Paper helped image of El Rio movement

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, activists such as Salomón Baldenegro (at left) played a visible role in Tucson politics. (The red markings were made by grease pencils wielded by Citizen photo editors back in the day. The marks, which usually don't appear in print, were meant to show how the picture should be "cropped" when it was published.).

I am deeply saddened by the departure of the Tucson Citizen. I feel a deep connection to the newspaper, not only as a former Citizen columnist, but also as a Chicano and lifetime Tucsonan.

The Citizen played a significant role in one of Tucson’s major political turning points, and a defining event in the political evolution of the Chicano community – the “El Rio for the People” movement.

The movement started in 1967, when city officials committed to build a park and neighborhood center on a portion of El Rio Municipal Golf Course, which sits in the heart of barrios El Rio and Hollywood, where I grew up.

The barrios had unpaved streets, no sidewalks and no park. With no place else to play, the kids played in the streets.

Barrio residents saw something inherently wrong in our children having to play in the dusty streets while outsiders had a lush golf course.

After trying for years to get the city to improve the area, the commitment to build a park and neighborhood center gave the people hope.

But city officials soon reneged on their commitment. We wrote letters and passed petitions. And when this failed, we held massive public demonstrations, resulting in the arrests of several activists, including me.

The City Council and its agents characterized our movement as being led by a small group of “outside agitators” bent on causing political mischief.

The Arizona Daily Star, perceived to be the “liberal” newspaper, picked up the council’s mantra and editorially blasted us repeatedly.

At the height of the controversy, the Tucson (Daily) Citizen, perceived to be the “conservative” newspaper, asked to interview our leadership.

That call from the Citizen led to a couple of unprecedented events.

The Citizen Editorial Board agreed to meet with us at the Centro Chicano in Barrio Hollywood in the evening. And we insisted that, while we would have designated spokespeople, the meeting would be open to the public. About 70 attended.

Normally, editorial board interviews are held at the newspaper office during business hours.

The Citizen published a detailed report of the interview, with pictures of the participants – “regular” people rooted in the affected barrios.

This gave the lie to the “outside agitators” nonsense. The story was accompanied by front-page editorials, one in English, another in Spanish. The editorials made the point that we were reasonable people asking for reasonable things.

Each local newspaper had previously published a front-page editorial addressing El Rio, but the Citizen’s two editorials, with one in Spanish, broke new ground.

We enjoyed strong and widespread support in the barrios, but people in other parts of town were confused about who we were and what we were about.

The Citizen story and editorials positively affected the public’s perception of our movement. Fortunately, City Hall folks also read newspapers.

El Rio for the People, the dean of the local neighborhood empowerment movement, was a historic phenomenon, a defining moment in Tucson history.

It proved a united community can indeed move City Hall. And it fundamentally changed the political landscape and dynamics of Tucson.

A veritable mosaic of people and circumstances contributed to the success of our movement, which resulted in the establishment of El Rio Neighborhood Center and Joaquín Murrietta Park, two of the most heavily utilized facilities in the city system.

The Tucson Citizen can rightfully claim a piece of that mosaic. c/s

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As I write this, my last column of the year, I find myself reflecting on my past columns.

My commentaries have ranged from downtown revitalization to the “Merry Christmas-Happy Holidays” controversy to profiling local personalities such as octogenarian artist Al Romo.

If the communications I have received are any indication, my columns have been stimulating. My pieces on immigration and on Mexican American-Chicano history have generated the most e-mails.

I have been a voice against the hate campaign that is being waged against Mexicans and people of Mexican descent. There are people, of course, who are genuinely concerned about immigration and the dynamics surrounding it, folks who are not driven by hate.

But most of the mail I receive on this issue is from people who insist they are not hate-driven even as they refer to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans as “cockroaches, a virus, the brown death” and urge people to shoot Mexicans when they cross the border “and leave the rotting car- casses as a message to the ones who would follow.”

Some readers insisted that I “go back to Mexico.” Representative of these is the guy who says that he wants to see me “beaten and shipped back to where you came from.”

