Interview with Maria Rodríguez, November 17, 2015

GÓMEZ: Hi, Maria.

RODRÍGUEZ: Hi.

GÓMEZ: This is Eloisa [Gomez] and Tess [Arenas]. Today is November 17th, 2015 and we appreciate it so much that you are giving us this time for the interview. I know you have a sore throat and so if anywhere along the line where you feel that it is too bothersome for you to talk, then we can always schedule a follow-up.

RODRÍGUEZ: Sure, no problem.

GÓMEZ: So, okay, we have. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: And If I don't sound clearly, let me know, because I have a throat lozenge in my mouth.

GÓMEZ: Okay, okay. Yes, so far you sound great.

RODRÍGUEZ: Okay.

GÓMEZ: So, thank you. Okay. Well, Maria, if you could just tell us where your place of birth was and maybe not so much the year you were born? I don't know if we have that information already but maybe just a little bit about your background growing up.

RODRÍGUEZ: Oh, okay. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lived most of my early 00:01:00years on what we call the near East Side, which was Milwaukee Street between Knapp and Ogden until I think was eleven or twelve years old and. . . No, probably thirteen. And then we moved to the South Side because that area became re-developed and the expressway was going to go down to the lake. So all that got settled, that old neighborhood got torn down. And the neighborhood was very mixed Latino, Mexican, Puerto Rican, some Italian, some African American, and nice neighborhood but it was a neighborhood of poor, mostly poor, hard-working people and when we moved to the South Side we felt kind of out of place because 00:02:00we moved to the South Side. We didn't know anyone. We didn't know our neighbors. We really didn't know anyone and then my family moved a couple more times on the South Side when I was in high school but we stayed on the South Side and I had started my high school at South Division and graduated at South Division High School and so that's basically it. My mom raised seven of us. I'm the oldest girl of the sevenand I have two older brothers. We're a pretty tight family and my family didn't have. . . my mother and father didn't have a lot of family. I'm sure somewhere in Mexico my Dad had family. He never made us aware of them. I 00:03:00know he had a mother, but he never visited her or. . . I only have her in a picture. So I know that she existed and had come up here at one point but I never saw her. My mother was a huérfanita. Her mother died when she was very young. Her father remarried and he died when she was very young also and so my mom kind of grew up with foster relatives or people who really weren't her relatives but were taking care of her and she grew up sort of with what she kind of called an aunt and an uncle. They took her on and they really weren't but 00:04:00they took her on and she ended up going to the migrant camps with them and she did that pretty much until she was a teenager. So basically that was. . . and she ended up marrying not really young, but she worked in San Antonio and that's where she met my dad. She was originally born in Edinburg. She was born in Edinburg, Texas and that's where she grew up and then she didn't stay there very long. She was in San Antonio and that's where she met my dad. Basically asked him to come to Wisconsin because she in her young life had come through Wisconsin as a migrant worker and she liked Wisconsin. She thought, "Hm, you 00:05:00know. . ." It was different from Texas where she had known. She had lived in Texas and she knew Texas. So she got him to come here and then he didn't like it so they went back to Texas. They went back to San Antonio. My brother was born. She made him, she convinced him to come again and again he wanted to go back. So then my brother Arthur was born but she convinced him to come back to Wisconsin and then I was born here and so I think that was one too many to travel back to Texas with so they ended up staying.

GÓMEZ: Yeah.

