The year 1964 began with a sad note. Father Rahm called me on January 4 to inform me that his superiors in the Jesuit order were sending him to develop a settlement house in the low‑income areas of Bello Horizonte, Brazil. Knowing that I had lived in Brazil, he half seriously asked me if I would go with him. I hated to see him go. More than anyone else, Father Rahm had taught me how to work with Mexican‑American street gangs. Tough, charismatic, street wise, capable of righteous indignation, ever‑loving and forgiving, Father Rahm dominated South El Paso. His replacement later in the year was Father Thomas, a tall, lean, red‑headed Irishman who also became a close friend.
Late in January I violated a major New Year's resolution‑‑a resolution to reduce my activities in New Mexico, which proved impossible to keep. Three close friends, Dr. David Varley (chairman of the Department of Sociology of the University of New Mexico), Reverend Jose Medina (a Presbyterian minister for northern New Mexico), and the Reverend Donald C. Westphall (field director of the Board of Christian Education Field Service of the United Presbyterian Church) invited me to participate for a tempting fee in a Presbyterian Ministers' Institute, co‑sponsored by the University of New Mexico, Department of Sociology and the Board of Christian Education, to be held on the campus of the University of New Mexico, January 27 to January 30. The theme of the conference, "The Changing Southwest," was very pertinent. David Varley spoke on the value of sociological knowledge to ministers. Thomas Sazaki discussed current trends among New Mexico's varied Indian pueblos and tribes, and I discussed the crisis of the rural Spanish‑American communities and the impact of this crisis upon the welfare of New Mexico. Much to my surprise, my comments were widely quoted in local newspapers. I enjoyed meeting my old friends from Mora, Reverends Carpenter and Ezquibel. The evening periods of dialogue between the ministers and the scholars was most impressive. The ministers, for the most part, were Spanish‑Americans from all over New Mexico and they certainly knew their communities.
At the conclusion of the conference, Irene Valdez, a former student of mine, mentioned that my replacement at Highlands, Thomas J. Maloney, had severely criticized my ideas about the causes of poverty in northern New Mexico in the classroom, in public meetings and in the press. I wrote letters to the Las Vegas Optic, The Candle, the Highlands student newspaper and to him rebutting his criticisms and challenging him to a public debate on the Highlands campus. He refused. However, Margaret Meaders, editor of the New Mexico Business Review (published on the campus of the University of New Mexico) heard about our differences and published our conflicting points of view on the causes of poverty in northern New Mexico in an issue of the Review. Maloney contacted me a year later to tell me that he was leaving Highlands because of his difficulties with Spanish‑American students over his criticisms of my work and because of Anglo ostracism of his daughter for dating a Spanish‑American boy. He later asked for my assistance in locating another position in the Southwest‑‑an assistance that I was not willing to give.
Upon my return from the Presbyterian Conference in Albuquerque, I met with Drs. Marion Cline, Lloyd Cooper, John Hovel, and Dean Clyde Kelsey of the University, and Peter Duisberg to plan for our lectures sponsored by the Chihuahua State Department of Education. On February 28 we traveled by bus to Chihuahua City to be met by Abel Beltran del Rio, a local businessman and his American wife, Patricia. After a pleasant visit we were taken to the Hotel Victoria, our home in Chihuahua.
In the late afternoon, Professor Javier Alvarez, head of the State Department of Education and our formal host, drove us to a large lecture hall. For two days we outlined the values and structure of the American educational system, the American government, and the American political system. Peter Duisberg and I spoke in Spanish on American social problems, the difficulties of development in under‑developed areas, and on the cultural and social factors involved in development in general and on arid lands in particular. As usual, the questions were very sharp, thoughtful, and analytical. At the conclusion of each day we were dined as only Mexicans can do.
When I returned to my office on campus I found a letter from President Ray strongly criticizing my activities outside of El Paso and questioning my heavy speaking schedule in El Paso. Scarcely a week went by without my speaking to some civic, educational or religious organization in El Paso. I was also called upon frequently to lecture to the personnel of government agencies about the social and economic conditions of the Border regions; on Mexican‑American history, culture and society; upon the social and economic characteristics of South El Paso; on racial and ethnic problems in American society; and upon poverty in El Paso. It could well be that my comments were antagonizing powerful elements in the city and county of El Paso and President Ray was coming under pressure to shut me up. I replied with an equally strong letter defending my activities and suggested that both the department and the university benefited from my ever‑growing involvement in the community. After all, it was the lecture series sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church that got me started. Toward the end of the year, he wrote me a very friendly letter urging me to cool down.
The Chamizal issue helped cool me down. It became obvious that President Johnson meant to turn over the Chamizal, a sector of impoverished South El Paso, to Mexico to remove a long‑standing irritant in the relationship between the two countries. The International Boundary Commission, headed by the very conservative Mr. Joseph W. Friedkin, was authorized to supervise the transfer. Being an engineer, he was more interested in stabilizing the channel of the Rio Grande River as an international boundary then in the tenement dwellers of the Chamizal‑‑predominantly Mexican immigrants to the United States. Property owners would be compensated by the United States, but no help would be provided tenement inhabitants to find alternative housing.
Therefore, on March 15, 1964, I called a press conference to suggest that the International Boundary Commission ought to establish an office to advise and assist the Chamizal inhabitants in finding adequate housing and to pay for the costs of moving. In an editorial on March 16, The El Paso Herald Post, the afternoon paper, called for the appointment of such a committee. Commissioner Friedkin announced the formation of such a committee, but never implemented his statement. Although local social agencies did what they could with their limited resources to provide some assistance, the majority of the people of the Chamizal simply picked up their belongings and moved to other slum housing without assistance.
In spite of my activities in connection with South El Paso and northern New Mexico, Ruth and I settled down to an almost normal existence. Each morning after getting our children off to school, we drove up to the university‑‑Ruth to take classes in Spanish and I to teach my classes, meet with students, and administer the department. As Ruth was on campus with me a good part of the day, I enjoyed her assistance in my office. We were pleased with the way our boys were growing, with our home and its spacious yard equipped with swings, slides, rabbit hutches, a chicken coop, and fruit trees. After Ruth left for home, I traveled down to South El Paso to spend the afternoon and often the evening with Father Rahm and later Father Thomas and with Salvador Ramirez, Abelardo Delgado, and others of our group planning activities for the barrio.
The return of the Dinsmoor family in the spring of 1964, after a prolonged absence in Europe, to their house next door to ours was a very important event for our family. The Dinsmoor children became very close friends with our boys, and Ruth and I quite enjoyed a deepening friendship with their parents. Mary Dinsmoor, after asking Ruth a series of questions about the Church, was baptized with her children‑‑except for Robert, who joined the Church later. As the Dinsmoors had a swimming pool, their backyard became the favorite rendezvous for the young Mormon population of the Upper Valley.
All during March I worked hard organizing my Rocky Mountain Social Science Program in Sociology and my Spanish‑American and American Indian adjustments to arid lands for the Committee on Desert and Arid Zones research. On April 7 I flew to Laramie, Wyoming, for the Rocky Mountain Social Science Program. For several years I had been trying to build up the sociology section of the Rocky Mountain Association and was gratified by the Laramie attendance. The organization was finally beginning to gain membership throughout our region.
I had just returned from Laramie when the Choate Foundation called from Phoenix to inquire if I could come to Phoenix with Alfonso Kennard, president of PASO (the political arm of the Mexican‑American organizations in El Paso) and Colonel Robin Washington, an officer in the El Paso chapter of the NAACP. Both men were experienced minority leaders. We met with other invited guests to discuss a possible regional conference on poverty in the Southwest early the next year. The Choate Foundation was eager to sponsor such a conference. The invited participants at the meeting agreed to assist the Foundation in developing such a conference. The three of us left Phoenix rather suspicious of Robert Choate and his foundation. Both Choate and his very competent assistant, Graciela Olivarez, felt that a cooperative political movement composed of the major minorities in the Southwest might develop from such a movement. They would not listen to me when I tried to point out that considerable hostility existed between native Americans, blacks and the Mexican‑Americans.