Another says he started a petition – and claims to have garnered hundreds of signatures – to have me deported.

I’m sure these folks were very disappointed when I told them that I ain’t deportable.

I have written extensively on the contributions of Mexicans and Mexican-American- Chicanos to our country, state, and city, maintaining that Tucson and Arizona history cannot be told without discussion of the substantial and substantive contributions of Mexicanos and Chicanos.

In this regard, I said such things as:

“The sweat and blood of (Chicanos) have irrigated this land and made it rich. We have tilled the soil. We have mined the ore. We have laid the railroad. We have died on the battlefield. We have harvested the crops. We have built the schools and universities.”

These assertions prompted much outrage, encapsulated in the following e-mail, from the haters:

“My problem with you Hispanicks (sic) is with you people trying to pass off the USA as a Hispanick (sic) creation . . . by forever trying to force the loser Spanish language on us, demanding we give full Spanish names to our cities and streets.”

Offsetting the hate mail are many communications from readers who took issue with me in a civil and rational manner.

I truly appreciate these people and have even developed an e-mail friendship with one. This person is my ideological opposite, which shows that people of divergent views can argue civilly and rationally (every so often we even agree on something!).

I also appreciate those readers who, even as they agreed with the thesis of a particular column, corrected me or chided me for something I said.

What is evident to me is that the Tucson Citizen has a wide and diverse readership and that Tucson is a very literate community. Overall, it’s been a good year, and I thank the Tucson Citizen – particularly Billie Stanton, Mark Kimble and Michael Chihak – and its readers for that. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for con safos, which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” E-mail: SalomonRB@msn.com

The Tucson metropolitan area recently hit the million-person mark with respect to population. Who would’ve thunk?

When I was growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, the notion of a million people in Tucson was inconceivable.

For all intents and purposes, the Tucson I grew up in ended at Wilmot Road on the east, Silverbell Road on the west, Irvington Road on the south and Prince Road on the north.

To be sure, there was life beyond these boundaries, but it was virtually rural in nature.

As a result of growth, Tucson’s boundaries have shifted over the years.

For example, our family would go swimming at Wetmore Park, which sat where Tucson Mall is today.

For us, this was an out-of-town Sunday excursion. Today, Tucson Mall would be described as being on the near North Side of the greater Tucson area.

Likewise, in my teen years, we would walk from Barrio Hollywood, on the West Side, to Himmel Park, on Tucson Boulevard, which was on the “East Side,” to swim. This was an all-day, crosstown trek for us.

Today, Himmel Park would be considered to be on the West Side of Tucson.

Politically, Tucson was also different back in my day.

Although I was not political as a child, I would later learn that during my growing-up years, Tucson was bereft of Mexican-American political representation.

It wasn’t always that way. There was a time, in Territorial days, when Mexican-Americans dominated Tucson politics.

Several served on the City Council, one as mayor. And several served in the Territorial Legislature.

But with the advent of statehood in 1912, Mexican-Americans became a numerical minority in Tucson, and their political representation waned.

Between 1912 and 1965, only three Mexican-Americans served on the City Council.

Héctor Morales’ election to the council’s Ward 5 seat in 1965 began a pattern of change.

There has been continuous Mexican-American representation on the council since.

In 1968, Morales ran for the Pima County Board of Supervisors, on which only two Mexican-Americans had served since 1920.

He lost, but he planted the seed. Between 1968 and now, six Mexican-Americans have served on the board, all but one for multiple terms.

At about the time Morales was integrating the City Council, Tony Carrillo was elected to the Legislature, also breaking a drought of Mexican-American representation since Territorial days.

There has been continuous Mexican-American representation in the Legislature since.

Ditto for local school boards. Raúl Grijalva’s election in 1974 to the Tucson Unified School District board broke a 22-year drought of Mexican-American representation on that body.

In the late 1970s, Dan Fernández and Camilo Castrillo broke the Mexican-American drought on the Sunnyside school board, and in the 1980s, Pánfilo Contreras did the same on the Flowing Wells school board.

