It was three hundred years ago when my family first came to Mexico. They came from Spain, and they settled in a small, dusty town called Mapimi. It was a town they grew up in, married, had children, and died in. Somewhere past the town in the harsh Durango desert is a small graveyard with the family mausoleum.
This is the mausoleum where my ancestors lie in eternal rest. It has stood there in the desert for hundreds of years, watching history pass before its eyes as each generation of my family grew up in that small dusty town. In 1910, the Mexican Revolution happened. And my family's life would never be the same again.
My great-grandfather, Joaquin Gonzalez Cigarroa Sr., who studied and earned his degree in medicine at the National University of Mexico, was a part of the struggle going on in that period with his intellectual friends. His brother, Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa, was the mayor of Mapimi at the time during the Mexican Revolution, and he was captured and imprisoned.
My great-grandfather feared for his brother’s safety, and he sold the only asset they had in Mapimi, which was a silver mine, to his brother’s jailers to ensure his safety. Leonides Gonzalez Cigarroa, and his wife, Genoveva Barbosa de Gonzalez, escaped with their lives intact. In doing so, they moved to San Antonio, Texas, where in 1916, Henry B. Gonzalez, the first Latino Congressman be elected to the United States Congress, was born.
Soon thereafter, my great-grandparents, Abuelito and Abuelita, joined his brother and his family in San Antonio. My grandfather was born there, and grew up watching his father organize free health clinics for the poor in San Antonio. This was what started his passion for medicine, and the family moved to Laredo, Texas. His uncle, Leonides, stayed behind with his family to work at La Prensa, and his first cousin, Henry B. Gonzalez, grew up there surrounded by activists and intellectuals.
Henry B. Gonzalez understood the value of education, and his parents made that impression on him starting early on. They believed that with education, that he could succeed at anything that he put his mind to. This was the guiding philosophy that shaped my grandfather as well, in growing up with his parents in Laredo. Two cousins, hundreds of miles apart, grew up with the same philosophy and the desire to make a difference in the lives of people they encountered.
They also encountered racism. As a chief probation officer in the juvenile system, Henry B. confronted this when he wanted to hire an African-American woman as his caseworker against the protests of the local judge. Henry B. quit in protest. The judge didn't want him to resign, and kept on the African-American caseworker, but wanted Henry B. to hire a "good ol' boy." As Henry B. said, "If I don't have the right to hire and fire, I am not interested in the position," and resigned. His first step into politics began when he ran for the City Council and lost in 1950 by 2,000 votes. He decided to run again in 1953, and won as the first Mexican-American elected to the San Antonio City Council where he put desegregation as his top priority, and passed desegregation ordinances.
Henry B. then ran for the Texas Senate in 1956 and was the first Mexican-American elected there. He and another state Senator, Abraham B. Kazen (who was the husband of my great-grandmother's sister), held the longest filibuster in the history of the Texas Senate against a series of bills designed to re-inforce segregation. Here's Molly Ivins on Henry B.'s effort to stand up for what was right:
Henry B. Gonzalez opposed the bills for 22 hours straight -- still the record in the Texas Senate. Ronnie Dugger of The Texas Observer reported:
A tall Latin man in a light blue suit and white shoes and yellow handkerchief was pacing around his desk on the Senate floor. It was eight o'clock in the morning. An old Negro was brushing off the soft senatorial carpet in front of the president's rostrum. Up in the gallery, a white man stood with his back to the chamber, studying a panel of pictures of an earlier Senate. The Latin man was orating and gesturing in a full flood of energy, not like a man who had been talking to almost nobody for three hours and had another day and night to go.
"Why did they name Gonzalez Gonzalez, if the name wasn't honored in Texas at the time?" he asked. "Why did they honor Garza along with Burnet? My own forebears in Mexico bore arms against Santa Anna. There were three revolutions against Santa Anna -- Texas was only one of its manifestations. Did you know that Negroes helped settle Texas? That a Negro died at the Alamo?"
The angry, crystal-voiced man stopped in his pacing and raised his arms to plead, "I seek to register the plaintive cry, the hurt feelings, the silent, the dumb protest of the inarticulate. ..."
For 22 hours he held the floor, an eloquent, an erudite, a genuine and a passionate man; and any whose minds he didn't enter had slammed the doors and buried the keys. What you have to remember about a 22-hour filibuster, still the record, is that it requires more than enormous physical stamina. You have to have 22 hours worth of knowledge in your head -- and having heard many a shorter filibuster, I can testify that many people do not. They just don't know enough to talk that long, not to mention talking that long at such a level of historical, constitutional, legal and judicial knowledge, in addition to the extraordinary passion for justice that animated the whole. Henry B. read widely his whole life and spoke four languages. That he was dismissed on the floor of the Texas Senate as a "lousy Mexican" was just a tiny part of the contempt and hatred that he experienced because of his skin color. Henry B.'s filibuster finally killed all but two or three of the whole hateful package.
He was known as the man that never sold out. He saw what was right, and decided to fight for it to the fullest. It was what inspired him to support John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign run in 1960, and started up the Viva Kennedy Clubs all over the country. Henry B. said this about Kennedy's run as an Irish Catholic:
People will respond to you if they can believe what you say. People will trust you if you keep your word. People will respect you if you respect yourself. If you lay out the problem accurately and if you propose a reasonable solution, people will give you a chance, not withstanding your heritage or race. Some would never vote for the Irish Kennedy or the Mexican Gonzalez; and some would only vote for us because he was Irish and I am Mexican; but most would decide the issues on the merits, and us on our ability.
In 1961, Henry B. Gonzalez became the first Mexican-American elected to the United States Congress. Robert F. Kennedy went down to Texas to campaign for him as did Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In Congress, Henry B. helped pass the Voting Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act, and much of LBJ's Great Society programs. He served in Congress for thirty-seven years, and made an huge impact in his time there as a proud, unabashed liberal who believed in standing up for what was right. Here's more from Molly Ivins on the kind of impact Henry B. had:
The man never sold out to anyone, from his early service on the San Antonio City Council -- where he fought to desegregate public swimming pools -- to the great stand on the hate bills in the Senate, through the 37 years in Congress. He was right about deregulating the S&Ls -- he was one of a handful who opposed that lobby-engineered disaster. He was right about Mexican banks not being strong enough for NAFTA. He was right about Ronald Reagan's HUD secretary's misusing his office. Because Henry B. had long been a champion of public housing, he saw the department being twisted. It took Henry C. -- i.e., Cisneros -- several years to untwist it.
Henry B. told us how often PAC money turned our own representatives against us. He warned us about the concentration of power in ever-larger banks. Henry B. was a powerful man for a long time. But he never forgot where he came from and what it was like. His best friend's mother went blind from hand-sewing baby clothes at 5 cents a piece.
This is the kind of family I grew up in, and my family inspires me to do what is right. With a great inspiration like Henry B., he is a constant reminder of what is good and possible about politics. That one doesn't have to sell out to do what is right, that it is good to stand up for one's beliefs, and that one can succeed with those in mind. He was what guided me in my work in the United States Congress as a legislative assistant in the belief that I could make a difference in the lives of people, in my work in the public option health care fight so that people could have access to a health insurance program which didn't make profits off denying them access to health care, and in my present work in making a difference here in Texas.