Returning to El Paso, I was surprised to find Ruth and the children waiting for me at the airport with a loaded station wagon. To my astonishment, they would not even let me go home. Ruth reminded me that I had agreed to her packing the car and preparing the children to drive to Statesboro, Georgia, and leave my family there while I went on to the meetings of the Southern Sociological Society in Ashville, North Carolina. I confessed to her that I had forgotten. In Statesboro, we stayed with Clarence and Thelma Billings and spent several days renewing friendships. I then drove up to Ashville with Sam Huebel, my replacement at Georgia Southern.
Arriving in the smoke‑shrouded town of Ashville, North Carolina, Huebel and I checked into an old‑fashioned Southern hotel with spittoons and registered for the Southern Sociological Society meetings. Not seeing any old friends, I walked around the very unimpressive community of Ashville and then attended the evening sessions. The next morning I read my paper, "Causes of Failure of Government Programs in Northern New Mexico." I was surprised at the enthusiastic response my 45 minute paper elicited from the audience of southern sociologists. That night I attended a dinner of Vanderbilt graduates for Dr. Wayland Hayes, who was retiring. After the dinner, Sam and I returned back to Statesboro. The next morning Ruth, the children and I drove out of Statesboro. Our only stop on the way to El Paso was the Vicksburg Battlefield. Within two days we were home.
But I did not get to stay there long. On April 27 I flew to Lubbock in a sandstorm to attend the annual meetings of the Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As I picked up my luggage, I heard the loud, booming voice of Dr. Karl F. Kraenzel angrily saying, "Don't these Texans ever learn? This sandstorm is a disgrace! Haven't they read my book on the Great Plains?" Before a hostile crowd could assemble, I hustled him out of the terminal and into a taxi. Karl was one of my favorite scholars. A large, burly, humble man who wrote one of the finest books on the Great Plains, "The Great Plains in Transition," he resembled a small‑town intellectual at odds with his environment. We drove up to the campus and after checking into a dormitory, registered for the meetings. I was responsible for a session entitled, "Indian and Spanish‑American Adjustments to Arid and Semi‑arid Environments," with nine papers. I persuaded CODAZR to publish the symposium in early 1965.
Although it seemed as though I were constantly on the road almost every weekend during the first part of the year, my involvement with South El Paso deepened. I continued with the lecture series on El Paso for most of the year. Mayor Judson Williams organized citizen councils to study the diverse problems discussed in the lecture series during the year to make recommendations to his office and to the city council for their resolution. The Reverend Charles S. Burgess, minister of the First Presbyterian Church that sponsored the El Paso Series was called to serve as chairman of the Council on the Slums, with my ally and close friend, Salvador Ramirez, as his vice chairman. Reverend Burgess asked me to head a subcommittee on Housing for Families of the Lowest and Most Unstable Incomes. Another of our South El Paso group, Abelardo Delgado, a poet and saint of South El Paso, became a member of the subcommittee under Reverend Burgess to study "conservation of potential slum dwellings." The three of us worked very closely together. Under the excellent leadership of Reverend Charles S. Burgess, the diverse subcommittees studied various social, economic, and physical aspects of the extensive slum neighborhoods of El Paso.
The reports of the subcommittees were finished in May and the final report of the Slums Council were issued in June, 1964. We found that 69.6 percent of all slum tenements needed minor repairs and 12.2 percent major repairs. Inadequate and dangerous deficiencies in electrical wiring were found in 94 percent of all slum tenements. Our report outlined the socioeconomic characters of the slum population and of the aged, dilapidated tenements in which they lived. Although the report received considerable publicity, it, like the reports of other citizen councils, was filed and soon forgotten. However, our Southside group was determined to bring about improvements in the barrio.
It was about this time, in the early spring, that I became a regular book reviewer for the afternoon El Paso newspaper, The Herald Post, as well as two professional journals, The Western Folklore and Western Politics. I was not only given the books that I reviewed, but was able to buy up review copies of many books I wanted from other reviewers. I also regularly wrote articles for the Western Review, one of the best intellectual magazines in the Southwest. Mrs. Bower, faculty member at New Mexico Eastern in Silver City, had an innate talent as editor. Years later, when she was suddenly deprived of the editorship of the journal by one of the authoritarian college presidents so common in New Mexico, the Journal slowly died.
Ralph Segalman, director of the Jewish Community Center of El Paso, asked me to participate on May 21, 1964, in one of the Center's round tables, along with Father Rahm, Arthur Reardon of the United Fund, and Fred Hervey, a prominent right‑wing El Paso businessman. The topic of our round table was "Poverty in El Paso: Is it a Social Cancer? Is Surgery Indicated?" Before a very large audience, we agreed that perhaps major surgery might be needed. Father Rahm, Arthur Reardon, and I took the position that the economic and social health of El Paso was threatened by social pathology of the El Paso slums. Hervey took the position that poverty was a minor problem and that the poor were responsible for their poverty and usually were content to be poor. To support his contention he mentioned his Spanish‑American neighbors around his cabin in northern New Mexico who were lazy, contented, and poor. I attacked him passionately and forced him to back down. In so doing I made a powerful enemy. Hervey cultivated his enemies like some people cultivate their friends‑‑he was always after them.
On May 26th I traveled up to Albuquerque to discuss the social and economic problems of northern New Mexico with the leaders and members of the La Mesa Presbyterian church. Invited by their pastor, Harry Sommers, who became a good friend, I discussed the causes of poverty in the region, the growing frustration of the Spanish‑Americans, and what might be done to diminish regional poverty. My audience was very friendly. This was but the first of many invitations I received from Protestant churches in New Mexico to speak on northern New Mexico. At the same time I was constantly speaking on the Southwest, the border, Mexican‑Americans, and the social problems of El Paso. The income received from fees became an important element in our budget. Whenever I could I tried to take Salvador Ramirez with me.
During much of 1964 my close friend, Salvador Ramirez, was a major preoccupation. Mr. O.D. Hightower, the director of the El Paso Boys' Club, died of leukemia in the spring. I mounted a campaign among my fellow board members to have Salvador selected as the new director. The prejudice towards Mexican‑Americans among members of a board of a public agency, whose purpose was to serve Mexican‑American boys, startled and shocked me. Many board members argued that Mexican‑Americans had no managerial abilities because of their innate characteristics. Others were opposed to selecting a Roman Catholic as a director. I argued that the Boys' Club could not function without Sal Ramirez, who dominated South El Paso. After several months of hesitation, the board finally chose Sal Ramirez, who did a splendid job for many years.
As two members of our department, Paul Goodman and Rex Gerald, left El Paso to finish up their Ph.D. degrees, I secured permission to hire a new faculty member. Recruitment was a serious problem. We were never given the funds to bring prospective faculty members to the campus for interviews and, therefore, had to rely upon fragile, imperfect letters of recommendation. Upon the advice of Dr. Lynn Smith, now at the University of Florida, I hired Fabio da Silva, a shy, retiring, artistic but competent sociologist and teacher. Fabio came from a wealthy Brazilian family. His father had retired from a career in the Brazilian government. Fabio, an intellectual in the Brazilian sense, and I shared a mutual love for Brazilian literature. I also employed an old friend of mine, James Duke from BYU, to teach summer courses at UTEP. We had many interesting discussions about life at BYU and about church policies. The summer of 1964 passed by rather quickly, but fruitfully.