RODRÍGUEZ: And then the others came later after that. My dad worked in the tanneries around Water Street, when they had the tanneries there and my mother 00:06:00pretty much stayed at home. Took care of us. But he wasn't the greatest person so my mom from the time when I was seven or eight, we were basically on our own and she did everything to try to keep it all together. She would garden, we would help her garden, and then that's when we would start going to the farms during the summer to help pay the bills. So we would go up North from the time that I was like nine to when I was almost fourteen. Every summer we would go to Sampson, Wisconsin and that's how she kept the family together. We'd all work together and it was not the best place. There was no running water, out-houses, 00:07:00the only thing it had was electricity and there was nowhere to take a bath so you would take a bath in the river but I think it made our family. I think it builds a lot of cohesiveness by us all being there every summer. Because we knew that by working there, we were going to help pay the rent for the whole year and that's actually why we went because she didn't have the resources and at the time, there really weren't. If there was, I didn't know. I believe at the time, there weren't a lot of financial resources for families. There was food and things like that but no financial resources. So that's how she made it. Somebody 00:08:00said. . . I saw a quote today: "Did you ever go online when you were young?" Well, my mother was always online because she did laundry for the older people in the neighborhood. I remember her ironing, hanging clothes outside, hanging clothes inside, making those little bolitas of the clothes. She'd wet it all down because they were starched. She could make a shirt stand. You know, because she'd use that old Argo starch? They had the crisp collar and the cuff. That's what she would do. There were a couple families on the East side then when we lived on the East side that she would barter for money or food and she would do the laundry or cook for them. I think there were three couples, three older couples, and they would pay her. They would pay her and so that's what she did 00:09:00to help take care of us and work on the farm during the summer. Then, one of the interesting things that I asked her when I was in middle school was: "Mom, why did you make him? Why did you make him come here? Why did you make dad come here?" And she said, "Because there weren't any signs." And I kept saying, "What do you mean there weren't any signs?" She said, "There weren't any, you know, signs."

GÓMEZ: Oh.

RODRÍGUEZ: And I said, "What do you mean, Mom?" She said, "Tu sabes. 'No Mexicanos, No Perros, No Negros'." You know, those kinds of things. Because if you remember. . .

GÓMEZ: Right.

RODRÍGUEZ: The Mexicano was like the Negro or the Black, like in the South. So 00:10:00she didn't see that here. She didn't see those very outward, racist signs. I think it existed but we didn't do that by the time. There was some of that but she didn't see it, I don't think, in her circle. And so she thought it was a better place to raise a family.

GÓMEZ: So when she came to stay more permanently in the early 1950s, there weren't any of these discriminatory signs that you. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: Not in our neighborhood but I do believe they were there in our 00:11:00other places. There were more prominent probably in places that didn't want African Americans in places. You know, things like that but in her circle, I don't believe she saw it.

GÓMEZ: But she really. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: I'm sorry.

GÓMEZ: Go ahead.

RODRÍGUEZ: Go ahead.

GÓMEZ: So she saw this as a good place to put down roots and thinking of her children and family overall not to have to experience the more overt discrimination.

RODRÍGUEZ: Right. Right. So it wasn't until later as I grew up that I began to look into this, the signs, the signs. I actually looked them up, what kind of signs. And truly, the first thing would say: "No dogs, No Mexicans, No Negroes". 00:12:00They'd be posted all over the place. They would be posted all over the place in Texas but my mom said that in certain places in Texas, there were certain places where you knew where you could go and places that you knew you had to stay away from but she didn't quite experience that here. She didn't experience that here and I think that she didn't have a huge circle of friends. She wasn't. . . she never had a car. So it was from the East Side, maybe Sunday you would go to theater on the trolley down 6th Street to the theater off of 6th and National. That is as far as she would get to. Or Our Lady of Guadalupe that was on 3rd and 00:13:00Washington at the time. You know, that kind of stuff. She really didn't get out that much so she didn't experience it.

GÓMEZ: Maria, this was so helpful to get a lay of the land, so to speak, of some of your experience as a child as well as Milwaukee at that time as well. Were there any key experiences that you had that came to influence you as an adult or even before becoming an adult in terms of your community involvement? So was there a particular experience or two that you wanted to share with us?

RODRÍGUEZ: Sure. I think it was my very first job. I started to work as a tutor with an after-school program and it was the program that was run by the Latin 00:14:00American Union for Civil Rights and it was called the Bilingual Bicultural Program and I worked for two years as a tutor and later on, I became sort of the. . . I managed the program after that and that experience. . .

GÓMEZ: What year? I'm sorry. What year was that, Maria?

RODRÍGUEZ: That was. . . I started working there in '69. . . '69 and during the school year and '69 and '70 and in '72, '73 I became the manager of the program.

GÓMEZ: And how old were you in '69? Were you in high school?

RODRÍGUEZ: I was still in high school, yes. So working with families that had 00:15:00just settled in Milwaukee because what I did was I actually had to visit them. I had to go into their homes and visit them. You know, talk to them about why their kids were doing so poorly. Well, my job was to get them to do better in reading and understanding English. That was my job. So, I actually did. That's what I did. I did home visits as a young person and trying to make sure the kids could do the program, that they studied, did their homework, and we actually checked the report card. And so we would meet with the parents and the teachers and that's what we would do. And there were only like. . . during the school year there would be about sixty kids in the program and then during the summer, 00:16:00there would be a couple hundred.