And over the past 14 years, we have elected two Chicanos to Congress: Ed Pastor and Raúl Grijalva.

So for me, our fine city’s evolution has two faces.

The explosive growth over the past 40-some years has brought serious political challenges, such as how to deal with transportation and infrastructure issues.

During the same period, we have seen the founding population of Tucson grow not only in size, but also in political clout. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for con safos, which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” E-mail: SalomonRB@msn.com

‘The times, they are a-changin’,” Bob Dylan wrote in 1964. Forty-some years later, the times are still a-changin’.

I grew up during a period when the Christian community not only preached the Gospel, but also actually went out and practiced it.

It was the Southern Christian Leadership Council, headed by the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy and others who led the black civil rights struggle.

César Chávez and Dolores Huerta marched behind the Virgen de Guadalupe as they fought to achieve basic human rights for farmworkers.

And the Rev. Reies López Tijerina invoked the Gospel as he fought for land rights of Mexican-Americans in New Mexico.

Those movements played out here in Tucson in the 1960s and 1970s, and I was privileged to have been involved in them.

I walked literally hundreds of miles on picket lines in support of civil rights and unions.

Walking alongside us were the likes of Sister Corrina Padilla and the Revs. John Fife, David Sholin, Lee Scott, John Clinton Fowler, Ricardo Elford, Memo Grassman, Alberto Carrillo, Vicente Soriano, John Shaughnessey and many others.

These Christians knew that Christ’s message, embodied in the Gospels, was love for one’s fellow humans. That Christianity was about making people’s lives better, not worse. That Christians should fight persecution of people, not practice it.

Our fine city became a better place as a result of these people’s commitment to their faith.

Today, the so-called evangelical right is turning Christ’s message on its head as it embarks on a campaign of hate. The times, they changed.

Proposition 107, “Protect Arizona Marriage,” proposed to make same-sex marriages illegal.

The fact is, such marriages are already prohibited by Arizona law. Prop. 107, which was on its way to defeat Tuesday night, would have changed absolutely nothing in that regard.

What it would have done was to deny benefits and rights to people who are unmarried but living together – be they gay, straight, elderly or young.

Prop. 107 was really about promoting the hate-gays campaign that right-wing Republicans, egged on by evangelical Christians, have been waging in recent years.

Reality check: Gay folks do not pose a threat to the institution of marriage. The American sport of divorce does.

And so-called Defense of Marriage Acts, such as Prop. 107, have no effect on divorce rates.

U.S. Census Bureau statistics give the lie to the notion that DOMAs “protect marriage”:

States with DOMAs have higher divorce rates than states without them. Where, then, is the protection of marriage that hate-based propositions such as 107 provide?

History works in a pendulum. If Prop. 107 had passed, I’ve no doubt the times would have changed again.

Good folks will find a way to make things right again. They always do.

The failure of Prop. 107 signals that the times have already changed – for the better. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for con safos, which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” E-mail: SalomonRB@msn.com.

“When I went to Tucson in 1996, they put me in a parade that went through Mexico town.”

- Pat Buchanan, Republican strategist and commentator

U nder the guise of addressing immigration issues, right-wingers are waging a hate campaign against people of Mexican descent.

I’ve lived in Tucson all my life, and I can say with absolute certainty that there is no area called “Mexican town” in Tucson.

Buchanan was in the Rodeo Parade, which goes through Tucson’s South Side.

As do other right-wingers who are creating a culture of hate against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, Buchanan simply makes things up.

In an effort to give these a semblance of credibility, he put them in a book: “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.”

In a book-promotion interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” Buchanan said of Mexican folks in Los Angeles: “They cheer Osama (bin Laden) in the stadiums there.”

In today’s America, there is no more scurrilous a lie that can be leveled at someone than that.

Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf is running a campaign ad also designed to scare Arizonans.

The ad says hordes of Mexicans are crossing the border into Arizona, emphasizing that some of these Mexicans may be “terrorists.”

