Interview with Rosa Aguilu, April 23, 2013, Madison, Wisconsin

INTERVIEWER: Hello Detective Aguilú, thank you again for agreeing to be a part of the Somos Latinas Project. We're just going to start off with some very basic questions. Could you tell us your name, birthdate and birthplace?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Rosa Eva Aguilú, I'm sixty-three years old, and I was born in Puerto Rico.

INTERVIEWER: What are your parents' names, their birthdates and their birthplaces?

ROSA AGUILÚ: My mom's name is Marina Lavaret and she was born on March 3rd 1931 in Puerto Rico and so my dad, he's deceased now, Ramón Aguilú Mateo, and he was also born in Puerto Rico and I believe he was born on August 31st, 1924.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any siblings? And if so, what are their names, 00:01:00birthdates and birthplaces?

ROSA AGUILÚ: I have two older sisters and a brother. The brother is deceased. I have a sister that's older than me, Davida Elisabeth Aguilu. She's in Puerto Rico and she was born January 5th, 1949. Then I have another sister Raquel Aguilu. Her birthday is April 5th, 1951.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. For these next set of questions are going to be about your Latina identity. So the first question is: how do you identify yourself? Do the words Latina, Chicana or Puertorriqueña fit into your identity at all?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Puertorriqueña

INTERVIEWER: Could you explain that a little bit?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Well, that's where I was born and even though there are similarities between the other Latino cultures, Hispanic cultures, there are some differences. I identify with being Puerto Rican primarily but in general I consider myself Latina, because I look for the things that we have in common more than the things we don't have in common. You know, I've been told "you look like you could be from Texas or Mexico or here or there; it doesn't bother me, like other people would get really offended at that.

INTERVIEWER: Did your identity influence the type of activism you were involved in and if so, how?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Well, being from Puerto Rico and the political situation that we're in and have been since I was born, you know, we're a territory of the 00:03:00United States. I learned early on about that because they are very political and when its election time, it's big, probably the same as in other, you know, Latin American cultures. They just--everybody's out in marches and protests and all this stuff so I tend to be more nationalistic than a lot of other people and I'm on the Liberal side. I believe in self-determination. And when I was in Puerto Rico, I was involved in Puerto Rican Independence Party. So, that's where I tend to gravitate -- that direction.

INTERVIEWER: What would you say are the most imperative issues facing the Latino community now and in the future?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Well definitely, the issue with immigration. It's a very complex problem right now. In my experience since I've came to the United States and dealing with mostly Mexican immigrants, agriculture workers and now I just see how. Let me say how I put this because I see this in two ways. I think there's a responsibility from the Mexican government and the United States government and from the people that come to the United States to live here or to be here.

INTERVIEWER: Could you talk to us about your involvement in the Puerto Rican 00:05:00Independent Party and the sort of things you participated in while back in Puerto Rico?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Well, we got involved basically because my dad would talk about it. He wasn't active in that time, but he would talk about it so we were exposed to that from early on. Once we started middle school, we were more vocal and teenagers do whatever, you know. No we wanted to, but in that sense we decided that we got involved with other people. We-- Caguas was where I was from, Caguas at that time, the town where we lived. We got involved with the youth movement of that station and basically we helped like with elections. Going town to town to get speakers outside, you know, the way we do it there. Going house by house 00:06:00to house with information about systems about policy about the politicians and that kind of stuff. Okay, when I started high school that's when the Vietnam War started, it was around that time and it was, I don't know if you guys know anything about it, but there were protests everywhere and of course we were protesting the war too because we would say that Puerto Ricans would be, well we said, "carne de cañón [cannon fodder]." They would be the ones who would be sent to the front, the front of the line, okay, to protect the ones in the back and we also had some issues because we said Puerto Ricans, Puerto Rico did not have vote, still we don't vote for President, but we pay taxes so the evils of a 00:07:00country that is basically a colony of the United States. So, by the time I started college, the university in Puerto Rico, the protest against the Vietnam War was everywhere and we were marching all the time. Speakers coming to the university. There were riots and we even had one student that was shot and killed during the riots, so that kind of switched everything because we were right in the middle of that. Dealing with the police at that time, we would say, "Policía borincano, ese junkie no es tu hermano [That abusive Puerto Rican police office is not your brother]." You know, that Puerto Rican police officer, that junkie is not your brother because they would be, you know, with their riot 00:08:00here, trying to hold us back and in that in Puerto Rico, I heard about Madison, Wisconsin, believe it or not, while I was still an undergrad at the University of Puerto Rico because of the sterling hall bombing and the protests that were going on here, so it was-- we knew about Madison then, and then I always, Puerto Rico is a small island and I wanted to expand because we always said that there are two-- we have Puerto Rico in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico in the United States, so I always felt I wanted to explore that also because I also knew about the Puerto Rican movement in the United States, especially in New York, the East Coast. I knew about Lolita Lebrón and Cancel Miranda, so it was kind of a 00:09:00normal transitions from Puerto Rico to the United States. At some point I had to come to terms with not feeling like I was a traitor, that I was leaving my country to come to the United States because while I was still there I would kind of see the ones that left Puerto Rico were like, oh they don't want to be with us, they don't want to be like us, they left. So, I came to terms with that and when I was in my last year of graduate work, I went to Connecticut to Hartford Connecticut to finish my degree.

