn’t want to be the leaders. We wanted people that lived there

that were, you know, or at least—a lot of the Brown Berets did live there. But

like, I didn’t just want to go in and become like a leader for them. So I joined these groups and we

would have meetings and really just help people learn how to do it. And they did. And that were

five organizations that sprung up. I believe it was four or five—let me see. East Town

Lake Citizens was one. And that had its own little territory. The Rainey Street Neighborhood—that

fought hard, but of course it was the first to go. And there was the Govalle Neighborhood.

That’s still in existence—that’s still working. And I think the East Town Lake Citizens is also

still, um, still going on. And then there was the Buena Vista. Buena Vista was just a little bit

further east and south of the little, uh, of East Town Lake Citizens. So in each one of those little

areas had their own leaders and they went out and they organized their own part of the neighborhood.

And we did it like, um, we would do flyers. You know, I worked with, you know, like, I would teach

people to do flyers, going door to door, getting kids involved, having council meetings. We’d learn

and we’d prep people—so that when you go to the council meeting you stand what you do this—this

is your message. So it was that sort of thing, because people had never been involved—not the

grass root people. I mean, leaders were springing up—not the grass root people, they were not

used to being involved. And so we did that. And there was some rollback zoning that happened

and um, so, as a result of several years of that and it continued. It went on.

And after that was started I left that particular organization

and went on to work—I was really wanting to get back into—I had graduated—I went back to school

and had graduated in 1982, I believe. So I had my degree—I was teaching, but I wanted to go back and

start working with middle school kids again and get back into that thing. So I went to, uh, then I

started working for South Austin Youth Services—it was called at the time. I was with Mona Gonzales.

And she had an organization. South Austin, same population. It was young Chicano kids—at risk,

dropping out, for more. And so, I was hired to work with families of dropout kids—or

at risk dropout kids. I was working with their families trying to keep their kids

in school. And I did that for a year. That was like in, um, it would be like in 1986.

WALJE: Ok. MANCIAS: Yeah, and

I had—another thing I had been doing during that time before I started working with South

Austin Youth Services while I was working with the neighborhood. I had a radio program—I didn’t write

that down I should have written that down. WALJE: Mis Amigos?

MANCIAS: Mis Amigos, yes, yes. I did that, where we interviewed

people from—local people and people from other places in the state and the country—a

lot of Native American leaders. And the purpose of Mis Amigos was to just kind of

show solidarity with other people around us that had similar issues. You know, like

land issues and civil rights issues. And

that’s what it was. You know, I would interview people and draw those connections to—because

unless I was interviewing somebody in English that didn’t speak Spanish (because the program was in

Spanish)—and so trying to establish a connection between the East Austin community with the people

around the world really—. WALJE: Uh—huh, yeah.

MANCIAS: And that was Mis Amigos. And it started out—I did a couple of radio,

but then it became TV because at the time I was working with AC—I was using ACTV

organization equipment, and I learned interviewing, and I learned what I could from

videoing—using that equipment from a friend. Sharon Steward—she was really, really good. That

was her background, and to this day she’s still doing that. She’s done several documentaries. And

so we did that together. And so I hosted that. Anyway, that gave me some background

in television production. So when I was working for South Austin Youth Services,

producer/director Hector Galan came to that organization because he was looking—well

he was between documentaries. He worked for Frontline—American Experience Frontline. And

he did a lot of independent things. But basically, those were his bread and butter at the time. And

at the time, he was between projects, and he was doing something for United Way. And South Austin

Youth Services got funding from United Way. So he came trying to see if he could do—pull

South Austin news sources into his promo for United Way that he had been hired to do. And so

my boss, Mona Gonzalez, put me—put him in touch with me. And she says, “Well, you know, she kind

of does media for us, and so she can work with you.” And so I started working with him, and then

got interested in my background because he had a similar background. And he said, “You know what,

my production coordinator just left, and I really need some help. Would you be interested in working

with me?” And, you know, that was like a huge opening for me. I mean, I really wanted to learn

that aspect of television production. It was much bigger. And I felt I could do a lot more—learn a

lot more, and do a lot more with it. So, I did. I started working with full—on productions,

and immediately did one. Our first—my first, certainly not his first, but my first documentary

was the Dallas drug war, and that was in 1987, I believe is when we did that one. And

at the time it was a lot of—that was during the crack era that was just, like,

going nuts everywhere. And we decided to do it in Dallas because it was the—it

was the Bible Belt, and it was really kind of a lot of irony. And it was an interesting story.

