Romana Acosta Banuelos

Romana Acosta Bañuelos has a fascinating ‘rags to riches’ life story that exemplifies the American dream, someone who persevered and succeeded despite severe adversity and one of the ugliest chapters of bigotry in American history. Although she was a U.S. Citizen by birth, she essentially faced the same challenges as many Mexican immigrants of the era, and over came those challenges.

She was deported at age eight, returned at age 18 with no English ability, two young children, with just $7 in her pocket, and worked as a factory worker until she could save up $400 to start her own business, later started a very successful bank helping aspiring Latino business owners, and was appointed the first Hispanic Treasurer of the United States!

Early Life of Romana Acosta Bañuelos

U.S. Soldiers Rounding Up “Mexicans”

Romana Acosta Bañuelos was born a U.S. citizen in 1925 in Miami, Arizona, of Mexican immigrant parents. Her father was a copper miner. In 1933, during the great depression and administration of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, approximately one million “Mexicans” were deported to Mexico, including Romana Acosta Bañuelos, although she was a natural born Citizen! Eight year old Romana would never forgot the humiliating and shocking experience of becoming unwanted Mexicans, and joining the migrant stream. She later said “As a citizen of this country, I was told to leave. But they certainly didn’t ask those of European descent to leave.”

Historians estimate that during the “Mexican Repatriation” approximately 60% of those deported were U.S. citizens, and most of the rest were here legally. “Mexicans” were blamed for high jobless rates, though deporting huge numbers did little to nothing to improve unemployment. Legislation to ban “Mexicans” failed in Congress, but mass deportations proceeded anyway.

Romana and her family moved in with relatives on a ranch in the state of Sonora, Mexico. Her family rose early each morning to tend the crops, and then Romana helped her mother in the kitchen, preparing empanadas that her mother sold to bakeries and restaurants to make extra money. Romana later said her mother taught her great work ethics and discipline that served her well later in life.

Romana married at age 16 (not unusual in that era), had two children by age 18, and then divorced after her husband deserted her. She moved back to the U.S. in 1943, arriving in Los Angeles, California with her two young children, unable to speak English, and with just $7 to her name. With the ongoing war and one million less “Mexicans”, by 1943 the U.S. was experiencing severe labor shortages, had started the braceros guest worker program, and welcomed back “Mexican” U.S. citizens.

Romana Acosta Bañuelos the Businesswoman

Pan American Tortilla Shop, which became Ramona’s Mexican Food Products, Inc.

Romana soon found work in Los Angeles, working in a defense plant. Little by little she saved, and married again at age 21. When she had saved up $400, she opened her own tortilla factory with a tortilla machine, a fan, and a corn grinder, and with her aunt helping her she made $36 on the factory’s first day of business in 1949. As sales increased she incorporated the company and named it Ramona’s Mexican Food Products, Inc., which still exists today, run by her children and grandchildren.

In 1963, Romana Acosta Bañuelos and some businessmen opened the Pan-American Bank, to finance Latinos who wanted to start their own businesses. Romana also believed that if Hispanics could increase their financial base they would have more political influence and improve their standard of living. In 1969, Romana was appointed chairwoman of the bank’s board of directors. Within a ten‐year period, the Pan‐American National Bank held deposits of $38,864,000 and assets of $41,472,000.

Romana Acosta Bañuelos instituted scholarships for poor Mexican-American high school graduates to pursue higher education, from both the Pan American Bank and Ramona’s Mexican Food Products. Her stature grew in the community, and she received the city’s Outstanding Business Woman of the Year Award. Later that year, Mayor Sam Yorty presented her with a commendation from the County Board of Supervisors. The Pan American Bank was extremely successful, as was Ramona’s Mexican Food Products, which pioneered Mexican food across the U.S. Romana became a widely respected businesswoman and community leader, respect that drew the attention of President-elect Richard Nixon.

Romana Acosta Bañuelos – First Hispanic U.S. Treasurer!

Nixon looked for a way to reward the Republican National Hispanic Assembly and bring diversity to his administration, and asked RNHA for candidates for positions in his administration. Romana volunteered for U.S. Treasurer, not expecting the appointment, but to her great surprise President Nixon appointed her Treasurer of the United States. She was swiftly confirmed despite an INS raid of her tortilla factory, an obvious effort to embarrass her and derail her appointment, but that didn’t work! Soon dollar bills were being printed with her signature!

Dollar Bill Signed by Romana Acosta Banuelos

Romana Acosta Bañuelos signature

Return to Successful Businesswoman and Retirement

In 1974, Ramona Acosta Bañuelos, left the Nixon administration to return home and run her businesses. Ramona’s Mexican Food Products continued to thrive. By 1979, Ramona’s was manufacturing and distributing 22 different food products, had more than 400 employees, and annual sales of $12 million. Ramona’s was instrumental in the making Mexican cuisine popular throughout the United States. By the late 1990s, Romana gradually let her children and grandchildren run her businesses, as she became semi-retired. In 2011, the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles presented her with a Latino Business Awards’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

She’s now around 88 and still living, with many fine memories of her ‘rags to riches’ life story.

