Green Street Kid
Green Street Kid

Author: Ricardo D. Palacios

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 148080309X

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Growing up on Green Street in Laredo, Texas, Ricardo Palacios made the wilderness his playground. The woods, the nearby creek, and the vastness of Chacon Creek Canyon transported him and his young friends away from the strife and poverty of the barrio and into the splendor of nature. Looking back on his life, Palacios reflects on seventy years of memoriesfrom his birth through his days at the all-male St. Josephs Academy Catholic school, capturing the powerful camaraderie he shared with his classmates and his experiences playing high school football. He next takes a hard look at his college years, during which he flunked out twice before finally making the commitment to graduate with honors and obtain a law degree. Palacios places his life experiences under a microscope, sharing periods of heavy alcohol use, very stressful years as a rookie attorney, and tales from the trenches about the pitfalls, successes, and failures of his legal practice. He describes his twenty-eight-year marriage, pondering how and why it failed, and tells of wonderful years raising his children on a cattle ranch, with plenty of opportunities for hunting and camping. Green Street Kid is more than the story of one mans life. It is a portrait of the life and culture of South Texas, where the majority of the population is Hispanic and conflicts sometimes develop between Hispanics and Anglos. It is a story of falling down and rising up again.

Tío Cowboy
Tío Cowboy

Author: Ricardo D. Palacios

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2008-08-04

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781603440790

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One of the best tie-down calf ropers ever to come out of South Texas, Juan Salinas grew up on a 15,000-acre ranch near Laredo, with the finest of horses to ride and hundreds of head of cattle to practice on. He roped in Texas rodeos large and small from the mid-1920s to 1935. From 1936 to 1946, he followed the national rodeo circuit, competing from Texas to New York’s Madison Square Garden. At the time, few if any other Mexican Americans competed in rodeo, and Salinas drew a lot of attention. Salinas also operated his family’s Texas ranch, where he ran cattle and raised prize roping quarter horses. In this account of his life and career, Salinas’s nephew, Ricardo Palacios, recounts the many tales his uncle told him—tales of friendship with Gene Autry, going to Sally Rand’s wedding reception, riding on the Rodeo Train, and sponsoring seven-time world champion tie-down calf roper Toots Mansfield. He also narrates life on the range, with his uncle riding across a pasture at full speed, gingerly holding the reins and a thirty-five foot coil of rope in his left hand while swinging the roping loop overhead with his right hand as he chased a three-hundred-pound calf for the throw. The story of Juan Salinas is also the story of the people of Mexican origin who live on the ranches of the South Texas brush country. Strong, rugged, independent, and hard-working, they knew social and economic success that has all too seldom been chronicled. Tío Juan was the family cowboy, the hero, the rodeo star, and Palacios tells his uncle’s story with warmth and admiration. In 1991 Salinas was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He was also named Rancher of the Year by Laredo’s Borderfest and won the Ranching Heritage Award given by the King Ranch and Texas A&M–Kingsville. In 1993, he was inducted into the LULAC International Sports Hall of Fame. These were, Palacios writes, “fitting tributes to a champion and fine additions to his collection of trophy roping saddles, silver trophies, and champion’s buckles.”

Colored Men and Hombres Aquí
Colored Men and Hombres Aquí

Author: Michael A. Olivas

Publisher: Arte Publico Press

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1558854762

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This collection of ten essays commemorates the 50th anniversary of an important but almost forgotten U.S. Supreme court case, Hernandez v. Texas, 347 US 475 (1954), the major case involving Mexican Americans and jury selection, published just before Brown v. Board of Education in the 1954 Supreme Court reporter. This landmark case, the first to be tried by Mexican American lawyers before the U.S. Supreme Court, held that Mexican Americans were a discrete group for purposes of applying Equal Protection. Although the case was about discriminatory state jury selection and trial practices, it has been cited for many other civil rights precedents in the intervening 50 years. Even so, it has not been given the prominence it deserves, in part because it lives in the shadow of the more compelling Brown v. Board case. There had been earlier efforts to diversify juries, reaching back at least to the trial of Gregorio Cortez in 1901 and continuing with efforts by the legendary Oscar Zeta Acosta in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Even as recently as 2005 there has been clear evidence that Latino participation in the Texas jury system is still substantially unrepresentative of the growing population. But in a brief and shining moment in 1954, Mexican-American lawyers prevailed in a system that accorded their community no legal status and no respect. Through sheer tenacity, brilliance, and some luck, they showed that it is possible to tilt against windmills and slay the dragon. Edited and with an introduction by University of Houston law scholar Michael A. Olivas, Colored Men and Hombres Aqui is the first full-length book on this case. This volume contains the papers presented at the Hernandez at 50conference which took place in 2004 at the University of Houston Law Center and also contains source materials, trial briefs, and a chronology of the case.

The History of Barrios Unidos: Healing Community Violence
The History of Barrios Unidos: Healing Community Violence

Author: Frank de Jesús Acosta

Publisher: Arte Publico Press

Published: 2007-03-31

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9781611920482

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This is the compelling story of Barrios Unidos, the Santa Cruz-based organization founded to prevent gang violence amongst inner-city ethnic youth. An evolving grass-roots organization that grew out of the Mexican-American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Barrios Unidos harnessed the power of culture and spirituality to rescue at-risk young people, provide avenues to quell gang warfare, and offer a promising model for building healthy and vibrant multicultural communities. Co-founder Daniel ñNaneî Alejandrez spent his childhood following the crops from state to state with his family. His earliest recollection of ñhomeî was a tent in a labor camp. Later, he was drafted in to the Army and sent to Vietnam. ñFlying bullets, cries of anguish and being surrounded by death have a way of giving fuel to epiphany. This war made as little sense to me as the war raging on the streets of the barrios back home.î He decided that when he returned home, he would dedicate himself to peace. Nane AlejandrezÍs story of personal transformation, from heroin-addicted gang banger to social activist and youth advocate, is closely tied to that of Barrios Unidos. Through interviews, written testimonies, and documents, Frank de Jesus Acosta re-constructs the development of Barrios Unidos„or literally, united neighborhoods„from its early influences and guiding principles to its larger connection to the on-going struggle to achieve civil rights in America. Today, Barrios Unidos chapters exist in several cities around the country, including San Francisco; Venice-Los Angeles; Salinas; San Diego; Washington, DC; Yakima; San Antonio; Phoenix; and Chicago. With a foreword by Luis Rodriguez, former gang member and author of La Vida Loca: Always Running, the book also includes historical photos and commentaries by leading civil rights activists Harry Belafonte, Dolores Huerta, Tom Hayden, Manuel Pastor, and Constance Rice. Mandatory reading for anyone interested in peace and social justice, The History of Barrios Unidos gives voice to contemporary inter-generational leaders of color and will lead to the continuation of necessary public dialogue about racism, poverty, and violence.