Oral History Interview with Diana Flores, 2001 Flores, Diana Interview conducted by José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Interview transcribed by Diana Flores José Angel Gutiérrez Transcript converted to XML encoding by Julie Williams Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Arlington Texas State Library and Archives Commission 112 pages Published online as part of the Tejano Voices Project. University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
P.O. Box 19497, Arlington, Texas, 76019-0497

Literary rights and title are owned by the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.

 2001

Source: MS-Word file transcript of video recording CMAS No. 148.

Oral history interviews published online as the Tejano Voices Project, partially funded by a grant received in 2001 from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission's TexTreasures program.

 Library of Congress Subject Headings Library of Congress Name Authority File Jose Angel Gutiérrez Diana Flores none English Spanish Flores, Diana Gutiérrez, Jose Angel University of Texas at Arlington. Center for Mexican American Studies Mexican Americans--Texas--Interviews oral history interview Tejanos Chicanos

The University of Texas at Arlington

Oral History Interview with Diana Flores, 2001 Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) Interview Number 148 Mexican American Public Figures of Texas Location of Interview: Dallas, Texas Number of Transcript Pages: 112 Cite as: Oral History Interview with Diana Flores, CMAS 148, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Interviewee: Diana Flores Interviewer: José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Transcribers: Diana Flores and José Angel Gutiérrez Date of Interview: November 3, 2001 Location of Interview: Dallas, Texas Diana Flores Dr. Gutiérrez: So this is the 3rd of November, 2001, Dallas, Texas. We're interviewing Diana Flores. And I couldn't help but think of the irony. Here you helped me start this thing back when — at least the research part -- and no clue that you would be on the end of the camera as a formidable political player — Ms. Flores: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: Several years later, no? Ms. Flores: Who would have known? Dr. Gutiérrez: Or even more than that, that I met you when you were looking for a lawyer and you were a kind of stay-at-home mom — working for the community colleges or whatever you were doing, just interested in politics but not knowing how to get in y mira nomás (and just look at you now). (Laughter) Ms. Flores: (Laughter) Dr. Gutiérrez: Now you are going to be part of the largest collection in the nation and probably in a book or two because of this. Anyway, I'll discuss with you the four areas we are to cover. You've signed a Deed of Gift, so you know we can do anything we want to do with this? Ms. Flores: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Why don't we start with the issues right off the bat, by the way, an opinion. Who do you think is the most effective political leader or Mexican Americans to date at whatever level? Ms. Flores: Well, shit! Excuse my language. There is none, not really, because by design there is none. They make sure you're bought, paid for, sold, whatever, so that you can't be fully effective, you can't be independent out there, in my view. You know, anyone that surfaces with any real capability or strength, you're co-opted right away. So in my view, at any level, there really is none, in our community. Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s what I’m asking about. Which is the most effective political organization in the Mexican American community today at any level? Ms. Flores: You’re talking local or statewide? Dr. Gutiérrez: All three, including national, that you didn’t mention. Ms. Flores: Most effective political community – Dr. Gutiérrez: Organization. Ms. Flores: -- organization? The same thing, none, because the organizations are dependent upon either the parties or corporations or someone for funding. That’s our big problem. We don’t have an independent source of funding where you can -- when you’re independently funded you don’t depend on anybody for what you bring to the table. You can’t be independent. Dr. Gutiérrez: What’s the most pressing issue facing the Mexican American community today? Ms. Flores: (Sighs) Well, it’s not any one issue. I mean, whatever, a cualquier lado que volteas, whatever side you turn, we’re not doing well. I mean, it’s certainly political representation with the redistricting issue that’s happening this go-round where we have been the reason for all of the growth locally and at the state level and probably in some ways nationally in certain states, right. We still might not get more representation because we’re not there, the ones making those decisions about the redistricting. Education. That continues to be a real challenge for us because our kids can still, in a lot of ways they are not made to see the value of an education by the way they’re treated in the schools. It’s a complex issue. Economics. Health issues. You name it. To me they’re all pressing, they’re all important and they all work together. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. What is leadership ? Ms. Flores: Leadership is being able to take the ball and run and make the changes necessary. Dr. Gutiérrez: What are the underpinnings of tension between blacks and browns, if any? Ms. Flores: I think it is real unfortunate that we have let a wedge be driven between our two communities. There are more things that we have in common in terms of disenfranchised, disempowered groups. But as Mexicanos we bought the lie about the African American inferiority. Because we were discriminated against, we were kept down, I think our mindset was, well, to make ourselves feel better, we need to step on somebody else, so the African American was there for everybody to step on, so to speak. And I’m talking about where I grew up and what my reference was growing up. But it was back when I was growing up in the ‘50s. Now the African Americans fought and got what they needed, as we were fighting and trying to get what we needed. The African Americans were the ones because they were throughout a lot of the nation, south and north, not just southwest like us at that time. They made more headway, and they were paid more attention to than we were, so they’ve gotten used to being the so-called favored minority in certain respects. And now that we’ve come up and our numbers are greater in some areas of the country than theirs are, I think they’re grappling with how to deal with this, not being maybe the so-called favored minority or being able to hammer away, look at what you have done to us, whatever. And we’re seeing that in the redistricting. To me the African American has turned around and acted like the [racist] gringo. We’ve got our power; we’re going to keep our power; to hell with you. That was clearly obvious in the DISD redistricting. It was the three African American trustees -- if that they had coalesced with the raza, with Anchía and Leos (who represents a raza seat), we would have a five-vote majority right there to get the kinds of districts we wanted. But they were too busy concentrating on protecting what they had and not coalescing for the greater good of both communities. Dr. Gutiérrez: So they cut a deal with the whites ? Ms. Flores: They tried – well, yeah, I think they did. I mean, you’ve got Parrot who’s, pobrecita, she’s – who knows where she is from day to day. And then Williams was very entrenched. Seagoville does not want an African American trustee, the white little pocket that’s in Seagoville and virtually in any DISD race, that’s an automatic 800 votes and in a small turnout race, that decides it and they did not want to deal with an African American trustee. And to get the representation we needed, Williams’ district would have become African American, primarily. So, yeah, they cut a deal. Dr. Gutiérrez: Relations between Chicanos and Mexicanos, that is, the foreign born from Mexico? What is the state of affairs or tensions there; what are the problems? Ms. Flores: When I was growing up, that was another group that we looked down upon, the new ones coming in. I think because of the same mindset, you’re so stepped on and looked down on that you want to be able to do that to somebody else to make yourself feel a little better than, unfortunately. So I think there was a lot of tension back then between those born here and those coming in. Of course Mexico, the same thing. They didn’t like us. We were the traitors. We were the ones that didn’t stay, although the border crossed, not us crossing the border. But here – I can’t speak for other parts of the state because I don’t know what the situation is, but here in Dallas in the early ‘90s we undertook a very deliberate effort to build a bridge between the Chicano community and the immigrant community. And I think we have been real effective. It started out with GAILA which is no longer around, but you’ve got the Center for Human Rights and you’ve got all the different immigrant groups working together under that umbrella. And we are very deliberate here in Dallas, the Chicano community, to work with the immigrant community, so I don’t think there is any tension here locally, but I can’t speak for other parts of the state because I don’t know. I certainly don’t hear as much any more as when we were growing up. Everybody would say, " pinches mojados," (damn wetbacks) or mojados this and mojados that coming out of our mouths. I don’t hear that as much any more. Do you? Dr. Gutiérrez: No. Ms. Flores: So I think that’s why we – I mean these are our, this is our family. Quit buying the lie that they’re here to take something that’s ours. This is our family that’s coming. And the good thing is now you’ve had a lot of intermarriage. You have a lot of intermarriage between Chicanos and immigrants, whether they be Mexicans or Salvadoreños or whatever. That’s caused the family tie to be even closer. How are you going to look down on somebody that’s now part of your family? Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s talk about the Central Americans. Same question. Is there any tension or what is the state of affairs between Central Americans of various kinds and Mexicanos or Chicanos in Dallas? Ms. Flores: What happens here is that we’re all painted with the same brush and they use, love to use the term Hispanic. So anyone that looks like us, kind of more on the brown side, here the larger society does not identify them as from a particular country. It’s just either Hispanic or Mexican because that’s the largest group. So I think they see the need to coalesce and they’ve been very good about that, the Salvadoreños, the Guatemaltecos, the Peruanos. The ones that haven’t come around so much and maybe it’s because it’s a smaller group are Colombianos. Puerto Requeños have also tried to coalesce. Even, to some extent, some Cubanos here in Dallas, because we are painted with that same brush and we all feel the effects of discrimination or whatever, it’s helped us to kind of bond and hit the issues not necessarily from a country of origin standpoint, but more as an ethnic group, as a group together. Dr. Gutiérrez: Your work in immigration issues, and you know all these different groups. Can you identify them and who belongs to those groups. Ms. Flores: Well, you’ve got Margarita Alvarez who’s very, very active in the Guatemalteco community and her husband that she just married. God, I can’t remember his name, Jorge [del Cid] – his last name is just three letters. I can’t remember his last name. But the Guatemaltecos are active. You’ve got Marcial Trejo – Dr. Gutiérrez: What are their names, the organization? Ms. Flores: Guatemaltecos Unidos. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. Ms. Flores: Guatemaltecos Unidos. They’ve been together, I would say, a good ten years, if not more. You’ve got Marcial Trejo – the Salvadoreños comprise a large group here in the North Texas area, so you’ve got different Salvadoran groups. Marcial Trejo is with Salvadoreños Demócratas de America; Mario Fernandez and Armando Pacheco and Margarito Sarabia and different people like that are with Salvadoreños Unidos. You’ve got Hondureños. I can’t remember the lady’s name right now – Marta Parejo or something like that with Hondureños Unidos and then you’ve got this real loose cannon -- and we have those in every community – Jorge Rivera who was with Hondureños Unidos. He felt like he was the man and started acting that way, so he kind of burned his bridges across all groups in the immigrant community. And those are the ones that are most active, the Salvadoreños, the Guatemaltecos and the Hondureños to some extent. And of course, the Mexicanos, and there you’ve got all kinds of different groups. You’ve got the PRD from Mexico trying to make inroads here and a lot of the immigrants that are here from Mexico are PRDistas. When they came from Mexico, they belonged to that party. You’ve got Mexicanos Unidos; you’ve got Familias Unidas, María Dominguez, and then a lot of different cultural groups. Dr. Gutiérrez: Who belongs to CIME? Ms. Flores: (Sighs) At that time, I don’t know – I don’t know what the status of CIME is because it changes from day to day (laughter) but it was Manuel Rodela, Hector – I can’t remember his last name right now. I’m wanting to say Barrera, but I can’t remember his last name – Balderas. Balderas. It was Luis de la Garza but then there was a revolt against him, so I don’t know if he’s in or out. I mean he interposes himself (laughter) regardless. Este de Garland, hombre. Alfredo Castañeda was also real involved. I don’t know if he still is. Eduardo Banda. And they’re the ones that are also in PRD and Mexicanos Unidos. These are just very activist Mexicano immigrants – well, now some of them are citizens; they’ve become United States citizens. They were the ones that were so – it was Dominguez, María Dominguez from Familias Unidas, Eduardo Banda, Alfredo Castañeda who were the catalysts for the revolt against the Mexican government when they wanted to charge a deposit on people [on their cars] who were crossing the border, especially – and they tried to do it when holidays were coming, Christmas was coming where everybody crossing over had to pay $800. And they just really – the ones from here in Dallas – it started in Dallas and then because Dallas did it, it went to Chicago, Los Angeles and other places where there’s large immigrant communities. They just started revolting and saying you’re not going to do this, ya, enough is enough of you taking advantage of us, mistreating us. Dr. Gutiérrez: What about the relationship with Asians? Ms. Flores: That I know of, that I know of, there are none. I know that the Asian Chamber, A.K. Mago had a working relationship like when Steve was on Council, City Council. But something formal and organized or even loose, I’m not aware of. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Let’s switch and start with your biography. Tell us your life story. Who is Diana? Her parents? Their parents, where they were from, et cetera. Ms. Flores: Well, I don’t know all of the story in terms of where my grandparents and great grandparents were from. I just know a little bit. Diana Flores – I was born and raised in Palacios, which is a small town on the Gulf Coast, on the coast of Texas. Dr. Gutiérrez: When? Ms. Flores: May 23, 1951. The fourth of five children. My parents were born in Palacios and two different times tried to move away, but, parents just called back too strongly, that family tie was too strong and came back. Did I say there were five children? Dr. Gutiérrez: Who are they? Ms. Flores: Okay. The oldest is Jesse Flores and he lives in Freeport. He is an electrician. Lucinda Flores – we’ve all reverted back to our maiden names in terms of the women – well, my sister and I. Mary Ann hasn’t. Lucinda Flores who lives in Dallas. She came to Dallas in the early ‘70s. Mary Ann Alvarado who is married; her husband is from Mexico, Serafin Alvarado and they live right around the corner from me. When I got the money from UTA, I bought them a house (and they’re paying it off) to live here in Dallas with us, so they’re here. I live here in Dallas, came to Dallas in 1979 and my brother Steve Flores who still lives back home. And he’s the only one in terms of immediate sibling relationship that’s back home. All of us have moved away. Jesse lives in Freeport. I can’t remember if I said that or not. Jesse is real funny porque in terms of our particular branch of the family, somos gueros (we are light skinned). So you can pass somewhat. Jesse can, if you’re among bolillos, especially because of how he dresses and carries himself and talks. I mean, he’s got that real heavy Texas twang, real heavy. And back when we were growing up in Palacios, we were such a small group. We were a real minority. And you had the southern town set-up, you know, the other side of the tracks. And so on one side of the railroad tracks in Palacios vivían los negros y los Mexicanos (the blacks and Mexicans lived). My experience growing up, we didn’t have that black/brown tension because we were both treated the same, so we would try to band together to get whatever advantages we could, or progress. Dr. Gutiérrez: Who was the larger group of the two? Ms. Flores: I think it was pretty much the same, because I am reflecting on – well, when I was in elementary school, we still had the segregation where the blacks couldn’t go. There was a time when there was a Mexican school, but that was before I hit the school system. So when integration hit, I think I was in junior high. So then we might have been just a little bit more in numbers than them. But I remember in school, we would try to have the class president that was either raza or negro, by putting our votes together to support one and the bolillos always had two or three or four, so their vote was split. But then, of course, they would get in the runoff with our candidate and then the vote was all united, so, we would only make it as far as the runoff. We would work together in the school system, the students, the negro y raza to try to get some leverage and get some positions, but it just really didn’t work. Dr. Gutiérrez: Not even in high school it didn’t work? Didn’t it flip by then? Ms. Flores: No. It was very rare but only because you would have un Mejicano, un Chicano or un negro that was popular among the bolillos. It wasn’t that often that that happened. Dr. Gutiérrez: So the push-out rate must have been terrible also. Ms. Flores: I can’t remember for the negritos, but for us, yeah, it was pretty high. I was the fourth of five and I was the first one to graduate. My brother, my oldest brother Jesse lacked graduating by half a credit. He did get to the 12th grade but when it was time to graduate, they informed us at the last minute that supposedly he didn’t have half a credit, so he didn’t graduate. Lucy did the thing back then of eloping when she was 16 years old and my mother acted like somebody had died. She got – she actually got sick. (Laughter) I can still see her in my mind laying down on that sofa and stuff, crying and everything. And then Mary Ann also got married when she was 16. My mother and grandmother would always be like the broken record, get an education, get an education. In Palacios pretty much the only thing that we had to work in was the shrimp factories. The men were shrimpers, would go out on the boats and make a living that way and the women would work processing the shrimp and the crabs and stuff like that. So it was a real stinky, dirty, smelly job. So my mother and grandmother would always drill into us, get out of high school because so many mothers – mother went as far as the 11th grade and then she got married. But her sisters actually did graduate. She’s got – mother’s got seven or eight sisters, I can’t remember. One brother that was killed when he was 21, so it’s just all been the sisters. So pretty much from Tía Toni, who would be the fourth child, from Tía Toni on, all of them graduated from high school. So they were able to get the great job; they were able to be a secretary. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was your mom’s name? Or who is she? Ms. Flores: Angela Flores. Dr. Gutiérrez: Maiden name? Ms. Flores: It was Lara but she never knew her father. She didn’t find out she was a Lara until she was like 10 years old or something. Mi Welita era bien caranchita (my grandma was something else) – Lydia Teran was the name she died with from the husband then. But – I don’t remember. I need to find out what Welita’s maiden name was. [Welita’s maiden name is Teran; Valadez was the surname of her last husband.] Welita had – if you saw her, she was just a very Indian looking good woman, a woman that was not loose, so to speak. But she had like four or five husbands. As one was exiting the door, the other one was coming in. So it’s just like a real mystery to us. How did it happen because she -- in your mind these loose women painted up and that was not Welita. But she – mother is the first child, Welita’s first child and Welita and mother’s father separated when mother was like a year old or less than a year old. Dr. Gutiérrez: And who was he? Ms. Flores: Lara. I can’t remember – mother says his first name [Cesario]. I mean, to this day, mother is like 75, 76, she laments the fact she never knew her father. And she has always gone around asking people, do you know so-and-so Lara. I’m wanting to say Celestino [Cesario] Lara, but I can’t remember. So and so Lara. I think he hailed from San Luis – Dr. Gutiérrez: Potosi. Ms. Flores: -- Potosi. And she tries to give, you know, and he was married to this woman, trying to see if she can locate her father. It’s never happened. Then my grandmother married [Crecencio] Bernal. I don’t know his first name, but they just always refer to him as Bernal. That’s where Welita had a whole bunch of daughters and the son. And then the other one was Jesse [Valadez], that was the last one, the one that I grew up knowing. Welita had two daughters, Frances and Milda – Dr. Gutiérrez: Where is Teran from? Ms. Flores: Jesus – Jesse Teran? I don’t know. Frances – no, Frances and Milda were from the third husband – what was their maiden name? I don’t remember the maiden name, but the man lived in Alvin and like ran a plant and was pretty well economically and Welita got involved with Jesse and so the marriage to Frances’ and Milda’s father was over with, but they were so angry at their mother, at Welita for doing that, they stayed with their dad. And that was real unusual back then. Children were always with their mother. And as a result, I think he was able to provide pretty well for them. One went to college back then which was in the ‘50s and that was real unusual for us. Tía Milda is an anthropologist and she’s a professor. She was at the University of Nebraska and she’s getting ready to move up to Oregon. Tía Frances wanted to be a pediatrician but arthritis got the better of her. Her father was originally from Mexico so she went back to her father’s hometown and kind of lives there. All my other aunts are up here in Dallas. That’s the reason my sister came in the ‘70s because none of us could stay in Palacios. There was nothing to hold you there in terms of good jobs. It was just the shrimp industry and that’s pretty – Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know where your grandmother came from? Ms. Flores: Lydia Teran? She came from San Luis. My – my aunt – Dr. Gutiérrez: Potosi. Ms. Flores: Yes. San Luis Potosi, originally. Aunt Annie and Aunt Martha, but basically Tía Annie has gone back up there and actually met family that stayed and things like that, so she’s got Welita’s side of the family pretty well documented. In terms of my father, we recently found out that my great- grandfather, Papá Carlitos – I would always hear them talk about him as Papá Carlitos – was actually a soldier in the Confederate Army. Dr. Gutiérrez: Carlitos what? Ms. Flores: Flores. Flores. He was a soldier in the Confederate Army. The way we found out was that the Daughters of the Confederacy or whatever they call the women’s group came knocking on my Uncle Jimmy’s door (laughs) letting him know that they wanted to put a plaque at his grave. We didn’t know that. I would have preferred he had been a soldier in the other army, pero bueno, ni modo (but okay, no matter). And then Daddy Jimmy, my grandfather, was pretty much a hustler. He had a cantina, he was a gambler. He didn’t like working for anybody else and he made a living by hustling. [Paternal grandparents: Santiago Flores and Otila Solis.] Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know where he was from or your grandfather Carlitos Ms. Flores: Papá Carlitos, according to what the Daughters of the Confederacy, the research they did, he started from Brownsville. So I imagine he was one of those that was here when the borders changed. And then he made his way up to Bay City and Palacios, is where he ended up. Dr. Gutiérrez: Bay City is different than Baytown? Ms. Flores: Yeah. Baytown is closer to Houston. Bay City is in Matagorda County. It’s the county seat for Matagorda and that’s like 20, 25 miles from Palacios. And when we wanted to do our shopping, we’d go to Bay City because there’s not too much in Palacios. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, tell me about some of the things you remember from your childhood. The most terrible things, the most disagreeable things. Ms. Flores: I remember that our father would always drill into our heads – he was like a broken record, too. Don’t ever let anybody put you down because you’re a Mexican. You’re born in a country where nobody is better or any worse than you are. We’re all the same. So don’t ever let anybody put you down because you’re a Mexican. And he would always come with stories about how se peleaba con los gringos (he would fight with the racists). They tried to tell me dirty Mexican; they told me this and they told me that. Papá era bien mal hablado. He would cuss a lot. So he would use all these curse words, to explain what happened. And his favorite thing, his favorite comeback to el gringo racista (the racist white) was, "Well, I might be a wetback, but you’re a drowned back. I crossed a river but you had to cross a whole damned ocean." So he kind of prepared us and sent us out into the world, not to let anybody easily take advantage of us or try to put us down, so we went out already prepared to fight. Dr. Gutiérrez: Drowned back? Ms. Flores: Drowned back. Un ahogado (a drowned one). You drowned trying to get here because you crossed an ocean -- Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Ms. Flores: -- I just crossed a river. So that was his comeback to them. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Okay. Ms. Flores: And mother would always drill into us, well like mother and Wela, to get an education. So I was the first one that did. But mother would always drill into us – well, dad too, both of them – the women – don’t ever let a man beat you. A man who beats a woman is not a man; he’s a coward, my father would say. And so mother would chime in, "And the day your father ever does that to me, that’s the last day he’s in this house. He’ll be gone." (Laughs) So dad never did that, but apá si era bien mujeriego, bien mujeriego y amá se los aguantaba (dad was a real womanizer, a real womanizer and mother took it). As a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons, one of the times we left, because of one of his little affairs that caused too much heat in Palacios with the woman’s husband and family, so we had to go to Chicago. Dr. Gutiérrez: The whole family? Ms. Flores: The whole – all of us, five of us at that time. Dr. Gutiérrez: So they were looking for him? Ms. Flores: Yeah. They were not happy with him. Dr. Gutiérrez: So what did y’all do in Chicago? Who was up there? Ms. Flores: Una prima hermana de apá, Julia, que en paz descanse. Ella tambien ya falleció. (A first cousin of my father’s, Julia, may she rest in peace. She is also deceased.) Julia was up there with her husband, so we moved to Chicago. And all I remember – I was four years old – all I remember is that it was real cold and going into a store, it was close to Christmas, and there were all these dolls with different colored hair, pink hair, blue hair, green hair, and that the doors were in the floor and snow. That’s all I remember from Chicago. We were up there, I think just a year or two years because Wela and Daddy Jimmy kept insisting that dad come home. They just couldn’t stand the separation from the son and the grandchildren. So after a year or two, Daddy Jimmy and Wela actually went up to Chicago and brought us all back. And then at one time dad tried to make the break and go to Houston, but Wela and Daddy Jimmy again, you know, you’ve got to come home, so… Dr. Gutiérrez: Where did he work at? Ms. Flores: Dad tambien (also) was a shrimper. He was also – and he never felt comfortable working on land. He was more comfortable en la agua (on the water). He was a shrimper. He was also captain of an offshore – the offshore oil rigs – captain of supply boats that would run supplies from the coast to the offshore oil rigs and he would work out of Louisiana. And there was a long time in there that he would be home two weeks and gone two weeks. So pretty much mother had to run the household. Mother for a woman at that time, I think, was pretty independent. Dr. Gutiérrez: She was a stay-at-home mom? Ms. Flores: Yeah. Up until the time dad se lastimó (got hurt). I think I was like 10. Dad was walking on a dock to get to the boat and it was at night y apá le gustaba tomar tambien (and dad like to drink also). There were some boards missing and he fell through and he hurt his back. So he was out of work for like three years. So mother had to go work. We had just had our house remodeled. So they had a payment of $79 a month to make on the remodeling of the house and the biggest fear was that we would lose the home because dad couldn’t work anymore. Mother went to work in my uncle’s restaurant. Uncle Jimmy had a restaurant que se llamaba El Toro (that was named The Bull). And she was making, as a waitress, was making $1.25 an hour in the early ‘60s and tips. And it was some hard times. It was some hard times. But then when he was able to – that lasted for about three years because he filed a claim and things like that, but unfortunately none of that – it came to naught. Mom and dad never explained to us what happened, the end of the lawsuit, the result of the lawsuit, but I think probably whoever he was suing said, well, he was drunk, and that’s why he fell down, not because of anything else. So I don’t think anything really came of it. They didn’t get any money off of that lawsuit. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, any other thing you remember about going to school – junior high or high school? Your dances or clubs or organizing? I mean, you talked about politics earlier, the student politics. Ms. Flores: I remember – mother went to school until the 11th grade and then left to marry, right. So, fortunately, we learned the English at home because she would say she didn’t want us to go through what she went through by hitting the school system and not knowing the English and the treatment you get and things. I do remember when I hit first grade there was a class – Ms. Navarro was the teacher. There was a class for students that didn’t speak the English. But we immediately went into the regular classroom and mother made sure she was a presence, would always introduce herself to the teacher and would go through this little ritual of telling the teacher that we had been instructed at home to be respectful and obedient and if there were any problems, she wanted to know about it because then not only would we get it at school, but we would get it at home, too, because she wanted us to be able to learn and not to be causing problems. So – you could sense, the que no te querían (that they didn’t want you). The teachers really didn’t like you as a Mexicano. And there was a double standard for discipline; when the Anglo kid did something, they just got a reprimand or whatever. When un Mexicano did something, you got beaten or expelled or whatever. But I think because my parents were able to actually come up there and talk the situation out or confront the situation, the fact that we were somewhat light skinned, it wasn’t so hard on us. And I also remember in our family that was a big deal, the color line. Oh, when a baby was born – es moreno o es blanco? Is he brown or is he white? That was the deal, we had to be blanco because then you were more acceptable to the larger community. And I even remember a friend of mine would tell me, God, I wish I was like you. I wish I was white. So that was real sad, going through that. And I never bought into that color line. I resented it, you know, that we were raza; why have this difference. And I always remember that my grandparents, because they were both light skinned – Wela and Daddy Jimmy [paternal grandparents]. Mother’s side of the family, no. Most of them are Indian looking. But mother’s father must have been light skinned because mother is light skinned. So in school you could always feel that difference. In junior high was when integration hit. The family right across the street where we grew up were the Heards. Johnny and – God, mother still writes to her – Doris – Johnny and Doris Heard and they had five children. Growing up we were always in each other’s houses. And I remember I would sit in the living room watching Doris do the irons and all that stuff on Ernestine and Fletchie. Dr. Gutiérrez: Those were blacks? Ms. Flores: Blacks. Yeah. And they were real worried when integration hit because there was a lot of talk que los bolillos iban hacer esto y el otro (the whites were going to do this and that). But it didn’t happen. Everything went pretty smooth. So in high school, that’s when we began to coalesce to try to get class positions and things like that. There were 91 or 93 in my graduating class. And I was – I think by that time, I think we were graduating a little bit more than what used to happen. I think there were about 20, 25 Mexicanos that graduated. I’d have to look at my yearbook. We had a good number graduating from high school. I didn’t have the situation where a lot of the raza says they were discouraged from going to college. My parents didn’t know anything – most of our parents didn’t know anything about going to college. I was fortunate. I always did well in school and most of us did. My brother and sisters, most of us did real well in school. I always did real well in school academically, so the counselor, I think, when I was in the 11th or 12th grade, Mr. Lauderbach, he came and pulled me out of class one day and he said, "You need to sign up to take this test." I said, "Well, what is it?" He said, "This is the ACT. It’s to prepare you to go to college." And, well, I was taught to be the obedient kid in school, so I signed up and took the ACT and I would be in UIL competition -- creative writing, speech, things like that. Never got anywhere because once I got there, I would get so nervous that – but I took the ACT and then when I graduated from high school, I came to work in Dallas for the summer and went ahead and ended up staying that year. But then in the summer of ’70, I applied to A&I in Kingsville. Dr. Gutiérrez: Who did you stay with? Ms. Flores: My sister was here already at that time. And she wanted a family, a closer family member, so she kept – when I – she went to my graduation. She went to my graduation and said, "Come back to Dallas. Come back to Dallas. You can stay with me," que esto y que el otro (this and that), so hay te vengo (here I come). I’d never been to a big town, really. Well, we had come to visit one time because my tías lived here. But when you’re in a small town with nothing to do, that’s the big dream, is to go off to the big city and do something because in a small town there’s not much. So I came up with her. She went to my graduation and I came back with her and got my first job at Sears, that big place they have on Lamar, the warehouse. And lived between her and my Tía Toni for that year, and then decided to go to college. So I made the preparations and went to A&I in Kingsville. The reason I went there was because I wanted to have an experience where I would be where there was a lot of raza. Because in Palacios there was not many of us and in the high school there was not many of us. So I figured, well, Kingsville, it’s close to el Valle (the Valley) and there should be a lot of raza down there. Dr. Gutiérrez: When did you graduate from high school? Ms. Flores: 1969. Dr. Gutiérrez: When did you get to A&I ? Ms. Flores: 1970, fall of 1970. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. Ms. Flores: And it’s a real interesting experience. I filled out all the paperwork for the financial aid and things like that, but didn’t have a clue as to what I needed to do. I mean nobody prepared you. Didn’t know what a degree plan was; didn’t know you should establish one. Didn’t know there were counselors or advisors on the campus that would help you through all that stuff. And in Palacios, since we’re such a minority, the issue was to try to be as white as you could by the white community, right? But in our community we would rebel against that. And the ones who would buy that lie of forget that you’re Mexicano and try to be white, we’d look down on them. You know, que eran vendidos o que se creían mucho (that they sold out or thought too highly of themselves) or whatever. But still in all of that, we would pronounce our names like many do today. It wasn’t Diana Flores (Spanish pronunciation); it was Diana Flores (English pronunciation) when I was growing up. And you’re (English pronunciation on the following names:) Garcia, you’re Martinez, Herrera. Well, when I went to A&I, I’ll never forget (laughs). I was in the registrar’s office and needed to get some records. And so they told me, "What’s your name?" I said, "Diana Flores (English pronunciation)." Y estaba raza (And there were some Mexican Americans), some guys that were students there. They started laughing, se burlaron de mi (they made fun of me) because I said Diana Flores. So, santo remedio (holy remedy). Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) Ms. Flores: Since then, I’ve never said my Spanish name in English. And when I was there, that was the hotbed at the time of the Chicano movement, a lot of what was going on. I’d hear your name a lot, José Angel Gutierrez, Reis Lopez Tijerina. Carlos Guerra was at A&I at that time always expounding in the Student Union Building. Amado Peña was a graduate student and I kind of hung around with them. I don’t – I doubt that he remembers, but it was Amado Peña, Tony Martinez, Raulito que era un [who was a ]dwarf, Raulito and the Worms. They were two twins and they looked just alike. They had this stringy, curly type hair that was everywhere so they called them the Worms. So it was Worm 1 and Worm 2 and I don’t know what their real names were. Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) Ms. Flores: (Laughs) And Josie Lara and myself – would kind of form this little clique that would hang out at A&I. And so I got real heavy – my father was in PASO in Palacios and would always, you know, was interested politically and actually ran for constable. I don’t remember what year. So – and they would always, my parents would talk about the importance of voting and would go to vote in elections and talk about the candidates and stuff. So I would hear all of that, and so that started my interest politically. And so when I got to A&I, a lot of what was there, the political scene – I got involved in – well, I think there was a PASO group at A&I at that time. And because my dad had been involved in that organization, I tried to join PASO and I can’t remember any other specific groups that I might have joined at the university, but I did get involved with – I don’t know if you remember a gentleman by the name of Guadalupe Saavedra. He was at A&I not as a – pues ya era señor (well, he was a grown man) and he was married to an Asian woman – I can’t remember her name. He formed a guerrilla theater group, kind of fashioned after Teatro Campesino, so I was a part of the guerrilla group. There was a guy named Archie that played the Vietnam soldier. We did a skit on the war. And at that time I had this wild-looking caftan, black and white all swirled and stuff, kind of wild. So I was the war. I would dress in that and be kind of huddled on the stage and Archie would be agonizing about being drafted into the war because that was at the height of the anti-war movement. And then all of a sudden I would jump up. I was the war, and I was going to swallow Archie up. So I was involved in that. We traveled. We did the Valley circuit. We traveled to different parts in the Valley. Teatro Atahualpa de la Quineña was the name of the guerrilla theater group. And there was a huge rally of Cesar Chavez, I think, at UT Austin. We went to that. And there was a – someone – I can’t remember the name. Some Chicano killed by the police in some town in the Valley, we went to that march and everybody was informed it was a silent march. You couldn’t say anything because the fear was people getting incited, wanting to do other things and giving an excuse for the police to come in and take some heavy action. So I was involved in different things like that and got so involved in that that I totally neglected the studies. Dr. Gutiérrez: So what happened? Ms. Flores: (Laughs) My GPA went super low. I think it went like to a 1.6. And then I also fell in love and Eliazar Guerra was his name. He was also involved in some of this stuff, but not as heavily as I was. And decided – we decided to get married and move to Houston. And so we did that in the – at the end of the fall semester in ’72 – no, ’71. I was at A&I a year and a half. ’71 and by January of ’72, we were in Houston. Dr. Gutiérrez: Before we leave A&I, who were some of your favorite professors that you remember, or the most disliked professors? Ms. Flores: I remember Bittinger. He was a sociology professor. That’s the only one I remember. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. So we get to Houston and you married or you eloped? What did you do? Ms. Flores: We eventually married. Back then, it was the anti-war movement, it was the Chicano movement and it was everything free and why be confined or defined by society’s standards – do your own thing type thing. So we decided we had fallen in love, we were going to get married, but we started living together. And that was at the time that that just wasn’t done that much. Now it’s real common. But we eventually got married, but I can’t remember when because it wasn’t that big of a deal, the actual marriage, because we felt we were already committed to each other. Dr. Gutiérrez: Tell me a little bit about him and his family. Where they came from, or if you know. Ms. Flores: Well, Eliazar Guerra, he was the oldest of – I think it was six at that time. But then his mother in the change of life had a child. So now there’s seven. He was from Roma, Texas. He was one of the polio children. He had – his legs were not real developed as a result of the polio and wore braces and walked with crutches. He was very intellectual and one of the reasons que me fije (that I took notice) was because my sister Lucy had a lot of problems with her first husband. He was bien mujeriego (a big womanizer); my father was bien mujeriego (a big womanizer). And in a small town, you hear who’s doing what. So there were a lot of men that liked to play around a lot. So I had thought, ah, maybe this one won’t be that way. (Laughs) Pero salió peor (but it turned out worse). Because of his condition I think he felt he had to prove himself even more and after we divorced I found out he had hit up on my sister, he had hit up on my best friend. And we divorced because he had an affair and decided he wanted to leave the marriage. It was interesting. He was from Roma. He is now a pharmacist. Most of his family has, his siblings have gotten a college education. On my side of the family, I’m the only one so far out of my siblings that have gotten a college education. And so I lived with him in Houston until 1979. We separated in ’78, ’79. I can‘t remember. We had three children – Quetzal is the oldest and mija (my daughter) was 30 years old last week. Maco – well Angelita is the second child, Angelita Guerra. Quetzal is here in Dallas and has two children and she works for an immigration law firm in North Dallas. And Angelita lives in Freeport and has three children. She is a nurse. Well, I take that back, Angelita got a college education. She got her nursing degree. Maco – Eliazar, his father, was called Maco by his grandfather, like chamaco (little boy), Maco. So my son, our first son, his name is also Eliazar. We call him Maco. Maco lives here in Dallas and he’s got three children. When the marriage ended in ’79, I came to live in Dallas because in Houston, I was close to Palacios and we would go back home a lot. We would go back home about two times a month. So when the marriage was over with, I didn’t want to be in a big city by myself. My fear was what if I get sick, who is going to help me with the kids; who is going to kind of pitch in and help out. So I moved to Dallas where my sister was in ’79 and have been here ever since. Married for a second time to uno de Mexico, San Luis (one from Mexico, San Luis). I didn’t want anyone that was educated or thought they were above everybody else because that’s kind of the mindset that ended up happening with Eliazar. I just wanted a hard-working man who was going to be a good husband and thought I had found that. Another nightmare; another – Dr. Gutiérrez: And who was that? Ms. Flores: -- mistake. His name was Gumaro Rangel from San Luis and our marriage lasted – well, I’m not divorced yet. I’ve never taken that step. (Laughs) The marriage lasted seven years. I married in 1981 and separated from him in 1989. And he turned out to be just a horrible stepfather to my three older kids. Dr. Gutiérrez: Any other children? Ms. Flores: Eric, Robert Eric is 19. Diane is 16. Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s from the second husband? Ms. Flores: Yeah. And so – anyway. What else do you want to know? Dr. Gutiérrez: How did you work and support yourself between husbands? Ms. Flores: When I was living in Houston I had, you know, again the mother and the grandmother, you know, get an education; look at your Tía Rosie, she’s a secretary, this, that and the other. So in high school I took typing because I was planning to be a secretary. And really it turned out to be a Godsend because that’s what got me through a lot of the rough spots, the typing ability at that time. When I moved to Houston, I got – I had temporary jobs, this, that and the other. But then I got in at Ben Taub Hospital which is the county hospital, as a typist for the radiology department. I saw a lot of experiences there that I didn’t even know could happen. I was working in the emergency room and the radiology department had two x-ray rooms and our office space was right in the middle. And so I was working the night shift. And that was by design because Eliazar wanted to finish his schooling. He hadn’t finished at A&I and wanted to finish. He had enrolled at Texas Southern University because he had decided he wanted to be a pharmacist and they have a pharmacy school. So he needed to go to school during the day. We already had a child by the time he decided that he wanted to go back. So I looked – I intentionally looked for something in the evenings so that I would be home during the day. But like my first or second evening at Ben Taub you had a child that they brought in that had either was trying to jump onto a train or got caught some kind of way in a train. He was like eight or nine years old, Mexicanito. And I can still see his eyes in my mind as I’m talking about it. The train cut off both his arms and one leg. And they were x-raying him, and I was trying to talk to him and he was like, "Don’t talk to me! Don’t talk to me!" because he was trying to concentrate on, I guess, not freaking out any more. I don’t know. And then on the other side was a lady, tambien Mexicana who had been in a bad car accident, was pregnant, had broken her pelvis and I don’t know how many other bones. And they had tubes running all through her, including her stomach. So she was going to lose the baby. So this from someone who comes from a small town and not ever seen much in life and the first or second day on this job at this county hospital that was the major trauma center for that area, you know, you have this hitting you. So that was an interesting experience because you saw life and death every day. And what it does, it just turns you real hard as a coping mechanism. So I didn’t get over that feeling of just not feeling in certain ways until after I left there and was already in Dallas. That’s something that you condition yourself. That was at the time when the drug stuff was real heavy, too, and especially on weekends, they would have three or four kids psyched out on drugs and they would tie them down to the stretchers and they are yelling their heads off. All kinds of stuff. But anyway, I worked at that, at Ben Taub Hospital like three or four years. Eliazar started to work there also, because he needed to work part time. I was the primary breadwinner at the time so that he could go to school. But then – and my dream was – it was a real sacrifice because I had three children in the span of four years. Not by design, but it happened. My brother would tell me, "Damn! One of these days you’re going to find out what makes babies and stop having them." (Laughs) And then another time he told me – because it’s like every time I would go home, I was pregnant, right? And then another time, he said, "Chihuahuas, all they have to do is look at you and you get pregnant." (Laughs) So anyway, it was a real sacrifice because then I had – Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, did you want to have that many babies? Ms. Flores: No. That was not by design. That’s why I said I was on different kinds of birth control and, you know – Dr. Gutiérrez: It didn’t work? Ms. Flores: No. No, not – out of the five children, I had two planned. Two were planned. Dr. Gutiérrez: And abortion was not an option? Ms. Flores: No. Well, I’m not going to say that. Back then was when abortion was just becoming legal. And I certainly considered it. I considered it with Angelita and I considered it with Maco. I actually consulted a doctor who was willing to do it, although it was not that widespread at that time. But when it came to doing that, I just couldn’t. We actually -- Eliazar and I actually saw the doctor and set up this thing and I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t do it. So it was a real sacrifice. He graduated. My illusion was, you know, going through all that sacrifice, having the kids, working, not really anybody to help you out or give a helping hand other than he and I, my vision was, you know, the sacrifice was for something. Of course, when he gets out of school, I can just take a break and concentrate more on the family and stuff. When he finished, ya [enough], he didn’t need me any more. He was out of love – and I think that that type of existence just takes a toll on the marriage anyway. But it was totally shocking for me because we were raised that you make a marriage work, no matter what. Dr. Gutiérrez: So when you came here, did he help you with child support and other things like that? Ms. Flores: No. When we divorced, he just totally forgot that he had the children. I mean, to this day, he doesn’t really know his grandkids and he doesn’t know anything. But I think that I did not take the news easily and so we had some altercations. He actually filed assault charges on me. He never prevailed in court. I mean, it was just ridiculous what he tried to do. But, yeah, when we were here I took him back for child support two or three times. And he would just never prevail and I think he had a lot of anger over this because in his mind he was justified in whatever he was doing. Every story has two sides. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, when did you get political again? I mean, you were political at A&I and then marriage and all that happened and now you’re going to start again. So where did you start and why? Ms. Flores: When I married and had the children, well, everything comes to a stop, I think especially if you’re a woman because the emphasis has to be on home and family and, well, work. So I was in Dallas in the second marriage and the two children and the marriage was not working out. My second husband was a very, very bad stepfather to my older three children. It took a toll. They decided they couldn’t take his verbal abuse anymore, so they left. They went to live with my mother back home. And that was a total shock for me. They were in adolescence, in their teenage years. And so I told him, I said, well, now we’re going to see where the real problem is. Because he would say, no, it’s your kids and they’re disrespectful and they do this and they do that and on and on and on. So when the kids were gone, I said, okay. Now we’re going to see where the real problem lies. Was it my children or is it you? And so the same thing is going on, all this tension and era bien enojon, (he had a very bad temper), for any little thing. So I gave it – what I started to do was when I saw that there was not going to be any change, I thought to myself, there is no way I am going to sacrifice my children for this man (laughs) because the man can walk out on you at any time, but about my children, I am the only mother they are ever going to have. So when his behavior was still pretty much the same, I started saving up to make my escape. We had bought a house on Rolinda here in Oak Cliff. And I would ask him to leave so that at least if nothing else his children had a home to live in. Y se burlaba (and he would mock me) – there’s no way. You’re the one that has to leave y que esto y que el otro (and this and that). So I thought to myself, okay. So I started saving up to be able to put a deposit down and rent and all that stuff. And when I had enough and was ready to go, I left one day. I had some friends that had a small company where they had trucks. So they sent over a truck and two men and helped me load everything up and move it into the new place that I rented and when he got home, the house was totally abandoned. It was a total shock to him. He came looking and when he knocked on the door, estaba llore y llore (he was crying and crying). What can we do to make this work and crying, crying, crying. I said, huh-uh. I’m not a ball. I don’t bounce back and forth. You were warned many a time; you didn’t take it seriously. And so then in the course of that, the children came back. Unfortunately, by that time it was a little too late because my authority over them had been broken. They were in adolescence. That’s when the gang stuff was heavy. So what happened was Quetzal ran off with the boyfriend. A couple of months later, Angelita ran off with the boyfriend. Maco got involved in a serious altercation, which is why I had to come look for you. So it’s pretty much the adolescence was shot. And what I had to do to keep my sanity over all of that is a friend of mine told me – Dr. Gutiérrez: You want to turn it off? (The recorder is turned off.) All right. We’re recording again. Ms. Flores: But anyway, as all of this was going on, you know, to keep my sanity, a friend of mine told me, she said, I have a friend of mine who went through something similar, you know, all of this stress and all of these problems. And what she did to stay focused and just kind of have something to keep her mind off of this other stuff, she went back to school. And you’ve always talked about how you want to go back to school. Why don’t you try that? So I did. I had started working at the community college district in 1985 at the downtown office as a secretary to a consultant to the Chancellor. And one of the reasons I took that job was because El Centro College was right across the street, so that I could take a course during lunchtime and things like that. And I had, through the years, I had taken a course at lunch and built up credits to see what would happen. But when all of this was happening with my kids and my friend suggested it, I said, well, why not. Nothing else was working; let me put my energy into something that maybe will work. I went back to – started taking more courses. Now I didn’t have the baggage of the husband and all these other things going on. Dr. Gutiérrez: When did that marriage end? I understand you’re not divorced, but I – Ms. Flores: In ’89. Dr. Gutiérrez: -- but you – Ms. Flores: ’89. Dr. Gutiérrez: ’89. Ms. Flores: April of ’89. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Ms. Flores: And by May of ’94 I had my bachelor’s degree. Because what I did was started taking a few more courses. They had a program at Mountain View at that time that would help you with child care in the evenings, so I was taking an evening course, so Eric and Diane would be in the child care. Quetzal, Angelita and Maco were out of the home, so basically it was just Eric and Diane. So I graduated in ’94 – Dr. Gutiérrez: From where? Ms. Flores: From Dallas Baptist University. (Laughs) They try to save you in every class. But anyway I got my degree and that – at the community college district, because I got the degree was able to move on up from the secretarial rank into an administrative position because they knew what – the type of work I could do, my abilities, this, that and the other. So I was real fortunate. I had a supervisor that supported that and fought for that and was able to get that done. But the political stuff came as a result of all of this bad stuff that was going on in my family. My son got involved in the gang thing, which in the early ‘90s was real strong here in Dallas. When he did that, I decided to get involved in something that was trying to counter the effect of gangs on the kids and the community. I started volunteering with the City of Dallas Gang Intervention Program which was headed up at that time by – I don’t remember. I got on the advisory committee. And one of the staff members was Javier Ríos. And I was on the advisory committee with Jesse Diaz, Alfredo Carrizales, myself, and one or two other mothers. But that was my initiation back into starting to get involved in the community and starting to get active politically. Through that, through my work there, I started finding out about other things going on, either meetings or events or organizations and things like, so I just started branching out. There was a youth summit that was held – a black/brown youth summit that was held in the early ‘90s spearheaded by this guy, Richard Evans, who ran for school board a few years back. And he brought different people together to work on it. And so I got involved with that. Javier and some other people, staff people with the city brought that to the advisory committee, so we decided to get involved in it. In this initiative, this black/brown youth summit, that’s where I met Maricela Vargas and her sister Nita. They were helping out. And Maricela and I clicked real well. So we started working on different things together. And for a couple -- we also, well, I did with some ladies here in Oak Cliff formed a group called MAGIC, Mothers Against Gangs in Crime. So that’s where I got to meet some other people and we would meet once a week and that went on for like a year or so. And through my meeting with Maricela, she pulled me in on the Hispanic Summit, which I think the first one took place in ’92 or ’93. And since I was real focused on getting my degree, what I told her was, I can’t get that, that involved because my primary focus is this, but – so I can’t help you leading up to it, but I can help you the day of. This was, I think, for the first Summit. I can help you the day of. Whatever you need me to do the day of, tell me. It turned out to be a real positive experience. The premise of the Summit was to bring together all factions of the community, political factions, grassroots people, professionals, feds, at whatever level they were, to discuss issues that affected us. And so the issues that were discussed – and see how we could come to solutions on some of these things. So the issues that were discussed were education, politics, the arts are three of the main ones that I remember. There might have been two or three more. But one of the things that was born out of that Summit and the issues that came up was that we needed, in the arts, we needed a place to showcase Latino arts, raza art, because there was nothing in the city. So that’s when at that time or like a year later, the city was looking to do a bond election. And we wanted to make sure that there were funds in that bond election for a Latino cultural center. That was something that was directly born out of the Summit. Barbara Gonzalez was Domingo Garcia’s – who was then a city councilman – Barbara Gonzalez was Domingo Garcia’s appointee to the Office of Cultural Affairs. So in the Office of Cultural Affairs, she was always bringing this issue to the forefront, more funding for Latino arts, a place for Latino arts to be showcased. And she was tapped into different elements of the community. She also worked for the community college district at that time. So on the Office of Cultural Affairs side for the city, she was pressing the need for bond money for a cultural center and keeping us informed of what we needed to do when. Domingo had assured the community that he would make sure that there were bonds appropriated – funds appropriated in the bond election. I think the bond election took place in ’95 or ’96. I can’t remember. But that there would be funds appropriated for the Latino cultural center in the bond package that was to be put before the voters. He also used to have a Chorizo and Menudo Breakfast once a month where he would bring different people to talk on different topics. So a lot of community people would come to be informed and interact and all this, that and the other. He happened to bring Chris Luna, who was also a councilman at that time. And, I think Barbara or somebody in the audience asked what’s the status of the Latino cultural center in the bond program. And Chris Luna says, well, there’s no funds there. And so it’s kind of like a collective gasp. What!? Because Domingo hadn’t kept us informed. Since he had assured us that this would happen, well, we thought, it’s a done deal. And so Chris said, well, there’s nothing there. And so we, we quickly – well, what’s going on, this, that and the other. What we found out was that since Domingo was running for mayor or planning to run for mayor at that time, he didn’t want to do anything that would make him look too Hispanic. So he didn’t push to get those, to make sure there was funding in there. So then we had to mobilize to make sure it would happen. Barbara, Maricela and I started calling, found out what we had to do. At a certain city council meeting they were going to do some of the final talks of what to include, what elements to include for the bond package. So we mobilized. We said we’ve got to pack that city council meeting to make sure that they know that they need to do this since Domingo’s dropped the ball. So we did. We started calling all kinds of people. Because at that time since I was free from a husband and I was already free from the study, I had gotten my bachelor’s degree, I was everywhere, going to all kinds of meetings, to all kinds of activities. It was just a real outlet for me for some frustrations of wanting to get things done and also a rebirth of the early political interests that I had. So anyway, we just had a vast network. Maricela had a vast network; Barbara had a good network. And so we just worked those people that we knew and said, you have to come. And that night – I don’t remember – know why, but I remember it was an evening meeting; it wasn’t a day meeting like what they usually have (and maybe my recollection is just wrong). But anyway, we had about 200 to 300 people there with signs, with everything, making the case. And the mayor happened to be out of town. Domingo was Deputy Mayor Pro Tem or Mayor Pro Tem; he was presiding. So he was trying to – since a lot of the criticism – all the people weren’t openly criticizing him that I can remember, but either he had a guilty conscience or something. He was real sensitive to the issue and didn’t want – was trying to really control the speakers, one minute or whatever. And I don’t know what the procedural move was, but there was a break – either there was a break during the meeting or it was right before the meeting started. But Domingo called Maricela, Barbara and myself up to the front to talk to us at the side. What are y’all doing; what’s going on? Y’all have got to stop this. And so I said, no, Domingo, you’re the one that caused this havoc. If you had come through on what you said you were going to do, we wouldn’t have had to do this. But now you can’t stop it. It has to happen. And we were successful. Bonds were appropriated. Although the cultural center hasn’t been built yet, at least the funding is already there. It was a private-public combination of funds. The city would put up so much but the community had to put up so much. And it’s been just like a month or two ago that the community contribution has been locked up, so hopefully it will be built and that’s something that will be there forever. And I am real proud to say I took part in it, part to make sure it happened, although Domingo is the one que ahora se levanta el cuello (that now takes the credit); he says, I did it. Esta saludando con sombrero ajeno (he’s saying hello with somebody’s else’s hat, meaning he’s taking credit for what somebody else did), as they say that he does. That was when I started getting politically active, was back in the early ‘90s as a result of what happened with my son and not wanting to see that happen with other families. Dr. Gutiérrez: You also got involved with GAILA. Tell me about that. Ms. Flores: Well, I got involved with GAILA as a result of going to a meeting you had. I think you had been at one of those Choizo and Menudos. That’s when you were trying to establish CMAS, get CMAS off the ground and you were handing out fliers on a meeting you were going to have to form an advisory committee for CMAS and so I went to that. I can’t remember the progression, but you were also the one that talked about GAILA and I can’t remember if it was through one of the CMAS advisory meetings or where, but you were talking about the need to have an advocacy group on the immigrant issues and for us to come together on that and that y’all were going to have an organizing meeting to form this group which ended up being GAILA. And I went to the very first meeting of that. And when it first started, it was just fantastic because there was a real hunger out there. People were living the disempowerment, living the disenfranchisement and all of that, you know, not having the political power; not having the economic power; being – the immigrant community were the scapegoats at that time. It’s their fault that we’re in whatever situation we are, so there was a real hunger to come together to change this dynamic. I think that’s also when 187 had come into California and we wanted to make sure it wouldn’t come to Texas. So in Dallas we decided to do something locally to bring attention to that issue. So I was at the first organizing meeting. The calls were being put out on Spanish-language media that this was happening. So like for the first year, I would say GAILA was 100 to 200 people a night; it was meeting once a week. Unfortunately, Luis de la Garza was the one that came to the forefront on the immigrant side and he was the one providing the meeting space and he’s – well, he’s got a lot of good qualities. He’s also got some that pretty much negate all the good ones. And one of them is he likes to grandstand or he likes to be, you know, Luis de la Garza, calling the shots and all that. So he would be the only one talking. Now he did go through the motions of trying to have a committee, like an executive committee and work through committees, but he didn’t have that skill, I think, of knowing how you work through committee. His – I think his background is primarily the Mexican model which is, just one or two or three important men and they call all the shots. But that doesn’t work here. And pretty much he talked GAILA into the ground because people got tired of coming there every meeting and hearing him talk and not really substantive actions taking place in the later part of GAILA. The first part of GAILA’s foundation, we actually had some protests; we did some letter writing before the ’96 law came into being, the Immigration Reform Act of ’96, GAILA actually sent people to Washington to lobby. They did a mock election for the Mexican presidential elections here, for people to do a symbolic vote, who would you vote for. So there were a lot of good things that GAILA did initially. This is just too bad it didn’t continue, but the immigrant community has continued in other forms of their activism. Dr. Gutiérrez: They were also involved in a mock election on Ann Richards, no? Ms. Flores: I can’t remember. I just remember – I know there were some things in there on the elections on this side, but I can remember, because the focus – the main focus was a symbolic vote on the Mexican – Dr. Gutiérrez: What was the point of that? Ms. Flores: Just to say that – the mindset over here by the majority community is that la raza is not – la raza doesn’t care about politics or la raza doesn’t do anything, we’re very apathetic, whatever. It was just a way to show, no, it’s different. If we had the ability to – this is on the immigrant side – if we had the ability, we would. And I mean there were huge numbers of people coming to those symbolic -- to those polling places to do that symbolic vote. There were polling places set up all throughout Dallas and Fort Worth. And I forget how many thousands upon thousands of people actually came out to do it, to do that, to vote. [Approximately 20,000 voted.] Dr. Gutiérrez: Then what happened next? Okay. So GAILA died eventually and the Latino cultural center, which is the name now, is off and being built – well, the fundraising is going on. The youth summit – Ms. Flores: The Hispanic Summit – Dr. Gutiérrez: You left it hanging there. That also ended. What brought – Ms. Flores: Well, there was only one youth summit. But Hispanic Summit, there were like three or four. There was only one black/brown youth summit. Dr. Gutiérrez: No. I meant the Hispanic Summits. Ms. Flores: Okay. The Hispanic Summit occurred in ’93, ’94, ’95, I think maybe ’96, maybe ’97. It might have gone on for five years. I’m not sure. ’93 was the first one. ’94 – and they would take place at one of the colleges. Dr. Gutiérrez: Community colleges. Ms. Flores: One of the community colleges. I think the first one took place at Mountain View. The second one at Mountain View. The third one at Eastfield. Then it came back to Mountain View. Maricela was the driving force behind the Summit. She has an excellent gift of being able to bring all the parties together and being able to stay true to a mission. The mission of the Summit, the purpose of the Summit was to bring together all factions, be it the Adelfas, be it the Domingos, be it the Hector Floreses, be it the Roberto Alonzos, the Jose Angel Gutierrezes. You bring everybody together, no matter what side of the fence you’re on on any issue. And as the community, let’s hear what Adelfa has to say. Let’s hear Jose Angel’s side. And then let the community decide. Or let’s hear the Republican side. Or let’s hear the Democratic side. And then after the community has heard what people have to say on whatever side of the issue, let the community decide for themselves. Okay, I like this view better. Or I like that approach better. But let them at least be exposed to the different views and let them decide. And then from their also decide how they’re going to work on that certain issue. So Maricela is very talented in that respect of being able to go to the people that she might not necessarily hold in high esteem and say, look, we need you there, as well as the people she does. That’s something that I certainly have trouble with. That was, I think, the success of the Summit. It truly was a nonpartisan place to come and for the community to get involved. And we would have attendance of like 700 to 800, all on a volunteer effort, all on almost no money to do these things. Out of that, as I said, was born the Latino cultural center. Out of that was born intense advocacy by community – by students of the community college district about, you know, you have to open up and be more accessible to our community in terms of getting out the information of how to get a college education, do better about employment and culturally based student activities, things such as that. Then as a result of just all of these different things coalescing together, we also had a meeting back – was it in ’94? Well, let me go back to the GAILA thing real quick. Another thing that GAILA did was that we went as a group to Mexico to lobby the Mexican government to grant dual citizenship so that the people who were residents here and didn’t want citizenship here because they didn’t want to lose what they felt was the last tie to Mexico would get over it, you know, and say, well, I’m not going to lose my Mexican citizenship. I’m going to be able to keep that but at the same time become an American citizen because we needed them to become citizens here and voting, and voting, because if we didn’t have that vote we are going to keep staying in the same boat of no real power. So we met with the – this was in August of ’94 if I remember correctly, about 15 to 20 of us. The majority from Dallas, but we also had a state rep join us from El Paso, a firefighter from Austin. The majority of the group – it was Robert Alonzo, Steve Salazar, you, myself, the token female, because I think the only other female was Luis de la Garza’s wife at the time – I can’t remember her name [Irma]. I’m wanting to say Maria, but it wasn’t Maria. Luis de la Garza, Gilbert Serna. (Laughs) Your joke about – anyway, Gilbert Serna. I can’t remember – Salvador Morales who was head of the Hispanic Firefighters here locally and has since gone up nationally. Another firefighter from here, a firefighter from Austin. That’s nine I’ve named already. I can’t remember who else might have gone with us. But we met with Teodoro Mas who was the Secretary for Mexicans in the Exterior, I think was the title. And it was incredible to me that he was like, you know, we can’t do that. We can’t say that you can keep your Mexican citizenship if you’re in the United States and a resident because the United States would see that as us interfering in their internal affairs. And our response to them was, no, it’s not. I mean, you can do whatever you want as a country. There’s other countries that have dual citizenship. And it’s very detrimental to us. I think one of us gave the example of, for example, the Jewish community, you know, in terms of the comparison of the Jewish – the comparison of the numbers in the Jewish community to our community is vast. They’re like what, three to five million in the United States and we’re now, in the 2000 census, we’re 30 million. But look at the power that the Jewish community has in the United States Congress. The Congress won’t think of enacting anything affecting Israel without consulting the Jewish community here. So we gave them that example, saying, imagine what we could do if all these people that are residents and don’t want to become citizens of the United States become citizens and become a strong, powerful bloc and begin to lobby for policies more favorable to Mexico. So I think that’s one of the things that, like, started opening up light bulbs. It took awhile for them to work the issue but it finally got done in, what was it, ’97? ’99 where the Mexican Congress granted dual – it’s not dual citizenship; it’s dual nationality. But at least now those who have residency here from Mexico, plus 187, was a big help to us in that respect. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the early voting – the absentee ballots, they did put them along the border at that time. That was six years ago. Ms. Flores: So that was another thing that we, that GAILA and those of us involved in GAILA did at that time, which I think was quite significant. Dr. Gutiérrez: I’m sure I don’t know all the extent of your involvement in different things, but you still have a story about TACHE [Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education]. You also have a story about CMAS at UTA. And, of course, the big story, you got elected finally to the Dallas Community College. I don’t know if you were ever involved with as a precinct chair with the Democratic Party. But those are at least areas that you need to cover and whatever else. Well, you got involved with Paul Kerr in – Ms. Flores: The Center for Human Rights. Dr. Gutiérrez: Center – yeah, and other groups, so have at it. Ms. Flores: Okay. When – before I went back to GAILA, what were we going to go to? There was something that I was going to cover. Oh. Because of the Summit that was going on, you and I had gotten to know each other a little more in terms of the activism. I had gotten to know Roberto, Steve, Maricela, just different people like that. There was a meeting that MAD, right, Mexican American Democrats decided to have. This was all after, I think, the different lawsuits had happened out of the ‘90s redistricting and then the seats that were available, that opened up. The JP seats and at all the levels, the state rep, the community college district, the city – Dr. Gutiérrez: That reminds me. There’s the other group you got involved with, and that’s the black/brown unity through Liz Velasquez – Ms. Flores: It wasn’t really her. It was Luis Sepulveda. Well, I did Liz Flores Velasquez once or twice, but Luis Sepulveda also had an initiative trying to get black/brown together in the city. And I’m trying to write these things down so I won’t forget to come back to them but your pen doesn’t write. Anyway. MAD called a meeting of different – of the different parties to come together. We met in Fort Worth like in a retreat fashion to decide who was going to go for what political seat so that we wouldn’t separate either ability to raise funds or the manpower, the people power to support candidates; that we wouldn’t be working against each other, in other words. Dr. Gutiérrez: That was the meeting at the Sandpiper Inn? Ms. Flores: Yeah. And I think you were there, Roberto was there; Domingo was there; Maricela was there; Diana Orozco was there; Juan Jasso, Mario Casarez – Dr. Gutiérrez: Aurelio Castillo? Ms. Flores: -- Aurelio Castillo. Dr. Gutiérrez: Francisco Rodriguez. Ms. Flores: Francisco Rodriguez. Dr. Gutiérrez: This fellow Mata – Tom Mata – Ms. Flores: Tommy Mata, yeah. Monica – Dr. Gutiérrez: Steve Salazar. Ms. Flores: Monica Alonzo. Steve Salazar. Veronica Cano and a student at that time, UTA that was kind of there just to help logistically. They were who I remember was there. But pretty much the decision then – I can’t remember who decided to go for what. I remember that I certainly indicated an interest in the community college district since I worked there and knew the workings of it that I’d love to be on that board because it just bothered me that here they would talk a certain game but organizationally they really would do nothing to bring about change. And when the community would come up and complain about lack of employees, enough employees or students or whatever, they’d respond back in a good way, but they would do really nothing to make changes, because I was working there. I saw that. It frustrated me, the hypocrisy of all of this. So I remember I indicated an interest to run for the community college seat, were I able to. And I can’t remember all of the other decisions that were made in terms of who would run for what. And I don’t know that anybody wrote down – I just don’t remember. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, there’s minutes to that meeting. Ms. Flores: Okay. I don’t remember. But I think, I think everybody coming out of that meeting felt real good because it was kind of like we had a game plan laid out and we were going to support each other and try to maximize our representation. So then in 1995 that’s when Roberto got funding for CMAS, right. And I knew that you were going to have a position available. So I kept bugging you to give me a position at CMAS, that I would love to work for the Center for Mexican American Studies at UTA. So when that finally came available, well, you said, apply and we’ll see what happens. So I did apply and, fortunately, I did get hired. And I remember I started – I got hired November – September 23rd of 1985 – I mean, 1995, was my official hire date. And you had told me that there was going to be a conference at UTA, the Tejano Student Unity Weekend Conference for, like the second weekend in November and almost nothing had been done to prepare for that conference and that was my first task, to make sure that this conference got pulled off. So you told me what students were involved. So I started on the volunteer effort, I think back in the beginning of September trying to start working on that. And then when I started actually officially working for the university, really had to go at it. But I’m quite proud to say that in the span of six weeks, we had one of the largest attended Tejano Student Unity Weekends and according to the students, it was one of the most successful ever. So we pulled a miracle. So you’re talking about from doing nothing from when I was officially hired to November 16th-17th, having contact with all of the universities and colleges in the state, getting students to participate, getting a full program, a full contingent of presenters, I mean, just everything. There’s not many people, I think, that can pull off a full-fledged statewide conference in six weeks, and we did it. It was just myself, you and the students. And one thing that I’m real proud of in terms of those students that were real active with us – it was a group of 10 to 15 – most of them have gone on to graduate from the university and are active in the community. I mean, they have stayed active. To me that’s real exciting. Michael Vega, Maribel Estrada, Patsy Burgess, Ana Contreras, Celestino. Ana Coca will come up to me still because I see them all the time and as I know you do. And they’ll say, if it wasn’t for you and Dr. Gutierrez, I probably wouldn’t have graduated because nobody was really helping giving them direction or encouraging them or giving them motivation to stay the course. And as result of them getting "Chicanoized," so to speak, the Chicano view and the Chicano history and everything else, it gave them a real sense of who and what they are and what is some of their purpose as they go out in the larger community. So they’re still very active. Dr. Gutiérrez: Speaking of which, how do you identify yourself, as Chicana, Latina, Mexican , Hispanic, mujer, American? Ms. Flores: Chicana. And when I address students, whenever I address issues, I always put Chicano/Latino – although you say that’s a Napoleonic term. Since we’ve had a different dynamic now in the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000, it’s not just Chicano-based or Chicano-origin people any more because you have people from Guatemala, El Salvador, so they don’t identify with the word Chicano. So you know us, we never like to exclude. So when I address issues, I’ll always say Chicano/Latino, because to me it’s still Chicano, but also being inclusive. At least Latino you can say in Spanish. Hispanic is – Dr. Gutiérrez: So back to CMAS. You finished the Tejano Student Unity Weekend. Do you know what’s happened to that? Ms. Flores: I think it’s still going on, but it’s kind of had its difficulties. Jesus Soliz who is a student at UTD was trying to bring it back to Dallas last year and he had asked for my support and would I help him do it again. And I said yeah I’ll help you, but he wasn’t successful. It’s pretty much stayed based around the Austin area, Austin, San Marcos, in through there. As far as I know, it’s still going on. I think like we did the seventh annual or the eighth annual, but students still talk about that one. To them, that was the one that was the most significant. But then in terms of CMAS, well, we – during that time, I was putting in like 18 hours a day, six, seven days a week. I mean, it was nonstop. And then you, as CMAS director, you wanted to make sure we provided all kinds of programs. You wanted at least one major thing a month. And we were real fortunate that we had a real good relationship with the media, that when we put on a program, it got media exposure. The community sometimes came out; sometimes they didn’t. Not because they didn’t want to, but you know, the realities of people working and would get home and take care of kids or whatever. But we had real good exposure, real good programs and good participation by the community. And we were working our asses off with almost very little support. But it was exciting what we were about doing, which was providing culturally based programs for the students and the community and also preserving the history. Because nobody is really about preserving our history – preserving the history of Chicanos in North Texas and then statewide. And then all of that came to a screeching halt in June of 1996 when you were informed that you were being removed. The president and the provost were arbitrarily doing a reorganization of the center and you were removed as director and my position was eliminated. We had an active community advisory committee for CMAS, which was Juan Paz Peña, Rosalinda Garcia, Richard Gonzales – was Richard Gonzales on it – okay. Those were the two I can remember right now. There was like 10, 12, 15 people real active with the CMAS advisory committee. So when Witt and Wright and Williams took this action, the community advisory committee was outraged because they saw how hard we were working and all of the things that we were doing that were having positive impact on students and the community. So they engaged in this campaign to fight the university on that action and organized committees and protests and press conferences. Students came in on it, too. Just a lot of different things occurred. When Witt started feeling – well, first – felt the first brunt of that heat, he released all of this false information on us, you know, that we had misappropriated funds off of the Reflejos y Mas concert and – symposium and concert – Dr. Gutiérrez: And teacher training. Ms. Flores: And the teacher training that was just so awesome for the teachers. And they – I remember they – I can’t remember the auditor’s name, Bill somebody, a young Hispanic that was working for Shupe, Bill Shupe, the auditor, the main auditor. He kept coming to the CMAS office. They had informed me that my position would be eliminated, but I think I could pretty much stay on until the end of the budget year which was August 30th, if I remember correctly. And they wanted a record of my time, although UTA didn’t have any timesheets, nothing that you could record your time on, that I was aware of, but they wanted a record of all of that. So you had always been such a stickler and a broken record, constantly stating that we do everything by the book, keep a record of your time, everything documented. So I had to pull all of that together. But you were traveling and so I didn’t want to get caught by them saying, well, you didn’t do it through the line in terms of this report. Your supervisor didn’t approve it before giving it to us and you were supposed to have done that. I kept telling this young guy, Bill whatever, I said, I’ve got the report but I can’t give it to you because Dr. Gutierrez is traveling and he needs to approve it before it goes on to y’all because what if he doesn’t agree with what I’ve put in there. What if I’ve put in there something that’s not the case and he would know. So until he approves it, I can’t give it over. Well, I think Witt thought that I was into some conspiracy or something (laughs) because I left that report where I would – we had a little cabinet, like a file cabinet or bookshelf and I would – your box was there and the report was in that box because you were supposed to be back that Monday, waiting for you to look at it and to approve it so I could move it on. Well, I think Witt thought there was some conspiracy, so he had the UTA police break into my office that Saturday and take everything in my office. And then when you came back Monday and then you always get there early, right. Usually earlier than I did. So when I came in, you had taped up a note to my monitor. UTA police have broken into your office, whatever, whatever, whatever. I advise you to go home. But out of what they took out of the office and then the auditors looked at it, then they made these claims. First they had said about we had mismanaged money. Well, then they made the claim that I had, that I had misused university time and computers to run political campaigns; that I had written letters lobbying the city of Dallas for a Latino cultural center on university – and lobbying city hall for other things on university time and computers, just all these horrendous things. And lo que no se fijaron los pendejos (and what the idiots did not take notice of) was that everything that they used to say that I had misused computers and time, that I had done this on their time, on their computers, everything they cited predated my official hire date at the university. Because this was – what they got all of this stuff off of was one of my discs, my computer discs that happened to be on my desk. I was very active in the community, so in my briefcase I would carry things relevant to what meeting I was going to go to that day or that week or whatever, so and it’s always a rush, right. After work I would go to these meetings, so everything was in my briefcase. So in the rush of pulling things out, I must have left things on my desk. And so – I didn’t think it was against the law to keep personal things at your desk. Don’t you have a picture of your kids on your desk, that’s personal. (Laughs) Anyway, so they used that to say that I had done all of this. Pero como digo, los muy retependejos (but like I say, these really idiot guys) didn’t even check my hire date. And everything I did, yes, I proudly did but before I was ever hired by the university. If it hadn’t been for that – you know, you can’t dispute when a bond election was held. That was in ’95, spring of ’95; I didn’t work for the university until fall of ’95. And I had written letters. We had done form letters – I forgot about that. We did a campaign of sending in form letters to the city council lobbying for the cultural center funding in the bond election. So those form letters were on that disc. Different campaigns that, yes, I was involved in – Mario Malacara’s campaign for school board; some of that stuff was on that disc which happened – I think that was like in ’94. And they said it was a campaign for Roberto for state rep that was in there and how dare I, you know, on university time. But it was all predating my employment date. So in May of ’96, I ran and won the seat – well, no. In June of ’96 I ran and run the seat for trustee – Dr. Gutiérrez: Of the Dallas County – Ms. Flores: -- of the Dallas County Community College District, because I was no longer an employee there, so now I was freed up to run for the position. And so in June of ’96 when I won the position, Domingo Garcia, his opponent, his candidate, my opponent in that race was Bill Velasco. So Bill Velasco and Domingo Garcia filed an election contest on June 4th or June 5th; I can’t remember, saying I had committed voter fraud, election fraud. So that hit the papers in a big way. Then the end of June – this was the first of June – the end of June was when I got the letter from UTA saying you’re out of here. So all of these things combined together, it’s like Jesus! And I think the president even said to one of the staff – faculty members, you know, even the faculty was asking, what the hell are you doing? Witt said, well, we can’t have a person like that here, someone that’s committed fraud, even though nothing had been proven and nothing substantiated yet. It was just, you know, the filing of this lawsuit. At that time it was just a horrible time. Here growing up, too, your family – my father would say, we don’t have much in this world, but what we do have is a good name because I’ve never been in jail; I’ve never broken the law; I’ve never this, I’ve never that. And as a poor person, the only thing you have is your good name. You make sure you keep your name good. So that was real important to me, a good name, to have a good reputation, and always working hard and doing the right thing, you know, professional-wise and whatever to have your good name and here they took it all away from me by first the election contest, the voter fraud and then the university saying I had done all these things. And who is going to question the university against a Chicana? You know. But Dios es bueno (God is good) and everything they used, los pendejos (the idiots), like I said, predated my employment date. Long story short, thanks to you I was able to get your lawyer. You convinced your lawyer to take me on contingency because most of the lawyers I had talked to, they wanted me to plunk $5,000, $10,000 down. I didn’t have any money. But because he saw how strong the case was and you kept making that point to him, you know this is a winnable case, because the same factors that applied to me and we won on apply to her. Frank Hill took my case on contingency. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you know why the receptionist did not file suit? She was involved. Ms. Flores: I think she just wanted to move on from that. I think to her it was such a shock she just wanted to be as far away from that as possible because this was someone that was not politically active, a single parent, just trying to make it, trying to go to school. That was one of the enticements of her taking that position with us was that she would be able to take a class during work hours. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was her name? Ms. Flores: Maria de Leon. Dr. Gutiérrez: What’s happened to her? Ms. Flores: She’s gone on to work for like – she’s working for Jenny Craig as one of their site managers or something like that. I don’t think she’s ever finished school. But I think she just didn’t, you know, she just needed money on the table right at the time and didn’t, couldn’t deal with all of this. Dr. Gutiérrez: So you sued and what happened? Ms. Flores: Well, we settled out of court. We settled out of court and now that this thing has happened with Chief Bolton and his deputy police chiefs that he removed and them having filed a lawsuit and getting a million or more from the city, I’m thinking, damn, I should have held on. But I couldn’t hold on. I had wanted to go all the way to court. I was just furious that they would lie on me like this and make these accusations when all my life, you know, your name is all you have. And in a heartbeat they take it away. So I had wanted them to have to say those things in court and in court be shown that they were liars. But I couldn’t hold on. I didn’t have a job. I couldn’t get a job; I was so tainted. And then apart from the taint, I was scared. I didn’t want to go and put myself through that situation again. Dr. Gutiérrez: Then you had the election contest going on – Ms. Flores: And I still had the election contest going on. It’s just a lot of things. But I decided – they made a settlement offer. I think I rejected it like two or three times. And then financially I was just able to eke it out, eke it out and then it got to a point where I just couldn’t eke it out any more. So I called Frank Hill and told him I’ll take the settlement. And I think that’s what they counted on. They knew I didn’t have any source of income. The lawyer that they had that was from the attorney general’s office (sighs) – I can’t remember her – Hoffman, I think was her last name. I can’t remember her name, but ay (oh) she was so obnoxious. Ay she was so obnoxious and stupid to boot, you know, but she was so obnoxious. I think that’s what she had advised them. This woman is not working; she’s not got an income, just wait. So they knew how bad it was. I’ll never forget the deposition I gave. And as a result of all this I started having anxiety attacks and you got to see one of them. And I had a couple of them. And it was no fun; it’s pretty bad and developed high blood pressure. But in my – I think a lot of my anxiety came out of not being able to deal with it directly. Not being able to just go up there and yank the huevos (balls) off (laughs) – Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) from whom? Ms. Flores: Whoever, you know, Domingo, Witt, Wright, Williams, you know, not being able to just myself – because I’m used to dealing with my problems directly. I’ve got a problem, I handle it. Here you had to have your lawyers handle it. And you’re also an elected official, so you’ve got to keep certain behavior and composure all the time. And all of that churning inside of me and that’s what made me have anxiety attacks. All of that anger had to have some kind of outlet. So it came out in ah-h-h, you know. But the – In your lawsuit, when I was, had to be in a deposition (sighs), the lawyers – I remember UTA had three damn lawyers – they had three or four lawyers there from the attorney general’s office. And I still didn’t have anyone at this point. And you had told me to contact Susan Barilich, although this wasn’t her area of law, employment law. You had suggested maybe she would be there just so that I could have a lawyer present in case anything was going on, because you or your lawyer couldn’t intervene on my behalf in terms of the questions and answers. But I talked to her and she was kind enough to agree and she sat there with me although she didn’t know a damn thing in terms of this area. But I’ll never forget it was that long table up in the Davis Building. Is that where Witt’s office is? In a conference room with a long table and I’m at the head of the table with a damn camera facing me and then on this side was Todd – is that his name – last name or first name – last name. Somebody Todd. He was the lead one doing the questioning and then another person and there was a Chicano, well, Hispanic there that was also a lawyer with the attorney general’s office there representing UTA. And I’ll never forget, during one of the breaks he and I happened to cross each other in the hall. And I told him, how does it feel representing someone that brutalizes your community? I’m not going to answer that! I’m not going to answer that! I said, I didn’t think you would answer it. But it was there that I was finally able to say, yeah, I did this and proudly. But guess what, you know, it was before I was ever hired. And that’s when I broke down because, again, how were they going to take my word against the university’s? But you can’t dispute when a bond election was held; you can’t dispute when a school board election was held and things such as that. All of that was prior to my being employed at UTA. And during the course of my litigation – who was the chancellor of the UT system? Was it – Dr. Gutiérrez: Cunningham. Ms. Flores: Cunningham. We had to go to Austin to depose him. And I think when we started asking for his phone – cell phone records – also UTA se estaba haciendo el muy muy (UTA was acting like very, very) – how dare they do this political stuff and they accused you of lobbying the legislature on university time. But Jude Valdez out of UTSA had sued also. UTSA. And out of Jude’s lawsuit came up that, guess what, what they were accusing us of, they were doing (laughs). Because they had had Bob Bullock at the UT Board of Regents – the chair or the president of the Board of Regents – I can’t remember his name – anyway, his ranch somewhere in Waco – they had actually used UT vans and took all of the upper level administrators, presidents and vice chancellors and vice presidents from the different UT schools – had driven them in UT vans during the time they were supposed to be in a retreat to this fundraiser for Bob Bullock. So how can you be accusing me of doing political things on university time (which I didn’t do) when you actually are. So when we deposed Cunningham in Austin and Hill and he was excellent and Frank Hill, you know, the way -- his different tactics to intimidate and all this stuff – to play minds with the – games with the mind. When he asked for Cunningham’s, the record of his cell phone calls and who they were to, they didn’t want to deliver them over. They didn’t, because that’s when settlement started being put on the table. And I’m just sorry that I couldn’t hold out and make them, in court, make all of these charges and us being able to show them for the liars they were. But I’ll never forget, Cunningham, he – the questioning is going on. Estaban (They were) Witt and Williams – Wright, I think, went to one of the depositions – well, the deposition we did of him. But then after that, Wright never really went to the depositions. But it was usually always Witt and Williams together that would attend the depositions. And they were there in Cunningham’s deposition. And again it was a long table and I’m thinking Frank was at the head of the table, Cunningham was on his right side; I was on the left side right across from Cunningham. And then at the end of the table were Witt and Williams. And my thing with Witt and both of them, Williams, and it happened at that deposition and subsequent ones. I would look at them straight in the eye and lock them to see how long they could keep looking at me. And I wouldn’t move my – así (like this) – just locking them, you know, them knowing that I know that they’re liars and them knowing it, too. Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) Ms. Flores: And Witt would try to hold it, but you know, he’s a mousy man. He couldn’t hold it too long. Williams got into this little game, well, if you’re going to hold it, I can to, but he couldn’t. They had to bow their heads. Unfortunately that was never on camera, but I know it. And that ended up getting settled. I think it was March of 1998 we signed the settlement. And the agreement was that I would not talk about the settlement; but there was nothing in the agreement that said I couldn’t talk about the facts of the case. And that’s why I’m saying this lawyer was so damned stupid, Hoffman, Maxine Hoffman or Madeline Hoffman. I don’t remember. Because she was so adamant about my not talking about the facts of the case after it was settled. And I told Hill, I said, I want to talk. I don’t want to be restrained. And he say, well, let’s see what they put in the settlement agreement. So when the document hit, he called me to his office in Arlington and we looked at it. And he says, well, it says there that you can’t talk about the settlement, but it doesn’t say anything about the facts of the case. I said, okay. Pendejos (idiots). Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) Ms. Flores: I remember when the reporters called me about it, I said, well, I can’t talk about the settlement, but the settlement is on file at the courthouse and anybody can get a copy of the settlement document at the courthouse. Shoom, ay te corren (there they run). So then when I was interviewed about the settlement, I forget what my quotes were. I said something about – they were pretty strong. It’s in the papers, something about these are the worst people that could be running this university, something like that. And Witt hit the roof, you know, because what he was trying to do was die down all of that publicity because this thing had gone on forever in the papers on your side and on my side and UTA looking bad. And so they filed something in court that I had breached the settlement agreement by talking, so we had to show up in court again. They delayed the payment of the settlement until we had that hearing about that breaching because I had talked. And, fortunately, that went nowhere. The judge said, no, she didn’t breach it because it’s talking here about the settlement agreement, not anything else. Then the interesting thing was like a year after that, someone had sued about that kind of settlement agreement, not being able to disclose, because they were saying since this is being done on public money and Texas is an open records state, so the Texas Supreme Court found that, yeah, a government, a state institution cannot not disclose when it’s on public money. So all of that was a moot point anyway. Dr. Gutiérrez: So you bought a house with the money. You laughed all the way to the bank, huh? Ms. Flores: No. I wish I would have. I mean, this was in ’98. I had been without a job, just eking things out here and there, teaching ESL, just barely to cover the expenses. Financially, you know, I still haven’t recouped totally yet because I still have not had a regular full time job from all of that. Let me see. Dr. Gutiérrez: (Inaudible) Ms. Flores: Well, yeah. No. What I did was take care of some things and, of course, use the money to live off of. The last little bit that was left – my sister Mary Ann lived back home in Palacios, had remarried Serafin and they had come up to help me with some things in the house and the car and stuff like that. So they had been here for the summer. And I was trying to talk her into coming to live here because I was telling her, you know, we’re not too many years away from when ya, we’re not going to be that mobile and be able to do things that much and this way we’re all three together, she, Lucy and I. And maybe by us being up here we can convince mother to come up. So right around the corner from me comes this little house, a little two-bedroom house on a large lot that the viejita had passed away, and the daughter and son-in-law, tambien viejitos, were selling the house and they would take cash money for it if somebody would plunk it down. So it was a perfect set-up because it was right around the corner, so I plunked the money for them, and that’s where the last little bit of my money went. (They are paying this back.) So anyway not to be – Dr. Gutiérrez: You’ve still got the contest pending – Ms. Flores: Yeah, the election thing. Okay. Domingo, for some reason, and I have to preface all of this by saying I have nothing good to say about that man. He is the lowest of the low, total scum. Anytime you’re going to exploit viejitos and intimidate them and brutalize them to fulfill one of your political greedy means, then I have no respect for you in any way, form or fashion, and that’s what he’s done in my case. Domingo had bucked from the coalition or partnership or whatever you want to call it that we had formed at that Fort Worth retreat of who was going to go after what position. It was understood – now I’m remembering – he would run for mayor and we would all support him. Well, Domingo is pretty arrogant away and his arrogance gets in the way. He lost. He lost. But he thought – he had turned more right and left his supposed radical Chicano roots to make himself more acceptable to the establishment and the Anglo