INTERVIEWER: Could you talk a little bit about Amigos en Azul?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Yeah, when we were saying how or what were some of the things that 00:10:00we and I say we because it wasn't just me as a Latina officer, did in the police academy to get involved and give to our community and one of the things that we did was a group called Amigos en Azul, which is officers in blue and it was just a group of Latino officers and a few Anglo officers in there too that had this desire, we had this desire to do something to facilitate the work, provide some education, help the community understand the role of the police and see if we could create that -- facilitate that communication, so we came up with this group, Amigos en Azul. We had a phone line that they could call and leave 00:11:00messages or talk to whoever had the phone in Spanish. We helped with the crime stoppers program. We developed an aspect of that program for the Latino community. Ways of, you know, reaching out to make them feel that they were also a part of this community and that we would respond to their needs and one of the things that we did, the first thing we did was a car clinic and we did that because people in the community were coming to us and telling us that they were being stopped because of the tinted windows in their vehicles -- I'm sure you've seen those, very dark -- and then they had Virgen de Guadalupe all over the back and they were getting stopped so it was an educational activity. People would come and we did it in our parking lot and we tested the degree of darkness in the windows and, you know, PR thing for the department but at the same time 00:12:00helping them understand the laws, so that they wouldn't get a ticket and get stopped. So, those were the kinds of things that we started doing while working as police officers. You know, there are going to police departments all the time, regardless of the type of country we are, there's a need because human nature, you'll see people are going to have conflict and they're going to need someone to mediate and help. And the police can serve that role, you know, mediate situations so I figure hey that's not going to go away, someone like me might as well be in there.

INTERVIEWER: That leads nicely into talking about if you've ever brought your politics to work and if so, how?

ROSA AGUILÚ: It's funny, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind. The 00:13:00chief of police is from my class too so he knew me. One time he said, "Oh you're Malcom X," he said to me and I didn't get offended, I knew where he was coming from, no reason for me to get offended about that in the contrary. I got involved in different committees, there was an officer's advisory committee and I got involved with that. You deal with things like the uniform, the cars and I wasn't interested in that at all, but there were also things discussed about how to facilitate our work and the environment in the police department and how were women treated and how minority officers were treated and things like training would come out of that officer advisory group. Training on different issues, so 00:14:00I got involved with that. I was not interested in getting promoted, you know, I wasn't interested in that, but I was interested in having a voice about the culture of the police department. David--Chief Cooper--was also a very progressive chief that we had, he came up with this thing, community policing, where you see yourself as someone that's only there to uphold the law all the time and arrest people.

INTERVIEWER: How did your involvement with changing how the Latino victims were questioned--the children--how did your involvement or how did you get yourself 00:15:00involved with that.

