La Raza Unida: A generation of leaders who continue to inspire
EL PASO — State Senator José Rodríguez will provide a welcome to El Paso at the opening of tomorrow’s (Aug. 30, 2012) 40th Anniversary Commemoration of La Raza Unida Party 1972 National Convention. Registration for the event begins at 5 p.m. at the University of Texas at El Paso’s Tomás Rivera Conference Center, which is in the Student Union Building, and welcome remarks begin at 6 p.m.
Senator Rodríguez was born in Alice, Texas, and from an early age worked in fields throughout the country to help support his family. Senator Rodríguez was the only one of seven children to graduate from college, where he served as president of M.e.Ch.a. (Movimiento estudiantil Chicano de Atzlan) at UT Pan American in Edinburg in 1971, and was a member of the Raza Unida Party of Hidalgo County. He became a lawyer and advocate for farm workers, among other constituencies involved in the struggle for civil rights.
The Raza Unida Party National Convention was a groundbreaking event in which Chicanos organized for the purpose of self-determination. While today the country grapples with relatively more subtle forms of discrimination — as illustrated yesterday with a federal court ruling on Texas’ redistricting plan, or by the ongoing issue of Voter ID laws — overt racism and brutality was rampant 40 years ago.
“We’ve come a long way in the last 40 years — I and many others, elected officials, lawyers, educators and more, stand as proof — but we also face many new challenges. We see attempts to discriminate against minority voters and efforts to demonize immigrants, to make life so hard they will ‘self-deport,’ ” Rodríguez said. “I believe in a greater America, which takes effort and sacrifice, and the Raza Unida conference anniversary is a reminder of that ongoing struggle to achieve self-determination for Raza in the 21st Century.”
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