community during the course of his time on city council. At that retreat, he had informed us that he wanted to run for mayor and we said sure. But when he ran for mayor, he shaved off his moustache. He was advised by his kitchen cabinet Anglo members that he needed to look less Mexicano, so he shaved off his moustache. Maricela and I told him he needed a better haircut because he’s always kept a lousy haircut. Well, he cut his hair a little shorter. But then he proceeded to pretty much block us out, I mean – in other words, he was taking the raza vote for granted and on top of that being arrogant with people. Maricela and I – what I had told him was, once he decided to run for mayor, I said, Domingo, you certainly have my support but it’s not because of you the person; it’s because of what that will say to all the little chavalitos out there, wow, look at somebody like me; they’re running for mayor; if they can do this, so can I type of thing. That’s why I’m doing it, plus the fact that we had already committed back in Fort Worth. Maricela and I were the ones that – mostly Maricela, and I helped her set up for his announcement for mayor in downtown Dallas in Pioneer Square, they call it. She had gotten platforms from the Art Institute and she got skirting and she got a Dixieland band and just handling all the details for him to have a nice announcement. I helped her with some people lug the damn platforms; I put on the damn thing, put the skirting around the tables where people could sign up to be supporters of his and all this stuff. And then during the course of the campaign, he was like to hell with y’all, to hell with the raza community. So we said, okay. He doesn’t want our help, so – we – beyond myself, beyond that helping with his announcement and all the set up, he didn’t come calling again, so that was my involvement in his campaign for mayor. He lost. He found out that, hey, his trying to whitewash himself just didn’t sell. You’re still who you are, you know, and some people, a lot of people saw through that. So he lost and then in the Democratic primary for ’96, I think his ego did not allow him to be without a political position. So that’s when he decided to run against Roberto. That was a horrible time in this community because it pitted very openly, you know, two people who used to be college roommates, compadres, all this kind of stuff, political allies. And all of a sudden Domingo turned, not only on him, but on all of us. And Domingo ran for state rep against Roberto because Roberto was state rep. And it was just, it was like a bloodbath in this community and, to this date, I don’t think we’ve recovered. And he still continues, you know, whatever it is to come up con la del, to salir con la suya, you know, whatever he wants. He’s had a lot of little things blow up in his face because of that, but not to the extent that I’d like to see it blow up. Anyway he won the primary against Roberto with a lot of shenanigans because he brutalized the elderly and the handicapped off of that primary. The people – we found out after the election was over with that he had submitted something like 250 affidavits to the Elections Department supposedly signed by voters asking them to cancel their ballot so that they could vote again. He was trying to cancel votes that he felt were probably for Roberto. And then he accused Roberto of voter fraud. Luis Sepulveda who was also a candidate, he is now justice of the peace, he was also a candidate for state rep in the primary. So he accused Roberto and Luis of voter fraud. That was in March. Then in May comes up the election for trustee where I had decided to run. I ran for trustee. He put in an opponent against us. I think, in his mind, he wanted to be el único chignon, political powerhouse and political broker, the kingpin, in other words. Everybody had to come to him to get a position or whatever. So he put an opponent against me even though he had agreed back in ’94 at that retreat that he would support me. His opponent was Bill Velasco. These are very low voter turnout races. What I found out after the race, the election was over is that there was a home for the elderly and disabled that’s run by the city, Brooks Manor, where these people stay politically active. I understood by some of the people that lived there they were encouraged by the Dallas Housing Authority management to be politically active so they would have political pull when they had to get things that were beneficial to the housing issues related to them. So these people were politically active. But Domingo said in Roberto’s and Luis’s case and then it came on over to me, that these people were being manipulated to vote as they voted and had voted illegally. What I forgot to say on these 250 ballots that he got in the primary election, he had people like Jesse Diaz of LULAC, unfortunately, and others, Marisela Vargas who is another Marisela Vargas who was active in the PTAs. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. We’re recording. This is Tape 2. Diana Flores, you had just finished explaining the two different Maricela Vargases. Ms. Flores: Okay. So I went to Marisela Vargas that had done these affidavits and asked her, "Marisela, why did you do this?" Dice, " Hay, Diana, pues me siento bien mal haberlo hecho. Pero lo que paso es que fui con Domingo y le pedí dinero para el grupo de Greiner," para un field trip that they had to take to Washington or I don’t know where. "Y me dijo, ‘Si te doy, pero primero tienes que hacer esto, tienes que conseguir estas firmas.’ So yo fui y hable con las personas pero ellos estaban confundidos de porque yo les estaba pidiendo que firmaran esa oja y tambien se sentían un poco, un poco con miedo, verdad, porque lo que se nos había dicho que se dijiera a esta gente. Y, si, dos o tres me firmaron porque era yo pidiéndoselos, pero despues de eso no hice mas,» dice, «No quize hacer mas de esos.» Translation: She says, "Oh, Diana, I feel so bad having done this. But what happened is that I went to Domingo and asked him for money for the Greiner group," for a field trip that they had to take to Washington or I don’t know where. "And he told me, ‘Yes, I will give you money, but first you have to do this, you have to obtain these signatures. So I went and spoke to these people but they were confused about why I was asking them to sign this paper and they also felt a bit, a bit scared, right, because of what we were told to tell these people. And, yes, two or three signed because it was me who was asking it of them. But after that, I didn’t do any more," she says, "I didn’t want to do any more of those." So then since – since Domingo in the Primary had accused both Roberto and Luis of committing voter fraud off of the mail ballots, and then by extension, you know, he used that in my election saying I had done the same thing. My attorney at that time, initially, Bob Wightman – I had Luis call him because Luis was real mad, you know, "How dare he accuse me of this and I want to prove he is wrong," que esto y que el otro (this and that). So I suggested that he call Bob Wightman. So Bob told him, "What you need to do is if you’re really serious about this, I would suggest you take a video camera and interview these people that signed these affidavits and ask them why. But you need – before you begin each interview, be sure you get their name, their address and ask them if they are making that statement willingly or not." So Luis did this. He – I think he got about 40 interviews. One of them happened to be – I think the name was Mable Allen, una viejita (a little old lady), lives in Arcadia Park, which is Luis’ neighborhood, that is legally blind. And she told Luis on the tape, she says, "Yes, I signed. Two men came," I think she said two men from LULAC and she might have even named their names, I don’t remember. But she said, "Two men came and they told me that that was showing that I was supporting you, so for me to sign the affidavit." If I remember correctly, that was what she had said. She signed the affidavit asking that her ballot be cancelled, that she had voted fraudulently or somebody had told her to vote the way she didn’t want to vote or something. I forget how the affidavit was worded. The kicker was on her, you know, here she is elderly, legally blind, and knows no Spanish, only English, reads only English. The affidavit that she signed was in Spanish. So this is all kinds of horror stories that Luis captured on video. Another one was a handicapped young man – 20, 21. According to him, it was Domingo’s brother that’s a policeman, actually went in police uniform and told him, "You did something illegal. We’re going to put you in jail. You either have to sign this paper because if you don’t, we’re going to put you in jail for two years. You are going to have to pay a $5,000 fine," or something like that. The young man got so scared he hid under a table. When his mother got home and found out what happened, she was just really mad, she told Luis, but he signed the affidavit. I mean, they were conducting these real brutal tactics intimidating voters. And do you know, José Angel, what our history is. As hard as we have fought for the right to vote and to do it freely, without paying a damn poll tax, without intimidation, without anything, and then having one of our own pull these God damn tactics nomas por sus huevos para salir con la de el (solely because of his balls, to have his way), to have his political position no matter what the cost, no matter what he does to who. Y eso nomas no, eso nomas no (And that cannot be; that cannot be). Dr. Gutiérrez: Who can get a copy of this video? Ms. Flores: Luis Sepulveda has it; I think Bob Wightman has it. And I will make it a part of my archive. We did try. We filed complaints with the DA’s office. Bob – you know Bob -- he goes everywhere. He tried to get the Justice Department to pay attention to it. I mean, all kinds of different agencies, and everybody ignored it. Everybody ignored it. And it’s really sad what happened back then. And, to this date, the community still hasn’t recovered from all of those things. The bad thing is since nobody’s stopped him, he’s continued with those tactics. Okay. Let me – I need to talk about the State Rep’s race because that stuff has happened there too. Let me – so on the election contest, he filed a lawsuit saying that – he and Velasco, and Velasco is just a puppet of Domingo’s. Velasco filed a lawsuit; Domingo was the attorney. Initially the lawsuit got filed by an Albert García. I really don’t know who that attorney is. You could tell that the signature was forged. It’s Domingo’s handwriting. Saying that two or three precincts, that all of the mail ballots that were cast were cast fraudulently because either the people were not elderly or were not disabled or that they were illegally assisted by my campaign workers were the main accusations in the lawsuit. The place that he – the primary place that he names where either the people were not elderly or were not disabled is that Brooks Manor right here on Page, not too far from your office. It’s a city-owned residence for the elderly and the disabled. I mean (laughs), those are the primary categories you have to fit to even be able to live there. And when I won the run-off election by a slim margin of votes and I thought that all in this country was fifty percent plus one vote, and I won fifty percent plus 52 – 54 votes. So then, according to Domingo and the Dallas Morning News, there’s something real bad about that, you know, I did something illegal. He – with this lawsuit he filed an injunction to keep me from being sworn into office. I didn’t know anything about this (laughs) until I got up to the Board meeting, that first June Board meeting to get sworn in and then sit, right. Well, they informed me. And I had supporters there, 15 to 20 supporters to see me getting sworn in. And they informed me they couldn’t swear me in because Domingo had filed an injunction and it was granted to keep me from being sworn in because of the voter fraud. And that’s when Roberto called Bob. Bob, at that time, had a good reputation of being able to get mandamuses issued from the Appeals Court or Supreme Court or whatever. Roberto called Bob asking Bob if he would look into this. And, so, Bob agreed and that’s the first time I met Bob Wightman. And so Bob was successful in getting that injunction overturned and I was sworn in on June 11th. June 11th. And I chose to be sworn in outside the federal – outside the county courthouse on Commerce and had Roberto swear me in, because as an elected official at that time, state rep, he was able to do that. Then from the swearing in, I went straight to, I drove straight to Brooks Manor, because I didn’t know any of this that was going on, any of these accusations, what the hell they were talking about. I walked in the lobby. There was a little office off to the side. I saw a gentleman in there. And so I introduced myself and his name – ya se me olvidó su nombre (I already forgot his name). I’ve got it written down somewhere. (Ted Kelly) Un viejito (an old man – Ted Kelly) said he was the Vice President of the Residents Council. And I said, "Well, do you know what is happening with these accusations they are making about Brooks Manor and voter fraud?" He said, "Ms. Flores, let me tell you. We have a very active Residents Council. We are encouraged by the Dallas Housing Authority to be very active in" – not campaigns – "in voting. So pretty much each election that comes up, we encourage our residents to vote. And we also have a committee of that Residents Council that is a political committee." I forgot what he named it, but like a political action committee. "And what their responsibility is is to get information on the candidates and come and make a recommendation about who we should support. And that’s what was done in your case. And the one who heads up that political committee is Bruce Wade." So I asked him if he could please call Bruce Wade so that I could talk to him. And he called Bruce Wade down. And the same thing, Bruce Wade said the same thing. "I head up the committee for the Residents Council. I bring back a recommendation and then they decide, are we going to back this candidate that they are recommending to us or not. And as a matter of fact, I got one of your fliers off of somebody on a bus. And they were talking about your candidacy." He said, "And I read on there what it said and I liked what I saw, so I brought that back to the Residents Council. We need to support this person." Apparently, they didn’t go all out and call people because I didn’t get called by them. He said, "We were very active in the mayor’s race. We put out a lot of votes. We were very active in the past Primary. And what I’m also going to tell you, we can’t stand Domingo García. You wouldn’t believe the things that his people did during the Primary." I think he said, Sandra Crenshaw, that she actually ran into their mail room and was trying – was taking mail ballots the day that she found out that they were going to be mailed, she ran into their room, the mail room and was taking ballots out of the slots of the residents to take – I guess -- I don’t know. Was she going to steal – I don’t know what she was going to do with them. He said, "But we had a lot of trouble off of them and so pretty much the way our residents feel, they will vote for anybody that’s, you know, that’s not affiliated with him. They don’t want anything to do with anybody that is affiliated with Domingo García. So we decided to support you." So anyway, then the Morning News gets involved. Why they got involved, I don’t know. I have my suspicions, but I can’t prove them. One of my suspicions is that Bill Wenrich, the chancellor of the community college district, has ties with them and maybe was stoking the fire. I don’t know, you know to think – I don’t know why they had a fear of me having been an employee there and now going back serving on the Board. Plus the fact that the students had been having protests at the Board meetings and showed up at Board meetings complaining about not having enough cultural, culturally relevant programming and activities of the different campuses for them. And they had asked me to help out. And that’s when I was already at UTA, so I was helping them out. And we, we actually one time went to a Board meeting and it’s like, I don’t know, 20 students and a combination of students and community. And as we’re going up the elevator, we were chanting and stuff like this to go into the Board meeting. And we walk into the Board meeting, I didn’t realize that the chanting was reverberating and you could hear it as we were going up, right. So by the time we got on the fourth floor and everybody was sitting there just scared. They didn’t know what was coming up. But they interpreted my being involved with the students as political motivation because I was going to run for the Board and I was trying to, you know – none of that was true. It was just to help the students out. The Morning News did several editorials – more than Paul Fielding got on being indicted and convicted and sent to prison, the ex-City Councilman. More than Al Lipscomb got, more than anybody’s gotten. This little position on nothing but accusations, pretty much outright accusing me of voter fraud. They did like five or six editorials. And we filed a defamation lawsuit against them and Domingo and Bill Velasco. And that’s still pending. I don’t know where that will end up because Bob Wightman, my attorney, has had his own problems and so I don’t know where that’s pending. The election contest has still not been resolved. Dr. Gutiérrez: When is your term up? Ms. Flores: The term is up in May of 2002 which is, what, about – Dr. Gutiérrez: So – (laughs) Ms. Flores: It will be a moot point pretty soon. But the thing is that if there had been all of this massive voter fraud, what we’ve continually asked in court – show it to us. Where is your proof? Where’s your proof? When Velasco, in his deposition, he was asked – at Brooks Manor you allege over 100 votes – oh, and he attested that he has personal knowledge of what he’s alleging. So they ask him, what is your personal knowledge as to these 100 voters? How do you know that they were either not elderly or disabled? And he says, "Well, I don’t." Well, not, first he says, "Well, I called them." Okay, how many of the 100 did you call? "About thirty." Okay, did you ask them if they voted by mail because they were disabled? "No." Well, how do you know? "Well, I don’t." I mean, just real blatant and nobody – what’s real frustrating for me is that nobody pays attention to any of this. You try to file a complaint. We filed perjury complaints. We filed making false statement complaints. All this. Nobody pays attention to it. So I think what Domingo banked on when I read your book, The Making of a Chicano Militant when you were talking about – was it Severita Lara who had gotten County Commissioner? Dr. Gutiérrez: Judge. Ms. Flores: Well, County Judge and then other candidates who would win on the Raza Unida side and then the gringada (racist Anglos) would file an election contest against them. And because they didn’t have money to defend, they would lose. And, unfortunately, that is how our court system is, especially on the civil side. Well, the criminal side is another travesty. But the civil side, if you don’t have a way to defend, a way to pay a lawyer, hey, yeah, you got screwed and I think that’s what Domingo was banking on – because he knew that I was a single parent, really didn’t have a lot of money, I lived off my job. Guess what, I’d lost my job at UTA, was – and he thought just by virtue of the fact that I wouldn’t have an attorney – if it hadn’t been for Bob Wightman coming and doing this thing basically for free, he would have walked away with that election through the courts. So that’s an issue that I would eventually like to address, either through a court challenge or at the legislature. I don’t know that I would be successful at the legislature, but through a court challenge, challenging the state of Texas or whatever governing entities that when there’s an election contest like this that the entity defend, not the candidate. Because if the candidate doesn’t have the money to do it, somebody subverts the democratic process by stealing the election through the courts. It should not be up to the candidate to defend. It should be up to the governing entity to defend those lawsuits. Then if it’s found that, yeah, the candidate did commit voter fraud, we’ll take care of it in another way. But don’t leave it up to the candidate to defend, because it makes it too easy, as has been proven in Cristal in that area. You can steal an election – win an election but still lose it and have it stolen through the courts. That shouldn’t happen. Not in America – but then again we have Bush v. Gore. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. So you’re still a trustee? Ms. Flores: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s finish all the litigation and the campaign stuff and then we get back to the nitty gritty of the politics. Is there any other litigation you’re involved in? Ms. Flores: The defamation lawsuit against the Dallas Morning News. Dr. Gutiérrez: But that’s pending? Ms. Flores: That’s pending. Dr. Gutiérrez: Yeah. Ms. Flores: And the election contest. That’s it. Dr. Gutiérrez: That’s it. Ms. Flores: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. Well, then let’s get to the nitty gritty. How did you campaign? How did you win? Ms. Flores: The – Dr. Gutiérrez: Dallas Community College. Ms. Flores: You’ve got to realize this was at the time that I was real active in the community, okay. So I had a lot of people that knew me. And it was just, frankly, all the people that knew me and word-of-mouth because I did block walking. I didn’t have money to do a mailer. I mean, I think the contributions I got, half of it was contributions and half of it was a loan. It was about $3,000 total that I had to work with. That went to pay Pati Hernandez who was my campaign manager. It was making calls and contacting people and things like that to get out the vote. To get out the message and get out the vote, I had one flier that I made like 10,000 copies of and was distributing everywhere. We – Pati and I stood at the early voting locations during the election. As people were walking in to do business at the Beckley Subcourthouse and also at the West Dallas MultiPurpose Center – as they were walking in to conduct business – you could pay bills there or do other things. Well, you could pay your utility bills at the West Dallas MultiPurpose Center. A lot of people go there to do that. At the Beckley Subcourthouse, you go get your titles changed or whatever -- different government things that you can do. So we stood outside and as people were walking in, we gave them a flier, made the spiel and asked them to please vote. And, apparently, a lot of them did. One of them at the West Dallas MultiPurpose Center – I’ll never forget – una negrita (a black female) – saw the thing and I was talking – "Oh, you did that? And you do this? Oh, yeah, you’d better believe I’m going to vote for you." So it was neat to see people’s reactions once you told them your story and why you were asking for the vote. That’s at the time that I was working those long hours with CMAS and I think that’s another reason you were such a stickler about keeping up with my time because you didn’t want those things to overlap and get any accusations going that way. So it was kind of hard for me because that’s when we were gearing up for that Reflejos y Mas Mother’s Day weekend, I think the weekend after the election. It was causing me to have long hours at the university, but it was just by people already knowing me in the community and the word-of-mouth. It was a low voter turnout race. I think I ended up getting 800 and some-odd votes and Velasco 700 and something. Dr. Gutiérrez: Now Steve Salazar was the prior incumbent? Ms. Flores: Yes. And he had left the trustee position to run for city – well, he left it when he ran and he won a seat on City Council to fill in where Domingo had vacated. Dr. Gutierrez: How did Salazar help you? Ms. Flores: Working West Dallas real hard and people he knew, tambien (also). Salazar, Roberto. I mean, all the people that committed back in Fort Worth pretty much stayed with it. I don’t think Jasso did or Orozco. They didn’t really work actively for anyone that I’m aware of. Jasso maybe other than for Domingo. But Roberto and Steve and Monica, Maricela, Veronica, those people really got in there and supported and called their people that they knew that vote and things like that – you know, work the vote, work the voters for me. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Well, some time you decided that you might try to run for state rep and did run against Domingo. How did that happen and what did you do? How did you do it? And what was the outcome? Ms. Flores: Well, when Domingo became state rep and went to Austin, he’s been a total disaster because he is blinded by his arrogance. He has gone up there and that is a very small community. What one state rep does, ya todos van a saber, me entiendes. Todos se hablan. (…now they will all know, you understand me. They all talk to each other.) And if they don’t, for sure their aides do. So word runs pretty quickly about the type of person you are. And I understand the first session he like made some commitments to vote – made a commitment to a state rep or two to vote yes in favor of a bill that people were asking him his vote for. And not only did he not come through on his commitment, not only did he not vote in favor, but he spoke on the floor against after he had told the persons sponsoring the legislation that he would give them his vote. So that was very bad. He also continued his move to the right by jumping on the band wagon of vouchers. The voucher movement was active and coming active into Texas at that time where you use public funds to pay for private school for kids. And so that upset the teachers’ unions. And that was more so like in his second term. The first term was bad about not keeping his word on the vote. The second term was the voucher issue where he really alienated and angered teachers’ unions and other unions. I think the trial lawyers. I’m not sure what the issue was for the trial lawyers. They were really out to get him. So in his third term, the election for his third term, that’s when I ran against him in the Primary. This was the Primary – from January through March of 2000 was when we were actively campaigning up until the election of 2000. Domingo has a very bad reputation, very strongly disliked by a lot of people in the district. What’s difficult for me to know – because all of the phone banking we were doing, the door-to-door walking we were doing – I mean, we did everything. This time I – when I got in against him, all the teacher unions jumped on board; the Trial Lawyers jumped on board; the environmentalists jumped on board; the women’s groups jumped on board; people here locally who were supporting and working in the background to get funds but didn’t want it to be known that they were working against him because they still needed to count on his votes in Austin and things such as that. I was able to raise like $35,000 to $40,000 to run the race. He took out a loan of $50,000, you know, his own money that he put in plus whatever little he was able to raise. But he had very few endorsements. The difficulty for me is understanding what went on is that all of the phone banking we were doing, the block walking we were doing you would have – like out of every 10 people we were calling – have one or two that would voice strong support for Domingo; four to five that would say, yes, I’ll support you; and the remainder saying I’m undecided. So I thought we had it in the bag. But come election day, it was the total opposite. It was like 59, 60%; I got 39, 40% of the vote. I’d like to know. To this day I still don’t know how this guy continues to pull it off. I know of one little trick they had going, but how do you prove this. There’s a woman in one of the precincts here in this district that Mario Cazares would fill out voter registration cards, false names, false birthdays, all of this stuff, putting this woman’s address and sending them into the Elections Department. So who knows? He might have like fifty to one hundred votes that way, just of these false registrants. And at the Elections Department, it doesn’t seem like they verify any of that. They just receive the card, they input it and they send you the voter registration card. So alguen que tiene maña (someone who plays dirty), and we know Domingo tiene maña (plays dirty), can easily run that game. And this woman basically told me this and I don’t think she realized what she was telling of the significance of it because she’s an immigrant. But she couldn’t remember the names and stuff like that, so… And then she had a break with Cazares, so I don’t think that’s continuing to go on with her. So that was the state rep race. But for me it was something very good to do. Dr. Gutiérrez: Because it was against Domingo or because you want to be a state rep? Ms. Flores: Both. What had happened was – in terms of my – and we haven’t really talked about my time on the Board of the community college district and I’ll get to some of that in a minute. But one of the things that we had done as a Board, you know, we have in all urban centers – Dallas County isn’t any different – you have a lot of undocumented students. People who don’t have legal residency status and their children. And so you have a lot of these students going through the school system, graduating and then not being able to go on to college. So I brought that issue up before the trustees at the same time that a couple of the college presidents were bringing up the issue. Brookhaven had figured out some kind of way they were letting these students in. Mountain View who has a real heavy concentration of raza and undocumented students was saying, well, we can’t bring them in but I understand Brookhaven is doing it. How are they doing it? What is going on? We need this issue addressed. And my thing was: Why are we asking our students what their immigration residency status is? We’re not the INS. We’re an educational institution and it seems like we’re asking it primarily of Hispanic students. That’s like selective enforcement. You can’t do that either. We need to find a better way. We need to just let people come to us and go to school. So the chancellor suggested since we’re a separate governing entity, he informed the Board that if we wanted to take the stand, we could (of enrolling undocumented students). The only thing would happen that we couldn’t submit those students to the state to get state reimbursement on that enrollment. And basically what it would be is the tuition – the in-county tuition the student was paying was pretty much all we were going to get off that student; we wouldn’t get the state money that would come tied to that student. I’m real proud to say that the Board had no problem. I mean, they didn’t question it at all. They said, this is something we should do. So we made that decision in August of 1998 and it didn’t’ become official until Spring of ’99, yeah, of ’99, the spring semester, January, 1999 because we needed time for it to work through the system. I didn’t make it public until probably a year later, didn’t start talking about it until about Fall of 1999 because I didn’t want it to be made public and all these reactionaries bring on criticism and possibly the other trustees back off. I wanted to give it a little time to really be set in and then start making it public. And so I did. And by Fall of ’99 I started making it public. But even at that, our staff, the admissions staff was so entrenched in that old mindset of we’ve got to keep these people out that it took me when I, when I was informed – when I started making it public and more people started coming forward, students calling and saying, "I tried to enroll and they didn’t let me enroll. Or they say I have to pay the international student rate." Like at Mountain View, it was the worst campus. And you’d think that it would be the best because that’s all that’s out there. I had to go – I sent one student back three times. And, unfortunately, the registrar was Juan Torres. And his thing was, "I did it the right way. Everybody has to do it the right way." Yeah, right. So, finally the student, the third time he called me, I said, "You know what, this day, this time you meet me there." And I met with the vice president and the president and I said, why are you letting staff ignore something that the Board has said will be done. This is – I’ve got to come out with this student? Y’all should be doing this anyway. This is a Board mandate. So it kind of took, and it’s still, you know, it surfaces sometimes. So I wanted – we had a success there, right. And it’s just a wonderful thing that happened for these students. So one of the motivators for running for state rep was to take that to the Legislature and get it enacted statewide. That was why I ran – one of the reasons I ran for state rep, plus wanting to focus more on educational issues. In the state of Texas, we just have a horrific record of employment in the institutions of higher ed. Being employed by the Dallas County Community College District, I got active in TACHE, the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education. It’s a group that formed back in the early ‘70s as a result of the Chicano Movement. And the mission of TACHE is to improve the education and employment for Hispanics in higher education. At every conference, that’s what you talk about, the continuing – the enrollment picture is improving. I think colleges and universities, because they need us for the funding that they’ll get, the reimbursement from the state off of the enrollment and we are the ones, the only ones that are growing in number out there. Colleges and universities, I think are doing a better job of reaching out to our community and trying to get out students in, but they’re still doing a horrific job in employment, on the employment side. On the community college district Board, I’m always focusing on both those factors, bringing in the kids, retaining them and employment. And we’ve done, again, at the community college district and statewide, we’re improving on the student side, but the employment side is still very, very bad. I wanted to take some things to the Legislature to hopefully improve the employment side of it too, for the Legislature to mandate that you’re going to have employment in your institutions that reflect the demography of Texas or something, you know. Come up with something to address the underrepresentation on the employment side. Those were two of the main issues that I wanted to handle, some of the higher ed issues in the legislature. That’s some of the reasons I ran for state rep, plus the fact that Domingo has done such a bad job. I mean, in 2000 he tried to draft people to run against Democratic incumbent state reps. And I understand there is an unwritten gentleman’s agreement or person’s agreement that as a party loyalist, you won’t actively seek opponents against a colleague in the House. Now that you do it behind the scenes, you know, is another thing; but that you’re publicly and openly doing it is a big, big no-no. And he did this against Wolens and (laughs) – I understand the guy that he was trying to draft against Wolens actually called Wolens and told him, "My name is Roger Herrera and I’ve been talking to Domingo and I’ll probably be running against you." Damn, pendejo (idiot). Como dice Maricela, "My mother would always say que pa’ pendejo no se estudia." (As Maricela says, "My mother would always say that you don’t have to study to be an idiot.") So anyway, so that got the state reps, the Dallas delegation, just really angry at him and then, by extension – really he’s on the outs with almost all the Democratic Party in the state of Texas. And that was shown at the Democratic National Convention in 2000 where they were going to stage a walkout if they – Lydia Camarillo who was running the convention was going to let Domingo -- because they’re buddies – was going to let Domingo address the convention. And when the Texas delegation find out, they protested and said that if they let that happen at the time he went to the podium they were going to stage a walkout. And since a lot of the delegation was made up a labor, too, se corrieron la palabra (they ran the word) through labor, so all of the labor delegation, from what I understand, from other states were saying, well, if Texas does it, we’re with them. So they weren’t – he didn’t address the convention after all. Pretty much, there’s nothing he can do for the district because he’s so burned. He’s burned himself so bad that – Dr. Gutiérrez: Is it true that he’s working with Republicans to create a Hispanic district for Congress up here? Dr. Flores: He’s bragged to my attorney, Bob Wightman, because he and Bob still have to talk over the election contest because we’ve been up on rulings that the judges have made in that matter. We’ve been up to the Appeals Court three or four or five different times, I don’t know, but we’ve prevailed three times. The last time was, I think like maybe August of this year, so that caused Domingo and Bob to have to be talking. Domingo, in one of those conversations, bragged to Bob that he was working heavily with the Republicans to try to form a congressional seat that was majority Latino, but what would happen is that it would impact Frost. So that’s just real interesting. I mean, he has no loyalty to anybody. Y ya (And now) when you can’t even be loyal to a compadre, que nos podemos esperar los demas (what can the rest of us expect), you know? So he just has no loyalty anywhere. I hope he goes up against Frost, I really do. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, have we covered all the fights and all the issues, because I want to ask you now what is next for Diana Flores. You’re going to run for re-election for trustee or are you going to run against Domingo again? In the city, there is a new city council district available. Ms. Flores: Well, let me – I’ll go to that in a minute. I would like to address a couple of things in terms of this fight that I didn’t look for. It was brought to me because of Domingo trying to build a kingdom. Como te he dicho, soy una pesona bien directa (Like I’ve told you, I am a person who is very direct). I take care of my stuff directly. So I haven’t been able to do that – the frustration because you’re involved in legal stuff. You’re also now an elected official. You have to comport yourself in a certain way in public. So it has been a real difficult thing for me to deal with. But sometimes I lapse into wanting to deal directly – for example, there was a LULAC event, like three or four years ago. Part of it was a luncheon, a banquet. Domingo happened to be there. So there was this time when I just had – anytime I would see him I would have this real anger and just really want to go and rip him, you know, and would have to hold back. But it had to come out some way. So with this particular banquet, he happened to be walking out. It was the end of it, right, so everybody was leaving to go to whatever workshop. So he happened to be walking out and he walked close to me. That was his mistake. He should have never come in my proximity (laughs). The tables were round so he was on one side and I was on the other. So he was going to walk by. Le dije, "¿Oyes, pendejo, como se siente ser tan pendejo, pendeo?» (I told him, "Listen, you idiot, how does it feel to be such an idiot, you idiot?") And it’s like, because it’s in public, he’s a man, I’m a woman. It’s like, how is he going to react , right? He can’t really react. He has to also hold back. So that’s how come I like to at least throw something at him and deal with it directly. And Nery Velasquez was standing right by me so he saw all of this and he just – Nery got a real kick out of it. And just little things like that that kind of play with his mind because I can’t deal with it directly, but I don’t just want to let him think that everything is fine and whatever. In other words, when I’m around, he’s uncomfortable because he never knows if I’m going to do or say something. And there have been other times when – starting to work on the 2000 census and making sure that there would be complete count of the community and how we were going to make that happen. Joe May started gathering a group at the Hispanic Chamber. And you know Domingo, he likes to go in and try to take over. So Domingo kind of like tried to take over the group. So one of the first meetings, I was there; Luis Sepulveda was sitting right next to me. Unfortunately, Luis now seems to be working real close with Domingo. But anyway – and we had – we had been writing notes to each other, you know, let’s make sure this guy doesn’t just try to take it over. And Domingo was saying – from the census, it was going on to redistricting. So Domingo was saying something about the state rep seats. My question to the group was, "Well, how are we going to get more state rep districts if the only state rep that we have representing us in Austin has no credibility and no one respects him, how are we going to expect that person to get anything for us if he’s sitting right there?" So that’s why he gets a little nervous because he never – and I’ve done that more than once. But when I do it like in a group, when it’s not just me and one other person, I try to be a little more professional in terms of the way I bring out the criticism. But de todos modos (anyway), it’s like shoom and it makes him nervous. He doesn’t know; he doesn’t know. Dr. Gutiérrez: (Laughs) Ms. Flores: It’s fun. It’s fun to get back at him because he has caused a lot of havoc and devastation to me and also the community. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you said you were going to tell me about your future plans later. But – so, can you tell me now about PURE. After the Chamber of Commerce meeting, you all decided to do something on your own. Ms. Flores: Okay. Let me – I’ve written it down. I’m writing down things you want me to cover. Let me cover real quick my experience on the Board of the community college district. Okay. I used to be an employee there, right, for – I was there for ten years. For eight of those ten years, I was a lowly secretary, an executive secretary, but a secretary no less. And in the hierarchy, and especially in a higher ed setting, that’s just nobody. But I was very active and took leadership positions while I was there on the employee group that they had for support staff. I became President of the Support Staff Association at my location, the District Office, and then became President of the Support Staff Council which was all of the different colleges and locations having their representatives. So I became President of that and was actually named Employee of the Year for the whole District back in 1992. So I had leadership roles there even though I was a secretary. So it was a real – I think it was real difficult for the staff when a secretary came back as their Trustee, plus a trustee that came in with so much controversy. I had been there. When I had left as an employee, I had been back critical of the community college district, in support of the students. And then when I got elected to the Board, came in with that controversy, that taint of fraud hanging over me and unresolved. So it was real difficult, real difficult at first because people were suspicious, you know, what’s she up to plus the fact that I was a secretary. What’s her real agenda going to be? This, that and the other. But my primary agenda to be on there was to open the doors of access not only for students but also on the employment side. And I just stayed real focused on my issues. And we have a strategic plan where in that plan it says one of our goals is to mirror the demography of the county in our employment and in our students, so me he agarrado de eso (so I have grabbed hold of that) to say in terms of our hires or in terms of our student numbers, we’re not meeting our goal. Dr. Gutiérrez: And you have that? That’s what you brought? Ms. Flores: Yeah. And I’ll talk about this in a minute. But I’m constantly, you know – Dr. Gutiérrez: Can we put that in the – Ms. Flores: Yes. I’ve constantly hit on that and like when it comes on the agenda to voting on the personnel contracts for administrators, several, several times I’ve voted no and stated my reasons for the record. I want it to be on the record, not just a no vote, but the why, saying that we’re failing to meet our goal of reflecting the demography of Dallas County. Then when – a couple of times when they’ve given us a report, an annual report on the goals and where we are, one of those reports one year said the only goal we had failed in and the word was there, that’s how they worded it, "failure," was in the diversity goal. So my question to them was why are we accepting failure? We had a retreat – it’s been like four years ago – on different issues. The Board has retreats periodically. At this retreat, yo creo que los otros (I think that the other) Board members – at that time, J.D. Hall was the African American trustee. And it’s exactly the kind of elected official that the establishment status quo wants, because they are not going to stir the waters or anything. Pobre (poor) J.D. was just filling the seat, that was it. He almost never said a word. So I had no support there. I was the lone voice on these issues. Although the trustees said they support this, but they weren’t pressing the issue to really make change come about. So at this retreat, I think they talked among each other and they ganged up on me, that "we have a real problem with you voting no on the personnel reports because of diversity. By you voting no, it seems like we don’t support diversity." And that was Kitty Boyle saying that and Jerry Prater kicked in, "Diana, what will it take for you to vote yes." And Randy Leake saying something, and Patty Powell saying something. J.D. didn’t say a word. And so you know how we’re taught in school that we live in a democracy and we have the right to vote and the sanctity of the right to vote and voting your conscience and the freedom to vote as you want to, blah, blah, blah. So, I said – so I cloaked myself in the American flag to respond to them. I said, "I’m voting my principles and I’m expressing my freedom to vote on those principles. And while we have this goal, we’re not meeting it. So I’m not going to be continuing to vote in favor of employment contracts that don’t support this goal. And why are y’all questioning my right to vote on my principles and my freedom to vote on my principles?" Como que se avergonzaron (it was like they felt embarrassed), because they thought I had some kind of conspiracy in mind or something, some kind of great plan out there to conspire out there, or whatever. And all you’re doing is voting on your democratic freedoms and principles to bring about change in a democratic way. So they kind of backed off . And I think it was real telling for Jerry when he said, "What will it take…?" I said, "Well, I’m not in this for it to take anything. All I want is for changes to be made." It’s like they were trying to make some kind of deal; what do you want? I don’t want anything; I just want the right thing to be done. And that issue has come up repeatedly. Plus, then, when I came on the Board, the Chancellor came up with – oh, no. The very first meeting we had, I started asking for different information. At that time, it was two long-standing Board members, Ken Pace and Bob Buccholz and I had been on the Board for like six, eight months when they decided to resign, because, in their mind, if an incumbent runs, it’s easy for them to get in. So they resigned before their term’s up; someone’s appointed, runs as an incumbent and easily gets elected. Plus the fact that it really doesn’t draw much attention anyway, the community college elections don’t. But Don Buccholz sale con que (comes out with), "Well, I think if any of us want to get any information, we need to have four votes." In other words, they were trying to find which ways to restrain me. So I said, "That’s fine, Don, we can have four votes; but I’ll just submit it under Freedom of Information, you know, the Open Records Act and get it that way." Boom! Never went anywhere. Callaron (They shut up). Then Wenrich decía (would say) – he had – at that time Patti Powell was the Chair and, boy, they had really programmed her. Wenrich came up with that to even put something on the agenda, I needed four votes. I looked through the policy manual; there was nothing in our policy that said four – nothing that addressed how we get something on the agenda. And Steve (Salazar) had told me that if it wasn’t in writing, it didn’t apply. So the first time I tried to get something on the agenda, Jackie Caswell who was secretary to the Board said, "Well, you need to tell Patti." I said, "Well, why do I need to tell Patti?" She was the Chair. "Well, because she’s the Chair and it has to go through her and she has to approve it." I said, "Well, there’s nothing in policy that says it has to be that way. I want it on the agenda." Unfortunately, at that time I was still a little shaky because I was punch drunk from all of these attacks at UTA, the controversy of election fraud, so I wasn’t acting with mucha certeza (with much certainty), you know, with certainty, you’ve got to do this. I was like still wishy-washy of that stuff. So then basically I just dropped it. But it ended up that my agenda – what I wanted got on the agenda, but I hadn’t worked it. I wasn’t ready to do it, so it just died. And I forgot what the issue was. It wasn’t anything greatly significant. But Wenrich kept informing the Board you needed four votes to get something on the agenda. So I asked him, "But where? Why do you need four votes? It’s not in the policy manual?" But the other Board members wouldn’t question it because it – it’s – to me it’s like all of the focus was on keeping me restrained. But eventually se les prendió el foco (their light bulb went on) that by keeping me restrained, it was keeping them restrained, too. One time I asked a question and Patti – this was in an open Board meeting. And Patti Powell says, "Okay. Four votes? Do I hear four votes?" (Laughs) And Wenrich kind of whispers, but you could hear him, "Ah, she’s only asking a question." (Laughs) So they had her real programmed. So no esta muy, muy (she is not very, very) -- (Gestures) Anyway…I shouldn’t say… Then, what was – oh, another time that I pointed that out, but still didn’t have support for questioning this four-vote thing, and then, again, I’m uncertain. I’m not real sure myself because of all these attacks. We were working on an agreement that we were setting up to run – the Dallas County Community College District was going to take over operation of the Downtown University Center. And so they had sent us a draft of the agreement that we would sign to make this happen. So they sent a draft and then at a Board meeting, they had some changes. And Wenrich, el muy tonto dice (the very stupid one says), "Jerry Prater wanted us to make this change," blah, blah, blah, "so we made the change." So at the Board meeting I asked, I said, "Well, it says here Jerry had a change. Did Jerry get four votes to make this change?" La otra que (the other one that) got voted in with me, Kitty Boyle, her emphasis, too, was on trying to keep me contained. But, she says, "Well, I had that same question. How come Jerry can put something in here? I wanted to change, but I thought we needed four votes, so I didn’t bring it up. But how come Jerry can do it and I can’t?" So it kind of started to unravel. But still no se les había prendido el foco (the light bulb had not gone on for them). All of the difference happened when – in – okay – in. Ya (now) J.D. Hall was pretty much up in age, so I think it was like ’98, ’99 he decided to resign. Ya (now) he, you know, healthwise and different things that were happening to him at the time familywise, he just couldn’t do it any more. So he just decided to resign. They – we went through an appointment process. When Buccholz and Bettis had resigned – this was in, like ’97. We went through the appointment process and pretty much they were naming – they suggested two or three people, but really were favoring one, but for it not to seem too obvious, they suggest two or three people to interview. And then Wenrich would put out letters, we have a vacancy do you want to – to the community. We have a vacancy. Do you want to recommend anybody? And usually nothing came of that, but the trustee that was leaving would suggest two or three people, with one favored. So that was pretty easy. That’s how Prater and Leake got on. At the time Leake, who is out of Mesquite, was appointed by the Board, Martha Metzger was also recommended. It might have been by Elvira Reyna. Metzger is a Chicana who runs a little business out of Mesquite, a trophy and plaque business. And so she had gone through the interview. And so she is a Republican, big time Republican, and was talking about her experience in the Republican Party and campaigning for Elvira and blah, blah, blah, etc., etc. Martha habla mucho (talks a lot). So Jerry Prater happened to make the comment, like, "Well, is there something you don’t want to tell us?" (Laughs) But Randy Leake, his father had been one of the original Board members, so he was the favored son. So I was real resentful because they really didn’t give Martha a serious look and I thought it but I didn’t say it at the time, was that, well, Martha didn’t have a daddy who was on the Board, so that’s why she’s not getting on. But the students had been angry at how they had come to the Board