VOCES

-For decades, Latinos had no political power. Willie Velasquez would change that. With an army of volunteers and with a battle cry of, "Your vote is your voice," they set off to register millions of new Latino voters and change the American political landscape. -That party that ignores that vote is gonna be punished at the polls, no question about it. -Willie Velasquez -- your vote is your voice. -For decades, Latinos in America had no political power. In the 1960s, a new generation nof Latinos emerged.. -It is a time when people of Hispanic descent are beginning to mobilize their strength and are beginning to have impact in the American political process. -Willie Velasquez and a grassroots army of volunteers began a voting revolution. Today there are over 55 million Latinos in America. 28 million are registered to vote. The Latino voting bloc has been called "the sleeping giant." -That party that ignores that vote is gonna be punished at the polls -- no question about it. Latina and Latino voters actually can make and break those candidates. -The road towards Latino political empowerment has been a difficult one. William Velasquez, better known as Willie, knew this. -He was looking for a voice in government for Latinos, and I think Willie was in a hurry and I don't blame him for being in a hurry. I'm glad he was. And as life would have it, his life ended at a very young age. Can you imagine if he hadn't been in a hurry? -Willie died at age 44, but not before he left an indelible stamp on the American political landscape. -Willie started with a couple of concepts. One of them was that Mexican- Americans were underregistered, and we wouldn't be a force until we were reflected in the vote as we were in the population. It was a very patriotic idea -- unassailably patriotic idea. And Willie then kind of grew that into a larger philosophy, which he captured in the simple phrase "su voto es su voz --" Your vote is your voice. -I think we make a contribution, and that, I feel, is what all immigrant groups have done. They are new blood -- new blood that revitalizes the democratic process, and I think that's what's gonna happen in the next 30 years, that the Mexicans, although they are cotton-pickers and they are laborers, they are making this country true to its ideals. And that means that even the humblest of its citizens have a right to elect their representation. -The thing about Willie is that if you had a chance to listen to what he had to say, you would walk home feeling empowered. -On a shoestring budget and with big dreams, Willie started the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project here on the West Side of San Antonio. -As I walked in, there was a folding table and a phone, and that was it. And the first thing that went through my head was, "What am I getting myself into here?" -I got a call from Willie. He says, "Hey, I hear you're back in Texas." "Yeah, yeah." And he says, "I'm looking for a field director. You think you might be interested?" -"Yeah, that's what we're gonna do, Andy." He said, "We're gonna build the biggest voter-registration effort Mexicans ever seen." He said, "We're gonna be around at least 10 years," and he said, "When we're finished, every politician will respect and fear our vote." -And he has a map of the United States on his wall, and he says, "Look, here's what we're gonna do. We need to build these little committees all across the Southwest." I'm standing behind him, and I'm saying, "This guy's crazy. How are we gonna do this?" And he says, "And we need someone to go out on the road and organize all these projects." And he's looking at me. I plotted West Texas for two or three months, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, southern part of California -- on the road, without coming back to San Antonio. -It was communities where we knew nobody. So what do you do? You go and you find the first Mexican restaurant you can find. -One city limit to the next, I would organize in one town, and then I said, "So, do you guys know who the leadership is over here in Eloy?" "Yeah, go talk to so-and-so and so-and-so." Okay. -You knew that, one, you were not paid very well. You knew, two, that the mission was for people that were very committed, and, three, that your life was gonna change. Willie was on the road all the time. I mean, for Jane and the family, it was hard. -People sacrificed -- not just us, not just my family, but whoever worked for Willie, they worked just as hard. -We worked in 132 cities. -Willie had created a committee of local leaders. He had them on his Rolodex. Well, multiply that 25 times, 50 times, 100 times, and you got a damn impressive Rolodex. -We used to count Latino voters manually. -Literally, we'd get the list of registered voters and just count every Spanish surname, "One, two, three." That's how we did it before the days of computers and stuff. I remember the big leap forward was a Texas Instrument hand calculator. Like, we thought, "Whoa!" -We had the first computer, a TRS-80. They called them Trash-80s after that. -Big old IBM processing operations with all, you know, the cards, and you'd load the cards, but back then, it was