GÓMEZ: Wow.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, so that experience and in working with the Latin American Union, I began to see sort of the injustices that were being placed on young people, or I should say how they were minimized in the school setting by the teacher. Because I could sense that they really. . . some cared and some didn't and so that led me to believe that they didn't care whether they did well or not. And others did. For the majority of them they did but it wasn't something they were. . . how should I say? Extending themselves to do more. But working 00:17:00with the parents led me to see that they were really trying and that they didn't have the resource to help their kids because they didn't speak English, and in some cases they didn't understand the work or couldn't do the work either. So that was difficult because then I'd be referring them to places to go and get basic education or whatever and that was difficult, in a sense, because it seemed like they were embarrassed and they wanted. . . What they did have was the. . . they motivated their kids. They wanted their kids to be better so they 00:18:00sent them to school every day. That kind of stuff. So maybe they didn't have the knowledge or the education but they could motivate their kids to do better than they had done, that kind of stuff. So while I was working there, I kind of got to see where people lived in the neighborhood, los pobrecitos, the conditions that they lived in, where the parents worked, and that kind of got me more. . . It made me think about what I could do and that's when I got involved with the Bilingual Bicultural Advisory Committee of the city because that was the 00:19:00movement that had kind of started with [name inaudible] Jimenez, and, oh my god, see, I'm losing my mind. . .

[talking over each other]

RODRÍGUEZ: It was Inez Arriba and I thought about her the other day. Yeah. So working with them to organize parents also became a job for me. I went to [inaudible] and I said, "We need to work with them. We need to work with this group," blah blah blah, and he said, "Sure, why not? You can do that." And I did. I did. I would help them organize their meetings, order buses if we were going to an NPS meeting. I would sit in their meetings and then at one point, 00:20:00they got to a point where the Milwaukee Public Schools acknowledged this group and even had an agreement with them that they could interview teachers. Now this was something that didn't last very long because it's so hard to maintain but what they did is they allowed the committee to interview teachers to determine if they were culturally competent to be in the bilingual program at NPS. Not that they could be hired by. . . They didn't have the veto power but to be in the program, they could recommend them to be in the program and so they did that 00:21:00for a couple of years but to maintain that kind of involvement, it was very difficult.

ARENAS: When did this happen, Maria? Where. . . [talking over each other]

RODRÍGUEZ: This happened in the. . . I'm going to say in the mid-to-late 70s.

ARENAS: Okay, and you were involved in that. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: I was involved with helping to organize the. . . Keep them organized. That kind of thing.

ARENAS: And how old were you?

RODRÍGUEZ: I was, I don't know, twenty-something?

ARENAS: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah.

ARENAS: How you doing? How you doing?

RODRÍGUEZ: I'm doing good.

ARENAS: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: So in that piece, that was a very exciting piece because we had clusters of parents throughout the city on the Northeast side, on the South side, that were meeting. They were meeting and then even Aurora Weier became 00:22:00part of that and so they were meeting with the administration. So bilingual education came about not only because of them but because of what other people did and Ricardo Fernández and Tony [inaudible] and Olga Schwartz, all those folks. Everything that they did. That's why it happens. So these were the parents. These were the parents that were asking for this. They wanted this. They felt that they didn't want their kids to just learn English. They wanted their kids to maintain their culture. So that for me was very important.

GÓMEZ: So you had asked for sort of a different position within LAUCR?

RODRÍGUEZ: No. I still had to work the bilingual program. It was: "Can I work on this, too?"

GÓMEZ: Oh, okay. You just add on another full-time job.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. It wasn't full-time but it was "Can I do this, too?" And of course, they were into it, too. So it wasn't hard.

GÓMEZ: So when you said you wanted, did you get more hours? Did you get better pay?

RODRÍGUEZ: No. No.

GÓMEZ: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: So, no.

GÓMEZ: Okay, I just wanted to. . . [inaudible]

RODRÍGUEZ: No, not at all.

