STF na Mídia - MyClipp

The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Sáb, 14 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Cotton Fields and Brownfields
I’M the oldest of 12 children. My father emigrated from
Mexico to the United States in the late 1930s as an
undocumented worker. He joined the U.S. Army when
the country needed soldiers for World War II but was
quickly discharged for health reasons. We still have his
discharge papers. He eventually became a naturalized
citizen.My maternal grandfather fled the 1910 Mexican
revolution and settled in Texas, where my mother was
born and met and married my father. During the
summers, my siblings and I worked in the fields. We
picked tomatoes for 10 cents a crate in May and then
cotton in July and August at $1.75 for every 100
pounds. After high school, I paid for my college
education by working a 16­-hour shift during the
summers at a processing plant for cotton, making
$1.10 an hour.
My friends and I car­-pooled to the University of
Texas­-Pan American in Edinburg, and in 1965 I
graduated with a B.A. in political science. The civil
rights movement had reached our state, and
Mexican­-Americans were becoming more active in
politics. Many of us had been motivated by the Viva
Kennedy­-Viva Johnson clubs that formed in Texas in
support of John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
During my junior year in college, there was an open
slot in the Democratic primary in my county for a
justice of the peace. Several friends in the Political
Association of Spanish­-Speaking Organizations said
our community needed to field someone and urged me
to run. I was still in school, but I jumped at the chance
to get into politics.
I won the November election and took office in January
1965, just as I was starting my last semester of
college. I juggled school and my judicial duties until I
graduated.
In the late 1960s, Raul Yzaguirre (now United States
ambassador to the Dominican Republic), Rick Bela
and I started the nonprofit Interstate Research
Associates, which provided training and technical
assistance to social service organizations.
In 1971, with increased government support for
minority enterprises, we changed our focus and started
InterAmerica Research Associates, which contracted
with various federal agencies. We worked on projects
like bilingual education. Around 1987, we began
providing I.T. services to Congress under the name
Inter­-America Technologies.
In 1983, the president of Wapora, an environmental
consulting firm owned by Kemron, approached my
chief financial officer about my interest in buying
Wapora from its parent.
I discovered that both companies were in financial
difficulty, but saw a great business opportunity. I took
the risk and acquired Kemron, and with it Wapora. I
placed the company into bankruptcy the next day and
started rebuilding.
Today, we have about 175 employees, five offices and
various projects around the country and in Puerto
Rico. Kemron cleans many types of contaminated
sites. We helped clean the Hart Senate Office Building
when anthrax was found there in 2001, and were
involved in the cleanup of the BP oil spill in Louisiana
and in the environmental cleanup in Mississippi after
Hurricane Katrina.
One of my sisters belongs to the Missionary Catechists
of Divine Providence, a congregation of
Mexican­-American nuns in San Antonio. In the early
1980s, the convent became too costly to maintain, so
the group sold it and moved to surplus military
barracks. Around 1990, I learned that the building was
going into foreclosure, worked with the nuns to buy it
back, and helped organize a fund­-raiser. The Benitia
Humanitarian Award Dinner, named for the
congregation’s founder, has become an annual event
for the convent.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen.
84