Arizona’s only Hispanic governor was a ‘dreamer’
This is about the “dreamers” I know.
I’m talking about the young people in the news who were brought to the U.S. as children by their undocumented parents.
About 800,000 of them are living in this country temporarily shielded from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by then-President Barack Obama in 2012.
President Donald Trump recently overturned DACA, then tweeted that unless Congress acts to pass legislation addressing the issue by March 5, that these young people will be deported.
Even though he ordered DACA shut down, Trump later proclaimed: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!”
Yes, really?
It’s a question I’ve been asking for years. As a journalist, playwright and longtime advocate for dreamers, I’ve come to personally know many of these “good, educated and accomplished” young people.
Take Dulce Juarez, who earned an undergraduate and master’s degree, performed in some of my plays, and later worked for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona as an advocate for immigrants rights. She is now a stay-athome mom, a U.S. citizen, who still advocates for immigrants.
There’s Antonio Valvodinos, who once tried to join the military but was rejected because he was undocumented.
Soon after, he volunteered for Team Awesome, an ad hoc grassroots voter turnout group in the West Valley whose legendary work quintupled Latino voter turnout in Phoenix City Council’s District 5 and helped elect Daniel Valenzuela that district’s first Hispanic council member. Tony, who has DACA, is now president and CEO of La Machine, which organizes political campaigns nationwide.
These are the other dreamers I know. But dreamers come in all ages.
About decade ago, I traveled to Tucson to meet a then 92-year-old dreamer named Raul H. Castro.
Castro was born in 1916 in Cananea, a once-thriving mining town in the Mexican state of Sonora. Two years later, Castro, his parents and first of his siblings crossed the border at Naco, Arizona. They were all undocumented.
According to Castro, as they crossed, “The immigration inspector said, ‘Castro family, you’re in the United States of America now, the rest is up to you.’ He was right. That’s the way we wanted it.”
Castro grew up in Pirtleville, the
“Mexican town” built by the Phelps Dodge smelter in nearby Douglas. He eventually graduated from Arizona State Teachers College (now Northern Arizona University), became a naturalized citizen, a lawyer, a judge, the first Latino Pima County Attorney, the first and only Latino governor of Arizona, and then U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia and Argentina.
After retiring from politics, Castro practiced law in Tucson for more than 40 years.
He was 98 when he died in 2015. In 2008, I wrote a play about Gov. Castro. I called it “American Dreamer” because I’d always thought of him as our first dreamer.
What made Castro’s story all the more extraordinary is that he accomplished so much of what he did long before the Civil Rights Act and long before the days of DACA.
What Castro had in common with today’s dreamers is that he grew up quintessentially American in every way, shape and form.
And despite not having been born here, he was willing to fight to defend his right to be called an American — not unlike like all the dreamers I know.
What Castro had in common with today’s dreamers is that he grew up quintessentially American in every way, shape and form.