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Bob Quasius is the president and founder of Cafe Con Leche Republicans

A common Democratic party narrative told to Latinos, especially in Arizona, is they should register as Democrats and vote a straight Democratic ticket, because those evil racist Republicans want to racially profile them and deport all Latinos. This is a blatant exaggeration, an obvious attempt to keep Latinos on the ‘liberal hacienda’, as few – if any – Republicans are seeking to deport Latino citizens.

A May 2001 in-dept study by Pew Research suggests a more accurate narrative to describe Republican attitudes on immigration: ‘a majority of Republicans favor immigration reform, including a path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants, and as with Americans in general, a strong majority of Republicans favor more immigration enforcement.’ The Pew Research poll also found that even among the most staunch conservatives, there is a 49%/49% split on immigration reform. Republicans are clearly not monolithic on immigration reform, and statistics like Pew Research’s hardly support any notion that Republicans are anti-Latino.

Contrary to the Democratic narrative, Democratic administrations have deported more Latino immigrants than Republican administrations. Obama has deported 1.5 million immigrants, mostly Latinos, and leading many to dub Obama our “deporter-in-chief.”

Which president has deported the most Latino citizens? Though Obama has deported more Latino citizens than any president in recent history, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt forced out more Latino citizens than any other president in history. During the great depression, a program called “the great repatriation” forced approximately one million “Mexicans” to leave the U.S. either by force or by making discrimination so pervasive that many could not find employment and simply left. Various historians estimate 60% of those who left were U.S. Citizens. The “great repatriation” was authorized by Herbert Hoover, but mostly took place during FDR’s administration.

Who is America’s worst racial profiler? Immediately for most, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio comes to mind. Sheriff Joe has become infamous among Latinos for his trademark immigration sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods, looking for minor traffic and other infractions as a pretext to investigate immigration status. A recent study conducted by an outside police executive, and authorized by the U.S. Department of Justice, found Latinos in Maricopa County are from four to nine times more likely stopped by police than non-Latinos, and 20% of Latino traffic stops lacked probable cause. However, despite Joe Arpaio’s notoriety he is not America’s worst racial profiler.

However, the title of “racial-profiler-in-chief” rightly belongs to an Arizona Democrat named Janet Napolitano! As Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she head’s America’s largest law enforcement agency, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). ICE and CBP are notorious for the use of racial profiling in immigration enforcement, but these agencies are only part of the reason Janet Napolitano merits this notoriety. Napolitano has very aggressively rolled out the Secure Communities program, in which state and local law enforcement share fingerprint data from local jails, even though this program has generated widespread complaints about the racial profiling S-COMM has fueled.

According to a recent study of Secure Communities, 93% of those arrested under S-COMM are Latinos, while Latinos represent 78% of the unauthorized immigrant community and 3,600 U.S. citizens have been falsely arrested. One revealing statistic is that nearly 50% of those arrested under s-comm were NOT jailed for committing a crime but rather traffic or similar non-criminal violations of the law, which confirms pervasive complaints that Latinos are being jailed rather than cited for such minor traffic infractions as cracked windshields, broken tail lights (including on bicycles), frost on car windows, expired vehicle registration, speeding, etc. State and local police don’t usually have the ability to check immigration status of those they stop, but jails do. It’s apparent that increasingly Latinos who are stopped for traffic infractions are being jailed rather than cited so their immigration status can be investigated, which is racial profiling because outcomes of traffic stops are different for Latinos, and some police will target Latinos for traffic stops on the suspicion they may be unauthorized immigrants. Less than one in five Latinos are unauthorized, so the result is that thousands of law abiding citizens are subjected to the humiliation of jail for routine police encounters such as traffic infractions!

Secure Communities has become so controversial that some states, including Massachusetts and New York have objected to participation, while other states already in the program, such as Illinois, have sought to withdraw. In response to widespread complaints about racial profiling, lack of following priorities, etc. DHS created a review panel, but in the end their recommendations were watered down, and the only change is that DHS agreed not to deport low level offenders for traffic infractions until they had been convicted. Five members of the panel were so outraged at the ‘whitewash job’ they quit the panel in disgust, while the other 14 panel members who didn’t quit were very critical of DHS.

Secure Communities started out as voluntary, but under Napolitano states now have no option but to participate and remain in the program if they wish to opt-out as they were promised under Bush. Like the great repatriation, which began under Hoover, Secure Communities began under a Republican administration as a pilot voluntary program, but vastly expanded under a Democratic administration.