The two major events of the summer were a family vacation at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, and a preliminary effort to develop a community action program in El Paso. Invited by the Presbyterian Synod to give three days of lectures on northern New Mexico and on Spanish‑American history and values to a group of Presbyterian ministers and lay professionals from July 28 to July 30 at the Ghost Ranch summer institute, I drove my family up the Ghost Ranch. While I lectured they explored that part of northern New Mexico. Before leaving the Ghost Ranch I encouraged my wife to indulge in her love for Indian jewelry. We, therefore, left most of the money I earned from my lectures at the Ghost Ranch Gift Shop.
Earlier in the year Graciela Olivarez had asked Salvador Ramirez and myself to organize an El Paso conference on juvenile delinquency. Sponsored by the Choate Foundation of Tucson, the conference began on August 5, 1965, and lasted for several days. We had invited representatives from social agencies and churches in El Paso and had a large attendance. During the conference, word reached us that Congress has passed President Johnson's anti‑poverty program. Determined that El Paso would not be left out, Sal and I turned the last session of the delinquency conference into a planning session. Members of the group selected Father Thomas, Arthur Reardon, Ralph Segalman, Ernest Tremayne, Salvador Ramirez, and myself to serve as an ad hoc committee to get an anti‑poverty program organized.
On November 20, 1964, the Social Action Committee of the United Fund, called together representatives of all the social agencies and other interested people under the chairmanship of Ernest Tremayne, Executive Director of Goodwill Industries. At the meeting those in attendance formed a large steering committee, consisting of Ernest Tremayne as chairman, Ralph Segalman, Arthur Reardon, Mrs. Juanita Hammons, Jack Lander, Bill Adamson, Clyde Kelsey (Dean of the college), Ed Graves, James Abernathy, John Hardy, Bob Bruce, James Funk, Rev. Gerald McDonald, Dr. Raymond Gardea, Col. Robin Washington, Manuel Rivas, Rogelio Sanchez, Robert Lottridge, Salvador Ramirez, and myself. The Jewish Community Center donated the half‑time services of Ralph Segalman and the Boys' Club authorized Salvador Ramirez to provide staff support. The project was developed, submitted to Washington, and funded. Project Bravo was born and has continued to this day.
The Community Action program was not the only project to grow out of the conference on juvenile delinquency. Graciela Olivarez, after a tour of South El Paso, suggested that we contact Robert Weber, director of the President's Committee on Youth and Juvenile Delinquency, about funding a project to combat juvenile delinquency in our barrio. Salvador Ramirez and I had become concerned over the apparent recrudescence of gang activities in South El Paso.
This was brought home to us by an event that happened at a Saturday night dance at the Boys' Club. A big, husky boy, active in a gang, forced the girlfriend of a boy from another neighborhood to dance with him. The offended boy approached the dancing couple and stabbed the offender, who staggered to the sideline. We immediately called the police and got the girls and bystanders out of the dance hall as fighting broke out between members of the two gangs.
The fracas spilled out onto the street. The police arrived and broke up the melee. As one of the policemen, with a choke hold around the neck of a principal contender, was forcing him into a police car, a boy of the opposite gang sneaked around the officer and stabbed the restrained boy in the side. Much to my surprise he made good his escape. That night Sal and I had little sleep trying to keep the situation under control in South El Paso. Although five or six boys wound up in the emergency wards with contusions, wounds, and broken bones, no one was killed.
I wrote to Robert Weber of the President's Committee on Youth and Juvenile Delinquency requesting information about their programs. Weber came to El Paso and we took him on a tour of South El Paso. As my car traveled slowly through the neighborhood, young boys ran out to greet Salvador Ramirez. At every stop we made the tenement inhabitants responded to me with respect and to Sal with affection. Salvador and I filled out the applications blanks, developed a proposal, and sent it into Washington. On February 9, 1965, a Mr. Martin Timin, an experienced worker with street gangs in New York City, flew in to consult with us. We also gave him a tour of the barrio and that evening entertained him in Juarez. The next morning he went over our proposal with us, helped us to correct its deficiencies, and gave us valuable suggestions about working with gangs. He returned to Washington, D.C. and within thirty days our proposal was funded for $75,000 a year for three years. The South El Paso Juvenile Delinquency Project came into existence.
Our basic thesis for our juvenile delinquency project was simply that South El Paso street gangs could not be brought under control without resolving (or at least reducing) the socioeconomic factors that encouraged gang formation. Gangs, families, and neighborhoods became the basic units for social action. A staff of experienced Mexican‑American social and youth workers born in El Paso were recruited, trained and paid well. They were assigned to four neighborhood centers consisting of tenement apartments equipped with the same level of furnishings found in neighboring tenements. Two youth workers and a general social worker were assigned to each center. One youth worker worked directly with gangs and the other with younger children. The general social worker provided assistance and counseling to the families of gang members. Our central office was located in the heart of the slums. Our staff was encouraged to go to college with tuition paid.
Youth workers were directed to win the confidence and trust of gang leaders and gang members. Whenever possible, gang leaders were recruited into the program. We never tried to weaken their authority. As the street gangs were often the only structured social organization in the neighborhoods, we believed that unless we preserved them intact, their members might turn to drugs, alcohol, and crime. We had considerable success in gradually turning the gangs into sociopolitical neighborhood groupings and the gang leaders into neighborhood leaders. We went only as fast as gang leaders and members were willing to go.
As many gang leaders and members had never been outside of South El Paso, we took them on guided tours of every neighborhood of the city and of Juarez. As gang leaders came to realize that we respected them, their natural suspiciousness rapidly diminished. They were brought together into a council of youth leaders of South El Paso to discuss the fundamental problems of young people and of adults in the slums. We exposed them to militant Chicano leaders who made them aware of who their real enemies were. Within a few months the council of gang leaders felt responsible for the entire barrio and its inhabitants.
Our programs were multifaceted. They included recreational programs in which each former gang fielded numerous athletic teams as well as barrio parties, street dances, and birthday parties. We stressed vocational training and job placement. With the full cooperation of local businessmen large numbers of young boys and girls were given employment and on the job training. Gang members were encouraged to form small corporations to sell ice cream, candy, and soft drinks in the barrio; to take care of yards; to move people and goods; and other business activities that provided training in the organization and operation of small businesses.
We worked extremely hard to gain the confidence of the police, courts, schools, and social agencies. As the police learned that we would report serious crime to them and were eager to reduce levels of juvenile delinquency and gang activities, they became fully supportive. We arranged public meetings in the barrio at which the police would appear to discuss law enforcement problems and the reduction of neighborhood tensions. Judges paroled young offenders to us and notified us when serious charges were coming down so that we could arrange for the young men to enter the military. School principals turned over to us names of children absent without permission for three consecutive days. Our staff contacted the young people, got them back in school. We set up a tutoring service in which paid college students tutored high school students, high school students tutored junior high school students, and junior high school students tutored elementary school students. Gang leaders worked to keep their members and the young people of the barrios in school.
One summer we operated an experimental education project for fifty Mexican‑American children who had failed the first grade. We hired young, experienced, proven Mexican‑American teachers‑‑many of them from South El Paso. Their teacher aids were parents from the barrio. Using the bilingual approach we were able to bring these children up to where the vast majority moved easily into the second grade. Mothers were also hired to cook and prepare free breakfasts and lunches for the children and young people of South El Paso, large numbers of whom were suffering from malnutrition.
We also opened a free medical and dental clinic to meet the unmet needs of children, young people and their parents. The El Paso Medical Society refused to permit their members to volunteer, so we turned to several Mexican‑American doctors and army doctors from Fort Bliss. The El Paso dentists not only manned our free dental clinic, but equipped it as well without cost. By the end of 1966 the gang problem was under control, juvenile delinquency decreased drastically, and the young people of South El Paso developed a strong sense of identification with their barrio. They patrolled it regularly to keep out disorderly and criminal elements. South El Paso hummed with a large variety of diverse educational, recreational, educational, and counseling activities. The barrio for large numbers had become a joyous, safe place for its inhabitants. And many gang members began to attend UTEP and to graduate from college. Each gang was encouraged to raise scholarship funds for young people in their neighborhoods.
