Oral History Interview with Rolando Arriola, 1999 Rolando Arriola Interview conducted by José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Interview transcribed by Karen McGee 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 66 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. 172.

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 Rolando Arriola none English Spanish Arriola, Rolando Gutiérrez, Jose Angel University of Texas at Arlington. Center for Mexican American Studies Mexican Americans--Texas--Interviews XXX oral history interview Tejanos Chicanos INSERT KEYWORD HERE

The University of Texas at Arlington

Oral History Interview with Rolando Arriola, 1999 Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) Interview Number 5 Mexican American Public Figures of Texas Location of Interview: Edinburg, Texas Number of Transcript Pages: 48 Cite as: Oral History Interview with Rolando Arriola, CMAS 172, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Interviewee: Rolando Arriola Interviewer: José Angel Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D. Transcribers: Karen McGeeand José Angel Gutiérrez Date of Interview: November 27, 1999 Location of Interview: Edinburg, Texas Rolando Arriola Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. We are recording. This is November 27th, 1999. We are at the International Trade and Technology Building, University of Texas Pan American campus interviewing Roland Arriola and we've explained the purpose of the interview. You are willing to do this and donate this to the archives at UT Arlington? Mr. Arriola: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. Can you give me a mailing address so I can send you that deed of gift form that you can sign and send back? Mr. Arriola: Ok. The University is, is, just send it to me at 1201 West University Drive, Edinburg, 78539. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Good. Well, let's start off with, I guess family background. You know, who, who is Rolando Arriola; parents, grandparents; where did they come from; when; where; where did you grow up? Mr. Arriola: Ok. Well, I, I am the third child in a family of ten. I grew up here in Edinburg, Texas. I am the son of David and Ramona Arriola. We, well my parents, my father came from Beeville. And actually he left home when he was like thirteen and came down to the Valley, was working down here and met my mother. She came from a family of sixteen children. And, and so, anyway, I was born in 19, on June the 20th, 1948. I attended Sacred Heart Elementary here, went to Edinburg High School, did my undergraduate work at Baylor University in Waco and my graduate work at Harvard. And from there I went on to work... Well, while I was in Waco I got into the political life. Later on I went to Austin and worked for the governor, and then, came back to Pan American, you know, back again. Dr. Gutiérrez: Boy, if I let you get away with that, that'd be the end of the interview. But we're not going to do that. Can we go back and get some names... Mr. Arriola: Ok. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...of parents and your grandparents... Mr. Arriola: Ok Dr. Gutiérrez: ...brothers and sisters? Mr. Arriola: Well, I, my, my grandfather on my mom's side, from what I remember, his name was Zenon Cantu. My grandmother's name was, was Virginia, Virginia Alvarez. Alvarez, that was her maiden name. I don't know my parents, my grandparents on my father's side because they were already gone when, when I was born. They were, those two, you know, that was a big family as well. As far as my, my brothers and sisters, well, I had nine brothers and sisters. Do you want all their names? Dr. Gutiérrez: It's not a test, but if you know... Mr. Arriola: I think I remember them all. Uh well, my oldest, the oldest sibling is Elma and she is now Elma Ayala. She's a counselor here at the Edinburg School District. The second child is David, Jr. and he passed away when he was very young. Then myself as third child. Then my sister is Melda... Dr. Gutiérrez: Imelda? Mr. Arriola: No. Melda. Dr. Gutiérrez: Just Melda? Mr. Arriola: Melda. It's unusual. Everybody always asks her about that. And she's married to Daniel Ramirez who is an attorney here in McAllen. Then I have a brother named Homer who is a physician in San Antonio. He practices internal medicine there. I have a, then there's Jessie who is a professor of computer science at Brownsville, Texas. Southmost, actually [community college]. Then there's Rosie and she's... Well, her husband just passed away, but she was married to a contractor. And she helped him with the business. Ricky, Ricky's with MCI and he's in McAllen. Most of my family stayed in, in the region. Then Eddie was also.... He was killed in a car accident when he was like twenty-four years old. And the, George who is now in Laredo. He manages, he's office manager for Dillard's in Laredo. So that's the whole... In fact, he was kind of unexpected. There's a big gap between him and, and Eddie. So we, we didn't think he was.... We were all shocked when he came. But, in fact, I just spent Thanksgiving with him. He came down from Laredo. Nice session. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, who's your wife and kids? Mr. Arriola: Ok. Well, my wife's name is Donna and I met her while I was going to school at Baylor. She's from Houston. She and I met at, we were both communications majors and actually we met on an assignment. She was the photographer and I was the reporter on a news story. So that's... We, we met there. I have three children. Elizabeth, she's about twenty-seven now. She's married and has two kids. And then, then I have Simon who is also married and he has one kid and one on the way. And then, John Paul who is currently at Baylor. He's a sophomore there. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Well, let's go back and talk about growing up in Edinburg. Mr. Arriola: Well... Dr. Gutiérrez: Catholic school.... Mr. Arriola: Catholic school. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...the nuns or whatever. Mr. Arriola: The nuns, I'll tell you, I guess it's very similar in many situations, but we had a pretty good elementary school. We had very restrictive nuns, you know, that would pull your hair, kick you, and all that stuff. And sit you in the corner if you didn't. So, you know, it was, there was a tremendous amount of incentive to, to learn and to study, so I did. We, I recall that we had a football team for a little bit, but then... Dr. Gutiérrez: In elementary school? Mr. Arriola: In elementary school. And... Dr. Gutiérrez: The nuns were coaches? Mr. Arriola: The, the priests and the lay people there. I remember they were very resourceful. They would, for example, I recall when I was little they had... Well, when, when John Kennedy was inaugurated or when John Glenn went around the world, when the Pope died, Pope John XXIII, the nuns would go out and they would go to the Lack's Furniture Store. They would get all their TVs for every room. They'd get all kinds of equipment for us and we would be right there witnesses to history. So, what we didn't have they were able to get and complement our education. So, it was a tough life, but it was, you know, it was, it was. And I didn't start out really being that academically oriented, you know, when I started my first year. In first grade I didn't speak any English at all. Very little English was spoken in my family, so I had a difficult time the first three or four years just getting used to the, to the language. And consequently, I would have... There would be these... And there was always these kids that they held back. And I was always getting in trouble with these kids. They would beat me up and stuff like that, so that was kind of a traumatic. But then, about the fifth or sixth grade, I really started to hunker down and I mastered the language, and started really improving academically. So by the time I got out of eighth grade I was doing very well. Dr. Gutiérrez: Did the nuns allow you to speak Spanish? Mr. Arriola: No. No. In fact, we had a deal that hurt even more than being hit. They had, they charged us a nickel every time we spoke Spanish. And a nickel back then, boy, I tell you, that was a whole days'.... There was a lot that we could buy with a nickel, and it really hurt. So, they would take your money. And boy, that made an impression on me. I didn't... So you know, it's unfortunate, you know, that... Well, the bad, bad thing was that you started looking down at your language. And then you would go, for example, I used to go to the, you know, go to... My, my barber was my godfather and I would go in there. His name was Bruno. And I remember I would go and everybody in the barber shop would be speaking Spanish. And I used to think, gosh, these people are never going to get anywhere because they are speaking the wrong language, you know. In school they tell you not to speak this. So, I had a, as most of us, I guess, Chicanos growing up in that time, I had a very negative image of my own culture and language. So, when I got into high school I decided that I was just... Because I was not athletically inclined. So I just decided that I would really focus myself and, and try to be, to really get top notch grades and get into a good school and make the best of it. My father and mother had never... Well my mother actually was about, few, few, one semester just short of getting her high school. She had to leave, I think, in the last year. She was a senior. But my father only went to about the fifth grade, and so, I thought, you know, I, I need to really, I made a decision for myself that I really needed to, to study hard. And, and that's not to say that my parents, I mean, they were very, very smart people. My father with a fifth grade education, he was, you know, he was successful and he worked in the construction business. He was in the fence business and he did well. Dr. Gutiérrez: That's what he did for a living? Put up fences? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. He sold fences actually and he worked with, with companies that would install the fences. He would, he would sell them, and then, they would... And also houses, and then, they would resell them to mortgage companies. And so, he would do well. Dr. Gutiérrez: We're talking about residential chain link Mr. Arriola: Chain link. Dr. Gutiérrez: not, not rancho fences? Mr. Arriola: No, no. Chain link fences... Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: ...and, and standard houses. I remember when I was a kid I would see him type with the two little fingers, you know. He never learned how to type, but he would do those contracts and, and study blueprints and all that stuff. So he got along well. Not a spectacular, you know, kind of success, but he did ok. Dr. Gutiérrez: Can I assume that your older siblings also went to Catholic
school? Mr. Arriola: Every one in my family except when we started, I think the very young ones, like from Ricky and Eddie and George, they didn't. They just went to public school, but everybody else. I'd say about seven of us. Dr. Gutiérrez: That was a big load on your, on your father. Did your mom stay at home; did she work also? Mr. Arriola: My mom always worked. She was, that was one of the things that, that I kind of regretted because she was a, a, not a registered nurse, but she was, maybe she was an LVN or something, but she helped out at the, at the hospital. And so, she was, she was gone a lot. And I remember that my older sister used to take care of us and she would baby-sit. And I remember I'd be out on the front porch waiting for my mom to get home late at night so that I wouldn't miss her. So, it was, it was a struggle, but she always worked. And then after she got out of the doing that, she became an encyclopedia salesperson and she... I don't know how many encyclopedias we had, we had at home, but we had Pions of them. And I used to read them all. And she would go around to teachers and people. And she was very good at it. She, and she felt like she was really helping people out because she was getting these books and they could help with their homework. And so she was very dedicated to it. And she got good commissions on those sales. So, I was pretty proud of her. Dr. Gutiérrez: The transition to public school, how was that for you? Mr. Arriola: Well, uh it was interesting because I found out that the public schools were not that good because I... There was like about thirty of us, I think, in my eighth grade class in elementary school. And of those thirty, about fifteen graduated in the top five percent, ten percent of our senior class, so I found out that, hey you know, that this, we got, we got a better training than, than the, a lot of the people, at least the Hispanics. I don't know if the Anglos were different, but I found out that a lot of them didn't have the preparation. When I went into those classes, I knew a lot of the stuff in, in the sciences and in the math. And so, I was able to do well in chemistry and all those courses. But I found a lot of these other kids that had been in the public schools just hadn't gotten the, the same kind of background. So we were, we were fortunate in, even though, you know, it was a pretty regimented experience also. Dr. Gutiérrez: Now this, this Sacred Heart Church school, was that a Diocesan school or you know, parish school or is that an order? Mr. Arriola: It was the Oblates here. Dr. Gutiérrez: Mostly Mexicano students? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. What happened is there was, there was two elementary, two Catholic schools in Edinburg, St. Joseph's and, and Sacred Heart. And historically, the Sacred Heart was Hispanic, Chicano and, as, you know, St. Joseph's was all Anglo. But once in a while there was a few that would cross over. Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow. Mr. Arriola: And a few from our area would cross over there. Dr. Gutiérrez: So the Catholics also maintained their segregated school system? Mr. Arriola: Oh yeah. They were very segregated, yeah. Very segregated. Dr. Gutiérrez: I knew that the churches and the Masses were, but I had no