GÓMEZ: Okay. I wanted to get back to one item, or not item, one experience you had in your childhood before we leave your childhood completely and you had mentioned in your video interview that you had experienced what might have been 00:24:00a racist incident while you were in high school but there really wasn't any. . . It was just a reference to it and I was just wondering, is that important to talk about here? For you to share here or was it just not something you even remember and so we can just move on?

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. There were. . . I think it was more kids being stupid more than anything but you know the word, you know the "spic" word. Those kinds of things. That went on. That went on in school.

GÓMEZ: So was that directed at you or was that directed at other Latino students in general?

RODRÍGUEZ: Oh yeah. It was directed at me several times and in terms of other 00:25:00students I would say I wasn't there but I felt it several times not only from students but from teachers.

GÓMEZ: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: But when I graduated, I was working full-time for the LAUCR a year or two after I graduated. So I had a part-time job at NPS. Right after I graduated I went to work for the [inaudible] professionals at NPS and I worked at Kagel Elementary School and I did all the English as a second language kids in a closet. So I had Serbians, Puerto Ricans, whatever. Whatever the kids spoke. My job was to teach them English. During parent-teacher conferences that 00:26:00Fall, parents came up to me and wanted to have a meeting with the principal and they wanted meet with him to talk to him about bilingual education and that was one of my very first incidents in dealing with maybe some pushback and some racism. I set up the meeting with the principal, I didn't think it was any big deal and it was like, five parents that represented about twenty-some kids in the school and we started talking and I was translating what they were saying to the principal in terms of they'd like bilingual classes. They want their kids to 00:27:00learn both and then in comes the steward for the union and says that they were not informed that this meeting was happening and that if there is going to be bilingual education that they need to be informed and just very, very abrupt kind of attacking the principal. And the principal was a very kind man and he said, "This is a meeting that the parents had requested. We haven't decided," or, "We hadn't decided on anything. If it comes to that, all parties will be informed." Sort of something like that. Well, after that they wouldn't speak to 00:28:00me [laughter] and one time I was. . . except for my teacher. There were certain teachers. . .

ARENAS: Who wouldn't speak to you?

RODRÍGUEZ: The union steward, which was a teacher, and a couple of other teachers.

ARENAS: Oh, okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: So one day I'm in the little coffee room and I'm grading papers and the union steward because I chose to sit in the teacher's lounge and not the paraprofessionals' lounge, she just said, "Some people have a lot of nerve around here." And I just ignored her. It was warmer in there. So, anyways. So my work became full-time at the LAUCR the year later so I didn't go back to Kagel. So that was kind of an interesting experience. School is probably now like 90% Latino.

GÓMEZ: Yeah. You think so? I'm going to switch gears here but still kind of one foot in childhood and early years to ask you about reflection on your ethnic identity. How did you see yourself early on and did that self-description change over time?

RODRÍGUEZ: Well, that's really interesting because when I started school, kindergarten, I didn't speak any English. My mom didn't speak any English, nobody spoke English and I'd end up at school on days that I wasn't supposed to be there and my mom would come at the end of the day while the teachers were 00:30:00working on things and I'd be there all day until she came to get me because we didn't have a phone. It was, for me. . . my mother loved music. There was always music. She had an old record player and she had records. You know, Javier [inaudible], [inaudible] Jimenez, [inaudible], those were her. . . there were a bunch of others but she always played her records and she always. . . What was really sad is as I was growing up, I realized that because my mother didn't have a. . . what do you call, like a traditional family? That she didn't know a lot 00:31:00of things about our culture. She didn't know about baptisms or this or that or weddings or what do you do. I realized that as I got older because she didn't have any of that. It was because she didn't have a mom, her dad was gone and so she was raised by people, all they did was work. As we were growing up she would make her own little traditions. You know, of certain events, how to do this, and cook meat. . . The one thing she did know how to do was cook. So in terms of. . . it was music and food but in terms of if you asked her, "Mom, in a wedding, 00:32:00what does this mean? What does that mean?" You know, like [inaudible]. She had no idea. Or the coins or the "this" or the "that" or in the baptismal. She was always directed by other people because she didn't know and later on I kind of felt bad about that because she didn't know but she managed us fine. She did her own. She did her own stuff but in terms of being who we are, she always said. . . her words were never about being Mexicana or being this or being that. Her words were always just: "Do the best you can and never be afraid." So it wasn't 00:33:00like, "Nosotros Mexicanos." Yeah. She didn't like Puerto Ricans, I'll tell you that much. But it was just something that rolled over because everybody else felt that way in the neighborhood but she grew up with so many of them and she had so many friends, good friends, that were Puerto Rican families but she. . . it's kind of an interesting thing. When I really think back, it's just. . . you do the baptismal, she taught us dancing, she taught us music and she taught us poetry and she didn't even read. These were all things she learned because it 00:34:00wasn't until I was in fourth grade that I realized she couldn't read.

