ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEB. 4, 1980

Decades and Proptitious Moments
By Armando Rodríguez

You’re inquiring whether the ’80s will really be the decade of the Hispanics? And how they’ve progressed through decades past?

You’ve come to the right person.

I’m an expert on decades. I’ve been through several of them.

As for Hispanics, I am one.

I wasn’t always. In fact, for most of the ’60s and into the ’70s, I was a Chicano. And in the ’50s, I was Mexican American.

Before that? Well, in the ’40s I was Latino; in the ’30s, I was mostly called “kid” or “joven” — sometimes “Pancho” — and in the ’20s, I was Mexican. I was born in Gómez Palacio, in the state of Durango.

IN THE ’50s, I BECAME A JOINER

It’s nice, here in the ’80s, to be consulted. In those earlier decades, even my parents and brothers and sisters didn’t seek my views out very often. I was No. 13 in a family of 14.

In 1930, I moved with my parents to the United States. They had immigrated briefly twice before — in 1911 and 1916. The Depression was on. We spent a while in El Paso, Texas, before moving on to the warmer climes of San Diego.

There the U.S. government repatriated my jobless father to Mexico. My mother, who had a job, and some of the rest of us remained. We waited eight years for my father to return.

So I characterize the ’30s as years of poverty and rejection for U.S. Hispanics. It took a war, but the ’40s were better, much better (unless you got caught up in a “zoot suit riot,’” as they were called). I graduated from high school, served in the Army, and used the G.I. Bill to get a college degree.

So label the ’40s as years when Hispanics proved their loyalty and bravery, and awakened to the educational opportunities, that surrounded them.

In the ’50s, I became a teacher and administrator and a joiner. I joined the American G.I. Forum, which sprouted up after World War II to assist Mexican-American veterans. I joined the Urban League, the Democratic Party, and the Community Service Organization. In CSO, I met Fred Ross, a legendary organizer of Mexican Americans, and was impressed by his words and actions.

Put the ’50s down as the decade Hispanics started getting involved with others.

The ’60s heaved with turmoil in the fields, on the streets, in the schools… the Chávez grape strike, the births of Raza Unida and the Brown Berets, Reies Tijerina’s courthouse raid.

A personal memory was 1966, when I was one of 50 Mexican-American “leaders” chosen by Chairman Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. to meet in Albuquerque, N.M., with the new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

IN ALBUQUERQUE WE ALL WALKED OUT

It was an ego trip till the plane landed. FDR Jr. didn’t even bother to show up. The only commissioner who did was brand new. We walked out, demanding a meeting with President Johnson. A few weeks later, the meeting was held.

I moved from a job with California’s Department of Education to the U.S. Office of Education.

We spent much of the ’60s banging on doors, sometimes with our heads.

The ’70s were good to me. I served as president of East Los Angeles College, with its student body of 20,000, for five years. Then President Carter appointed me to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the body that a dozen years earlier, I had walked out on.

But not all Hispanics fared so well. Rubén Salazar, an important voice, was killed. Hispanic growth was rapid numerically, but inadequate in social achievement.

Now come the ’80s. Young, trained Hispanics, who can measure time and progress by propitious moments, not decades, are ready in the wings. They know the body language of the Third World. They’re equipped with a cultural and political sensitivity that leaps tall borders in a single bound.

If the United States will forget its “Hispanic problem” these critical years, if it’s smart enough to acknowledge their talents and exploit their inherent wisdom, Hispanic Americans will help find the peaceful path through a decade that will test this nation in ways it has never been tested before.

(Armando Rodríguez, a member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the time he wrote this column, now resides in El Cajon, Calif.)