In the fall of 1964 politics began to warm up. My colleague and friend from the Department of Political Science, Melvin Strauss, and I (as representatives from PASO) were called together by Mexican‑American political leaders to help organize a Viva Johnson Club, modeled after the old Viva Kennedy Club. Senator Montoya spoke to our group about the importance of registering the local Mexican‑American population and getting them to vote. We formed our Viva Johnson Club and went to work with a will‑‑combing through South El Paso and other Mexican‑American neighborhoods, getting the people registered and their poll taxes paid.
October, 1964, turned into a very busy month for me. I drove up to Santa Fe, New Mexico to speak to a committee of the American Friends about the social and economic conditions of northern New Mexico. Without success, I urged them to develop a model village project in the region based on their work overseas. The next week I flew up to Denver to lecture under the auspices of an eccentric and interesting sociologist from the University of Colorado, Howard Higman, to group of Colorado Employment Security Commission personnel on cultural and social change among the Mexican ‑American people of the Southwest and techniques of working among rural and urban Spanish‑Americans and Mexican‑Americans.
As one of the very few sociologists in the Southwest with any knowledge about and experience with Mexican‑Americans and with the urban poor, I was constantly on the road, flying from Los Angeles on the West Coast to San Antonio in the East, and from Denver to border towns. Much to my astonishment I found that I was making almost as much from my lecturing and consulting as I was from teaching at UTEP.
On January 24, 1965, Marion Cline, Fabio da Silva, Andy Mares, Salvador Ramirez, Dr. Gardea and I drove over to Tucson, Arizona, to participate in the "Southwestern Conference on Poverty," sponsored by the Choate Foundation and the Federal Office of Economic Employment. The conference was called to focus public attention in the Southwest on regional poverty, on the diverse governmental programs designed to help conduct the war against poverty, and perhaps to forge an alliance to support the war among poor and minority groups in the Southwest. The conference, tightly controlled by Robert Choate, Jr., was badly organized.
Sergeant Shriver opened the conference with a poor speech on the topic, "People had Said the Peace Corps Would Not Succeed; But it Did. People are saying that the War Against Poverty Will Fail; But it Won't." After his speech, so‑called representatives of the poor and of minorities spoke in very good English, many using Marxian terminology, to discuss poverty among their people. I suspect that many of them were planted by Choate. Whoever they were, they were not poor. In disgust, Marion Cline and I took the rest of the morning off and visited the Desert Museum.
We returned in time to listen to an excellent panel including Michael Harrington and Steve Allen field questions on poverty from the audience. That night, armed with a forged pass, I sneaked into the auditorium (only the so called poor were invited to attend) to hear Vice President Humphrey, one of my idols, give a flaming speech denouncing poverty and those who benefit from poverty and urging all those present to join the federal effort to eliminate it.
The next morning, not knowing if I would be permitted to give my presentation on the causes of poverty in northern New Mexico, I distributed copies of it to close friends of the New Mexican delegation, such as Jack Flynn, Drew Cloud, Anselmo Sedillo, Reverend Paul Stevens, and Father Raymond. I was suddenly called into the auditorium to deliver it. I was told by many that "I had given one of the most forceful and factual of all the discourses . . on the poverty theme." We managed to persuade Sergeant Shriver and his staff to visit El Paso on their way back to Washington. We left promptly for El Paso ourselves. Several days later, on January 28, Sergeant Shriver and his group kept their promise. We took them on a tour of the worst tenements and talked to the local people through interpreters. At every one of the numerous stops Dr. Gardea pointed out signs of malnutrition and the diseases associated with malnutrition, such as anemia, among the children.
The final event of the year was my annual trek to Albuquerque on November 12 to participate in the meetings of the New Mexico Conference on Social Welfare. I served as a member of a panel that included Ben C. Hernandez, Albuquerque attorney and lawyer; Mrs. Sarah Shakette of Santa Fe; and an old friend, Mrs. Helen Ellis, now a retired professor of social work at the University of New Mexico. I spoke on the need to involve the local people of northern New Mexico in the federal, state, regional and local anti‑poverty and other programs. I pointed out that without such involvement, programs would fail if imposed upon the people. I argued that, ". . . professionals should go to the villagers in the spirit of humility and find out what they think about their problems."
When I said this I drew fire. Ben Hernandez who, in the course of a prolonged dialogue between us, said, "What have the Spanish‑American people ever done that was worthwhile or what had they ever contributed to civilization?", I was so shocked and angered at this expression of self‑hatred that I ripped into him until I reduced him to tears. Then I felt remorse. My friendship with Helen Ellis weakened when I heard her say, "Many impoverished and unemployed persons have less than normal intelligence. Although they are not capable of fitting into the professions, they could be trained for a productive life of service to others."
I was reduced to outright rage by these and similar statements by New Mexican liberals at the conference. Their attitude towards the rural Spanish‑Americans was so contemptuous and so patronizing that they infuriated me. For the first time I saw the liberal establishment of New Mexico naked and exposed. As profound a gulf separated them from the Spanish‑Americans as the gulf between the Spanish‑Americans and their conservative Anglo‑American exploiters.
The year 1965 was in many ways an important divide in our El Paso existence. It was the year in which the Department of Sociology developed a firm foundation with the return of two faculty members who had completed Ph.D.'s and the recruitment of three additional degreed faculty. It was also a year of professional growth. By 1965 I had developed a region‑wide recognition as an authority on Mexican‑American culture, history and society. It was a year in which I became a community leader in El Paso and helped to bring three anti‑poverty programs to El Paso and one to New Mexico. And it was a year in which my relations with the college administration improved.
But, on the other hand, it was a year in which my sister Sarah died. It was the year in which I became involved with Reies Lopez Tijerina and his Alianza Federal de Mercedes. It was the year in which my alienation from the very conservative parochial Mormon community in El Paso began. It was a year of growing militancy for me. I taught two new courses‑‑the Sociology of the Southwest and Mexican‑American Culture and Society. And, in these two courses, I pointed out the problems and difficulties faced by the American Indian and Mexican‑American peoples; the exploitation, land loss, and other injustices suffered, and went over their deplorable socioeconomic conditions. My courses had a dynamic influence on Mexican‑American students, and many have told me that it helped to eliminate feelings of inferiority, to develop ethnic pride and to create a desire to serve their own people. And, finally, it was the year in which the Departments of Sociology at both the University of Utah and Brigham Young University expressed an interest in me.
Much of my time in 1965 was involved in recruiting. Julian Roebuck was the first to be recruited. Married to a Mexican‑American girl, he liked El Paso and got along well with Mexican‑American students. Ellwyn R. Stoddard, a Mormon, was the next addition to the faculty. As I was the only active Mormon on the faculty, I decided to recruit one for the department. While house‑hunting during the summer of 1966, he lived with us. One evening he made a startling comment. "You like me now, but when you get to know me better you won't." An abrasive individual deeply wounded by life, he had an incredible ability to lose friends and make enemies. Deeply interested in the border and in Mexican‑Americans, he was never able to work successfully with Mexican‑Americans. Both Roebuck and Stoddard became excellent scholars.
Both Paul Goodman and Rex Gerald were quiet, faithful, unassuming members of the department. A good teacher and colleague, Paul suffered from the gentle/anti‑Semitism so common in educated Texas circles. He and his wife, a charming person and a very competent librarian, became our close friends. Gerald taught anthropology and was curator of the college museum. He got me involved with the El Paso Archaeological Society.