GÓMEZ: Oh.

RODRÍGUEZ: There were poems that she knew by heart that she would teach me and she would have me stand up at a Mother's Day event and repeat the poem. [laughter] You know, dancing, cha-cha-cha. She knew how to sew. She'd make me little costumes. She'd have me and my brothers dance the cha-cha-cha. You know, for little events when we were really young. And so. . .

GÓMEZ: It sounded like she was a very creative person, really.

RODRÍGUEZ: She really wasn't. She couldn't read. I didn't realize that until I was like, fourth or fifth grade and then she ended up trying to go to MATC and then my Dad stopped her from going. So, she learned little by little.

GÓMEZ: So with your ethnic identity, I think you were saying that because of 00:35:00your mother's own experience that perhaps there wasn't necessarily a strong sense of ethnic identity?

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, other than our language because she really didn't speak any English for a long time and her food because she always cooked Mexican food and her music. She was always playing Mexican music.

GÓMEZ: At what point did you say who you were, ethnically speaking? When was that and what did you consider yourself to be then?

RODRÍGUEZ: I think while she never said "You are this". . . you know, she probably did. Somos Mexicanos. Somos Mexicanos. But what does that mean? And for 00:36:00her it was just being hard-working people. For her, she would say, "Whatever you do, you do it well and you do your best. I don't want anybody talking about you, your grades, you're messing up. . ." It was always about being on the right path and doing the right things. Which I think just translates into any other culture but those were always her things growing up.

GÓMEZ: At what year did you say, "This is who I am"?

RODRÍGUEZ: I think as I was in high school and I realized. . . I had to get a 00:37:00birth certificate because I was going to go get a social security card and I needed to get a work permit or something and all my school records said Mary. Mary Rodriguez. So I went to go get my birth certificate. . . so I thought that was my name. I went to go get my birth certificate and it's Maria. So at that point: What the heck? What did they do to me?

ARENAS: [inaudible]

RODRÍGUEZ: What?

ARENAS: Your new identity.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah.

ARENAS: Yeah, [inaudible].

RODRÍGUEZ: Because in my house I wasn't called Maria. I wasn't called anything 00:38:00except Chava or Chavelita.

GÓMEZ: Oh, a nickname.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yep, I had a nickname. That was like, oh my god. That was an awakening. What did they do to me? If you look on the birth certificate it says, "Mother and father do not read or write English". It says that right on the birth certificate, but all this time when I went into school they translated all that to Mary. So I thought that was mean. Is that weird? I thought, "Oh, my god. My name?"

GÓMEZ: So what do you consider yourself now, Maria?

RODRÍGUEZ: What do I consider myself now? You know, it's like. . . I thought 00:39:00about that because I knew you were going to ask me that. And it's like, there was a day when you'd say "I'm Mexican" when I was younger then there was a time when I would say, "Yo soy Chicana." Because I was a part of that movement and worked on some of those efforts, right? And now it's like, we're in a different era. "Soy Latina." And I'm okay with that. I would say that I'm okay with that 00:40:00because I think you go through your own time of being young and being active and doing things that you feel are important and whatever that movement was at the time I identified with and now I'm older and it seems like people are sort of settled and I hate that word because I don't think we should ever settle but everyone is okay with the word Latina or Latino. Hell no, I'm not a "Hispanic". I never liked that one.