and pretty much were given lip service and nothing changed. Evelio and Pedro Alvarez and Elena – I don’t remember her last name – the different group of students who were active back then – looked for candidates to run against these people. So they ran Ana Narro against Randy Leake and she got 30% of the vote without even working anything because, I mean, they put the candidate up, but then they didn’t realize, well, you actually have to have money to campaign and all of these things. So they got – I think they got discouraged and just didn’t do anything. And, unfortunately, I couldn’t be in there active, because that’s kind of detrimental. But it was a real eye-opener that she got 30, 35% of the vote on doing nothing against Randy Leake. And I forget who ran – Carla McGee was up that time, too, and the students – Roy – remember Roy – talked to this guy named Carlos something and he ran. And what happened by Carlos being in there, it forced McGee’s reelection into a runoff between McGee and Albright. And Bruce Albright is there every Board meeting complaining about something or critical of something. So they were real nervous if he would have won. Okay. So in ’98 you had that change. Leake and Prater, after being appointed, got elected in. Then in ’99 you had Hall resign. So they went to the appointment process. And I think there were about three or four African Americans that were recommended. One of them was James Belt who is an attorney in the area. And he had all of the elected officials – state level, county level, school board level, submit letters of support for his nomination for this appointment. And then you had some surgeon that’s run as a Republican and pobrecito (poor guy). He was really weird because while we were interviewing him to consider his appointment, he got calls on the cell phone and instead of turning it off, he would take the phone call. "Yeah, okay. Soft diet. Uh-huh. Bye." I mean, that wasn’t an emergency, so that was real no-no. One of the trustees even made fun of him when he was gone. You had Gerald Borders who was a TI person. Real nice man, but a company man. And then maybe there was one other. I can’t remember. Unfortunately, they scheduled those interviews and the time to make the decision at a time when I had to be somewhere else. I told them, "Don’t do it on this date because on this date I can only meet until this time and then I have to leave." I forget where it was, but I just had to be there. So they did it on that date. (Laughs) So then we were – we had already gone through the interviews. On Gerald Borders it was, well, "God has put me here and God is doing this." And God this and God that. Well, of course, I was backing Belt. And I told them, I said, "Well, I don’t see how we can ignore all of the elected officials speaking on behalf of this man because, by extension, they are speaking for their communities, because they have got the vote to be there and to do that." So I – John Wiley Price put in a letter and so that was the death knell for him, I think. And they were talking, dancing all around the thing. And then I said, "Look, I’ve got to leave. But my preference is for James Belt. If we name someone else, then this will only be temporary because when it’s all said and done, it is the community who is going to decide anyway, through their vote. So – minority politics are not like majority politics. Just because you have an incumbent running does not mean the incumbent is going to get it, you know, an incumbent that has been appointed. Minority politics are not like majority politics. The minority community has spoken by virtue of these elected officials giving their support to this one individual. So my vote is for him and I would hope that is how y’all vote. I’ve got to leave." The next thing I know, Gerald Borders had got it. Well, then I found out Gerald Borders is a company man; he knew Wenrich, all this, that and the other. Again, I’d say real nice man. I had talked to him several times, you know, "these are the issues, Gerald. I hope I can get your support," que esto y que el otro, pa’ ‘ca y pa’ ya (this, that and the other). One of the times there was something on there about hiring again. And I said, "Listen, I will address it and I will make all the case for it. I just hope I can get your support." So sure enough, at the Board meeting I just made all these different points, why y que esto y que el otro y que pa’ ‘ca y pa’ ya. All he had to do for me just to get a little bit of them to listen if he would have said, "I agree." That’s all he had to do, just say, "I agree." He didn’t do it. So that told me right then and there where he was going to – you know, typical status quo company man stuff. Well, then the election comes up for that seat. It came up in 2000. And again you had the same pattern. Charletta Compton worked for the District. She was like their minority contracting person. She had worked for the District. She filed to be a candidate, continued to work for the District during the campaign. But then, lo and behold, she wins it. So that made all the difference in the world because, finally, I had some support. Whereas the others, I think, saw the validity of my issues and things like that, no tenían (they didn’t have) the wherewithal to support an Hispana, a Latina – a Chicana on this stuff. But by Charletta now, guess what, the two minority trustees have the same mindset or speak in the same way, but it was also horrible for her coming on the Board because of the same thing. Suspicions – even though she didn’t come in with the controversy, but she was still an employee. What’s she doing here? What’s her real agenda? Her first thing, she asked for letterhead. Well, we don’t do that. So she says, "Well, why not?" So that was just a horrible meeting when that happened. And these other people doing the status quo line. I mean, how are we going to have minority people have letterhead when we don’t ever ask for it? Well, it’s because you don’t ever want to do anything. Your issues are not our issues, so to speak. So – but it’s just made all the difference in the world having her on there. The fact that I can just – you know, I’ve been addressing issues on the record – the faculty numbers – although they haven’t improved, we’ve got a new program called Visiting Scholar where we’ll hire someone for two years. They don’t have to go through the regular process of hire which is a search committee and it’s dominated by faculty and they are going to hire somebody that looks like them, all that kind of stuff. It’s the hiring supervisor, the Dean or the VP making the selections and basically just putting them in there as Visiting Scholars. Unfortunately, it’s temporary. But we’re giving them the full-time experience for when they are looked at for a permanent position. If you don’t have that full-time experience, you’re pretty much out. So another thing that I have found is just by raising questions or by putting things on the record, it causes staff to begin to work to address it or to eliminate that concern because they don’t want it brought up again. So that’s just as effective, I’ve found, as having the vote. Because they are going to work on it anyway. That’s the last thing that either the chancellor or the president want, that you continue to raise these issues. But I continue to raise them. But that’s been a real interesting dynamic for me, finding that you have effectiveness anyway, even if you don’t have the vote. Dr. Gutiérrez: Why do the African Americans continue to gain in personnel and appointments and contracts and things without any advocacy from the Board? Who was pushing that and why is it missing on our part? Ms. Flores: I can’t answer that for you. My only – it’s not necessarily that anybody – on the Board level, when I push, I don’t just push on the Latino numbers. I push on increasing our numbers, period, to reflect our demography. If our demography says, like 20% African Americans, I’m not comfortable until we get there. If the demography says 30% Hispanos, I’m not comfortable until we get there. So I’m not just addressing, and never have, just in terms of employment or students, address just the Chicano/Latino standpoint. I’ve addressed it across the board. I think what’s happened, the dynamic that’s happening out there since African – you say the 20 years – because African Americans have fought these battles before. I think in the Anglo mindset they are already used to, well, we’ve got to do it for them at some level; but they still don’t want to do it for us. Plus, us, we have the added thing on us that we continue to come. We continue to return to some of the original homeland. The African Americans, it’s a finite number. They’ve become like Anglos. They’re not multiplying in huge numbers. We are not only continuing to come; we continue to multiply in large numbers. I had five myself. Most people now have one or two and that’s it and that’s the African American story, too. So I think with us there is even more resistance because it’s, like, oh, crap, how long am I going to be able to hold them off (laughs) because eventually it’s going to be like an ant hill. We’re just going to be everywhere, regardless. And I think it’s that last gasp of trying to hold it off – not necessarily conscious, but it’s there. Dr. Gutiérrez: Okay. So what is – I think that the best accomplishment you probably would say of you being on the Board is the tuition waiver or regularization, the Visiting Scholar Program. What is your worst defeat? Not getting a president? Ms. Flores: Well – well, even that -- it was a defeat but it’s still a victory because when there was a position, a vacancy for president at Brookhaven, that process took a long time. I mean, Wenrich has instituted a practice that I think just does not work well. His thing is for people to be supported when they are employed, they need to have other employees feel that they were a part of that process. I mean, it doesn’t matter that, like, well, we operated for 15 years or more with just the supervisor making the selection. Now all of a sudden your fellow employees have to feel that they’re a part of that process. So what happens in the search committee process: you name a search committee; the committee interviews the people; the committee decides who they’re going to recommend up, you know, two or three finalists. So what happens is that search committee is usually dominated – especially for presidents and anything having to do with the instruction side – it is usually dominated by faculty. Our faculty is 85% Anglo, so there is just no way you are going to have a sufficient number of others to be on those search committees to make a significant impact and really bring some strong candidates through. Plus another dynamic that happens by having the search committee process is the faculty, in my opinion, by what I have been able to observe – not by what anybody has verified or told me. But by what I have been able to observe, faculty looks for the most beaten down, the most controllable, the most uninspired, the most that is not going to cause them to really do more than what they already want to do. So right now if you look at our pool of presidents, vice presidents, deans, there’s really nobody dynamic out there [except for one or two]. And that’s really disappointing. There’s really nobody dynamic out there that you can say, wow, you can just see the brilliance on them and know that they are going to be ascending or whatever. You have beaten down whatever. The Brookhaven presidency went through the search committee process. We had an African American vice president from North Lake that had some dynamism about her who had served as an interim president – I forget at which one of the colleges – maybe Eastfield when it was with a vacancy. So she had that experience under her belt. She had the instruction experience; she had everything. But they didn’t even consider her as a finalist. And that was just blatant. So when finally they brought the finalist forward who Wenrich decided to hire, Alice Villadsen – she was coming out of North Carolina – I voted no on that hire. And I said, "I am voting against this because I have a concern about how the search was conducted," and put it on the record, right, "because I have a concern about how this search was conducted, especially the fact that it netted us no diversity in the final pool. We simply cannot continue to operate that way. It’s not saying anything about the individual. All that Dr. Villadsen did was apply for a position. My vote in no way has to do anything with her as an individual or her qualifications or her capabilities. It has to do with our process and our continual denial of equal access," or whatever. I don’t remember, but put it on the record. So as a result of that, even though I lost, as a result Wenrich has said that he’s now changed that process and the college will have input into the qualifications they would like to see in a president and input into maybe who will be looked at. But who actually does the final screening and recommending is the vice chancellors. It’s been taken out, somewhat, out of the faculty’s hands. So there was a change. Even though you have losses, by you taking a stand and making these statements, it has impact and it causes change to happen. Dr. Gutiérrez: Have you been active with the Latino Community College Trustees Association? Ms. Flores: Somewhat. It’s kind of – they have – they’re now doing their conferences, their meetings in conjunction with the National Community College Hispanic Council, which is an affiliated council of the American Association of Community Colleges. And they do that in the summers. They had their last one here in Fort Worth and I attended that. And one of the sessions they had for trustees, I was real upset at this panel they had on, you know, how you serve as a trustee and the process of governance because one of the panelists was spouting – I can’t remember if it was a panelist or a participant – was spouting this rhetoric. Have you heard about the Carver governance model? Well, I think that was developed by a CEO who worked with a difficult board. We’ve adopted the Carver governance model. The tenets of Carver governance, it says, we speak with one voice or not at all. When that’s come up before me that we’ve had that at a retreat, my thing was, "I’m not going to lose my right to speak for anybody. I can’t agree with this." And so they know. They’ve been put on notice. I don’t agree with this. I know that in terms of official action, we can only do it through majority vote, but I have my right to a minority report or putting my objection on the record, voting no or whatever. I’m not going to say that if I don’t agree with you, I can’t speak (laughs). So, anyway, I don’t adhere to Carver governance. So this guy at the Fort Worth conference this past summer was saying that, "We have to – eventually we can get our issues addressed; eventually we can – but you’ve got to get along with everybody. You’ve got to work those votes." You’ve got to this, you’ve got to that. So I spoke up and I said, "No! Sure you want to have the votes! Sure you want to get it through that way! But you’re just as effective by voting no and by saying why you’re voting no!" Because that will make them, you know, here in the District what happens is they’ll never give me the credit for bringing about the change, but because they don’t want me to continue to address that issue, they’ll start making changes. That’s why Visiting Scholar; that’s why the change in how now the presidents are going to be hired and just a lot of different things that I can’t even remember because it’s happened a lot. That’s how you bring about change. If you, as a Chicano trustee, if you expect to bring about change through the votes, it’s never going to happen, because our agenda is radically different from the status quo agenda. The status quo agenda is what? Keep the things as they are. That doesn’t work for us. So we can bring about change simply by voting no and continuing to raise those issues. And staff doesn’t want to hear you continuing to raise those issues, so they’ll work on ways to make those issues go away. I don’t buy into what this poor guy had bought into. And it’s sad that even our own association they’re putting that stuff out. It’s just sad. Dr. Gutiérrez: Are we done with the trustees? Or have you got something else there? I wanted to move to PURE or what you got on your list there. Since you’ve now organized the interview (laughs)… Ms. Flores: Well, we’ve done CMAS; we’ve done TACHE; we haven’t done black/brown. We did the state rep; we did the Morning News. So we – I have on here Center for Human Rights, black/brown and PURE. What do you want – Dr. Gutiérrez: Take your pick. Start at the top. Human Rights – that was short and black/brown, that’s short:? Ms. Flores: Yeah. The Center for Human Rights – when I – this is another Domingo story. When I decided to run for state rep back in 2000, I was working for the LULAC National Education Service Center which is funded through federal government TRIO programs money – the Talent Search program and, I forget, one or two others. They opened up a center here in Dallas in 1999. Ray de los Santos is the director. Olga Flores [no relation], who worked with Ray on different grants to get funding for different programs, really made a strong pitch to him about me. Olga Flores was working as an Assistant to the President at Mountain View, working on her doctorate – another Chicana who has a fantastic story to tell, who started out as a high school dropout, a mother at 16, widowed at 21 or 22 and now has her doctorate and is a vice president currently in the Houston system. Anyway, she was Assistant to the President at Mountain View and also in charge of resource development, worked with Ray de los Santos on writing different grants and stuff. She and I had become friends and she knew that I needed a job. And so she made this real hard spiel to Ray to hire me. And he interviewed and stuff and decided, yes, he would hire me. Ray and I became quite close and worked well together and jived well together, all this, that and the other. When I decided to run for state rep in 2000, I had to leave the employment because I had to be campaigning full time. But I told Ray, "I’d like to come back and work full time, if I can." He says, "You have my guarantee you have a job when you’re ready to come back." So I went off and did what I needed to do. Another reason that I wanted to leave was because Ray had gotten real nervous because Domingo had already placed a call that "I better not know that she’s making any calls on that phone or anything because I’m going to put in a complaint against your non-profit charter." He made that call, I think, to Hector Flores who sits on LNESC’s national board. So that’s another reason that I thought it was best just to leave and go campaign full time. I didn’t want to jeopardize anything, knowing how dirty Domingo does his stuff. So when I was ready to come back – I can’t remember if I called him or how it – I think I called him. And he says, "Well, there’s a problem." And basically – and I don’t know if he ever told me directly. I just can’t remember; it’s a blur in there. But bottom line was that they decided to turn my position into a part-time position. And I think basically they did that because they didn’t want me back. Not that Ray didn’t want me back, it was the national connection – Domingo getting, you know, putting pressure on them. And he even put on one of the literature pieces in the race that I was fired from there for political dealings while on the job or something like that. So I couldn’t go back to LNESC. I had to work. José Plata, who has a lot of connections, too, I had told him, "I just really need a job. If you know of anybody that’s looking or whatever," I said, "put in a good word for me." So he says, "Well, as a matter of fact, there’s a new group that has – " well, I knew about the new group because I went to their opening ceremony or whatever they called it. The Center for Human Rights was housed at Mary Ann’s church; Mary Ann is his boss and, "Mary Ann is saying that they need to hire someone to kind of coordinate their programs and do fundraising," and this, that and the other. "I’m going to talk to Mary Ann and have her talk to Paul Kerr who is the director and see if they want to consider hiring you." I know Paul Kerr; he’s real active also in the immigrant community. He headed up Proyecto Adelante which did a lot of advocacy for – primarily for Central Americans and especially back when the amnesty program hit in the middle ‘80s. They did a lot of the processing of INS paperwork for people to gain residency. So I kind of knew Paul out of that venue, but didn’t know him well. So José made the case for me. I called Paul and he was interested and then didn’t get back to me for a couple of weeks. I found out he was trying to secure funding to make sure I could do this, I mean, he could hire me on. And when he got a little bit more funding, he went ahead and brought me on. What was going on at that time, their emphasis was, the Center for Human Rights, was an umbrella group for the different immigrant groups which I named earlier, Guatemaltecos Unidos, Hodureños Unidos, Salvadoreños Unidos; at that time, initially, Mexicanos Unidos, but then they separated off. Familias Unidas. All these different groups. And their main focus now was going to be not INS paperwork processing or anything, but advocacy, lobbying at the national level and at the state level to bring about changes in laws favorable, more favorable to the immigrant community. So we hit the ground running. We started having press conference after press conference. We had letters that were sent to different senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Phil Gramm on a proposed change in the immigration laws back then, in 2000. Martin Frost was supporting some – authored some kind of bill having to do with the retroactive effect of the immigration changes in ’96. We were trying to get Texas to change its requirement that they had enacted about having to have a social security number to get a driver’s license. We – so anyway, we started doing all of these press conferences on these issues, different issues, to get these letters signed, vigils. At that time there was a lot of controversy about detainees, INS detainees were being handled by the detention facility that the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department was operating that was on the 6th floor of the George Allen Courthouse. We had a vigil on July 4th of 2000, a 24-hour vigil to bring attention to the area. You were having pregnant women who, when they were in danger of aborting, were ignored by jail staff and actually did abort. And just horrendous treatment. A handicapped woman that had to have braces and needed help removing and putting on the braces and would get no help and as a result had sores developing and all this kind of stuff. Just horrible stuff that was going on. We had, three or four different times, groups, individuals from these different groups go to Washington to knock on Senate and House of Rep doors to lobby for these pending laws that were before Congress to change immigration. And I would – unfortunately, I didn’t get to travel with them because I developed a problem with a knee that was as a result of an old injury, so it wasn’t real easy to walk distances, so that’s why I would decide not to go to Washington. But I was the one that was calling up, like Frost’s office, Hutchison’s office – I can’t remember the different congressional people – trying to get meetings with. But I was the one that was setting up all those meetings. We were also working – at that time it was still the Clinton White House, so we were working with a liaison in the Clinton White House to get meetings to advocate on those issues. So it was a real exciting time. We had a March for Amnesty in – again, shades of CMAS (laughs) – when you get hired and immediately you have this huge project you need to make successful. I started working there in May – the first part of May of 2000. And I think that the March was going to be on May 31st, I think was the March. And so we had to do all these things to prepare for that March. Gracias a Dios (Thanks to God), we had about 10,000 people in downtown Dallas. I mean, we had press conference after press conference; phone calls; meetings; getting different groups to support it, to sign on as supporters and just all of these different things that had to be done. We had about, on May 31st – if I’m not mistaken, that was the date in 2000 in downtown Dallas from the Catedral (cathedral) to the Kennedy Memorial. We had about 10,000 people. It was just real impressive. There was a big group that came out of Houston because it was a statewide March. There was a big group that came out of Houston. One of the ones that came was dressed as the Statue of Liberty. And it was awesome – had this, like a styrofoam head on. He actually fell during the parade route because he couldn’t see that well. You had this church group also come out of Houston that had these rams horns, these things that curl and would woo-ooo-ooo; they would blow on them and it sounded really neat. So, it was there that we got a lot of these signatures. Then we had another rally in Samuell Grand Park also to get signatures to change laws to send to senators, to congress people and Bush on the driver’s license issue, Bush. So just a lot of activity. And we ran a project for Southwest Voter to target Congressional District 5 when Montoya and Sessions were going to go up against each other. And I think that was a fluke to get in, because since then Southwest Voter, because of Domingo, has blackballed us. We were the only successful project that year. We had a goal of 1,000 and we registered either – I think it was 1,100 or 1,080. I can’t remember. But we exceeded our goal and I think we are the only project that has ever done that [in Dallas]. Well, Southwest Voter is now back in Dallas but they’re working heavily just with the Domingo side even though they say they’re nonpartisan and they have not contacted us at all. So I was thinking, well, maybe it’s just me. Let me check with Paul, see if he’s been contacted. They haven’t contacted him either. But anyway, unfortunately, our funding ran out in December of ’99 so there I was again without a job. But that was a real exciting time. Unfortunately, since then in terms of the immigrant issues and changing of laws more favorable to the immigrant community, we’ve had the disaster of, the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, so all of that has been put on hold. And I don’t know when all of that can be resurrected. But it’s unfortunate not to have immigration laws more favorable to immigrant families because some of the effects right now are real devastating of keeping families separated or in illegal status that could get that legal status. So that’s the Center for Human Rights. Dr. Gutiérrez: The black/brown stuff, there was a period earlier that real tensions developed between Mexicanos and Blacks, particularly during the tenure of Yvonne Gonzales as superintendent. Ms. Flores: There was a lot of tension built up between the black/brown community. And I can point to it happening again because of Domingo. When Domingo got in – well, it happened right during the time that Domingo was going to get in against Roberto for the state rep seat. You had John Wiley Price, the county commissioner, who was doing almost daily protests of Parkland Hospital because – I can’t – I think the contracting numbers and employment numbers were really bad. There happened to be a Hispanic board member, Jaime Ramon on that board, so they were kind of like, they had singled him out, Price’s group had, to criticize him. Hey, eres raza (you are Hispanic) and why aren’t you doing more to try and improve these numbers. So they had written some posters that were derogatory towards Ramon. So there was by some in the Hispanic community a real criticism of Price. I’ve forgot what that – I think they had said "go back to Mexico," and Ramon is like a Cuban or something. He’s not of Mexicano origin. So there was a real criticism of them for doing that. So Roberto, if I remember correctly, Roberto called Price and said, "You’ve insulted our community. You need to apologize and you need to make this thing be able to smooth over so we can work together." Price did. He respected what Roberto had to say and he issued a letter of apology to the Mexican community and the Mexican community only – the Mexican American community. But then one of the signs said, "Jaime Ramon is a coconut," which was one of our Chicano Movement terms. Well, then they – instead of focusing on, yes, the apology was issued, they focused on, well, how dare you call him a coconut which is brown on the outside and white on the inside. So then Domingo capitalized on it by saying that Roberto era negrero (loved Blacks) and preferred the Blacks over the Browns. Just – that’s where to me the black/brown division just became real public because before that, they did try to work together. That was in ’96. Then the Gonzales thing I think happened in ’98 where, for some reason, the African American community just did not like Gonzales. I don’t know because she had come out of Houston – I don’t know if the African American community in Houston had some issues with her and let Dallas know about it or what. I really don’t know why. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, she came out of Santa Fe. I don’t think Houston at all. There may have been something in the background. But she had promised to clean house which meant a lot of the upper administrators who were African American would be subject to scrutiny – Ms. Flores: Here in Dallas – Dr. Gutiérrez: -- and possible removal. Ms. Flores: Yeah. Well, DISD needs to have a good house cleaning, has needed it for years. It’s not only African American it’s a lot of people that need to be gone from there. But the African American community was real negative on Gonzales and that’s when they were showing up to the board meetings with machine guns and just creating a lot of havoc because they were unhappy. And, I think, Lee Alcorn who was president of the NAACP had wanted – I can’t remember if he did it in a letter or in a meeting – wanted to know from Gonzales how many undocumented students there were because the African American community, it seemed, was upset that we were beginning to surpass their numbers. So their thing was going to be, yeah, but how many of them are here illegally. We’ll just count the legal ones; I think that’s what his next step was going to be. So when it showed that the tension was getting pretty heavy, I can’t remember who the initiator of it was; you know, was it the African American community reaching out to us or vice versa? I only know that I got a call from Luis Sepulveda who has pretty much maintained positive relationships with the African American community saying, "We’ve got to be in dialogue with the Blacks. We’ve got to make sure this thing doesn’t escalate any further. I’m not really getting any response from too many people. Will you help me on this? Will you agree to dialogue with them?" I said, "Sure, I’ll help you with that. There’s no problem with talking and seeing where we’re at." Well, even – let me take a step back. Even before that, I think Roberto and Steve got some African Americans together. They met at my church. It was Lee Alcorn, Price, might have been Thomas Mohammad and I can’t remember who else. Maybe five, six, seven Blacks. Robert, Steve, myself – were you there? I can’t remember. Roberto, Steve, myself and I don’t remember who else on the Chicano side. That’s where we brought up the issue to Alcorn about what are you doing attacking the kids because of their undocumented status? And he said, "Well, that was taken out of context but we were asking how many here are undocumented because – " and I forget what reason he gave. But my response to him was, "By you taking that tact, you’re no better than the Ku Klux Klan because that’s what they do. And to us there’s no undocumented people because that’s family. That’s the original homeland and throughout history people have always migrated to where they can meet their needs." And I forget what the standpoint was from Roberto and Steve, but what we were trying to do is placate the tension. Then we proceeded to have a couple of dialogues, the Black/Brown Dialogues. Liz Flores Velasquez’s group did something, but I wasn’t really involved. It was by invitation and I think I got involved like at the last minute and had a conflict or something, so I didn’t attend. But the Black/Brown Dialogues we did have was because of Luis Sepulveda. And we had like two or three of them. And Aaron Michaels was the one that was heading up the Black Panthers at that time that were showing up with the machine guns. And, basically, just trying to eliminate the tension. And it did get eliminated to a certain extent. It wasn’t so open any more; it wasn’t so hostile any more. But it’s still there under the surface. This was also when Jesse Diaz, when the African American contingent was going to the board meetings and doing all these protests, Jesse Diaz actually tried to confront one of them. They were actually going to get in an altercation. So it was really in the danger of simmering over. And then when Gonzales was under such siege that she had been – I can’t remember if she – she had resigned. I was going to say I can’t remember if she had been removed or resigned. She had resigned. That’s when Luis de la Garza and others got on Spanish language radio and saying, "We can’t allow this to happen." This was before we learned that she had embezzled. "We can’t allow this to happen. It is time for the community to take a stand, show support, you need to come out here." So all of the Spanish language radio and television were there outside broadcasting the call for people to come out. And so you had like 2,500 people of our community come out. And it just was a shocker to everybody, African Americans and Anglo that on one issue, there we were. And so I think that’s when the African Americans started talking among themselves, "Oh, it’s because they have this radio. We don’t have that." I think that was the first time they realized in terms of our media outlets the exposure and outlets that we have versus what they have. Dr. Gutiérrez: PURE? Ms. Flores: Well, let me go real quick on – then when Gonzales was gone that they proceeded to hire another superintendent, one of the candidates that they were looking at was from – I think it was Iowa, either Ohio or Iowa, an African American candidate. And they had community forums for the community to meet the candidates that they were considering for final vote on. So they had a community forum here at Townview and I went. My question to him was, "How do you work – what is your experience with Hispanic students and how do you work with them, being that we have particular needs?" And he said, "Well, there’s really not that many where I’m from, but when we do have some, I’ll get some Americans to work with them individually." (Laughs) So they didn’t give you a chance for a back and forth. You just ask the question and he could answer it. But my thing immediately was, in my mind, hey, we are Americans. Not all of us have just gotten here. So that immediately signaled a problem. Brashear was there. Afterwards they had a reception – Hollis Brasher who was, I think at that time, president of the school board. So I told Hollis, "We’ve got a real problem with this guy. He doesn’t know that we’re Americans?" He tried to play it down, right, because this was the guy that Brashear was really supporting. So at that time, coming out of also an initiative by a different group trying to placate the black/brown tensions, we had formed what was called the Hispano Leadership Forum. It was Rosa Orenstein. That’s when I first got to meet her. It was Adelfa. It was an early attempt to get, again, all the factions together in our community. Maricela was involved; I was involved; Cindy Benavides, Marcus Ronquillo and a lot of people. But we were the ones, Adelfa, Rosa, Maricela, Cindy, Marcus, myself, we were the ones that were chosen to be on the, what’s called the executive committee. So what HL – one of the things HLF undertook was to try to impact the selection of the superintendent post Gonzales, before Rojas was hired. One of the tactics we decided to use when we saw at the community forums who the candidates were and had our concerns, one of the things we decided to do was bring in the trustees by two’s and three’s, where you wouldn’t have a quorum of them, to meet with us. And to share with them our concerns and what we thought was important in terms of a new superintendent. And we did that at Brenda Reyes’ office, which was on Ross at that time. So it came the first go-round, I don’t remember, two or three of them. So when Brashear was in one of the groups, my question to him was -- we explained to him what our problem was with this American issue that, "I pair them with American students." Again he tried to downplay it. So my question to him was, "Hollis, if you, as a trustee – would you as a trustee consider for superintendent of the DISD where there is a large population of African American students, would you seriously consider a candidate that had no experience with African American students?" And he, like hemmed and hawed and looked at us and looked at me and hemmed and hawed. I said, "Just answer the question. If the candidate had no experience, really did not understand, did not know the African American community" – first I got him to admit that the African American community has their own particular issues and all this stuff in terms of education, the student does. So then I said, "Well, if you had a candidate that had no experience with the African American community, would you hire, would you be comfortable hiring that person?" And he had to admit que no (that no), no. I said, "Well, then why do you want us to be comfortable with it? We have our – just like your students do, our students do. How can you want us to support someone that has no – that doesn’t even consider us Americans?" So that killed that guy. I can’t remember what his name was. But then we got Rojas and that was another disaster! Jesus! And he buddied up with Domingo. That should have told it to us right then and there what kind of person he was going to be. But the DISD continues to be a challenge. Fast forward to PURE. In, in – Joe May had set up this group, as I told you earlier, to work on the census complete count and then to move on to redistricting. And it was trying, again, to bring all the factions together. This went on okay for awhile. It kind of fell by the wayside in terms of people continuing to stay with it. And this was happening in 1999. Then – to gear up for the 2000 census and the count and all of that. Then the census was done and the efforts to get the complete count. Then I remember that you called me – I can’t remember if it was – when we talked about this. But it was either – it had to have been late 2000 that we needed to undertake an effort to get everybody involved in the redistricting for this area. That we needed to make the case that whatever differences there were between people or groups, those differences needed to be laid aside, that we needed to create the pie first, meaning the different positions. That we needed to create the pie first and worry about who was going to fight over the pieces later. The main thing was to create the pie. So you wanted to get a group together. And I think you had even asked me, que will you get a group together. I agreed and I called Maricela. Because what happens with Maricela and I, pretty much as I told you, Maricela has that great talent of working with everybody, regardless of whatever issues she might have with them. And I have a vast network. But there’s some way that I just can’t make that jump over (laughs) to some people I just don’t like. That’s why I called Maricela. "You call the people that you know will listen to you; I’ll call the people that I know will listen to me." And this is what we’re trying to do, bring everybody together. José Angel has already tried to do this with Adelfa. She has said no. So this is our stab at bringing everybody together. We’re going to invite everybody to the table. The monkey’s going to be on their back whether they choose to participate or not. At least they can’t point to us and say, "They excluded me." Whether we like the people or not, it’s about coming together on this issue. So we did. I think, again, this thing of doing it quickly. I think we had like two or three days to put it together. Why the rush, I don’t remember. But we brought together like over 100 people in the span of just calling them and letting them know from one day to two days up that we were going to have this meeting. And the first meeting we had at the Hispanic Chamber – do you remember? Dr. Gutiérrez: (Nods yes.) Ms. Flores: Okay. There were like close to 100 people there. There was no room in that room. People were standing along the walls and outside and all this stuff. But pretty much the decision was made, we’re going to work on redistricting and we’re going to start – we set up the framework for all of this to begin happening. Well, who has stayed with it has been about 20 to 25 to 30 people. The first couple of meetings we had, like the first two meetings we had a good 100 turnout. The subsequent three or four or five meetings, we had 75 to 50; then after that we had 40; and then after that 25. Now it’s dwindled down to 20 that meet regularly. People United for Representation and Equality (PURE) have continued to meet every two weeks since January 8th of this year (2000). We formed different committees to address the different governing entities. For example, we had a DISD committee on redistricting; a city committee on redistricting; a state and congressional; a county; and an international, being Mexico, because Mexico is going to have the posts where people get elected from here to serve in Congress over there. What we did, those of us – I chaired the city council committee. Those of us from the different committees – and it pretty much fell to the chairs – would attend as many meetings as they could on the redistricting issue. Oh, and the community college district was also one. We would attend as many meetings as possible when redistricting was going to be talked about either by the city, the school board, whatever. And what has happened is we’ve really not gotten anything, even though we drove 95% of the growth in Dallas County in the 2000 census. We didn’t garner any additional representation in the county; we didn’t garner any additional representation from the community college district; we didn’t garner additional representation on the school board; and it certainly looks like at the state level we’re not going to get anything. The only place where we got one additional seat was at city council. The thing that has severely hampered us in this is the incumbency issue, protecting incumbents, because people don’t want to do anything that is going to jeopardize their seat. But by doing that, you’re not making accommodation for all that growth in numbers in the Latino community. That’s where I think – at the school board level, particularly, it has been most obvious. They don’t want to make room for what’s there. The African American trustees just don’t want to make room for the Latino. They want to hold on to their own even though their numbers have dwindled quite a bit as a percentage of the whole because of the huge increase in our numbers. The city did give, but only because there was an opportunity for it to give because Dwaine Carraway did not win the race against Ed Oakley – Dwaine Carraway being an African American out of District 6; Ed Oakley being an Anglo who won District 6. So pretty much what happened there was District 6 was abandoned by Ed Oakley fashioning, agreeing to have a district that would – where he would be included is District 3. That’s where Kessler Park is. So District 6 is now the new Latino seat on the City Council. If we had not had the incumbency issue, we should have been able to come up with at least one more seat. And where I kept harping that we really needed to look seriously at forming a Latino seat was in the Pleasant Grove area. And I think, to some extent, we held back on going full press on that because of the black/brown tension. We didn’t want to escalate. We got one additional one. They had the wisdom to give on that one, to cede on that one. If really the right thing were being done, they would have totally wiped away the way the districts looks now and come up with something new that’s really representative of the population that’s out there. And all the other entities. And nobody wanted to do that because they want to protect their seats. Dr. Gutiérrez: So where’s PURE now and where do they need to go? Ms. Flores: PURE has moved on from redistricting. We submitted maps. We provided testimony. We provided testimony before the school board, before the city council redistricting commission. We didn’t do so much at the county. Unfortunately, that kind of fell through but we have put in a letter of objection. We certainly turned out heavily for the community college district – Dr. Gutiérrez: And Austin – Ms. Flores: We went to Austin and testified before that committee on redistricting. So now we’ve moved on to – we filed a letter of objection with the Department of Justice on the county redistricting plan and the letter is being worked on right now on the DISD redistricting plan and on the community college district redistricting plan. We’re not totally happy with the city, but being that we garnered one more, we’re going to let that stand pat. We’re also in the process of litigation, of beginning litigation against the school board. Mike Daniel who has a lot of experience as a civil rights lawyer and especially litigating voting rights cases has agreed to be our attorney. We’ve had the first fundraiser. And I think we have a good $10,000 collected or at least half of that collected and the other committed to the issue. So we continue to stay focused on that area. PURE, some members of PURE, not me, on principle and also because I have been blackballed, has taken on a project of voter registration under Southwest Voter. So they’re working that, some members of PURE. But we’re going to stay focused now on the litigation aspect. And on the litigation – oh. We’re also going to recruit candidates for all of these different entities, the school board, the city, the community college, the county. I’m not sure yet about the state. We haven’t talked that much because nothing is definite there. But definitely, the school board. We’re working real heavy on that because we’re just not happy what happened there. It was just too blatant. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the Department of Justice has agreed with you. They rejected the county as to JP and constable districts. Not on the commissioner – Ms Flores: Yeah. I was real surprised they didn’t agree on the commissioner part. I mean, because that’s pretty blatant, too. How are you going to ignore 30% of the county population? So our hope is on the litigation to handle all of these entities – not the city, but definitely DISD, community college, county. We’re leaving the state part up to MALDEF because we just can’t handle it all. And that’s being litigated now. But, hopefully, we are handling, again, the school board, the county and community college district. And, fortunately, Daniel has agreed that once these are out of the way, to then look to the outlying areas, to look to Irving, to Grand Prairie, to look to Garland, to Wilmer Hutchins, those cities that still elect at-large instead of single-member district as required by the Voting Rights Act. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, let’s go back to that question because we have been at it for quite awhile. What’s next for Diana Flores? Ms. Flores: Well, I had seriously considered running for state rep again, but – and I had already put out that word because that really was what I had planned to do, and had already talked to a couple of people. But in the interim – I referenced a bad knee earlier. I twisted my knee back in ’91 dancing salsa. I was wearing the wrong kind of shoes and didn’t realize it. As my partner was taking me into a turn, my body turned, but the leg didn’t (laughs). So I didn’t really take care of that injury like I should have. When I was campaigning in 2000, it surfaced. It caught up with me and I started having problems with my knee. I just found – and I went through one surgery and it never got better. So I just found out like a month ago that the orthopedist wants me to have knee surgery. That’s going to sideline me for a month and it’s going to make it difficult to campaign, what I need to do to run against an incumbent, which is knock on a lot of doors. So I’ve decided not to go for state rep this go-round. My trustee seat comes up for election again in May of 2002, so I’ll probably very definitely do that. There’s some interesting things happening now at the city level where Mayor Kirk will resign Wednesday to run for the Senate. So that means a city election has to be had in January of 2002 to fill his position as mayor. Laura Miller is considering running for the mayor’s seat, although that’s not definite. If Laura Miller should run – I’m in her district. There might be some possibilities there. Who knows? We don’t know. If, for some reason, I were to make it on city council, then my goal would be mayor down the road. But that’s all the things I’m playing with, nothing definite. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do women do politics different than men? Ms. Flores: I think women have a more direct touch and I think women are more comfortable approaching people directly and making their case and asking for the vote because you don’t have this machismo thing that you’re dealing with. Yo soy hombre y yo que esto y que el otro (I’m a man and I this and that), and we don’t have those things. So I think we have, again, we are more comfortable with the direct contact. I, myself, I can’t speak for all women, but where I don’t do as well is asking for the money. I have a real problem asking for the money. Fortunately on the state rep thing, the money came to me (laughs). I really didn’t have to go asking for it. People were looking to give money to defeat Domingo. But in these other races, we shall see. We shall see. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you think in 10 or 15 years we are going to be women led in the Latino community? Ms. Flores: Well, we’re pretty much women led now. I mean anything you go to, Jesus, es pura mujer (it’s all women). I don’t know what’s happening to the men. What are their focuses or what the emphasis is on. But, like on PURE, it’s been women led. When the – on the school board it’s been pretty even. But especially like on the student side, the college student side, when you have different organizations or planning conferences or whatever, it’s women led. I don’t know what’s happening to the men. What do you think is happening to the men? Dr. Gutiérrez: I don’t know. I’m the one doing the interview, not answering. (Laughs) Ms. Flores: (Laughs) I just want to get your opinion. Ay que José. Dr. Gutiérrez: No. I agree. That’s why I raised the subject because I have been talking about that, as you know. It’s going to happen and the men are not ready. I’ve run out of questions. It’s fascinating trajectory. Do you have anything else you want to say or any future message or comment or something I didn’t ask you about that you want to talk about? Ms. Flores: Well, I think when I started out I said it’s kind of hard to really push our issues because you’re either bought, you’re sold, or you’re co-opted, whatever. But we need to get to the point where, where we can really push our issues. Because like I tell others, not just those among us, I tell others, our issues are the larger society’s issues. Because a society is only as strong as its weakest link. And until we get there in every realm, whether it be politically, economically, integration-wise, whatever, we’re going to – society as a whole is going to be weak because we’re the ones that have the largest number and the largest ones coming up. We have to do better in education and political representation, all of that, because only we can speak for ourselves. But unfortunately when we’re bought, sold and paid for, you speak for someone else. We need to get to where we’re speaking from our standpoint what works best for us so that we can fully contribute in this society. Dr. Gutiérrez: The last question, since Diana Flores begged for it, how does Diana Flores stay unbought, unco-opted, unsold out and on course? Ms. Flores: She lives in poverty. Look at my tax returns for the last several years (laughs). Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Well, I want to thank you very much for taking all this time, volunteering to help in all these other projects, including this one. And I guess we will add that to the interview, the statistics you brought on the community college? Ms. Flores: That’s right. Yeah. I forgot to say that you do bring about change because I don’t think there’s any institution, in terms of my time on the board that can point to a 60% increase in Latino students, a 66% increase in those completing their degrees or certificates, so I’m real proud of that. So where a lot of – and it needs to continue to increase more. But where the work still has to be done is on the employment side, where we are showing about two or three percent improvement. That’s totally unacceptable. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Anything else? Ms. Flores: No. Congratulations on this work.