The director of the Jewish Community Center, Ralph Segalman, had long wanted to enter academia. A very talented, social worker and an experienced administrator, Ralph and I had worked very closely together for several years in the development of anti‑poverty programs in El Paso. I managed to persuade the college president, Dr. Joseph Ray, to employ him to manage the Upward Bound Program and teach an occasional class. Segalman was a brilliant scholar, a competent program writer, skilled in the art of securing funding.
During the spring of 1965, New Mexico was very much on my mind. Several New Mexicans at the Tucson Conference had mentioned the rise of a new, rather mysterious Spanish‑American organization‑‑the Alianza Federal de las Mercedes—led by a relatively unknown, charismatic leader, Reies Lopez Tijerina, that demanded the return of alienated Spanish and Mexican land grants to the village communities to which they had once belonged. For years I had sent into northern New Mexico copies of my articles on land loss, exploitation, and the socioeconomic problems of the Spanish‑American rural villages. I had hoped that my articles might spark the formation of a new Spanish‑American protest organization to fight for the civil rights, the culture, the language, and the lands of the Spanish‑American people. I began to wonder whether or not the Alianza might not be that organization. I called contacts in the F.B.I. to ascertain whether or not Tijerina was a Communist and was assured that to the best of their knowledge, he was not.
The first definite information about the Alianza had come from Peter Van Dresser. He wrote to me on November 28, 1964, as follows: In case you haven't already run across it, I thought that you might be interested in the existence and activities of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes. It is an organization with an office in Albuquerque, but apparently originating in Mexico, which purports to be dedicated to the rights of the heirs of Spanish and Mexican land grants. They had a fair‑sized meeting in Santa Fe several months ago, which was attended by about 200 people and was conducted in Spanish.
I wrote for information to friends in New Mexico, who thought that it was but a flash in the pan. Then, suddenly, in February Tijerina appeared in my office with a copy of my paper, "Causes of Land Loss in Northern New Mexico," in his hand. He sought permission to reproduce it for distribution in northern New Mexico. We talked for about half an hour before he left. He struck me as being a very nervous, extremely intelligent, but rather reserved Mexican‑American. Because of his accent, I knew he was not a Spanish‑American. He had a magnetic personality that caught and held one's attention. He left me in a very thoughtful mood.
Having to go to Albuquerque in February to do research on Spanish and Mexican land grants at the Coronado Room at the University of New Mexico, I decided to visit Tijerina before returning to El Paso. After some searching I found his headquarters‑‑a large, two‑story building with several partitioned offices, a kitchen, restroom, a large hall on the bottom floor, and family facilities on the second floor. After introducing me to a number of people, including Eddie Chavez, his office manager, we talked for several hours; that is, he talked and I listened. Displaying a surprising knowledge of New Mexican history, he stated that the Alianza was organized to secure the return by non‑violent means of the community land grants of the Spanish‑American villages of northern New Mexico to their former owners. He struck me as a very intelligent, charismatic leader. Towards the end of the conversation, he asked me if I would speak at the annual Alianza convention sometime in the fall. I replied that I would be happy to.
April, 1965 was an extremely busy month for me. Besides teaching my classes and administering the department, I traveled on April 7 to Tempe, Arizona, with John Haddox and John Sharp to attend the meetings of the Rocky Mountain Council on Latin American Affairs on the campus of Arizona State University. Then on April 14, I rode the Greyhound Bus to Dallas through some of the most extensive non‑scenery in the United States to read a paper, "Changes in the Family System of the Spanish‑Americans," at the meetings of the South‑western Social Science Association. I flew from Dallas to Los Angeles on April 16 to participate in a training program organized by Robert W. Schasre of the Delinquency Prevention Program at UCLA for some thirty‑odd black and white youth workers at the Youth Studies Center in Watts. I had a chance to tour Watts and to talk to numerous black leaders. None of them anticipated a riot in Watts several years later. I left Los Angeles at the conclusion of the training session and flew to Salt Lake City on April 18 to visit my parents.
I barely had time to greet my family when I drove off to Albuquerque with Marion Cline to attend Governor Jack M. Campbell's two‑day conference on poverty in New Mexico on April 23 and 24. I felt good at receiving a special invitation from Governor Campbell's office inviting me to participate in the conference. Arriving at the conference site, I encountered a number of New Mexican friends and sat up most of Friday night catching up with the news on northern New Mexico. Perusing the program early Saturday morning, I noted with surprise that the Spanish‑Americans, the poorest group in New Mexico, were not mentioned by name. When I asked Governor Campbell about this, he said that the political leaders in New Mexico were fearful of rocking the New Mexican boat if they implied that Spanish‑Americans existed, let alone that they had special problems. On April 30 I returned to Watts to participate in another training session.
At the conclusion of the training session, I flew from Los Angeles to Phoenix, Arizona, and rode up to Flagstaff to participate in the meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Rocky Mountain and Southwestern Division. Harold Dregne informed us at the CODAZR meetings that the National Association for the Advancement of Science wanted CODAZR to serve as a nucleus of a national committee. After the CODAZR meeting I flew on to Albuquerque to be met at the airport by Ilo Campbell of the New Mexico Council of Churches and Thomas Carter of the Washington office of the Employment Opportunity Office. We talked until late in the evening about the contours of a migrant labor program for New Mexico. We drove into Santa Fe the next morning to meet with a group of delegates from every county in New Mexico. Many old friends such as Reverend Paul Stevens, Tomas Atencio and Horacio Ulibarri were there. I was asked by an old friend, Jack Flynn, head of the New Mexico Planning Office, to chair the northern New Mexican committee. In the evening the committee drafted a proposal to establish a migrant labor program for New Mexico in which most of the northern Spanish‑American villages would be included. Thomas Carter assisted us to properly fill out our application blanks, and was after me to hold a similar conference in El Paso flew back to Washington, D.C. to fund the program in days. Project Help, as it was named, became an important component in the economic development of northern New Mexico for many years.
I returned to El Paso to teach my classes and catch up on the paperwork of the department. I am still surprised that the dean never admonished me over the classes that I missed. Fortunately, I was able to bring in interesting speakers to take my place. May and June proved to be just as busy as April had been. On May 7, Fabio da Silva, Ralph Segalman, Marion Cline and I traveled up to Boulder, Colorado to attend the annual meetings of the Rocky Mountain Social Science Association at the University of Colorado. We only had two sessions in sociology on the program and our little group took care of one of them. My paper for the program was entitled, "Social Mobility of the Syrians and Lebanese in the City of Sao Pablo, Brazil." Before I left I carefully checked on the health of the prairie dog village located on campus.
In June I loaded my family into our station wagon and drove to Santa Fe, stopping on the way for the boys to collect rock specimens and to look at the desert vegetation in bloom. In Santa Fe we visited all the museums and looked in all the pottery and jewelry stores. From Santa Fe we drove peacefully up to the Ghost Ranch, secured a room, and I lectured on "Culture and its Implications in Working with Families," to the members of the Family Service Association of America. I encouraged Ruth to buy some Navajo jewelry at the gift shop with the fee for speaking. The boys and I hiked around the Ghost Ranch and enjoyed the habitat zoo.
From the Ghost Ranch we proceeded on to Monte Carlo, Colorado, and checked into a small motel. Depositing my family, I reported to the Vista Training Center, operated by Dr. Howard Higman, Department of Sociology, and his assistant, Robert Hunter, who trained Vista workers to work among Mexican‑Americans and Spanish‑Americans. For two days I lectured on Mexican‑American history, culture, immigration, discrimination, and techniques of working with Mexican‑Americans. Given several tours by local Mexican‑American residents, I learned that Texan influence is, unfortunately, quite strong in the San Luis Valley and that the majority of Mexican‑American residents were impoverished Mexican‑Americans from Texas who lived in segregated small town ghettos, such as La Riata in Monte Vista. A few relic Spanish‑American villages can still be found, plus a number of Mormon communities.