clue that you had two separate... Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...private schools. Mr. Arriola: There was some that... I remember there was one guy, I'm trying to think of his name. He was an Anglo kid. And he's the only one that I ever knew in our, in my class. And why he came I don't know. I think his father was, he wanted him to learn Spanish or something, but we couldn't speak Spanish. I don't know what the reason was. And then... Dr. Gutiérrez: Maybe he was expelled from St. Joseph's. Mr. Arriola: He could have been. And then, one of our guys, I remember, went over there. But he was really more Lebanese than he was Mexicano, but his mom was Mexicano. But no, it was, it was segregated. And it wasn't until later, I think, when we got Bishop Madeirios that he said, "No." In fact, he closed Sacred Heart and everybody had to go, then Spanish and Anglos, had to go to St. Joseph's. And I was... Dr. Gutiérrez: That's recent? Mr. Arriola: Well, Madeirios came in, gosh, I don't remember. Sixties, I guess. Something like that. Dr. Gutiérrez: Oh, ok. Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well still... Mr. Arriola: Yeah. It was not... Dr. Gutiérrez: That's recent. Mr. Arriola: ...it was not that, so we did have that. The same thing with the, like you said, the congregations, you know. Dr. Gutiérrez: So St. Joseph's still functions today? Mr. Arriola: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's got, it's got an elementary school, yeah. And now it's, I guess it's about half and half. Hispanic and Anglo. Mostly, probably more Hispanic than Anglo. Probably about sixty percent. Dr. Gutiérrez: They go all the way up to the eighth grade? Mr. Arriola: Eighth grade, uh huh. And the other one is shut down. It's closed, been closed for twenty years. I don't know how long it's been closed. The church is still very active, but the, but the school is just, just there. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, what was some of your better subjects or worst subjects in high school or interests or teachers or experiences or athletics or clubs? Mr. Arriola: Well, I was, I was into the sciences, but I was also into literature. And I, I really liked chemistry. I had some good experiences there. In fact, it was, I think it was, his name was Calderon, also the professor, and it was Jaime Calderon. Anyway, he was, he was very inspiring. I had Mr. Cantu who was the math teacher. It was, the Hispanic teachers were just getting in to the high, to the high school. There was not too many of them, but the ones we had were pretty good. Also, liked literature. I, I, I started a, a poetry publication there and we called it The Corridor. And I was the editor and we had all the students. I was also on the publications. I liked journalism and we had the Bobcat News. And I served as assistant editor there. Now, that was an interesting story because I wanted to, I wanted to write. And I went to the counselor and she said, "Well, you can't get into this journalism class because you have to have... You have to know how to type." And I said, "Well, I, I'm going to take a typing course during the summer." She said, "Well, you have to make an "A" or you can't get into this class." So I went one summer and I remember the bus would pick me up, take me to the high school. That summer school was at PSJA [Pharr-San Juan-Alamo]. It wasn't being offered because there was not that many students so they consolidated them. Every morning they'd pick me up, take, bus me over there to school. So I made an "A" and I walked in there. I got into the class and I found out I was the only Hispanic in the whole class. And nobody else knew how to type. And so, I ended up typing most of the stories. And everybody would come to me and they made me the assistant editor. Dr. Gutiérrez: She did you a favor. Mr. Arriola: She did me a favor and... Dr. Gutiérrez: But wow. This is, so even in high school you still had... Now what year was this? Mr. Arriola: This was, well, I graduated in '66, so this must have been about '64, somewhere around there. It was pretty bad. That same... And I can't think of her name, that.... I think I blocked it out of my mind. But that same counselor really messed me up when I was trying to go to college because.... I, I graduated as the salutatorian of my class. The, the guy that graduated ahead of me... And the full name, his full name was Paul Fagg, F-A-G-G. He, he only, he only, he had like a 98.7 and I had like a 98.5, something like that. It was just two tenths of a point. Well, she personally took him to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. She flew up there and introduced him to people at her own expense because he was the son of one of the English teachers there. And when I went in there to, to get counseled, she told me "Why do you want to go to college?" I told her, "Well, I want to get a career and everything." And she said, "Well, you don't need to go to college. You know, there's jobs, you know." And I said, "Well, I have, you know, I think I have the grades and..." "Well, your grades are OK." So, she said that I should go to Pan American. Well, I did go here for a semester, you know. And, but I wanted to... So I had to do it on my own. I sent off letters. I sent off a letter to, to Baylor and they accepted me. And, and the only reason that I, that I looked at Baylor was because they had a good journalism program that I had heard about. And I was, I was interested, you know, in journalism. I was interested in sciences too, but I, I wanted to express myself a little bit. And I thought that I could express myself better in communications than, than in chemistry. Plus, I also wanted to gain more confidence because when I was in high school I wasn't that sure of my, of myself. And so, I wanted... So I started taking a lot more speech courses and things like that where I could get, be a little bit more outspoken because I was a pretty quiet person. You know, other than the stuff that I did through National Honor Society, Junior Historians, that kind of stuff, I really didn't have an opportunity to, to speak out or to say much. So that, that's what interested me. Dr. Gutiérrez: What happened that you got college in your mind? Did your parents put that in there or was it always a given in your household or you met somebody? You, you said you had an interest in the journalism stuff, but still... Mr. Arriola: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...wanting to go to college is a different story. Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Well, my mother was always very interested in all of her kids getting an education. And she was always, in fact, you know... She had almost gotten her high school and she, she had been very diligent about her work. She, she lived way out there in the rancho and a lot... It would have been easier. Her mother would tell her, "You don't have to go to school." You know, "Stay at home and help." You know, "Clean up the house." But my mom always wanted to go to school. She loved school. Dr. Gutiérrez: What rancho was she from? Mr. Arriola: She was out there north of San Manuel. I mean, it was some ranch out there. I don't know all the details, but I, I've always wanted to go back and research all that, but I haven't started. And her, in fact, one of her, her cousins, the, the Cantus, they had another ranch out there. And they had a lot of, a lot of cattle and stuff, but her family was very poor. And, and she had told me, used to tell me about how they would, on the holidays, their, their cousins would kill a big cow or something and they'd have a big party, and then they'd invite them over. So, she used to look forward to those. But she would, she would make it a practice to go to school every day. And she didn't ever want to miss, even though she didn't have good clothes or whatever. So, she wanted us to, to be the same, so she would encourage us. And actually out of all my brothers and sisters, I think only two did not get a college education. So they are all kind of; they all kind of did well. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, how did you find out about Baylor, that they had a good program. And who were you to decide what was good or what wasn't? Mr. Arriola: Well, what, what, what happened is that when I got into that journalism, into the newspaper there at the, Edinburg, there was a teacher by the name of Harry Quinn and he was the editor of the Edinburg Daily Review. And since I was the only one really working there, everybody else was, I mean, I was the only one typing and writing stories. Everybody else was just, it was kind of a social thing. So, I... When you looked at the paper, like there might be twelve stories, like six were mine. So, so he took a real interest in me. And he had worked for the Associated Press and, and he used to tell me about some professors at Baylor. One was named Dave Cheavens. Dr. Gutiérrez: Cheavens? Mr. Arriola: Cheavens. C-H-E-A-V-E-N-S. And the other one was David McHam. And David McHam... Dr. Gutiérrez: How do you spell that one? Mr. Arriola: M-little C-capital H-A-M. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: He was a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, which is, of course, in the field, that is the top school of, if not the country, the world in terms of journalism. That's where, you know, it's kind of like MIT is for engineers, you know. It's, that's Columbia. So I was most interested... Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that's who started the program. Mr. Arriola: That's who started the program. Dr. Gutiérrez: There was no such thing as journalism before. Mr. Arriola: That's right. That's exactly right. Well, in Missouri they had the McNeill School of Journalism, but. So, he would tell me about these guys. And Dave, the Cheavens fellow, was big in the wire services and, you know, the cutting edge of journalism. And, and so, I took an interest in it and I kept, kind of filed it in my mind and said that would be a good program to go to. Because, you know, somebody that knows them personally. But the other thing that helped me was I was involved in this Junior Historians and they had this essay contest that they would do every year. And there had never been an Hispanic that had ever won first place in the state. I mean, anywhere in the state of Texas. And what would happen is the University of Texas history professors were on the panel and they would read your essay. And they would give out three awards every year for the best essays and they would be published in this Junior Historian publication which is part of the Texas Historical Commission. And I was always interested also in history. I always wanted to know, you know, what happened. And I would go to the library to check out history books. They always had these Anglos with their feet on dead bandidos, (bandits) you know. And they would have a rifle and they would have their foot on top of some dead bandido, you know. That's all you would see in the books. You know, either the history of the lower Rio Grande Valley and.... It's always how they killed all these bandits. And, and then they would showcase like, like they were lion trophies or something. I mean, and so, I, I said this can't be all there is to it. You know, there must be something else. And so, I always wanted to write or do some research on that. So, I decided, since I had... At one time I wanted, like most of the Mexicanos that go, go to parochial school, I wanted to be a priest because that's what everybody encouraged you to do, you know. So, I was still caught up in that. And so, I wanted to find out what was the early history of the church in, in South Texas. And I spent about a year and a half and I went to, on my own, I was just a little kid, I mean, I was in high school.... And I got on the Valley Transit Bus and I went to Brownsville. I went to the diocese. I went to a couple of little, you know, not museums, but church archives that they had over there in the diocese. And I was reading through all of this stuff And so, I wrote