Castro’s presidency bid is a community triumph
So many remarkable moments stood out Saturday as Julián Castro made his case for becoming the next president of the United States. Pride, even more than the day’s picture-perfect weather, drew more than 1,000 people to Plaza Guadalupe to witness that history.
A mother of three Pre-K 4 SA students testified to the tremendous impact that Castro initiative made on her children, and a first-generation college graduate, a daughter of an immigrant, spoke emotionally about how Café College, another Castro initiative, served as her greatest stepping stone.
James Talarico of Round Rock, the youngest current state lawmaker in the Texas Legislature, said that as a teacher at Rhodes Middle School, he hung a picture of Castro alongside other inspirational Latinos leaders, so his students could see them each day.
There was Ashwani Jain, who worked in the Obama administration, who revved up the crowd with a series of lines that began with “Julián believes” and ticked off a list. He believes in a free press, funding public schools, LGBTQ rights, universal gun background checks and climate change. He believes survivors of sexual assault and that families shouldn’t be separated at the border.
There was State Rep. Diego Bernal, who warned all those who might doubt a Castro presidency is possible, that “If you don’t respect us, you must expect us.”
But for me, there were other moments and people, less noticeable perhaps, that summoned the lifetimes of political work that went into Castro’s announcement, events at play long before he and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, were born.
There was Irma Mireles, the Castro campaign volunteer dutifully issuing press credentials.
In the 1970s, she was a member of the Raza Unida Party that pressed for political self-determination for Mexican-Americans. Its members organized to put up candidates in towns where Latino majorities then held few elected offices.
Mireles filed for office, spent about $100 on cards that said she was running for the San Antonio River Authority and got elected.
Mario Compean, who also was in the crowd on Saturday, ran for governor in the last breaths of the Raza Unida Party. They sowed seeds few believed would ever grow.
We can only imagine their emotions of taking in the day’s events, how they must be feeling about what was once seemingly impossible or about those among them who didn’t live to see this moment in American history.
Daniel Meza was there, as was Mireles’ husband Miguel Berry. Rosie Castro noticed others from that storied past: Linda Valdez Cantu, Anna Riojas, Sylvia Gonzalez and Benny Solis. Mireles spotted Rogelio “Smiley” Riojas and Eduardo Garza, too.
In introducing his mother, Joaquin Castro said he often jokes that “of all the people in our family, the one best qualified to serve in public office, doesn’t.”
When she strolled confidentially to the podium to introduce her son as a candidate for president, she was interrupted by a voice that pierced the publicaddress system’s power. “We love you, Rosie,” it said.
The glorious day that took a half-century was her moment, too, and she came to it with grace and generosity.
“This community has raised up Julián and Joaquin,” she said, “and we really thank you for that” — then described him as a son of San Antonio, of Texas, of the West Side and of this country.
I’m not a mother, but I can only imagine how a heart could actually burst with pride.
And it was another woman, María Antonietta Berriozábal, the first Mexican-American woman to serve on City Council and who came so close to winning a mayoral bid, found other words to describe the feelings wafting over Plaza Guadalupe.
“Look what an immigrant brought to this country,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. No one else who has ever run for president has ever evoked a refugee from the Mexican Revolution in announcing his presidency, she said.
Those words are worth remembering.
“When my grandmother got here almost 100 years ago,” the candidate said, “I'm sure she never could have imagined that just two generations later, one of her grandsons would be serving as a member of the United States Congress and the other would be standing with you here today to say these words: ‘I am a candidate for president of the United States of America.’ ”