Never mind that there is not a single instance of terrorists having come into the U.S. through our southern border.

The known or suspected terrorists who have entered our country have done so by flying in or via the Canadian border.

A linchpin of Buchanan’s book is that there is a conspiracy among the Mexican government, Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans to give Arizona (and other Southwestern states) back to Mexico.

I’m sure even Buchanan knows how stupid that notion is. How does one give an American state to another country?

But he knows his audience. He knows there are folks who are predisposed to believe his big lie and pass it on.

Having no qualms about using a noxious epithet long used to demean Mexican-Americans, Arizona Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, recently proposed that a failed 1950s program, “Operation Wetback,” which sought to round up and deport all Mexican immigrants, be resuscitated.

But the historical reality is that previous mass-deportation schemes have not differentiated between immigrants and citizens. If you looked Mexican, you were deported, citizenship notwithstanding.

Indeed, anti-Mexican policies can only be enforced on the basis of looks, surname, language and accent. To the haters, we all look and sound alike.

This past July, the Springfield, Tenn., City Council considered banning all Hispanics from city parks.

When it was pointed out to the alderman who sponsored the motion that not all Hispanics in Springfield are “illegal” – which was the basis of the motion – he responded: “If they’re speaking Spanish, I tend to think they are illegal.”

Immigration is, indeed, a real and serious issue in our community, one that needs to be addressed.

But the solution to the immigration situation lies in the realm of politics, not the arena of hate. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for “con safos,” which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” E-mail: SalomonRB@msn.com

In the realm of Mexican-American/Chicano history, Tucson has been a key player.

I taught Chicano history at the University of Arizona, and to make the material more relevant, I would give a Tucson perspective to historical dynamics.

For example, mutual-aid societies (mutualistas) played a key role in the history of our community.

Mutualistas were formed in reaction to nativist groups that sought to keep “foreigners” (which Mexican-Americans weren’t) and Catholics (which many Mexican-Americans were) from being elected to office and from obtaining certain jobs.

The first Mexican-American mutualista in the country, La Alianza Hispano-Americana, was founded in Tucson in 1894. Soon, mutualistas sprouted all over the Southwest.

Due to the efforts of La Alianza, the Mexican-American community was well represented in Tucson politics in Terroritorial days, with several Mexican-Americans serving on the City Council and one as mayor.

This activism also led to the founding of the public-education system in Arizona and the establishment of the University of Arizona.

The National Council of La Raza, the most comprehensive Latino advocacy organization in the country, has Tucson roots.

Tucson labor activist Maclovio Barraza conceptualized the Southwest Council of La Raza in Tucson in 1969.

Barraza was the founding president of the council, which evolved into the NCLR.

Also rooted in Tucson is Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the “Bilingual Education Act,” which gave language-minority children equal access to educational opportunity.

Local educators Adalberto Guerrero, Enrique Oyama and others brought the issue of bilingual education to the country’s attention in the 1960s.

Guerrero testified before Congress, which led to congressional hearings in Tucson, resulting in the 1968 passage of Title VII, a historic piece of legislation.

Two of the most influential pieces of literature of the Chicano Movement era have Tucson connections.

Octavio Romano’s essay, “The Anthropology and Sociology of the Mexican-Americans: The Distortion of Mexican-American History,” was conceptualized at UA in 1967, when Romano was a visiting professor.

His essay suggests that in order for Mexican-American history to be truthfully and realistically portrayed, Mexican-Americans needed to write about themselves.

“Pereginos de Aztlán” (Pilgrims of Aztlán), by UA professor Miguel Méndez (1974), chronicles the Mexican experience in the Southwest.

These works inspired hundreds of young Chicanos and Chicanas to become writers and scholars who went on to generate accurate depictions of our community.

Several of the founders of Padres Asociados para los Derechos Religiosos, Educacionales y Sociales (Priests United for Religious, Educational and Social Rights), were Tucson-based.