I barely had time to get my classes ready for summer school and to organize the summer curriculum. Fortunately we were able to employ all members of the department who desired employment. The summer semester had just begun when Thomas Carter, head of the Migrant Labor Division, Office of Employment Security, arrived in El Paso. I called together a group of friends and allies such as Father Thomas, Salvador Ramirez, and others. Within several days we had put together a migrant labor program for El Paso that emphasized vocational training, English and other basic education courses, and job placement that was funded for $600,000 the first year. Unfortunately, Jesus Terrazas and Clifford Haggerty were hired as directors. Under their direction the program was beset with corruption.
July and August were busy months. Besides teaching my summer classes, attending to board meetings of the diverse anti‑poverty programs I had helped to organize, and preparing the department for the coming school year, I was on the road almost every weekend. Thus, on July 1, I traveled to Albuquerque by bus to attend a CODAZR committee meeting called to plan next year's symposium. While in Albuquerque I visited Ilo Campbell to discuss the extension of the New Mexico Migrant Labor Program, Project Help, to all of northern New Mexico. I had successfully lobbied in Washington, D.C., to persuade the Migrant Labor Division of the Office of Employment Security to define all Spanish‑American villages as migrant communities and, therefore, eligible for assistance.
Ilo persuaded me to go the airport with him to pick up the Vista Volunteers assigned to Project Help that I had helped to train in Monte Vista. As they were deplaning, Ilo turned to me and said, "Will you organize a training and orientation program for them today?" I almost fainted. I spent several days discussing with them Spanish‑American history, culture, socioeconomic conditions, and community needs. It was quite an experience having to organize a meaningful training program in twenty minutes. I became a patron to all the Vistas assigned to New Mexico and the El Paso areas, helping them with their problems and mediating between them and their agencies and with Washington.
I returned to Monte Vista the first part of August to participate again in a Vista training program. I had many long talks with Howard Higman. A man with many internal conflicts, he managed a successful Vista training center. While there I was driven around southern Colorado by local Mexican‑American and Spanish‑American residents. I was thoroughly instructed about the problems of discrimination, uncaring schools, biased police and sheriff departments, and internal conflicts between Spanish‑Americans and Mexicans. When my part of the training program came to an end, they drove me to the airport at Alamosa to board a Frontier flight to Denver. Much to my surprise, I was bumped as the Frontier flight could not take off with a full complement of passengers. Even though it was late in the afternoon, I was able to rent a car, charged the car to Frontier Airlines and drove through the night to Denver, cursing Frontier Airlines all the way.
Arriving at the run‑down Oxford Hotel early in the morning, I reported in to Dr. Higman and Robert Hunter his assistant who, besides the Monte Vista Center, Dr. Higman also operated a training center on Larimer Street in Denver training personnel of social agencies and police departments to work more effectively with minority groups. This training session was entitled, "Management and Operation of Youth Opportunity Programs." As usual I lectured on Mexican‑American and Spanish‑American history, culture and society, socioeconomic change, and discrimination in the Southwest and gave tips to the budding social workers about how to work successfully with Mexican‑Americans. I felt flattered when a group of Mexican‑American trainees drove me to the Denver airport in the early morning of August 14, thanking me for my presentation.
Just before I boarded the flight for El Paso, I received a telegram from my father in Salt Lake City that my sister, Sarah, had died. I hastily transferred to a Salt Lake flight after calling my wife and flew to Salt Lake in a very depressed frame of mind. Sarah and I had grown up virtually as twins. I loved her very much. Arriving in Salt Lake City, I found my parents prostrate. Sarah and her family had lived close to my parents and were an important support to them. For many years Sarah's children, Marilyn and Tommy, were the only grandchildren my parents had. Ruth, my wife, was a friend to Sarah for many years before I came on the scene. Sarah had, as a matter of fact, introduced me to Ruth. Every time we came to Salt Lake City we spent much of our time with Sarah, her husband Tom, and their children. Just before the funeral, as I stood grieving for Sarah in an upstairs bedroom, I strongly felt her presence.
Toward the end of August I traveled alone by bus to Las Vegas, New Mexico, to speak to the assembled teachers of the West Las Vegas School System‑‑invited by Mr. Palomon Arguello, Superintendent of Schools. Before I spoke he took me on a tour of the West Las Vegas school system. I was quite impressed by the good schools they had built with limited funds. I spoke to the teachers about the educational needs of the Spanish‑American children, stressed bilingual education, urged teachers to teach in Spanish, suggested that they teach Spanish‑American history and culture, discussed Spanish‑American problems and mistreatment, and urged them to do their best to strengthen the sense of identity of their students and encourage their creativity. Not all teachers liked my presentation, but the majority kept asking me questions about the suggestions I made for several hours.
The most important event of September, 1965, was my trip to Albuquerque on September 4 with Salvador Ramirez and Andres Mares to speak at the annual convention of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes in the Albuquerque Civic Auditorium. I was rather impressed by the number of people in attendance‑‑well over 1,000. Reies first spoke for three hours in Spanish about the grievances and mistreatment of the Spanish‑Americans without scarcely drawing a breath. A consummate speaker and actor, Reies played on the audience like a master musician. He could draw from them whatever emotion he desired.
After lunch he introduced me. I stood up before the audience and began to read my paper on causes of land loss among the Spanish‑Americans. Reies interrupted me. He asked the audience if they wanted me to speak in Spanish. They roared out, "Spanish!" So I threw away my prepared speech, drew a deep breath and, much to my surprise, spoke in my fractured Spanish for two hours about land loss, the advantages of bilingual education, and about the wrongs of the Spanish‑Americans. It was a most interesting experience. The audience was very sympathetic. When I seemed to stumble over a word, they yelled it out. I must confess that I enjoyed the experience. At the end of the convention Reies drove me over to a Spanish language television station, where he and I were interviewed on the Spanish‑American economic and social problems by a Mr. de la O.
Ever since I spent my first summer in Juarez interviewing families in poor Juarez neighborhoods, I had become very interested in the possibilities of cultural exchanges across the Mexican American border and in the formation of trans‑border associations. The Mexican and American borderlands were being woven by economic and social trends into a single bilingual society, but the failure of the two nations to effectively and jointly resolve border problems and to recognize the interweaving of the borderland into a single community seriously hampered the life of the people living on both sides of the border.
Therefore, I was delighted to be invited by the El Paso Chamber of Commerce and the Camara Nacional de Comercio of Mexico to assist in the development of a Border Cities Association to work for the economic and cultural development of both sides of the border and to encourage legislation facilitating economic and social change that assisted the people of the border and fight negative government policies. The Central planning committee established committees focusing on such specific areas as economic relations, trade regulations, legislative action, tourism, international health and public safety, cultural relations, and public relations. Each committee was given both an American and a Mexican chair.
Professor Jose Meos Torres of Juarez and I were called to chair the committee on cultural relations. The various committees met on the first day of the Border Cities Meeting in El Paso and Juarez held October 28th and 29th, 1965. Our committee met during the first day and hammered out a report presented to the plenary session the next day. We recommended that mechanisms be established to foster faculty and student exchanges between Mexican and American border colleges and universities, cultural activities such as book fairs, cultural events, the relaxation of immigration laws for scientists, writers, college faculty, and students.