GÓMEZ: So this takes us down to a definition of how you would define your work 00:41:00over the many years. Would you define yourself as a community activist and. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: Sometimes it's like, okay, take yourself out of where you are and go somewhere else. What are people doing? I had no idea what was going on other places. I had no idea what was happening in other places except what you read in the news and how you compare to our community here. We were in a mode of trying to make things better. Trying to look at things and we were in an era where we could do that. And if things could change and it wasn't without somebody being 00:42:00hurt or arrested, because that happened. That happened a lot. I was in sit-ins, I was in. . . but I was never supposed to let them arrest me because my mother would just have a heart attack. But it was. . . Would I do that now? It would have to be something really gut-wrenching, something that probably was. . . that'd have to move me to that point and maybe the things that were happening then weren't all that important to other people but they were important to a 00:43:00small group of people, like people who were involved with bilingual education, people were involved in in bringing attention to education and walking out to get attention. I organized two walkouts and so it's like, would we do that now? Would that work now? I don't know.

GÓMEZ: Without the comparison, Maria, what does. . . Yeah. Without the comparison I'd say, how do you define that period when you were more active, and you still are, but. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: I thought that there were a lot of. . .

GÓMEZ: There can be other terms, by the way I just wanted to make sure.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah.

GÓMEZ: I say that there are many other ways to describe your own work. So you would have to describe that.

RODRÍGUEZ: I think it was. . .

GÓMEZ: Your terms.

RODRÍGUEZ: I think it was more of an eye opening in awareness that things were not right. Certain things that were happening that just were not right and that we had to do something and so I think that's what motivated me to get involved in certain things. Things just needed to be done and I became more aware probably because of where I worked and the opportunity I had to be with different groups of people. If you look at my family, no one else would even 00:45:00consider doing any of these things in my family. I was considered "loca", you know, like "commie". Those are kind of the words my brothers would use but if I called them, they would come. It was kind of an eye-opening time for me. I just became aware and the another thing was I realized I was smart enough, that I could do a few things. I wasn't always confident that I could do them but I was smart enough that I could. Does that make sense? There was always a doubt about 00:46:00my. . . you know. I kind of knew I could do this kind of stuff. I could work with this group. It was just taking on certain groups and going after them and doing things, organizing. I knew I could do that but I always had little doubts. Little doubts. I always needed some assurance.

GÓMEZ: So it wasn't something where you necessarily sort of walked in and said, "I'm here to change the world."

RODRÍGUEZ: No.

GÓMEZ: It was you went in and you got a part-time job and the situations rose for you. You were there to see the needs so you were more responsive to the 00:47:00need. So is there a term you would define that for you? We don't even have to use a term, by the way.

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Anyone could have come on these things and chosen not to do or be active. It was not knowing what I really wanted to do or not knowing what I wanted to be when I grow up kind of thing. I always thought of that as being a bad thing for me. "I'm going to work on this and then move to something else or do the two things at the same time." You know, working on housing issues on the South Side. Setting up the South Side housing advisory committee because there wasn't enough affordable housing. You 00:48:00know, becoming. . . So, it was whatever. . . Sometimes I thought that there were too many things. That had I stayed in the one element, I could have done more or whatever. So, I don't know that there is a word.

GÓMEZ: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: But in my experiences they just sort of opened up my need to do something and maybe I did do something and maybe I didn't. But I could see that there were things that needed to happen and being aligned with the LAUCR and 00:49:00being aligned with various groups made those things possible and that was something that was a gift, sort of, that kind of came to me. I'd be working on with young people in the community then all of a sudden, I'm hooked up with [inaudible]. I'm hooked up with Marion MacNulty. I'm hooked up with folks that care about young people. And so we work on runaway kids because it was happening more and more and that's with Walker's Point Family Center happened. It sort of was like was just a time and place where things were happening and I think that we were lucky to have been part of that and to be able to do some things. Some 00:50:00people didn't do anything; so we did a few things.

GÓMEZ: You had mentioned that you helped organize two walkouts. When did that happen and what was that about?

RODRÍGUEZ: Well, it was all around El Grito de Lares and El Grito de Dolores. It was because at that time, no one was recognizing those as holidays or giving them any kind of attention to parts of history that involved that was part of Puerto Rico and part of Mexico and that's all that was. People wanted to identify with what was part of our culture and that's what that was. The walkouts weren't just about walking out; it was about meeting and having cultural presentations and speakers and things of the sort. It wasn't just a 00:51:00skip school day.

GÓMEZ: What year was that and what role did you play in that?