ROSA AGUILÚ: Well, it's human nature that whenever you're in a crisis, most likely your going to revert to what's native for you and it's easier for me to tell you what's happening to me in the words that I know that I'm more familiar with and that happens with anybody. This was in particular with children and at the time when we're investigating a very serious child abuse case in the Latino community, it was horrific and I was helping in that case, interviewing different people, but I was involved in helping do a forensic interview of the child and as I was explaining before, I was translating the questions to the 00:16:00child and the answers from the child to the interviewer. So, that takes a long time. It's a child, they're sitting there waiting, while I was doing all that translating and with that, you know, you're stopping. The flow, it's different. You lose a lot. So, after doing that case I decided, okay we need to change this. So I was trained as a forensic interviewer but the most important thing was that the child needed to tell the story in their native language and that the ones that were going to be put through, listening to a third person interview were the people that were sitting comfortable in a another room listening to the interview, not the child and that's how that came about. And Safe Harbor, the organization where the forensic interviews are done, they were 00:17:00very receptive to that because they understand. That's the way it should be done. So, of course we needed to get some equipment. Oh sure we'll do it but then we needed this and we need that. So we paired with Midwest Family Broadcasting and La Movida and they were incredible. Initially we were just looking for three thousand dollars, but as I said before we ended up collecting a lot of money. People were calling, people were coming to give whatever they could. Parents brought their children with their piggy banks to donate. So, it was a very satisfying, gratifying experience for me and to this day, we train a lot of other officers to interview children in Spanish, so it continues even 00:18:00though I'm not there. It continues like that.

INTERVIEWER: Where did most of the support to get the interviews in Spanish? Did it come from the community? Did it come from police officers? How did you persuade police officers or bosses that this was the right thing to do?

ROSA AGUILÚ: It wasn't hard. I have to tell you, it wasn't hard. It was a matter of me saying okay, I will get trained to be a forensic interviewer and I will do it in Spanish. And from that, we got another group of other people like Teresa Téllez who has been involved in the community, other officers, people from Safe Harbor, a captain, a lieutenant. You know, it wasn't very hard, I have to say our department, good or bad, in that sense they were very receptive. So, 00:19:00of course the community.

INTERVIEWER: It was just about taking initiative?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for that. You talked about how in Puerto Rico, you being a law officer would have never been possible--

INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about your involvement with the OHA newsletter?

ROSA AGUILÚ: OHA, its Organización Hispana Americana, I think is what OHA stands for and this was in 1977-78. When I think I became involved with OHA, it was on the 1800 block of Park Street, where Centro Guadalupe or the multicultural center is now and St. Martin's house was there and we had, so they 00:20:00had part of the building and OHA was in the other half. There was a board and I cannot remember who was on the board. I know they had English as a second language classes. There was a teacher, Bob Esser, I remember him and his wife Elena. They were the ones teaching that class and then we had a secretary and I think I was like doing job development. People would come in and they're looking for a job so we would try to connect them with different agencies, things like that. I will always remember there was an older gentleman, el Señor Ávila who lived in the building, for some reason, there was a little room and that's where he lived and I can't remember where he worked, but the front, the entrance is a 00:21:00little lobby. He would sit there every morning and talk to everybody, talking to us. That was like it was his house too. There was a newsletter and I cannot remember how it started. I know Marialita Olaville (?) was the photographer and it was bilingual, in English and Spanish. One of the articles I remember, was it about the Atlanta killings? There were a lot of children that were being killed in Atlanta, you don't remember that. There were some articles about that because people were so concerned that this was happening. This was a long time and that's what I remember at this point. There were migrant families that would 00:22:00come to the center to get help, places to stay overnight, how I get Wautoma where they were going to the fields or they needed money to go back to Texas, they need some food or something. So, those were the kinds of things that OHA was providing. Also people that would come here to do migrant and ended up staying and then they wanted to learn English and get a job and things like that. That's where I learned to, you know, eat tacos and tostadas and I remember I gained a lot of weight, I was pregnant at that time because we did a lot of fundraisers like taste of Madison and we would have our little stand making tostadas and tacos and things like that to raise money for the organization. So 00:23:00that's what I remember about OHA.

INTERVIEWER: Could you explain to us your definition of a community activist is?

ROSA AGUILÚ: Oh wow. You know, I don't know if there is just one definition. I think you can define based on your circumstances and your own needs, what type of activities you're going to be in your community. There are some people that are out there all the time, they go to everything and whatever comes up, they go. Like I said before, I was limited, not only because I am a single mom with my kids, I prefer to be in the background doing things. I don't like to be somebody up in the front, but I think there's always something you can do to give back to help, something that interests you. So, whatever that is, I don't 00:24:00care how much or how little you, do something about it. Make a phone call, call a radio station, write something, and talk to your neighbor.