Similar conferences were held until 1969 in Juarez and El Paso. Unfortunately the organization gradually withered. It floundered on the fundamental lack of municipal autonomy by Mexican urban communities tightly controlled by Mexico City. Their mayors lacked the power to even make simple decisions concerning municipal matters. Inevitably a number of other border associations were organized and then died for the same reason. Another serious problem was the incredible ignorance of American local, state, and national leaders and businessmen about the Spanish language and Mexican culture and values. The Mexicans in general were far less parochial than the Americans but their hands were tied by the incredibly inept and partially corrupt centralized government in Mexico City. The American government was less corrupt but even more inept. However, scholarly associations with participation from both sides of the border are flourishing. One of my deepest regrets at leaving El Paso was my having to abandon my border interests when I had such a creative start. My major advantage, one seldom possessed by other Americans, was my ability to function jointly within the Mexican and the American value systems. I like the Mexicans without any hesitation, and they knew it.
The second annual Conference of the Southwest Council of Foreign Language Teachers in El Paso on November 13, 1965, was the last major event of the year. The chairman, Marie Esman, Supervisory of High School Foreign Languages, El Paso Public Schools, invited me to serve as one of several specialists presenting background material on the ethnic characteristics, socioeconomic conditions, religious system, social values, and family system of the Mexican‑American people in the Southwest for their committee on "Our Bilinguals: Social and Psychological Barriers to Their Environment." A good friend, Chester Christian, served as chairman of our specialist committee. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference. The debate on bilingual education was intense‑‑almost bitter. I flung myself ardently into the discussion as a proponent of bilingual education.
In contrast, 1965 ended peacefully. We were able to celebrate Christmas at a higher level of spending than in previous years. My constant travels as a consultant sharply increased our income. All in all, I felt quite contented as the year came to an end. My position at the college was solid. I had tenure and the respect and friendship of my fellow faculty members. I got along quite well with the administration, in spite of an almost constant series of small conflicts over my department budget, my hopes for expansion, and often over the personalities of members of my department. In my professional life I had secured recognition throughout the Southwest as an authority on Mexican‑American history and culture (at this time the number of scholars interested in Mexican‑American studies was very small).
A crucial year in our El Paso experience was 1966. Events of the year implanted my feet firmly on the road that would lead us to Salt Lake City. It was a year of growing recognition as a regional authority on Mexican‑American history, culture and socioeconomic conditions. It was a year of growing radicalization and commitment to the Mexican‑American movement. It was a year of growing alienation from the very conservative local Mormon leadership. It was a year in which our boys began moving into their teens. It was a year of tragedy in which my wife was permanently injured in an automobile accident. And, finally, it was a year in which my Department of Sociology was firmly established.
At the beginning of 1965 the department consisted of five Ph.D. faculty members‑‑Paul Goodman, Rex Gerald, Julian Roebuck, Ralph Segalman and Ellwyn Stoddard. Enrollment in the three areas of geography, anthropology and sociology for which we were responsible continued to grow rapidly. We were beginning to send our majors to the better graduate schools in the nation. Our relationships with the senior Department of Sociology at the University of Texas strengthened. Our course offerings for the first time covered the major areas of sociology. By rotating classes we were able to sharply increase the number and variety of courses offered without a substantial increase in the faculty. I enjoyed teaching courses on the sociology of the Southwest, border sociology and Mexican‑American history, culture and socioeconomic conditions. Mexican‑Americans students flocked into my classes and I secured the respect and appreciation of the El Paso Mexican‑American community for my efforts on their behalf.
As a result of our growth, members of the department spent much of the year developing an M.A. program. To support the program I sought membership in the exclusive graduate faculty of the University of Texas system. My membership application, supported by the college administration, was submitted in early March. It was rejected. I then decided to enlist the support of the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas. I socialized with them at several professional meetings, sent them copies of my papers, and in August the department at Austin sent an evaluation team to visit our department. Shortly thereafter my application for membership in the graduate faculty was approved. I quickly found out that the graduate faculty of the University of Texas system was an academic elite consisting of less than ten percent of the college faculty. It served as the equivalent of a university senate and a presidential advisory committee.
I was appalled at the incredibly inept, inefficient and bureaucratic structure of the University of Texas system, dominated by an anti‑intellectual, extremely conservative, boorish Board of Regents that treated college presidents as foremen and college faculty as hired hands. The chairman of the board, Sam Irwin, a wealthy, drunken, Neanderthaloid crony of Governor Connelly, represented the worst elements in the Texas establishment. A dictator, he intimidated board members, college presidents, and faculty members alike. He interfered in the affairs of the university system, hiring and firing presidents and faculty members, increasing or diminishing the budgets of schools, colleges in schools, and even departments. A natural bully, sympathetic to the growing John Birch movement in Texas, he ruled by profane threats and savage personal attacks. Intellectual freedom did not exist and the Board of Regents cared little whether its universities and colleges were blacklisted by the American Association of University Professors or other professional organizations. I quickly realized that in order to survive, I needed to develop a strong network of support throughout the Southwest, which I proceeded to do. That network proved to be my salvation in my days of peril. Although our request for a graduate program in sociology was approved by the local college administration, it was stopped dead by an 18‑month moratorium on eleven graduate programs imposed by the Board of Regents.
Because of my growing involvement with anti‑poverty programs, the Juvenile Delinquency Programs, the Boys' Club and Our Lady's Youth Center, I was spending ever more time in South El Paso. By now it had become my barrio. Almost every nook and cranny was familiar to me. I knew an ever‑increasing number of South El Paso inhabitants and had friends and acquaintances in almost every one of the presidios (local name for the tenements). Most of the former gang leaders had become personal friends and I was able to assist a good many to enter the University of Texas at El Paso.
The visit of Marvin Myers and Ralph Sussman from the President's Committee on Youth and Juvenile Delinquency was an important event of the spring of 1966. After refunding our juvenile delinquency program for 1966, they told us that Congress was about to pass the Green Amendment prohibiting political activities by anti‑poverty programs. They told us that they would fund a militant social action program in South El Paso before the amendment passed. We sat down together at a restaurant in Juarez and put together Project Macho to exert pressure on tenement landlords to improve their tenements, to organize demonstrations and rent strikes, and to organize the slum population for effective political action. Myers and Sussman flew back to Washington, D.C. and funded us for $250,000 a year for three years. We employed Thomas Sinclair, a very competent, intelligent Vista volunteer working in Lovington, New Mexico, to head the project. He had demonstrated leadership ability in organizing a successful movement to desegregate the Lovington schools.
The Catholic clergy and the Sisters of Loreto, when informed of Project Macho, joyously supported us. For three years, tenement by tenement, we organized the inhabitants into associations and put pressure on landlords to provide materials (if we provided labor) to bring their tenements up to city tenement code provisions. Many did so when photographs of conditions in their tenements were made public; others refused. We overcame their resistance by organizing "pray‑ins." That is, we organized a demonstration beginning with a mass for the souls of the delinquent landlords at one of the two parish churches in South El Paso. Then we marched on the road in a demonstration, to the owner's public residence carrying large banners with names and addresses of the tenement owners prominently displayed, along with blown‑up photographs of their tenements. Then, prominently displaying the signs, the members of the demonstration would kneel on his lawn or sidewalk. A priest then asked the Lord to soften the heart of the tenement owner. One demonstration was enough. The owner usually caved in promptly before other demonstrations were organized. Even the threat of such a demonstration was enough to bring about prompt cooperation. The police, when called, simply found it impossible to take action against a group of people engaged in prayer in front of a residence. Rent strikes were organized and proved effective. Macho also organized neighborhood socials, a credit union, a cooperative store and engaged in job placement. The personnel of most anti‑poverty programs cooperated surreptitiously, as did the young people and former gang leaders in our juvenile delinquency program. Very few people ever connected Project Macho to me. The project gave me more happiness and satisfaction than did almost any other program in El Paso.