a, I wrote an essay about the early colonization of South Texas by the, the church. The Franciscans that came back and actually were here in 1519 when Lazaro de Pineda crashed his boat out here into the, into the mouth of the Rio Grande. They call it the Rio de la Palmas. (River of plam trees.) And then he was rescued. And then, followed by the French, Father Calumet, the French priest that came from Canada. And Bishop Odine and all these guys. And they sent a bunch of French-Canadians down here. And they are the ones that brought the Immaculate Conception Church in Brownsville. In fact, part of the interior of the walls was from the mast and parts of the ship which is still, this, this is interesting. And then, it talked about the Oblates and how the Oblates were big time... Of course, the Oblates taught us. They were missionary priests and how they were really big in Texas. And I kind of chronicled all the, the sequence of events and talked about their struggles. And, you know, some of these priests would, they would get on their little donkey or horse or whatever and they would go out. And some of them never come back. They would go out in the brush and they would never be heard of again. They would just disappear, killed by some marauding Indians or something. But I was impressed by their dedication and they all always set up a little school and they had the little church and the school. And so, I, I wrote about it. And it won first place. And I remember I went to, my hist, my, even though I was a good student and I was in Honor Society and all this, there was only two Hispanics in the whole Junior Historians. Myself and this other guy. And so, the professor, of all names, his name was Price Thrall. Dr. Gutiérrez: Thrall? Mr. Arriola: T-H-R-A-L-L. Like in bondage, you know, like a slave. I always remembered that name. But anyway, he was the, he was a teacher. And he was, he was shocked that I had won. And all of the other, because they're, all of the other people in that class were like from well to do families. And in fact, one of the, one of the girls was Cathy Baker. Her family was big here. In fact, they had big, you know, huge ranches and all of that. Later on she went into the movies or something. She was, she was on some television series. But anyway, all of these people, they didn't expect Hispanics to do anything. They didn't. So I won that award. I went to Austin, I remember, and they introduced me and they gave me this Stephen F. Austin medal and they gave me some books. And I won a hundred dollars, which was, my family was real excited about that. And... Dr. Gutiérrez: You were a junior or senior? Mr. Arriola: I was a junior, yeah. And then I, I got to visit the University of Texas and I was very impressed with it. And I said, "Well, I want to go to college." And I thought about that school and, but then, I always kept rethinking that, that Mr. Quinn was telling me that I had a career in journalism, that I would be good. And so, later on I ended, I, I ended up going to Waco which was the, the.... I guess it was meant to be. Dr. Gutiérrez: Before we go off to Baylor, did I get you straight? Quinn was your teacher, but he also was the editor of the local newspaper? Mr. Arriola: Uh huh. Dr. Gutiérrez: At the same time? Mr. Arriola: At the same time because what would happen is that journalism programs weren't very big there at my high school. So he would teach a class and since he was the editor, he, he'd take off. I mean, the paper was not that big, so he... In the afternoons he'd be over there teaching and in the mornings he'd be working on the paper. Dr. Gutiérrez: So what did this lady have to do with letting, the gatekeeper, letting people into journalism when this guy was the teacher? Mr. Arriola: Well, that's the thing. The counselor didn't really communicate with the prof, with the teachers. She, she was a very racist person and if she could keep you out of anything, she would keep you out. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: There was no... And also they didn't, they never had any Hispanics in that thing. So I don't know that Mr. Quinn actively recruited anybody, but when I did get in there and he saw what I was able to do, he.... In fact, when I remember when I came back to Edinburg, he was still alive then and we worked together on their bicentennial thing. We just started back where we were before. I mean, he was just a, he was, he was one of those guys that was... I, I don't think he was, you know, racist or anything. He, he was really just a kind person whereas this lady went out of her way to, to target you. And obviously she did to many, many people. Dr. Gutiérrez: Uh huh. Mr. Arriola: Bad element in that, in that school for a long, I don't how many people she damaged. Dr. Gutiérrez: All right. When you get to Baylor, no drinking, no smoking, no dancing, Baptist, so this is just another world. What was that like? Mr. Arriola: Well, I tell you what, when I went over there I remember, I remember because the whole thing is so vivid in my mind. I remember getting on the bus here and I remember my mother was crying because I was the first child ever to leave home to go to college, to go away to college. My sister had gone here to Pan Am and my brother had gone, but I was leaving home. And I had, and I was real close to my little brothers and they were all crying. My mom was crying. And I don't know where my dad was. He was off somewhere. But anyway, I remember getting on that bus, and then, going over to the checkpoint, you know, where they stop you. And the guys, you know, "Where are you going kid?" You know, "Who are you," and all that? I thought, you know, what? Are they going to put me in jail or what? You know, you are so scared. And, and I had never been out of the Valley. That's the other thing. I mean, you know, it was real weird. This is something that's a lot of people... I know you are aware of this, but a lot of people are not, that, like my mom. She had never even been to the, to Brownsville. She had never even been to the beach. McAllen was a long way to go and Weslaco and, you know, Rio Grande City, we never knew about Rio Grande City. We were all in the Valley, but we never went anywhere. So, you just had a little circle where you stuck to. And later on, you know, I was determined that I was going to get my mom to go to... Later on I took her to Mexico City. But that's another story. So, I was on that bus and I get to... First of all I took, to me it seemed like it took days to get there because it's so far away. It was actually sixteen, eighteen hour drive because they, they stop in San Antonio, every little place. So, I got off the bus, it was like early, early in the morning. It was like five thirty in the morning, six o'clock in the morning when I got there. And I was supposed to register that day. And I get to the bus station and there is nothing but Black people. And I said, "Well...." So then I, I had a little money and I got a taxi cab. And the taxi was driven by a Black person and on the bottom of the taxi cab there was a hole where you could see the road. And, and then, we were driving down and all over the place there were Black people. And I had this thing in my mind, I said "Did I enroll in a Black university?" Because I didn't know anything about Baylor. All I knew was what Mr. Quinn had told me and that it was a good school. Then I get there and it's all lily white. I mean, in the middle of this ghetto was a, this prestigious school. And I bet there weren't even ten Blacks in the whole university. I don't know how many Hispanics, the Black were probably the.... But we didn't even have Blacks on the football team back then. Not that I recall. They were just beginning to think about getting... As a matter of fact, we don't... I, we might have had one. And, of course, there were very few Hispanics. You could, you know, maybe thirty or something like that. Dr. Gutiérrez: You'd never met a Black person before? Mr. Arriola: Well, I had met a Black, there was a, there was a Black family, well, there was a couple of Black families in, in Edinburg. The West family and the Jacksons. And, and they've been, they're very successful people. Ralph Jackson was a super bright guy. He, he's an ophthalmologist here. But I didn't have... I didn't know them personally. I just would see them at school. And, and then, I never had seen that many. And that, and also at the time, Waco was segregated. So, for example, you would see them at the bus station and you'd see them, but you would never see them like, like if you went into, to eat somewhere like the corner drug or whatever. They wouldn't let them in. And so, it wasn't until 1969 or something that after all this racial violence in L. A. and everywhere, that the Waco leadership unilaterally desegregated the restaurants. But, but most of them were just like, you know, they were porters or you know, cooks or whatever, you know, taxi drivers and things like that. But they wouldn't let them into the restaurants. And I hadn't... Waco had like thirty-five, forty percent of the population was Black, so I was just amazed, you know. It was, it was a cultural shock. That thing was also a cultural shock with the whites because, you know. So, I felt very alone. And, of course, they put me in a room with another Hispanic in the dorm. And, but this guy was like twenty years older than me or something. He had, I remember... What was his name? Nick, I think it was Nick Ramos. I don't remember his last name, but we, he was, had been off to the war. I don't know what war that was back then. Or he'd been in the military. That's it. And then he decided to continue his education. I mean, he was like a physics major and he wouldn't talk. He had all... You'd go in there and he'd say like two words and that's about it. There was a big age difference. So, a whole, probably we were there about a whole year together and we never talked much at all. And he was very reclusive. And there was another guy that, that was down the hall. And, and I remember, we never just, we never really did communicate that well. Anyway, I did get along very well with the professors. Dave McHam. And because I... Once again, I was producing most of the stories and I would work, I mean, I would work fourteen hour days. I would go, I'd go over to the press at night while they were putting the paper together. And I'd be there until three or four in the morning. I was just a, I was just really excited about how the.... And at that time they had the linotype. And those little things would come out and, and then, they'd put them in the thing and they would have to cut the wood in such a way to stuff it in there so the linotype wouldn't move. And the old photographs that they used to do in this machine that would cut little grooves, you know, off of the wire. To me it was, it was just fascinating. So, I was really into, into that. But it was a cultural shock to me. Dr. Gutiérrez: How did the white students treat you? Mr. Arriola: Well, the ones in the journalism class were a little bit more open because there was, there was... In fact I wrote an article for the, for the magazine because I became assistant editor of the magazine there, about how minorities were treated at, at Baylor. And what most, what mostly happened is they ignored you. In other words I didn't, you didn't even exist, you know. You were there, but you didn't exist. And there was a, you know, they weren't mean to you or anything. They were just, because they were very Christian, but you felt like you didn't, you didn't have a presence. Now, in the journalism program most of the kids there were a little bit more open-minded because journalism you have to, you have to be exposed to so many different things and you generally tend to be a little bit more, see a bigger picture of the world. And they tended to be more liberal. And so, I was able to, I was able to do ok with most of the journalism students there. And because I was a hard worker, you know, they respected me. So, that worked out well within that small clique. Later on, Dave McHam, actually he was my best man at my wedding. Dr. Gutiérrez: I assume then Donna is Anglo? Mr. Arriola: Yes. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that must have been a shocker too, both for her family as well as yours? Mr. Arriola: Well, well yeah, that was. I remember that... Dr. Gutiérrez: Because that was like a first girlfriend or...? Mr. Arriola: No, I had another girlfriend. She was, she was the daughter of, of Bonilla here in Corpus Christi, the Bonilla family. And, but that didn't work out. It was, you know, it was, well it's a long story. Anyway.. Dr. Gutiérrez: She was up at Baylor also? Mr. Arriola: Yes, she was up at Baylor. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: And her dad had graduated from Baylor, from Baylor Law School and we met at a, at a, one of these little social gatherings they had there. We, we dated and we were engaged. But, and I remember I even went to visit her family, but that was, you know, she, she was very religious and, and some things. And I, you know, had my own way of looking at things and there was just, and philosophically, you know, it didn't work out Then I met Donna. Like I said, I met her in, when I was on an assignment and she was from Houston. She is actually from the Bellaire area and we got to talk a lot. And we, we were very, had a lot of things in common. She liked to play the guitar; she spoke Spanish; she liked to, she was a singer and she was an artist. And so, but then, I remember when I, when I was introduced to her parents. That was like guess who's coming to dinner kind of thing and that was an experience. They were very, they were very aloof at first, but later on, you know, I, I had developed some interests with, with my father-in-law. He liked football and he liked things like that, and so, we got along real good until he passed away. Well both of them have passed away. But it worked out. But it was a little trying at, at the first. Dr. Gutiérrez: And on your side, did they accept this guera (white girl) Mr. Arriola: Well, not really. At first my sister Elma, you know, she was not too pleased. And then the other thing that happened was that, we were kind of strange. We wanted to get married in the Catholic Church because Donna is Catholic, but we didn't want to get married in the, in the... We wanted to marry, get married by a Catholic priest, but not in a Catholic Church. So, we went to an Episcopalian church and we got Father... I don't know if you've ever knew Father Joseph Znotas. Dr. Gutiérrez: How do you spell his name? Mr. Arriola: Z-N-O-T-A-S. He was big in Austin. But he used to be in Waco. He is a Greek Catholic priest and... Well, Ernie Calderon would know him because he, he did a lot of things in Austin. But he was in Waco and he was head of the Newman Club. We actually had a Newman Club. And this guy was so open, you know. Remember when they had all the ecumenical things and all that? He also counseled us that we should sleep together before we got married so, so we would know whether we were compatible. This is a priest. And, you know, and so, he called the priest over there at the Episcopalian priesthood, St. Augustine, saying we want to get married there. Hey, Ecumenical. So, this was a real shock to my family. I mean, going into a Protestant Church and having a Catholic wedding. This really freaked them out and they went up there and the whole time I think they were in shock, but they came. We had the wedding up there. And then we had Donna's family and they were kind of in shock. So it was most trying event. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, how did that change your, your life, getting married? You were still in school, no? Mr. Arriola: I was still in school. I lacked about a semester and, well, you know, I needed to make sure, now that I was married, I had to make sure that as soon as I got out of school I had to get a job. And... Dr. Gutiérrez: You didn't have a job before? Mr. Arriola: I had a job at the, the school. I was on the Baylor Lariat staff. Dr. Gutiérrez: Is that how you paid for this school because that's
expensive? I was going to ask you about how you afforded Baylor. Mr. Arriola: Well, I had some, I had some scholarships and I also worked on the newspaper, the Lariat, and I got a salary and that's, that was extremely helpful. But I knew that I needed to get, you know, get out of school, graduate, get a full time job, and, and take care of my wife now. And I had not planned to stay in Waco because I had, I had had an opportunity to go work at the Washington Post because they.... Because my professor knew a lot of people there. And there had been a recruiter that had come down and in fact, I had run into several other reporters from the Post when I was down here when they, I would come down. I was involved with MAYO even when I was at Baylor and I would come down. And we had the deal where we painted the Virgin Mary brown and all that. Over here at.... Dr. Gutiérrez: La Lomita. (The hill) [near Mission, Texas]. Mr. Arriola: La Lomita. Dr. Gutiérrez: There was a MAYO chapter in, in Baylor? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. It... Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow. Who were some of the people involved? Mr. Arriola: Well, it wasn't at Baylor. It was in Waco. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ah. Mr. Arriola: And but I became involved in the community because see I wouldn't just stick to, to the campus. I, I got, I went out and I met people at LULAC &[League of United Latin American Citizens&] and the Waco Mission of mutualistas (mutual benefit society). And I would get out in the community. Also because I did... The way I met these people was that during the holidays and in the summers I would work for the Waco Tribune Herald And so, I would do stories and they had... I remember I met these guys and they had a brown Santa Claus. And so, I wrote a story about the brown Santa Claus and he was, he was walking around on the, on the south side of, of, it was the.... We had a Sacred Heart Church in Waco also, and it was right next to University High which is where a lot of Hispanics lived. And they've got this guy dressed up as a brown Santa and he was going around. And so, I did a story for the newspaper. But the paper didn't want to run it. They said, "Well, that's ridiculous." And I said, "Well, this is the story." And the way I was able to get it in is that my professor would also work, we all worked as.... All the regular staff of the Tribune would leave during the holidays. So, so my professor would then, then he'd be the night, the city editor. So we would all sit around like that and I would write headlines and comps and sometimes I would write stories. So, if I would write a story he would run it. And so that's where I met a lot of the, the, the people there, you know, in the, gosh... Steven Espinoza and those guys. Oh gosh. Anyway, so they had a MAYO chapter there and I got involved in it. I, I, I liked what they did, and so, I brought, I remember I brought a bunch of them, Johnny Garibay and all those guys. And I brought a bunch of them with me to the Valley during a break. It was Easter break or something. They all had the long hair, you know, and I had long hair. And we crashed over at my sister's house. And, of course, my brother and sister, my brother-in-law was just shocked, you know, hippies, you know. And so, I took them around the Valley and we went, it coincided, maybe it was not that, but I would bring them down. And one of the events was at the, the La Lomita. And at that time I also met another Washington Post reporter... I don't remember his name, he said "Look..." He said, "Just send me your name, you know, and we have internships." And so, I was interested in that and my professors were supportive and I, that had been my plan, you know. But then I got married, you know, and said well, you know, thinking of survival. And, you know... So I had an opportunity, by being involved in Waco, to get involved in the Community Action Agency program there. And they hired me to be their public relations manager which was a pretty good opportunity for me there. And, of course, it was mostly Blacks in that group, but there were some Hispanics. And that's how I got into a lot of the community. And I got to know a lot of the Black leadership through that program which later really helped me. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, why don't you get us into the politics because I know that, that's really what I wanted to get to. Mr. Arriola: Yeah, I know. Yeah I know. Well, when I, when I was working at the Community Action Agency I would go to all the neighborhood meetings because I would be covering a lot of the stuff for the corporation. And I printed, I published a newsletter and I talked about what was happening at the different centers. And there was five or six centers in East Waco and there were some in South Waco, and so forth. And most of the Black leadership was, was those people were the ministers and they were very actively involved in politics. One of the, the individuals, one of the Black.... Well, when I got to Waco there was one, after I got to Waco there was one Black elected to the, to the city council. A fellow named Radford. Dr. Gutiérrez: What year was this? Mr. Arriola: Oh, this was in, I think about '67, something like that. And... Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, that's spectacular. That's at large elections. Mr. Arriola: Right. Dr. Gutiérrez: He must have been a good Black. Mr. Arriola: Well, that's what he was. In fact, he was like a dentist. And when
he'd go to the city council meetings he would be asleep. He would sleep through all the meetings. He was like eighty-five. I don't know, he was... And he would never say anything, never did anything. But there was this younger Black that was in the Community Action Program, Oscar DuConge. Dr. Gutiérrez: Can you spell that? Mr. Arriola: DuConge like, and I found out later it's up the Congo. I guess that's where the French.... D-U-capital C-O-N-G-E. DuConge. And anyway he was like the director of the neighborhood centers and he was originally from New Orleans and he was a very light skinned Black gentleman, smoked a pipe, very intelligent, had, was totally skilled in Saul Alinsky, you know, he'd been through a lot of training. And he had that Black community very well organized. But he couldn't do anything until this Radford guy left. So then... Dr. Gutiérrez: This is the dentist? Mr. Arriola: No, the dentist was Radford... Dr. Gutiérrez: Right. Mr. Arriola: ...but he was in there and he'd been anointed, you know, by the establishment. So, he couldn't do anything until that guy would leave or something else would happen. Well, that's when I became involved in a law suit. What happened, it started out with, it started out with the school district first and MALDEF [Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund] was involved in desegregating the, the schools. Now, you know, they had passed that thing where you could go in restaurants, but the schools were still segregated, so it was all Black schools and all white schools. And the Hispanics had kind of were in-between the whole thing on the south side. And I had, one of my friends, Pedro Arvizu, who later became very active in La Raza and that thing, he was the lead plaintiff because his kids were, of course.... My kids, at first I didn't have kids and then, when I did they were very young, but he had kids in the school. And he was the lead plaintiff. And so, I was helping him, you know, gather materials and I would go in when he would testify and I said.... And we won that, MALDEF won that suit. And they segregated, desegregated the schools. So, we had at large elections in the city and I said, "Why don't we sue the durned city?" So, we went and got the, the ladies, the League of United Women Voters to give us some money because they would, they had a bunch of real liberal ladies in there. And we got, I think, I think his first name was Dave Richards, Ann Richard's.... Dr. Gutiérrez: Husband. Mr. Arriola: ...husband to be our attorney. And I was one, I was the lead plaintiff against the, the city to sue, to sue the city. See, I had had a very negative image of the city council when the first day I had ever been to a meeting. And what had happened was I was involved in the community and we wanted to start a, a branch library in South Waco because they had branch libraries everywhere, but not where the Hispanics were. And I remember I went to the city council and it was a bunch of parents who went with me. And all that and they had asked me to speak. I was still in college and I got up there and those guys just were mean. They were just rude to us. And the other guy was asleep. And they just, they were rude and insulting and they didn't want to listen to us because it was a ridiculous idea. So I thought in my mind, I said well, I'm not going to put up with this, you know. And, and I always kept thinking about it that they needed to change that council around. And that's what, later on, I had the opportunity and became a plaintiff and we went... I remember I was in federal court and Judge Roberts and Jack Roberts and we won that case and they went to single member districts. It wasn't about a, a few months after that that I ran for city council from one of the single member districts and DuConge ran from his. So we both got elected. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you remember what year this was? Mr. Arriola: This was about '70, well, '75. 1975. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, were you the first Mexican-American to win? Mr. Arriola: First Hispanic, yeah, ever to be on the city council in a hundred and fifty years. Well, let me back up. No. In '75 I ran, but I didn't win the first time. '77 is when I won. Dr. Gutiérrez: So who won in '75? Mr. Arriola: Well, no one did. In other words, what happened, ok, it's coming back to me now. In '75 I ran at large, that's it. And then is when I filed the lawsuit and then in '77 I won. That's when I made it. Boy, it's been a long time ago. And then DuConge got in as well. Then, he became, later on he became the first Black mayor. And I became the first Hispanic mayor later on after him. So, we worked together on a lot of the stuff. Dr. Gutiérrez: Tell me a little bit about the campaigns. I mean the first one at large and how many people got involved.... Mr. Arriola: The first one? Dr. Gutiérrez: ....did you do voter registration? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. The first one was really hard because it was a whole city wide thing and I was concentrating on... I didn't have very much money or anything. I was concentrating on the Black community and, and the Hispanic community and labor. I remember I went out and I, I had good response because at that time we had General Tire and Owens Illinois Glass. And we had some large companies and they were all unionized. And a lot of the Hispanics that had done well there had been in the unions because that was where the better jobs were and so forth. And I remember going to the, the other workers and, and it was a big hall. There was like five or six hundred of them. I got a lot of support and, and help with volunteers. So, but, but the unfortunate thing was that a lot of the traditional yellow dog Democrats, they were the more, more liberal elements in, in Waco. They didn't get really fired up for city council elections. If, if, you know, if it was a state senate race or a president or whatever, governor's race, they would, but on local elections they, they took a low profile and, but you would get some help. But I remember I got wiped out in the like Waco and Woodway and all these affluent neighborhoods. I just got blown away. But I made, I made a fairly decent showing. So, went back for, when I came back to single member districts, there was no problem at all. I, what I did in my district, I, I practically went house to house and I compensated for not having money. I just, I went in there like, you know, like what you normally do and I got all the registration lists. We broke them down. I had team captains. I had a precinct chairman. I had everybody. We had it all organized. And by that time also I was the executive director of the Alliance of Mexican Americans. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was that? Mr. Arriola: Well, what happened is that when I got out of school and I was working at the Community Action Agency there was a lot of interest in getting the Hispanics united because we had like seventy-five percent dropout rate among our kids and so it was really bad then. In fact, when I went to Waco there was only like five or six people with college degrees. Most people didn't have college degrees. And the ones that did were, were like Robert Garibay. He ran the Holiday Cleaners. There was a guy that was a pharmacist and it was people like Ernie Calderon. There was just a few people in the community then that had degrees. And so, what happened is they were starting, they, they formed a partnership. They took the three major Hispanic organizations, Sociedad Mutualista de Jornaleros [name of mutual benefit society], which was a very, very old group; the Waco Missions which is very much tied to the church; and, the LULAC. And the three groups came together and formed an Alliance of Mexican Americans and it was basically, it was on paper. And they had a chairman in each group of seven representatives. And I remember I was, I, I was a member of all of them. I was a member of the mutualista, Missions... I was... In the mutualistas, it was all Spanish there, so I had to really get back into, you know. Because remember when I was younger I had gotten away from stuff And they made me like the recorder, so I had to... There was these old guys that, you know, they had been there since the 1920s or something where they'd talk about how they had formed the mutualista under a tree. When someone would pass away they would pay for their expenses. It was a real interesting group. But, you know, all elderly gentlemen that had immigrated from Mexico, but they were very resourceful and entrepreneurial. They made a lot of money at these dances and functions and things. And then there was the Missions that were more like just church activities. LULAC, well, you know LULAC. And so, I would go to all the meetings, all three of them, so I was a member of all three. And so, I.... And MAYO also, which was kind of an incompatible thing but. Then, I actually drifted away from these and got more involved with MAYO and La Raza [Unida], but then, later on came back. We all came back to the Alliance of Mexican Americans which at that time had, when it started it was kind of very conservative. But then, in the early `70s, like after La Raza [Unida], the, in the '72 election and all that, a lot of us that were in MAYO and La Raza [Unida] went back. And we, and we took control of the whole Alliance of Mexican Americans. We became the leadership then. And so, what we started doing is, it was a non-profit group, we got a 501C3 [nonprofits status] and we started getting, we started getting the programs. And I had, in fact, Ernie was on the board, Calderon, was on the board, and we were very successful. We got grants for child care programs, for drug prevention programs, for.... One that I was really very excited about was, which leads me to this thing, was the tutoring programs. And we started, we got a grant from ESAA to, under Health, Education, and Welfare to, to tutor our kids after school. And we, we got an old church and these kids would come in there. And we would get high school kids that, that were like in, you know, National Honor Society, doing well, come and tutor the little kids, be mentors. And it was a model program. We, we made a big dent in the dropout rates because we started with the little kids in elementary and middle school and by the time they got to high school they were in pretty good shape rather than waiting until they were already, all ready to drop out. I think that's one of the things that I feel best about in my years. We made a lasting impact. And I've run into little kids that were in that program. And I've seen them and they'd tell me "Oh, you were the superintendent of that school." I said, "No, we didn't have superintendents, but I, I, I was in charge of the program." But anyway... Dr. Gutiérrez: This, this is under that Educational Segregation Assistance Act? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: Because after that lawsuit that we won, then we were eligible for all kinds of money from HEW for, to for dislocations and, you know, academic dislocations and all that. And so, we applied and we got all this, this funding. And we had, we had a huge staff. I had like eighty-four people working for me. And I was like twenty-five years old or something like that. Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow. Mr. Arriola: So, that also helped us in our organization because we were putting out newspapers and we had staff to volunteer on the weekends. And so, when I did my first campaign, all of these people were out there working, knocking on doors and I was knocking on doors. And we were registering people. We, we, we, we went and registered people for about a year before the election. We just registered everybody we could think of. We'd take them to the polls. I even had this guy that leased us a church. He was, it was some Protestant church, I don't remember, but he, he.... You know how these guys are all very much into money, and I was leasing the thing. And I said, you know, "I want to keep this lease here. You know, we need some help." But he let me have like seven church buses and we would pick up, with the church buses, pick up people and take them to the polls. And he didn't care about the buses. I guess he cared about his money that he was making on the lease. So, so we won that, that election. And it sent a lot of shock waves into the, the establishment because they ran this guy against me that, they have always had these big like president of the bank, owner of the Chrysler dealership. Those were, those were the people that ran the government, the city. And they were always handpicked and they had picked this guy, he was a big insurance executive, guy named Gray, to run against me. And they didn't expect anything_ They didn't expect us to be organized, toppled the guy and they were shocked. First day the city manager called me and said "Oh, we're so excited that you won." I mean, the guy was just really B.S'ing, you know. And because the city manager was, he was a sharp cookie. He, even though he may not have agreed with people, he, he knew how the whole dynamics were. Because there would be times when the mayor wouldn't, wouldn't even want me to speak at these meetings and the city manager would say, would stop him and say, "Look, he's a council member. He has a right to speak," you know. So he would intervene. And I guess he realized that, you know, I could be very damaging to the whole system, In fact, I was in the beginning because I, I, I didn't like the way I was treated. And what happened was that they... I recall they wanted some contract to rebuild the, the police department facility. And so they were spending millions of dollars on this thing. And I, I wanted to know who their contractor was. And it was this political contractor associates. All lily white group. And I said, "Well, you know, we're getting federal funds for some of this work, Model Cities." I said... And so, I called Washington and I called people up there. I put a halt to the whole thing. And man, they were upset because I just, you know, they, they, they started to ramrod everything, take federal money, do whatever they wanted to do, and not put anything back in the, in the Black or Hispanic communities. And so, I was like a thorn in their side. I mean, they tried to change the charter when I was there. I was there the first year and they tried to change the charter. They wanted to expand it to seven city council members. And I went to federal court, to Jack Roberts, back to Jack Roberts, and I said this would lead to dilution of minority voting strength which had been in this original order. Killed it right there. So, it was not a real good relationship with the other council members from the beginning. Later on, there was some new ones that came on and we had a better rapport. One thing that I, that I, that I learned was that you really had to be on top of everything. I mean, I, I, when they would bring me those packets, I would read every single thing. I would study everything. It was, there was, you know, if you weren't alert, they would just be cramming stuff down and you wouldn't know what was going on. And there were still a lot bitter, bitter racial issues there. Like I remember I got a call late at night and they told me that this Hispanic had been beaten up at the police department. So, I called the Chief, you know, the Chief of Police, and he said "Well, let me look into it." And I went over there and I wanted to meet with the guy. I went in and he was all bloody and beat up. And the chief said he would check into it. And sure enough, we found a tape, you know, like a booking tape, and it showed where the guy came in and the guy had a few drinks and everything. And they were pushing him around and he asked for a badge number. And that's when they started kicking the shit out of him. And one of the lieutenants was over there smoking a cigar while they were beating this guy up. So, I, I asked that these cops be suspended. I had the tape. And there was Internal Affairs, you know, and we asked to suspend them without pay or we want them fired. They weren't going to fire them, so this was suspension. Well, the guy, the guy that did most of the beating up got one day. And it was funny, it, it was, this was interesting.... What's so ironic about this... His dad was one of the fire chiefs. He was so upset that he was suspended for one day for beating up a Mexican that a week later, he took out, from Playboy, he took out pictures of men and women copulating. And he put the Chiefs head on one, and then, his secretary on the other one. So you know what the Chief did? He fired him. Dr. Gutiérrez: Fired him. Mr. Arriola: So he got fired for, for pornography, but he didn't get fired for practically murdering an Hispanic. But as it worked out, it worked out good for us because, you know, the guy got out of there. He was a real bad apple. But this was the kind of stuff that, that we had all the time. I mean, it was... Dr. Gutiérrez: So, how was it that the Black guy got to be mayor before you did? Mr. Arriola: Well, when Radford left, they were, they were, the Blacks were much better organized than we were because they had had the Community Action Agency and they had all these centers and then they the, the pastors. So when single member districts came in, I mean, in "70, well, it was... '75 was still the.... In '75 it was still at large and I ran and, and he ran, but he got in because he, he got in actually because we were, we were showing all this political activity and they were afraid. And, and they felt like well, it's just one. Let's just have one. They already had Radford in there, ok, we're going to get this other guy. He's a little more, more outspoken, but he won't be a problem, you know. This is one guy. Now, when I got in, he was in there too, and that's when they got really... This is when we really.... Because we would work together....upset the apple cart. Although, he still was a little, you know, he, he was still tentative on many things, but on many other issues we worked together. A lot of zoning issues. And so, he did make it at large, just like Radford had done, but he was of a little different temperament. And also, I don't think he would have made it had it not been this, if they would have picked another one like Radford. But they decided to go with him because they felt that, you know, he could pacify us and all that stuff, you know. Dr. Gutiérrez: How do you spell Radford? Mr. Arriola: R-A-D-F-O-R-D. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. So, you get to be mayor. Well, how did that work? Mr. Arriola: Well, that was an interesting thing. Dr. Gutiérrez: Was that an at large election or selected from the council? Mr. Arriola: That one ended up being from the council because what I was trying to do.... One thing I did agree with the charter, when they were trying to change it, I didn't want a mayor at large because I felt that once that, you know, I would establish myself on the council that I could get support from labor. And, and if there was a mayor's election, I felt that it would be more like a senatorial race or a state rep race where there would be a lot of interest and there would be a lot of high profile. And basically I felt that Waco had a lot of poor people, a lot of union people and they were the majority because Waco always voted Democratic. And the people that were running the city were all Republican. And, because very few people voted_ So, I always felt that in a big election where there was a lot of high profile, but we would be able to win. But not the way it was set up because it was at large and they would pick one of the mayors, a mayor from one of the at large members. So I didn't.... I did like the idea of an at large mayor and the single member districts. But it didn't happen that way because the judge didn't, he just kept the same system. Now they've changed them, which is what I wanted to do. They changed it after I left actually. So, the only other way you could become mayor is I was in there.... Let's see, I became, I was in there six years and I became mayor pro tem. The only way you could do it is to support all the other candidates. So, what I would do is I would go and work with other, other city councilmen from other districts. And I have, of course, the East Waco people. There was a young guy that, that I had known at Baylor that ran from the North Central region and I went and campaigned for him. So, I was able to get enough votes to become, selected from among the city council. And by that time the council was really changing. There were, there were a lot more young people in there. There was one guy that later went on and became a state representative. But we changed, and then, we got a woman elected and she was with the League of Women Voters, so the whole dynamics of that council changed. And then, after that, after I left to go to Austin. Two years later they did change the charter and they have a mayor elected at large. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, when did you get elected mayor? Mr. Arriola: In '82. Dr. Gutiérrez: And you served? Mr. Arriola: I served one year. Dr. Gutiérrez: And then what happened? Mr. Arriola: Then I became involved in, in Mark White's campaign. And I, they were really looking... [Bill] Clements was running. And, and they were looking for a lot of Hispanic support. And so, I was able to round up a lot of Hispanic mayors from all over Texas and we had a big gathering. I brought some of that stuff with me here. But this was one of the pictures where we, we sat up an event and had a mayor of ... [Arturo] Guajardo from San Juan and mayors from, mayors from West Texas and little towns like La Grulla and places like that. So I got very much involved in the campaign because I knew Marc Campos. And I knew a lot of the people who worked for, for White. Then, I ended up going to, taking a position in Austin with the Texas Department of Community Affairs. Dr. Gutiérrez: So you had had it with Waco or city politics or... Mr. Arriola: Well... Dr. Gutiérrez: ...the Alianza politics? Mr. Arriola: Well, I, no, I, I still was very active in there, but I felt like I needed to broaden my sphere, you know, and I, and I thought.... Austin was very attractive to me. And I seemed like I was still in a rut there in Waco. I mean, it was the same thing, you know, fighting the same people over and over. Winning, you know, I was winning battles all the time, but I felt like, you know, I needed to, to get more involved in statewide politics. Dr. Gutiérrez: How did your wife help you in all this in Waco before we get to the statewide stuff? Mr. Arriola: Oh, oh. Well, she was very supportive. She, you know, she was out there licking envelopes and helping me with publicity. And of course, she was a photographer and journalist herself. And at the time she was working for Texas State Technical Institute there, and she was like in the public relations department. So they were very political over there. I mean, they, they did a lot of stuff for state representatives and people, so she was really able to help me out. And she would attend functions and events, but nothing that, I mean, she couldn't do any real high profile stuff, but behind the scenes she would help me. Dr. Gutiérrez: So, with Mark White, did you become part of the staff? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. I, I worked, I did some work with the governor's planning office and then I went over... But I didn't like it there because it was too removed, so I wanted to go where the action was and I went to the Department of Community Affairs. And one of the things I really wanted to work with was cities, other cities, primarily the cities in South Texas. And I wanted to work in, in economic development initiatives because when I was with the Alliance of Mexican Americans I did a lot of work on economic development issues. And I got really interested in that. And so, they would send me to Dimmit County and, and Laredo and down here to the Valley. And, and I would meet with the leadership and talk about grants and programs that we had available through community development grants. And, and work with trying to get industry into these towns, like Edcouch and places like that,. Packing sheds, and, you know.... Dr. Gutiérrez: There was no such thing as journalism before. Mr. Arriola: That's right. That's exactly right. Well, in Missouri they had the McNeill School of Journalism, but. So, he would tell me about these guys. And Dave, the Cheavens fellow, was big in the wire services and, you know, the cutting edge of journalism. And, and so, I took an interest in it and I kept, kind of filed it in my mind and said that would be a good program to go to. Because, you know, somebody that knows them personally. But the other thing that helped me was I was involved in this Junior Historians and they had this essay contest that they would do every year. And there had never been an Hispanic that had ever won first place in the state. I mean, anywhere in the state of Texas. And what would happen is the University of Texas history professors were on the panel and they would read your essay. And they would give out three awards every year for the best essays and they would be published in this Junior Historian publication which is part of the Texas Historical Commission. And I was always interested also in history. I always wanted to know, you know, what happened. And I would go to the library to check out history books. They always had these Anglos with their feet on dead bandidos, (bandits) you know. And they would have a rifle and they would have their foot on top of some dead bandido, you know. That's all you would see in the books. You know, either the history of the lower Rio Grande Valley and.... It's always how they killed all these bandits. And, and then they would showcase like, like they were lion trophies or something. I mean, and so, I, I said this can't be all there is to it. You know, there must be something else. And so, I always wanted to write or do some research on that. So, I decided, since I had... At one time I wanted, like most of the Mexicanos that go, go to parochial school, I wanted to be a priest because that's what everybody encouraged you to do, you know. So, I was still caught up in that. And so, I wanted to find out what was the early history of the church in, in South Texas. And I spent about a year and a half and I went to, on my own, I was just a little kid, I mean, I was in high school.... And I got on the Valley Transit Bus and I went to Brownsville. I went to the diocese. I went to a couple of little, you know, not museums, but church n we would solicit some money and there would be loan programs, low interest loans, there was a pecan shelling plant out here in Dimmit County. That was owned by La Mantia. There was a bunch of those things. And I liked the idea of getting out there, meeting the public officials, working on, on economic development issues, getting some funding down into the, into the communities. And that's what I did. Dr. Gutiérrez: Was this the heyday of Cheo Sandoval? Had he already been indicted or run out? Mr. Arriola: No, he was already, he was already gone, yeah. It was, this was in like the '8, '8, from '83 to about '8, '85 and I think he was already long gone. He was, his heyday was in the '70s. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, how long did you stay there? Mr. Arriola: I stayed there from '83 to '85, and then, I took a sabbatical and I went to do graduate work at Harvard. Dr. Gutiérrez: What brought that on? Mr. Arriola: Well, I, it all went back to that counselor. See, when I was in high school I, I wanted to go to Harvard or to UT Austin or somewhere, you know, and Columbia, you know. And she just totally discouraged me, you know. So, I ended up, I mean, went here, you know, a semester, and then, I went to Baylor. But I still felt like I could have gone somewhere else, you know. And I always had that in the back of my mind. So, I was there and I had read about the Kennedy school and so forth, so I made an application. I got accepted. And I got a, through the governor's office, I, they gave me a sabbatical. And, and then, I got a job, they also helped me get a job at, there, Massachusetts with Dukakis. And I worked in the, the, their community, Department of Community Affairs sort of, but it was called the Department of Commerce up there. And so, I was involved in his administration. Not that I was a high level or anything, but because I was in school, so I'd go to school, go to job. But I was at, at several functions where the people that I reported to were involved with him and we were attending and he was a very impressive person, fellow. So, I liked that. I liked what he was doing in, in Massachusetts. And, and I liked, you know, I liked the whole program that they had. I got really into it and did a lot of stuff there. Dr. Gutiérrez: Did this lead to a terminal degree of some sort? Mr. Arriola: Yeah, I got a graduate degree in public administration. Dr. Gutiérrez: What are we talking, Masters or Ph.D.? Mr. Arriola: Masters. Dr. Gutiérrez: Uh huh. Did the wife go and the kids, they are growing already? Mr. Arriola: Well, they, they, they couldn't go because, but they would come and visit me and I would come and visit them. And so, there was a separation there for a long period of time because it was, it was just so expensive, you know. I was able to get some, some major grants and, and, you know, part of a scholarship to cover my costs. But still, living expenses and everything, that's why I had that job. Now really, you were not supposed to work. I never, but I never did tell them, so I don't know what to tell you. I never did tell them I was working. And I would just work it around my classes and get on the subway and go to work and come back and study because I needed the money. But then, when I came back Mark White has lost and everything. And so, I was looking around and I, I thought, I was thinking about going back to Waco because I had, I had started like a, a company there, advertising and marketing company, before while I was helping Mark White out, and we had done very well. We would, we used to do, back in the old days, I mean, that was the precursor to all this stuff you see nowadays. But we were doing commercials for beer companies in Spanish and for radio stations. And, and we had.... We were doing good. And so, I thought about going back and getting back into that business. And I ran into Dr. Navares at a function for Garry Mauro. And he started telling me about all the stuff he was doing. He was, you know, he had only been president about six, five or six years, you know. Now he's going on eighteen, something