It wasn’t—we weren’t going to tell the same East Coast story or West Coast story. You know,

we wanted to tell something different. So anyway, we did that. After that, it was

another one for Frontline, and then I became his associate producer after that year.

It was crazy how—you know, how you learn to do it just ground—just start running as soon as you get

in there and learning to get people to talk to you and learning to find stories. It was pretty

incredible. But then we did the migrant worker story, and it was—. In 1960 Edward R. Murrow did

the “Harvest of Shame” on migrant workers. And what we did was “Same Harvest”—what was it called?

It was “Old Harvest, Same—” I wrote it down. I’ll never forget. “New Harvest, Old Shame”. And

it was kind of picking up the same migrant trail. And that was really cool for me because, you know,

my own family had been migrant workers. And so I traveled with the migrant workers for that one

from Ohio to Homestead, Florida. And we filmed, I traveled with them. And the crew

would kind of, like, meet us in certain places, but I was with them the whole time, and that was

an incredible experience too. We did that, and then after that, we did another documentary

on Latinas and AIDS. That one was called “The Forgotten People: Latinas with AIDS.” And

that was because AIDS was such a big deal, but Latinas were not—even though they were very much

affected, they were hardly ever referenced when talking about AIDS. You know, it was usually men,

gay men—and nothing wrong with that. It’s just that Latinas was a whole other thing

because of the way—because of crack, for one thing, and poverty, and just the places where

they were living. And we did that one in Chicago, and New Jersey, and New York,

Arizona. Anyway, so that was that one. And then my final one that I worked with Hector was in 1992,

yeah. We worked on one called “Who Cares about Children”, and that was on the foster care system

that was falling apart. There was a lot of instances going on around the country about foster

care. So we were doing one that was for Frontline as well. And we did that one in Arkansas because

Clinton, at the time, was governor of Arkansas, and they were being sued. (Laughs). You know,

we would pick somewhere where the interest would be really—you know, where you could

get the interest for the issue. And their foster care system was being sued, and he was running for

President. And so we went there, and we got our story there, and that was it. And then after that,

let’s see—I got married somewhere in there—in 1990, I got married. And life was starting to kind

of look a little bit different. When I was working on the documentaries, I traveled all the time. I

was always so [worn] out. I would go and stay somewhere for a month or two at a time because

we’d be—to get the story. And so things started to—I started thinking, Well,

maybe I just need to get back to education and kind of just leave this for a little bit. But I

wanted to try and do something on my own, and I did. I put together a pilot project. But I never

got the full funding. I got funding for it, but to get a film you have to, like, really, really,

really dedicate your life to getting funding for it because it costs a lot of money, and there’s

a lot of people doing it. And the one that I did was called “The Smoking Gun”. And it was on

the anencephaly of children on the border—encaphalitis, children being born—babies

being born with really exposed backbones. And I went into Mexico, and I did some interviews

of women working in the maquiladoras, and doctors, and people on both sides of the border.

But I didn’t get the full funding for that one. That was my last thing with film.

At that time, I got pregnant. And it was like, “Okay, I need to just kind of rethink my life

and think where I’m going to go with it.” And I just went back to full—time teaching,

which has always been, to me, one of the most rewarding things that anybody can do.

I always worked in East Austin, mostly in schools that had a lot of immigrant children. So it was

working, and eventually became a reading specialist. To me—and more and more these days,

kids are not learning to read, and it’s like the worst thing. They’re learning to take tests,

and they’re not learning to read and love to read. And so, that’s what I did for the next,

I guess, twenty—plus years after that,

and retired a few years ago—2016. WALJE: So all of this activism that you got

involved in and everything else—do you think that growing up in small towns and experiencing those

things that you did, do you think that impacted why you were drawn to activism whenever you moved

to Austin? Because you mentioned the discrimination you faced and everything

else when you were growing up in there. Like, developmentally, do you think that impacted you?

MANCIAS: I think that gave me the direction. I’ve thought about this, actually. I think

that gave me the direction in the place where I wanted to place my energy and focus because

as I mentioned before, when I got here, before I knew anything about, Oh, this is discrimination.

This is what I’ve experienced in my life, I had a drive to work—doing something. And

like I said, I went to—I lived across the street, in an apartment across the street

from the state hospital. And I would see people kind of walking around, and some people were—you

know, I met them in the park because they walked around. And I started going,

Maybe I can go over there and see what I can do there. I wanted to do something. I think people

that get involved get involved because there’s a drive to get involved doing something. And

before I found what to focus it on as far as

my activism in politics, I put it there because that’s what was—that’s the only thing that I

could see. WALJE: Right.