During the year David, Daniel and their close friend, William Dinsmoor, joined the El Paso Boys' Chorus, directed by Dr. Thormasgard, the music teacher at UTEP and a close friend of the family. David took private bassoon lessons. Both boys played in their respective school orchestras. During the summer all three of our boys were kept quite busy with tennis lessons in the morning and swimming lessons in the afternoon.
Ruth taught piano class at several local elementary schools. She was so successful that she had long waiting lists for her classes and for private instruction. Ruth and a group of musician friends organized a student chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota on campus and an alumni chapter in the community. She and our neighbor, Mary Dinsmoor, who had purchased a potter's wheel and kiln, made many lovely things of clay. Ruth, extremely popular in the ward, taught in Relief Society and served as ward organist.
Now, to comment on the other events of 1966. On January 24 I spoke to the Panamerican Round Table in Alamogordo on "Social and Cultural Change Among Spanish‑speaking Groups in the Southwest;" and on January 29 I flew to Washington, D.C. to participate in a seminar on "The Implications of Cultural Differences for Corrections," convened by the Joint Commission on Correctional Manpower. Invited participants spoke before an audience of correctional personnel of the federal government on the major minority groups of the Southwest. I discoursed on the Spanish‑speaking people of the Southwest. I felt honored at being invited, but was worried about what Mexican‑Americans might think about my presentation. My apprehensions were relieved when several months later a Spanish‑American in Las Cruces thanked me for what I presented. Besides the seminar, I deeply enjoyed moments of conviviality with other participants such as Philip Montez and, Harry H. L. Kitano of California, and Joseph Montserrat of New Mexico, a Puerto Rican leader. For the first time I learned much about the Puerto Rica situation in the United States. The seminar was one of my most enjoyable experiences of the year.
In January, 1966, Howard Higman hired me to lecture twice a month to the personnel of Colorado social agencies serving the poor and minority groups. Staying at the Oxford Hotel, I came to know Lorimer Street and the poor people living in the area. Lorimer attracted the down‑and‑out, the prostitutes and the petty criminals. It was a major center for vice, drug trafficking, and those on the bottom of society. I learned a great deal from my interaction with social workers, police, correctional personnel, and local and state agency personnel that enriched both my research and my teaching. Many local Mexican‑American leaders in Denver became personal friends. I continued my bimonthly trips to Denver until well into late 1968.
The most important event in February was a trip to Albuquerque during the first part of March to participate again in the annual conference of the Spanish‑American Presbyterian ministers in northern New Mexico. Reverend Jose M. Medina, Field Counselor for the Presbyterian church for northern New Mexico invited me every year to address the conference on the people and problems of northern New Mexico. I thoroughly enjoyed my participation in these ministry conferences. Strong bonds of friendship developed with many of these humble, dedicated, Spanish‑speaking, religious leaders. Many of them corresponded with me for many years.
As a result of my work with the Presbyterian ministers, I was invited to participate in state and local conferences sponsored by the Evangelical Council on Spanish‑American work and came to know many of the local ministers of Spanish language Evangelical churches. At the same time, I received frequent invitations to speak to groups of Roman Catholic priests, sisters, and lay members as well as to groups in the Jewish community. The friendships I formed with ministers, priests and rabbis enriched my life in El Paso.
I remember well the day when the Mexican‑American patriarch of the El Paso stake asked me to arrange a meeting between Mexican‑American Church leaders and Anglo‑American stake presidency to discuss discrimination, ethnic prejudice, culture conflicts, and methods of improving missionary work among the Mexican‑Americans. Stake President Harold Turley coldly informed me when I met with him that no such problems existed in the stake. Turley, born in the Mexican‑Mormon colonies, spoke Spanish and served as a mission president in Mexico. He was later appointed a church regional representative. He had no compassion nor understanding of the Mexican‑American people in or out of the Church and demonstrated considerable bias against them. His cold arrogance, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, President West, one of the finest stake presidents I have ever known, infuriated me. As a result I withdrew from all stake activities while remaining fully active in local ward meetings. Turley’s wife once commented that, "No Mormon should ever be active in non‑church organizations." It is highly ironic that a daughter many years later married a Mexican‑American boy.
It was early in 1966 that I was first offered positions in the Department of Sociology at both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. I wrote for information on salary, benefits, number of class hours to be taught, and the departmental specializations. At the moment I was not interested in leaving the University of Texas at El Paso but, as always, tried cautiously to keep my options open. Neither department offered me much more than I was making at UTEP, so the matter rested for the year.
On June 11 I spoke at the annual meeting of the G.I. Forum of New Mexico in Las Cruces. I urged the G.I. Forum to take the lead in New Mexico in fighting discrimination, segregation, and exploitation effecting the Spanish‑speaking people in New Mexico. I asked them to go to the common Spanish‑speaking people who had little contact or involvement with Mexican‑American or Spanish‑American organizations, work with them, get them involved, and assist them in improving their socioeconomic conditions.
June turned out to be a tragic month for the Knowlton family. My student assistant, Sylvia Whetton, a charming Mormon girl from Colonia Juarez, a relative to Bishop Pratt of our ward, who worked for me along with her sister LaRayne and Brother Kelly, was thrown from a horse in the Colonia and killed early in June. Then Ruth suffered a near‑fatal automobile accident. Her mother had been after us for some time to travel to Salt Lake City on June 17 for the weddings of Katherine and Carolyn Call, two twin girls, step‑daughters of Ruth's sister Ann. As I had been called to Austin to discuss our departmental graduate program with members of the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, I could not go with her. I had a very strong impression that Ruth should not go, but overruled my feelings when Ruth found another woman in the stake to accompany her.
A member of the ward, Joseph D. Payne, found a Mrs. Helen Kmetzach, a stake officer in the Young Ladies Mutual, to accompany Ruth. He and his family decided to travel with Ruth and her companion to Salt Lake City. If I had known that Ruth would convoy with the Paynes, I wouldn't have insisted upon someone going with her. As soon as they left my driveway, I drove to the airport and flew to Austin with Julian Roebuck. We discussed our graduate program with members of the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas. After securing their support I flew back to El Paso, entering our house around midnight.
I had just opened the door when the phone rang. I stood still for a moment before I answered the phone. I knew that it was Ruth reporting an accident. With a prayer in my heart I picked up the receiver. It was Ruth. She told me that Mrs. Helen Kmetzach was driving the car erratically just north of Moab. Ruth tried to get her to change drivers, but she refused. Ruth told me later that the impression crossed her mind to turn the key of in the ignition. A few minutes later Mr. Kmetzach rolled our station wagon over. Ruth and Mrs. Kmetzach were injured, but the children seemed to be all right. Ruth's father and brother, John, were coming to Moab to drive her to Salt Lake City with David and Ann. Daniel, Keith, and my nephew Ricky had gone on with the Paynes.
I taught my classes on the morning of June 16 and then flew to Salt Lake City. Upon entering the De Young home I found a nightmarish scene. My poor wife, doubled up and scarcely able to move, was being ordered by her mother in a loud, angry voice to straighten up as there was nothing wrong with her. My children were clustered around their mother in pain. Ruth's sister, Neoma, and the sister's husband, Earl, a doctor himself, were fluttering around trying to reason with the angry mother. I took over immediately, told the mother to shut up, and consulting with Earl, called Dr. Quentin Harris. He came over immediately and ordered Ruth and the children to the hospital by ambulance.
Ruth and the children were thoroughly examined and X‑rayed. Ruth was found to have a jammed right shoulder and three compressed vertebrae in her back. David had a broken collarbone, and Ann a broken leg. They were all treated and put in the hospital. Daniel, Keith, and Ricky escaped injury. I was surprised that the doctor at the Moab hospital had not picked up the broken bones. When I wrote to the doctor about it, he told me that their X‑ray equipment was old and defective. If I had not come when I did, Ruth might have been paralyzed for life.
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