PADRES held its national organizing convention in 1970 in Tucson, where its platform of religious-based civil-rights activism was formulated.

PADRES pledged and gave support to the Chicano civil-rights movement and was active on many fronts of the movement.

Many of my students indicated in their course evaluations that these Tucson connections made history more meaningful to them and made them proud.

Indeed, for our fine city and its residents, history has not been a spectator sport. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for “con safos,” which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” E-mail: SalomonRB@msn.com.

Seems I’ve come full circle. I recently retired from the University of Arizona, where I began my activist career.

As a student activist, one of the first major victories of the Chicano Movement in which I was involved was establishing a Mexican-American studies program at UA in 1969.

In 1970, in an essay on the Chicano Movement for a political science course, I wrote:

“We are involved in a historical moment of our evolution as a people. I firmly believe that in 20-30 years, a new generation of Chicanos and Chicanas will study El Movimiento – in the Chicano Studies classes we are creating even as I write this – and have cause to be proud of their parents’ generation.”

Thus, it is fitting that my last UA position was teaching Chicano history for the Mexican American Studies and Research Center.

Since I have some time on my hands, I’m thinking of writing my political memoirs. There’s lots to say, some of which I’ve touched on in previous columns:

I am of the Chicano Generation. We grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, when American society viewed Americans of Mexican descent as foreigners and there was a concerted campaign by society, particularly the schools, to make us feel inferior and treat us as interlopers in our own land.

We had two choices. We could acquiesce and shuffle through life, hat in hand, picking up society’s crumbs. Or we could resist and assert our humanity. We resisted.

In coalition with barrio activists and some Mexican-American professionals, we fundamentally changed the educational, political, cultural and social landscape of Tucson and Arizona.

People of Mexican descent are today routinely elected to office, at all levels. Teachers, counselors and administrators of Mexican heritage abound in our school systems, as well as in universities and colleges.

Today, we count our college and university enrollments in multiples of thousands rather than tens.

Barrio streets are paved and have sidewalks and streetlights. There are neighborhood centers and parks in our barrios. Hiring practices were opened in the public and private sectors. Instead of rejecting Spanish-speakers, employers seek out bilingual applicants.

And, our children are not beaten for speaking Spanish.

The Chicano Generation achieved these things and others directly – or we created the atmosphere in which they could occur.

But our generation’s greatest contribution was that we instilled a deep and irrevocable sense of pride in our community, especially in our youth. We beat back the Mexican haters.

Indeed, Tucson and Arizona are improved versions of their old selves due to the Chicano Movement.

But history is cyclical, and the Mexican haters have resurfaced. We again find ourselves having to prove our legitimacy in our own country – for Proposition 200 and its ugly cousins target people on the basis of looks, surname and accent.

I look forward to detailing all this in readable form. If any of you have reminiscences, documents, photos, news articles, etc., that can help me, please contact me. I’d appreciate it. c/s

Political historian Salomón R. Baldenegro is a lifelong Tucsonan and longtime civil-rights activist. The “c/s” at the end of his column is a Chicano barrio term that stands for con safos, which denotes closure, along the lines of “that’s all I got to say.” Contact him at 884-0070 or SalomonRB@msn.com.

Even as we celebrate the Fourth of July, our most patriotic holiday, much desecration of the U.S. flag occurs.

Although the flag code (www.usflag.org) forbids using the flag for advertising, many businesses use July 4th, and the flag, to sell beer, wieners, couches and cars.

I didn’t take seriously the recent attempt by Republicans to pass a constitutional amendment that would make burning, or otherwise desecrating, the American flag illegal.

Like most thinking people, I saw that for what it was: a cynical attempt to distract the American people from the unpopular Iraq war, which has claimed more than 2,500 American lives, and the danger that Republicans face of losing control of the Congress in the upcoming elections.

Truth is, if we enforced the flag code, we’d be prosecuting a lot of folks.

College and professional athletes, for example. The code prohibits the use of the flag on athletic uniforms. But the flag seems a de rigueur part of athletic uniforms these days.