MANCIAS: So when you say did my experience impact or influence: yes, I think it gave it direction.

I think when I finally became aware through that class at UT—when I finally became aware of,

This is what I have been experiencing. This is what my people experience. This is what my

family experienced. This is what people all the time—and this is what caused it. And it’s still

going on. And then I began to see it everywhere. I saw it in the police brutality cases. I saw it in

discrimination in the small towns in the Valley where people didn’t—when I went to go help them

organize for voting—registering to voting, people in Crystal City still didn’t have paved streets.

They didn’t have indoor plumbing. They didn’t have—and this

was, like, in the mid—70s. WALJE: That’s crazy.

MANCIAS: So it’s just kind of like, this isn’t right. So yeah, I had a drive to get involved,

like I think a lot of people do today. And I see today. It’s like, “Fix the wrongs.”

You just go fix the wrongs. And wherever you fall on that—some people may not have my experience of

growing up with, you know, the poverty and the injustices, and everything that I experienced.

I didn’t know I was experiencing that—it made me feel bad, but I didn’t know what that was,

because I had so much love, you know? I had so much love and support from my family

that when I came out of that I just had a drive to do something and I think it

that’s what people have today. Those people you see in demonstrations—people that you see

putting their lives on the line for all kinds of things and out in the streets

doing the things that they’re doing today—it’s the same drive. You just feel compelled—you

just come to this world and you feel compelled to do something and you figure out what it is and you

keep working at it until you figure out what it is. It’s one thing for a while and you move into

another thing. With me it was, you know, finally I got my satisfaction for most of my life through

working with kids—teaching them to read because that sets them for a lifetime of success.

WALJE: In regards to—I know you mentioned you worked for or you worked with the Brown

Berets and you also were writing for Para la Gente and working with the Raza Unida Party.

Were—how involved with each other were those two organizations? Did they see things the

same way? Were they working together? Or did they have—or were they a little bit divergent at times?

MANCIAS: They were divergent. Um, yeah. Because at the—here in Austin—not everywhere around the

state—here in Austin, Raza Unida was a UT thing. WALJE: Okay.

MANCIAS: It wasn’t like a popular thing around there. That’s how I got to know it—through UT.

And around the state it was like the small towns—it was the people there—but not here. People

here weren’t, like, in the community, there wasn’t a Raza Unida party, in the East Austin community.

WALJE: Why do you think that was? MANCIAS: Why do you think that was?

WALJE: Yeah. MANCIAS: Well because, I

am—when I started getting involved I realized that

East Austin organizing was a little territorial. That can be positive and that can be negative.

Positive because it was dedicated

and passionate but very protective—because it was like—and the reason it was protective was because

the leadership that was here when I first started working in the East Austin community

the leadership there was very wary of people coming in and starting to organize

and lead people off in directions that they felt were not in the interests of

the community but in the interests of the people that were leading people off. And so it was—I

would call it territorial. I would call it protective. And Raza Unida was not necessarily

welcomed as a party because they did not feel—East Austin people did not feel that it reflected

exactly those community—and they didn’t want leadership coming in from somewhere else. So

Raza Unida brought in its own leadership. East Austin had its own leadership. So it wasn’t going

to be—ok, we’re going to share leadership. And it’s a classic, classic, classic thing wherever

you go that there’s organizing. It’s um, and people are there just trying to do the work—it’s

hard. It’s hard to work around those things. That’s leadership here,

that’s leadership there—I want to do the work. WALJE: And is that why you mentioned when you

were working in East Austin with the zoning laws that you were careful to not, um—you

didn’t want to come in and take over. MANCIAS: Exactly.

WALJE: You just wanted to help organize? MANCIAS: Exactly. I did not want to become

a community leader. I didn’t have any desire to come in and be known as one

of the community leaders. That’s never—I don’t know—that’s never been part of what I want to do.

I’ve never—you know, throughout the years at different times—run

for this office or run for that office or do this and it’s like—no,

that is not what I want to do. I like doing the work and just, you know, I like doing the work.

But yeah, that’s an interesting question that you would ask that because that was definitely

the dynamic with leadership and really, Raza Unida wasn’t trying to come in and step over—they

weren’t. When I came in I was doing the story for the paper and then when I came in it was like,

this is the work I want to do. And Raza Unida was starting to, like, organize less do a little—it

was just starting to change just because of other dynamics that were going on within them. And

I had already graduated from school too. I’d already got my degree, and so I wasn’t

as involved with the university as much. And so I just saw a place to get involved in East Austin.

