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Trabajadores de la Raza in San Diego

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The struggle for Spanish speaking social workers, bilingual pay and mental health services

In the late 1960s a small but active group of people formed an organization known as Trabajadores de la Raza (TR). It started with social workers but soon included probation officers and community members. Various members of Trabajadores took the lead on issues and worked together to accomplish their goals. Trabajadores were on the front line whenever there was an important issue for the Spanish speaking community in the areas of mental health or social welfare.

The organization’s most important accomplishments in my opinion were revealing the lack of Spanish speaking social workers serving the Spanish speaking community and securing compensation for Spanish speaking social workers using their bilingual skills.   [Read more…]

Jesse Ramirez: The First Executive Director of the Chicano Federation

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As we sat down to do our interview, Jesse Ramirez opened the conversation saying “I am a product of the Great Depression. We had to put food on the table so we did everything we could to make money”. He had many stories and memories of various events in the period between the 1930s and 1940s.

Jesse was born on April 22, 1926, in Houston, Texas and raised there. During the Depression he and his brother did various things to “put food on the table”. They sold newspapers and shined shoes to earn a few pennies. He sold the Houston Chronicle for three cents. He says the big thrill would be if someone gave you a nickel for the three cent newspaper and told you to keep the change. On Saturday nights they would stay up late preparing the Sunday paper for delivery.   [Read more…]

Lilia Lopez: From Logan Heights to the United Nations

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Introducing our new series ‘Latinos in San Diego’

By Maria E. Garcia

If you have not met eighty-seven year old Lilia Lopez, wife, mother, friend, feminist and activist, you have missed out on a woman who has influenced many people. She has worked diligently to improve the lives of women, not only in San Diego, but all over the country and Mexico and Europe.

Lilia says that I am responsible for her becoming involved in Chicano issues. While I was a student teacher at Lowell Elementary School in the 1970s, I invited her to attend a meeting with a group of moms. She says that was when she understood the injustices the women were facing. She couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

Lilia did not need me or anyone else to take the leadership role in so many issues that affected Latinas.   [Read more…]

Return to Delano: the 50th Anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike

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By Maria E. Garcia

A few weeks ago, when the United Farm Workers (UFW) posted that there would be a celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike, I posted a simple sentence on Facebook: ” San Diego is anybody going?” Within a few minutes my friend Gloria Serrano-Medina responded with a simple “vamos” and with that one word a decision to be part of that celebration was made.

This would not be my first trip to the Forty Acres, the parcel of land in Delano, California that in 1966 became the headquarters for the United Farm Workers of America, the first permanent agricultural labor union in the United States.   [Read more…]

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