like that. He's the longest tenured president now, I think it in, in the state of Texas. I don't know. Anyway, he was telling me that he wanted to get the university to get more involved with the cities and the communities. And, and I started thinking about that. I said, "Well, you know, it's kind of like what I was doing with the state. I would work in all the communities, bringing in grants and funds." And, and so, he told me to call him and I did later on. And so I, I came over here and started working here in '87. There was two people in the, what we called the Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, called CEED, and one secretary. And I started there. And then, the guy that was the director left, I took over the program. And, right now, I've got a hundred and fifty people and a four million dollar annual budget. And, back then, it was only a hundred thousand dollars, something like that. So, we built it up. Dr. Gutiérrez: Did you know him before because he's from here too? Mr. Arriola: He's from McAllen. And I, I had met him, but I didn't know him that well. He, he went to A & I, then to Michigan State, then did his Ph.D. at, at NYU [New York University], and then, he came back to the Valley. But his father was a surgeon in McAllen. Actually he was from Reynosa, but during the war there were no doctors here, so he would come over and practice. His dad would practice here. And, of course, he was born here. And so, so we were kind of... In fact now the Provost, it turns out, remember I mentioned the other guy that was in Junior Historians with me? Dr. Arevalo is, he's now the Provost here. He just came back. He'd been in California. What was funny is in high school, my name was Rolando, I go by Rolando and he went by Rudy. And he went to California and now he's Rodolfo. And I ended up Roland, and then I went to Waco. So you can't call him Rudy now, but when I knew him in high school it was Rudy, it was just Rudy. But he is the Provost now. Dr. Gutiérrez: Let me ask you about your surname. Some people start it with an "E"... Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: ...and you spell it with an "I". Mr. Arriola: "I," yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: What's the story here? Mr. Arriola: My understanding of this and I don't know, it, it's a, it's a Basque name. And supposedly the people with Arriola came from the Basque country and they went to the Canarias (Canary Islands), and then, they came and landed up in Louisiana somewhere. And you find a... My wife is into this genealogy stuff, and you find that the Arriola's with an "E" came from another part. And that, and mostly you find that in, in Mexico or southern Spain or, you know. But this is more the Basque orientation. And, and then, one of my professors called me one time and said he had been in Spain and there was a lot of Arriolas in the Basque. He just looked through the phone book with an "I". So, I think that's what the, the difference is. Dr. Gutiérrez: What is leadership? Mr. Arriola: Well to me, leadership is the ability to mobilize resources to achieve a common goal. I mean to me, what I've done... If I've done, if I've had any, if I've exemplified any leadership and... What is able to, to mobilize people or resources and accomplish a goal. And not so much by, you know, being out there at the forefront, but by making, making the individuals feel that what they are doing is important to them. I think that's what leadership is. Dr. Gutiérrez: What's the most pressing issue facing our community today, Mexican American community? Mr. Arriola: Well, I, I think one of the most, that's why I'm in this field, is education. I think that with the way that the world is changing, you know, with technology, that our kids have really got to get a good, very good education. And I see it every day where, given an opportunity, my kids really shine. They shine in all different fields. But unfortunately, for a long time there was no parody. We were out here in deep South Texas. And, and, and it's common in many areas, we are just completely ostracized from the educational mainstream. Now we have finally, because of some lawsuits.... There was one major one LULAC filed, and finally got some recognition through the UT system. And now, we actually have some decent programs. We've got a first rate engineering school here now, science school, science and engineering. And then, we, we gained a medical research center and our kids are finally getting that opportunity that everybody else has. And when we do get the opportunity they really do well with it. But this problem right now is that, for example, we graduate like twelve thousand kids from our high schools here every year, and no more than ten percent end up going to college. And what happens to the rest of these kids? What are they doing? Going to menial jobs for the rest of their lives is just, you know, their income is never going to be very good. And what they are going to be able to achieve is going to be limited. So, I think it's the most pressing issue today. If we could do something and we, if we make a dent in getting our kids properly educated, so it's really going to support. Dr. Gutiérrez: Which is the most effective Mexican American organization today? Mr. Arriola: Well, that's a good question. I think the [National] Council of La Raza has certainly has a high profile and I've been to some of their events. They, they do a lot of policy papers. And [Raul] Yzaguirre has done quite a few things. There's, there's the groups on the business side like National Hispanic Chamber that, you know, are also actively involved. But, you know, they have a different focus, more on the entrepreneurial ship, business development, and, and that kind of thing. I mean, LULAC has pretty much subsided. G.I. Forum is not what it was, you know. There's not too many, I mean, that. There's a lot of these associations, you know, that are like oriented to your different professional groups. But other than the Council of La Raza I don't see too much activity out there. Dr. Gutiérrez: Who is the most effective Mexican American political leader today? Mr. Arriola: Wow. Boy, that's a tough one. I, I don't really see much leadership out there. I see.... Political leadership? I mean, we had Cisneros there for awhile and we just But on the national scene.... Then you've got people like Richardson out there, you know. But they're not, they're not galvanizing, you know, widespread support or anything like that. I don't know what Bill Richardson's.... I don't know what his plans are, but.... I just don't see a lot of .. I really don't see one major leader out there though. Dr. Gutiérrez: What are the underpinnings of tension between Blacks and Browns? Mr. Arriola: Well, let me tell you, I, I got a full education on that when I was in Waco. And, and I think it's still the same thing. I didn't realize a lot of this stuff until I got there. And, and found out how the Blacks felt very sensitive about the fact that they had been out at the forefront all those years with the Civil Rights movement, with everything. And then, then they felt that the Hispanics were kind of marching in their parade. And, and that resources were coming down that were meant for them, the Blacks, and not for Hispanics. They were very upset about that whole thing when the Hispanics started to get involved. This was back in the Seventies. There was a lot of tension because it was scarce resources and it was always, it was always the same. They would throw us these little crumbs and we'd fight over the crumbs. And that was about how it was. And I, I tried to reach out to the Black community by going through their, the different ministers and preachers and we would go to the churches and talk to them and try to, to show that we had a common goal, common interests and that, and that was how we built coalitions. But there was a lot of resentment between the Blacks and the Browns, you know, and there was a wide chasm. It was difficult to, to bridge that chasm except on certain, on certain, you know, high profile issues where we would get together. And, and I don't think it's changed that much. I don't think in the major, like L. A. and places like that, I think there is still the same kind of tension there was in Waco, Texas in the Seventies. I, I don't know that there's been that much bridge building. Dr. Gutiérrez: What are the tensions here between the Chicanos and Mexicans from Mexico? Mr. Arriola: Well, I think one of the things that there is a lot of concern about is that as the continued immigration comes in, especially in the, a lot of the border towns like Brownsville, in wave after wave. And you have the schools being overburdened where everywhere you see there is just like these temporary school houses, temporary buildings, and so that puts a big strain on the, on the local taxpayers. So, I think there's, there's a lot of, that's why there was all this thing about school finance and all that because it highly impacted here. And so, there probably was some resentment that they were putting a strain on the budgets here, and so forth. Also, there are probably in some neighborhoods where the immigrants come in and, and they are next door to other people that have been here a long time, there's probably some tension there, you know. There's, there's still, even though we're all Hispanic, there's still some differences. Lifestyle, approach to things, and there may be some tension there. But I don't see like, you know, a big outcry about it. I don't see any huge public effort. It's in all these kinds of, you know, taking our stuff and everything like that. I don't see that. But there are some of these underlying issues where, where it were to really become massive that it would put a big strain on resources and the ability of the community to, to support their educational system. Dr. Gutiérrez: What was your involvement with, with Ramsey Muniz? Mr. Arriola: Well, I'll tell you. That was an interesting chapter in my life. I, I met Ramsey.... He was in the Model Cities and I was, like I said, I was a member of these different groups. And he was also very supportive of MAYO and I was in MAYO. And I remember the first time I met him, he was at, we were at some community center and he was speaking out. And to me it seemed like that the guy had a lot of energy and, and interests and he wanted to do something. And he had a very comfortable job there, but, you know, he was willing to give it up. And so, I, I, I mean, like I took a bunch of time off just to work on the campaign. I was, at the time which was helpful for me, was that I was working for the Alliance of Mexican Americans so we had a very benevolent group of directors that said if you need to go to the campaign go on. So I did. And then, I went from El Paso to the Valley in my little car and I would be doing all the press releases and I would be calling people, radio stations and, and I would record. In fact, I have a lot of thosespeeches. The guy would record his speeches and I would play them back on the phone to, to the reporters. And so, we got a lot of coverage in the AP [Associated Press] and all of that. Of course, he lost, and then, I got bumped out of the campaign when he got Carlos Guerra or somebody became his press guy for the next campaign. And we all just dropped out of it after that first election because he went on to bigger, greener pastures. Dr. Gutiérrez: Marijuana pastures. Mr. Arriola: Marijuana, marijuana pastures, whatever. And he, he pretty well ignored the rest, the group that helped him in Waco. He just took off. And so, we felt kind of shunned, you know, by that whole thing because we had all poured... So many of us had just given up all our time and energy. And I mean, we were all over in Laredo and Houston at our own expense. I mean, we just, because we thought it was, we were all excited, you know. I'm going to Cristal (Crystal City) with you... And what was the name of that park out there near Austin somewhere? And we had strategy sessions and all that and... But I was disillusioned after that, you know, because I saw the direction he was taking. And I, I didn't really ever see him again. Actually, I kind of remember after he left Waco, I.... He called me one time. He was down here and had a new wife and she was helping him or something like that. And he said, "Well, I'm in McAllen," or something and, "let's get together." And I said, whatever, you know. You know, "Give me a call." And then, the next thing I know he was back in prison, you know. I got.... My professor at Baylor would send me these clippings. And would say, "It looks like Ramsey got back in another jam." Sent me these little clippings. Dr. Gutiérrez: What do you think the legacy of the Raza Unida Party was or is? Mr. Arriola: Well, I think that, thanks to you, I, I think I was... Really changed some of the things that we, you know.... Made a lot of, a lot of things happen for Hispanics in Texas. I mean, because before Raza Unida [Party], I mean nothing was happening. There was very little Hispanic leadership anywhere in this state. You know, maybe pockets