WALJE: You mentioned that you did, like, protests regarding police brutality,

and I know that you were heavily involved in the protests that got the boat races

canceled. Was there significant conflict that was ever involved with that with the police,

in regard to that? MANCIAS: Yeah, I should have mentioned. 19—well

we had demonstrations all the time. There were several police incidents where black men

or Latino men were killed. One young man was shot in the back stealing a loaf of bread.

One young man was shot in his neighborhood in Montopolis. An older man was

choked in front of the police station. He was drunk, and they choked him in

front of the police station. So we were working with the black community for police brutality—or

against police brutality. So we would have marches

downtown, around the police station. It was the Brown Berets and the Black Citizens Task Force

that would organize these. These were Brown Berets. These weren’t like other community

leaders. This was definitely a Brown Beret project was the police brutality. The community issues

was where a lot of that—but those community leaders would show up for the protests. It’s

not like we were on our own for that. They weren’t the ones that were organizing them, but they would

show up for those. We’d get a lot of people from around the community. I mean, they understood

this had been going on for a while, and people hadn’t really been protesting this to the extent

that we were starting to protest at that time. Police—we had—so police had a problem with the

Berets. They had already arrested several people at the boat race—the same leaders.

Paul Hernandez was one of the leaders—his brother Sam. And there were a couple of others.

They were arrested, along with several others at the boat races. And then there was a Klan march in

1983. Did I write that down? Yeah, 1983, February. WALJE: I remembered reading about

that. Yeah, in Austin. MANCIAS: Yep, it was

February. In fact, it was February 19th, 1983. The clan,

for some reason, decided to come march in Austin. It was real contentious. They were on television

holding up a gun. You know, “And this is for Paul Hernandez. We’re going to make sure that—doesn’t

get away with anything.” WALJE: Oh, wow.

MANCIAS: And of course, we were organizing our protest, our counter protest.

The clan was going to march in the capitol, and we were going to counter protest. We had,

I mean, we organized it for a long time. We had a lot of people showed up. And it wasn’t just

people from East Austin. It was people from all over and people that—you

know Austin. You know? They weren’t going to put up with a clan marching downtown without a

good protest. So it was people from everywhere, not just Mexican—Americans or blacks.

And we showed up to do the protest. The clan—and at the time, I think because they hadn’t really

had a big issue. We had voted—we had tried to get them to stop. We had gone to council and

tried to get them—you know, when you get older you go, “You know, I can understand why the

council did that because everybody has a right to march, and you can’t really tell people not

to march.” I mean you do—but back then it was like, “No.” We were just indignant. It was like,

“No they can’t march. They shouldn’t march. They’re doing this, they’re doing that.” And so

we did go to council, and they voted to let them march, of course. And we showed up,

and they didn’t really have them separated very much. It was like the Klan march was on

the street, and we were on the sidewalk. And it was this throng of people that we

were just marching along. Paul Hernandez, who was the leader of the Berets and the person

that they wanted most, I think because he represented what the police were—he

represented a lot of problems for the police—. And it’s not all of the police. There were,

like, three in particular who were involved with that incident. But what happened is

we were all up at the front. I was right by him, and another friend of mine, and a couple of other

people. And then this wall of police just cut us off from the rest of the march. And they just kind

of created a little wall, and they came in and they just stopped us. And everybody behind us kept

pushing us ahead because they didn’t stop. They just kept marching. But the police had stopped us,

so they kept pushing us into the police. And then the police took out their batons,

and they started, like, prodding us. Not holding us like this, but doing us like that. And then

one of them started really, really pushing his baton into Paul’s stomach. And I just

instinctively turned around, and I took it, and I tried to pull it up like that.

And immediately, they just—they knocked me out with one blow. I was out. And they beat the heck

out of him and another friend of mine who didn’t go down so fast. But we were the three that got

injured. They dragged me out of there, and I came to while they were dragging me out. They had me

by the arms, and they said, “You just need to get out of—.” This one cop—I remember his name,

Billy Sifuentes. He just came and said, “There’s nothing you can do in there. You’re not going to

help anybody. You just need to walk out of there. You’re going to get hurt. Just keep going. There’s

nothing you can do. He’s going to be all right. Maria’s going to be all right. Everybody’s going

to be all right. Just keep going.” And so, I was really dazed. I mean, they had—I got several

stitches in my head from the blow, so I was dazed. I just kept walking. Later, I saw the video

of how it was just like these strong cops just beating up—Maria crawled out of the

milieu while she was going. And he—they just kept beating him, beating him, beating him.