RODRÍGUEZ: I worked with. . . Well, I was still working at the LAUCR and so we organized. . . and even Carmen may have been a part of that, Carmen Cabrerra. That's what I'm trying to think, Carmen Cabrerra and myself, Santiago [inaudible], we were part of. . . and Tony. One of them Tony was involved in.

GÓMEZ: Mhm.

RODRÍGUEZ: And those were in the very. . . before Fiesta Mexicana came.

GÓMEZ: Okay.

RODRÍGUEZ: Before Fiesta.

GÓMEZ: So you worked with these people to work with. . . Did the students come to you and. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah. Well, and we put the word out and they came but it wasn't, 00:52:00like I said, it wasn't just to get out of school. We wanted to have either speakers or presentations to talk about culture and what these two days signified.

GÓMEZ: And was that in the mid-1970s?

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, the early part of. . .

GÓMEZ: And what was the second walk-out? Were the two connected to the same issue or was there a different one?

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, it was. They were. There were two of them.

GÓMEZ: All right, so your activism or your. . . let me just not use that word any longer. Your community involvement that occurred when you started your 00:53:00part-time work while you were in high school at LAUCR. Okay. Let's see. . . Let's talk a little bit about LAUCR. What influence did. . . I think you started to talk about that influence of LAUCR on your work, your involvement. What kind of support did you get from the organization? What kind of leadership skills did you learn, those kinds of related questions.

RODRÍGUEZ: What was the first part?

GÓMEZ: Well. . .

RODRÍGUEZ: I didn't. . .

GÓMEZ: The first question was. . . I'm trying to remember what it was exactly. How did they support you? What kind of support did you get from them?

RODRÍGUEZ: Yeah, yeah. There were three major characters as far as there were 00:54:00three major persons that worked at the LAUCR. One was Roberto Hernández, Ernesto [inaudible], and Lalo Valdez. They worked there. They influenced me in a way that I think probably changed my whole outlook on who I am and what I did. They were. . . and I hate, because they're men, they. . . Roberto was a wonderful man, [Ernesto] was more of a male chauvinist pig and I would say the same thing about Lalo Valdez but Lalo was educated. He was a sociologist. He 00:55:00wanted to understand what was going on in the community and so he was running the newspaper, La Guardia, and I worked on La Guardia in the evenings. Roberto was more of a strategist and a strategist, well, I should say he was always the person that bought calm to any kind of argument or debate. [coughing] So whenever we were in a meeting, regarding an issue or concern, he was the calming person to have. [Ernesto] was the attacker and I learned by watching them and 00:56:00they would tell me. They would tell me that these meetings were going to happen and that this was going to be my part, whatever. And if things didn't go well, Roberto would take the tables and just turn it over and say, "This meeting is fucking over." Things like that. So they were very impressive. All of them were very impressive. I mean, I was young. I was impressed but I learned that what they were trying to do was make the community better. It was about jobs, police brutality, communication, having our side of the story, making sure our news was 00:57:00being reported, stop harassing our people, that kind of stuff. It was always about that kind of stuff. So seeing them initially, as I started to work there, seeing them being committed to these issues and doing things to help change them impressed upon me. And Roberto always said, "Hey, Maria, right on. Right on. You did good." Whatever. [coughing] And [Ernesto] wasn't like that, though. He was more of an 00:58:00asshole. But what they did, there's so much negative stuff about what [Ernesto] did and stuff in terms of his personality but there were a lot of good things that happened, a lot of good things that got done that you'll never be able to take those things away. So those were. . . It was different projects, it was different meetings, it was different. . . "If we're going to work with the Native Americans, this is what we're going to do." So, I would become a part of that and, "we're doing a fundraiser." They'd make me go do all the grunt work. 00:59:00But I learned a lot. I learned a lot and they wanted me to think, to learn, and then they thought I could do things and that made me feel that they were supportive. One year I told [Ernesto], I said, "I think school is closed for the summer. What do you think? Let's open it up for the whole summer." And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "Okay, I'm going to call NPS." And we had new school all summer. We had 300 kids in there for the summer instead of them being at home. 01:00:00That was kind of the first ALCU kind of thing but it was like, he would kind of say, "Go for it. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, try it." Or, "Call so and so. Go for it." And that's. . .

GÓMEZ: That really gave you a lot of leeway to do things.

RODRÍGUEZ: They did. They did.

[end of part 1]