here and in San Antonio, you know, Corpus, places like that, but it was all very restrained and very, it wasn't, there was not much change happening. And I know in my life it made a big difference, in a lot of the people that I know. Most everybody that I know that was involved with Raza Unida have gone on to, to have very meaningful careers. And they have been very active. And, and kind of like the mayor of McAllen, [Leo] Montalvo, he was a good, very big in the Raza Unida. And [Jesus] Chuy Ramirez, you know, and those guys, very, very establishment. Most of them are an establishment types now, but it was, it had to happen. And, but it probably wouldn't have happened there if you hadn't taken the, the initiative. And had it not happened, we would had another twenty years of this, at least another twenty, twenty-five years of this very restrictive kind of thing where the Hispanics were not allowed to do much or do anything. So, it totally changed the whole landscape and revolutionized the state. Even though that hasn't been acknowledged, I don't think, very well in the history books. But I think for those of us that were in it, we saw the change. Dr. Gutiérrez: Why did you not return to politics? Mr. Arriola: Well, you know, I, I, after I was mayor, well, when I was mayor, I ran for the Texas Senate. I don't know if I told you about that. Dr. Gutiérrez: No, you didn't tell us that. Mr. Arriola: And I ran against Senator Jones from Abilene. He was this chairman of the Finance committee. I was really stupid. But I thought that, you know, I could, there were some counties in-between and I thought that I could, I could make it a battle between Waco and Abilene. And I could get a lot of, back to my whole idea of get the labor people out, you know. Get the people that, the teachers and, and the people that usually vote in, in Democratic elections, old people that are being pushed around, and at the time, you know, the old people still had a lot of problems back then. In other words, they were not, many of them were not getting the tax exempt extensions on their homesteads. There were a lot of issues. Farmers, there was a lot of problems with the farmers and labor people. So, I was trying to build a coalition. And I had started out with Hispanics and Blacks and I wanted to bond with like teachers and farmers and old people. And I thought that if I built a coalition like the old populist kind of thing that I could unseat this guy who was a very conservative right wing Democrat. And, but I never could raise the money. That's the problem because I was doing, I actually went into his home, home city and I got like forty percent of the vote in Abilene. And I thought that if I could get thirty, thirty-five and win McClellan County, that I could win. And I only had, I didn't even carry McClellan. I got like forty-five percent of McClellan County because I didn't have the money. I didn't have the money for TV. Everything had to be on our old budget. Dr. Gutiérrez: What year was this? Mr. Arriola: This was in, actually it was in '80. That's actually before I was mayor. That's right. I was mayor pro tem. 1980. And so, I just served out my, you know... And I sort of felt like if you were going to be in politics you had to have the big money. And the only way you could get the big money is to sell yourself out. For example, when I came down here I was asked to run against, by Ramon Garcia, I was asked to run against [Eddie] Lucio for the senate. And the only thing about that is that you then are told by lawyers.... There was a meeting of the lawyers and the judges and I was invited to that. But you are not going to have really, you're not going to be your own person if they're going to put out three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, four hundred thousand. I talked it over with my wife and she said, "Well, you're just going to be doing what? I mean, the minute that you stray, that's it." Because... I, I said, "Now if I won the lottery, I would run for office because then I wouldn't be beholding to anybody." And that's the way I always wanted to do it. Dr. Gutiérrez: Literally? You mean that if you win the lottery you would quit this and run for the politics? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: It's still in there? Mr. Arriola: It's still in there because I've thought about Congress here when, when Ruben [Hinojosa] Well, see [U.S. Representative] Kika, Kika [de la Garza] comes out and, and this is like Christmas Day or something.... And announces he's not running and the deadline is February. Now give me a break. I, if you, if you know you're not going to run, tell us a year ahead of time so other people can prepare. But I was interested. Once again, it would have been a money issue I know, but, you know, I, I was interested. But there's no way you can do anything in two months. And the only one that had the money was Ruben Hinojosa and it was from his family with H, H and H [Meat company]. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, the Jewish fellow that ran against him... Mr. Arriola: Well, but I knew he wouldn't win because he, he, you have to be an Hispanic down here. You're not going to.... Raza Unida has done such a good job that there was no way a non Hispanic could win down here. So I didn't think that guy had a prayer, but see, he gave him a tough race even then. So, had there been an opportunity for a year of the effort, maybe fundraising or something, I would have jumped into that thing, you know. Even, I was even considering it without that. I talked to Dr. Nevarez about it. He said, "Whatever you want to do." But I, I just said, "Well, it'll be another Texas Senate race," which I had already experienced. Which is a bitter thing for me because I remember, you know, being out there and, and you just don't have the money and even though you've got a good message, you got good stuff, you can only go so far. And Ruben borrowed, he borrowed like a half a million bucks. Of course, he paid it later, you know. But who could you even borrow half a million bucks from, you know? And he had his stocks and all of that stuff. But I still, you know, I'm still young enough. I think I would be if something were to happen, if I could get the where withall to, to do. I would still be interested. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you buy lottery tickets? Mr. Arriola: Well, that's so farfetched. Dr. Gutiérrez: One last question. Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Why is the Valley so conservative now that you have all this Chicano leadership? We are in charge. And the problems remain, and there are no solutions being proposed by the leadership. Mr. Arriola: Well, you see, what happened is we got political leadership, but we don't have economic leadership. The economic power is still in the Anglo establishment. I mean, you still have people that are here that if you want to get elected you still have to go to them and they have the money. And so, we may have the, the Hispanic faces in the political landscape, but we still don't have the economic power. And that's what needs to change. And that's why I'm still so focused on this education institution because the more people that we can get educated and they can become, get into the, establish themselves economically, professionally, the greater opportunity we have to have economic power. And I think that will make a, a larger difference. But we still, we're still, I mean, we still have, we have the highest poverty rates in the nation here. And although, you know, we got county judges and state reps, there's other people pulling the strings. And that's why we're still kind of conservative. Dr. Gutiérrez: Do you have any comment about any of the things we've talked about or something I didn't ask you that you want to talk about? Mr. Arriola: No. I just think that a lot of those people that were in La Raza [Unida] were very idealistic, you know, and hope they don't lose that sense of idealism because I still am. I mean, I, I may dress differently and have a different, work in a different environment, but deep down I'm still, I'm still fighting the same battles but in a different way. Dr. Gutiérrez: Can you identity who these people are? If you'll just put that up by your face. I'm sure you're going to let us have a Xerox copy? Mr. Arriola: Oh yeah. Well, I, let me see. In fact, I think I, I had a deal where I had some, all of the names because this has been such a long time ago. Let's see here. I know this, this fellow was a mayor from... Dr. Gutiérrez: That's from left to right. You, you're going to tell us left to right? Mr. Arriola: Hempstead County and gosh. I know I put all of the names down on the list. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, just identify the ones you can remember or can recognize. Mr. Arriola: Well see, ok, the next, the next one was a council member in the San Juan, but the one after him is Mayor Guajardo. Dr. Gutiérrez: The third one? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Mayor Guajardo. Dr. Gutiérrez: Arturo? Mr. Arriola: Arturo. And gosh, these two I don't, I can't remember all their names, but I have a news clipping. Dr. Gutiérrez: And who's the one at the end? Mr. Arriola: Well, that's me. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. All right. So you're the last one in that corner? Mr. Arriola: There in the corner, yeah. Dr. Gutiérrez: Ok. Mr. Arriola: But I have a clipping of where all of them, everybody that was at the press conferences are identified. And I had a sheet that identified all of the mayors that were on that committee which was really interesting because at that time what had happened is.... There's a little story about it. When we were, well, when we did this is when these other guys from LULAC and G. I. Forum were endorsing Clements. And so, ours was, really got more of the publicity and, and we were able to get... Of course, Cisneros wasn't in there, but... He didn't want to participate. But it was these other guys from LULAC and, and G. I. Forum... And, and by getting those county mayors together we were able to, to, to give the governor quite a bit of support and he did well in that election. Of course, we lost. He bit the bullet, but.... Dr. Gutiérrez: Are we going to be able to make copies of all of this? Mr. Arriola: Yeah, sure. Dr. Gutiérrez: Good. Mr. Arriola: There was a couple of things here that I, that I was going to mention that I think really stemmed from my being in La Raza Unida was that I did develop an auto.... We were talking about leadership. That was my first real exposure to community organization and having to get out there and talk to people that I never knew, you know. And you couldn't be shy. And so, they would send me out... Ramsey would send me out as an advance person. So I'd have to get all the groups together, organize everything, and, and meet with them. And I learned a lot there that helped me later on when I was on the city council and, and my, my whole life. So I think it served as a tremendous training ground for people. And later on I, like I was recognized here by the U. S. Jaycees for the Outstanding Young Men of America. But a lot of that, I believe, I owe to.... Had I not had that experience I probably would have been a little bit more reclusive. Not that I'm not anyway, but I would be more and probably wouldn't have had so many opportunities to, to get involved with a lot of different organizations. Dr. Gutiérrez: Wow. You know this one of ten Outstanding Young American Men in 1983 by the U. S. Jaycees, you must have been among the, again, the, one of the few Hispanics, no? Mr. Arriola: Right. Dr. Gutiérrez: Like the Junior Historians? Mr. Arriola: Yeah. Yeah_ Actually, yeah, that's right. There's not too many. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, you also mentioned you had those tape recordings of Ramsey's speeches. You know anything that's in your garage that's in your way you might want to put in your archive here because this is basically a.... I'm going to be able to make copies of that stuff We're going to have an archive there of documents. And you need to do something with the stuff instead of just having it in boxes somewhere. Mr. Arriola: I don't know. I've been thinking about that. Of course, Ramsey's such a, turned out to be such a negative person that I, you know, that I said, "Well, you know, just toss the stuff away." Dr. Gutiérrez: No, no, no. Don't you dare do that. Don't you dare do that. Mr. Arriola: But, what he did, on a lot of, you know, he, he would read all those things by Malcolm X and he would weave all that stuff into.... He would just give it an Hispanic twist. And I don't know whether that was original or, or... I mean obviously it wasn't original. He took it off of Malcolm X. But I don't know of any other Hispanic leaders who were doing that at the time, but, but it was, it was good. It was good listening stuff. He got you pumped up. Dr. Gutiérrez: Well, if you're thinking of throwing it away, give it to me. I, I know where to put it. I want to thank you for the interview. Mr. Arriola: Thank you, Jose. Gracias.