It was an incredible situation. I think if it had happened today,

it would have been different because it had national coverage. A television station

from Houston got the whole thing from a parking garage up at the top. They got the whole thing.

But the trial—we were not arrested until three weeks later after the incident.

That’s when they actually officially arrested us, and our lawyers actually took us to the jail. And

they didn’t put us in jail. They just—they let us go. Our lawyers got us out. But

they arrested us—they arrested me for interfering with the arrest of another person.

And they arrested Maria Limon for the same thing, for interfering with the arrest of another person.

And they arrested Paul Hernandez for resisting arrest, which—all he was doing was,

like, blocking— WALJE: Yeah.

MANCIAS: You know—the blows. But we went to court.

That was my first year of teaching school too. That was really incredible.

We went to court, and I got acquitted. Maria got acquitted. And Paul—I

think eventually, Paul did too. So it was really for naught except that we all just

got the tar beat out of us. WALJE: That kind of disproportionate

response from the police there—the Klan was marching too. Did they treat them differently?

The police did, in their march? MANCIAS: Well nothing happened

in the Klan. I mean, they, yeah. And nothing would have happened with us,

but they provoked it. They started—they caused it because we weren’t attacking.

We weren’t—we were just marching. We had signs. We were marching. And, like I said,

they came in front of us, and they stopped us, and the crowd pushed us. So it looked like we were

trying to push against them, but we weren’t. It was the crowd behind us.

WALJE: Right. MANCIAS: And then they used that as an excuse. But

if they had not gotten in front of us for whatever reason, that wouldn’t have happened. So they

caused it, and that’s what they were trying to do. WALJE:

Well, all right. That covered all the questions that I had, Adela.

This was really interesting. A really great interview. Is there anything else that you

want to talk about before we go? MANCIAS: Hmm,

well, let me see. I’m glad you brought up the Klan march because I almost forgot about that.

WALJE: Yeah, I remembered reading something about that, and I was wondering if I was mixed up or

not, but I thought that was very interesting. MANCIAS: (Speaking at same time) There’s several

videos on that. There are videos. There was a video—it’s called the Klan march. And

it’s by Gilberto—Gilbert Rivera. He put it together, I think.

And I did one for Mis Amigos later. And taking the footage from the channel too in Houston—some

of that footage. And we used some of the footage from the council meeting.

And we put that story together. To tell you the truth, it’s in some archive. I haven’t

seen it in forever. But it exists. I think we’ve covered everything, Ethan. Let’s see.

(Long pause). I think so. (Laughs). WALJE: This was really interesting.

I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your day to do this for me, and for our class,

and for the History Center at Austin. (Laughs). And thanks for your patience with the Zoom

stuff—our adventure yesterday to get it all fixed. MANCIAS: (At same time) (Laughs) Hey. Well, I’m

glad you remembered how to get back on there because I got back in, and I said, Oh no, it’s

the same thing I did yesterday, and if you had not remembered how to do that I don’t know if we

wouldn’t have spent another two hours doing this. WALJE: (Laughs)

MANCIAS: So this is going to be in the History Center? Is that where this is going to be?

WALJE: Right, well, we’re doing an oral history project—an Austin women’s

oral history archive. And we’re going to be writing papers, and we’re submitting all this

to the archive. And then our class specifically is going to write papers based on the interviews that

were being conducted from the different women. MANCIAS: (at same time) Okay. Okay, well,

I’m glad. I’m using a lot of History Center—I’m continuing my writing after retirement. It’s like,

you know when you retire you go, “Okay, so—,” there’s phases of your life. You know,

like there was that whole beginning and then, as I kind of started figuring out where to get

involved and doing all those things, and then going into education. Raising my kid is another

phase of a life that you never think of, but it’s so important because that’s another person

that is in the world that you know you’re responsible for how they get started. So

that was another thing. But you know, they’re grown and well and doing okay. And so yeah,

so I’m in another phase, and I’m putting notes together and doing some writing, so I’m using the

History Center a lot. So I’m glad they’re there. WALJE: All right, well, here I’ll go ahead and

stop the recording here. MANCIAS: All right.

WALJE: All right. (End of Interview)

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