state-of-the-art. -And the disk -- these big disks only had 64k, but we had one of the first ones in town, and that's what we were using to crank out these reports. -Look, the computer tells us the registration rate and it tells us the turnout rate and tells us the rate for the rest. -You have to remember, this is all, you know, at the time, very high-tech. -That's an IBM. It isn't a Mexican computer. And we use that information. We decide where to go. -Willie didn't know how to use any of this. You know, we were the ones using it. But he would get excited when we'd press the button and this report starts being printed. You know, he says, "Oh!" like it was like magic, you know? -San Antonio in the 1950s. Willie grew up in a Mexican-American barrio on the West Side. He was the oldest of five children. -My dad was a butcher, and he worked at Swift & Company on San Marcos Street and my mom worked in the sweatshop over at Fine Silver, and my grandmother worked at the cigar company, and that was all in the same barrio. -Weekend family gatherings were a tradition on the West Side. Unlike the other kids that wanted to play, Willie would sit with the men and listen to their stories and got his first taste of local politics. -They would sit around outside in the backyard of my grandmother's house and talk about what was happening in the community, what was happening in San Antonio. They're the ones that got Willie interested in what's going on in the community. -San Antonio had long been segregated. The West and South Side of town were among the poorest in the country. -We really saw the Latino vote suppressed throughout the early part of the 20th century. Mexicans lived on one part of town and Anglos lived on another, and they didn't mix, politics included. -In 1929, the League of United Latin American Citizens, LULAC, was organized to protect Mexican-Americans from rampant discrimination. -Latinos were ignored politically. During those times, we had this emotional barrier of "you don't count. You don't matter. You're not American." And in addition to that, in Texas, you had the poll tax. -Imagine all the disincentive to vote that exists today, like it's too hard or you can't get there, but add on top of that you have to pay. It was specifically designed to make it difficult for poor people to vote. They just didn't have the money. -After the stock market crash in 1929, work was scarce. -The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. -American authorities targeted Mexicans for deportation. Between 500,000 to 2 million Mexicans were deported to Mexico. The program was called repatriation. -The Latino community was literally deported during the Great Depression. Whether you were a citizen or not, they didn't check your papers. Raids happened, and it is devastating. -When World War II broke out in the 1940s, William Velasquez Sr. was ready to fight. Although Latinos were segregated at home, they were not segregated in the war and fought side-by-side with their Anglo countrymen. -After World War II, we saw Latinos come back from fighting the war. They had this newfound political awareness, where they go, "We are over there risking our lives, fighting against fascism, fighting against Nazism, and we come back home to South Texas and we have to use a different water fountain?" So there was this awakening. -You have the returning GIs. They're getting jobs, you know, because they're veterans, and that's the basis of a rising middle class. -We moved to the North Side. That's as far north as Mexicans can move. -When we first moved in there, we didn't have hot water. We definitely didn't have air conditioning. When it rained, it would flood terribly. My dad belonged to the old school. He wanted to take us to be migrant farm workers, and my mother put her foot down and she said, "No, these children are gonna get an education." -Willie, along with his brothers and sister, attended Catholic school, a financial burden for the family. -When we were able to work, then we paid the rest of it. We paid our own way from freshman year on up, because there was no way they could pay it. -In 1962, Willie enrolled at at St. Mary's University. He still lived at home and worked long hours to put himself through school. His free time was devoted to his fixation with politics. -Willie took part in all kinds of in-the-field exercises, working with candidates and the campaigns and so on when he was studying here. -Willie became a member of the Young Democrats and volunteered on Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez's re-election campaign. Congressman Gonzalez saw potential in Willie. In his second year at St. Mary's, he received a telegram offering him a summer internship in Washington, D.C. The year was 1964. Mexican-American youth were entering a cultural renaissance, finding their voice in American society. Across America, the Civil Rights Movement was at its pinnacle. LBJ would sign the controversial Civil Rights Bill. Events were escalating in Indochina. Soon, Latinos would be drafted in disproportionate numbers to fight the war in Vietnam. Willie and a handful of Latino students would spend the summer of 1964 as government interns in Washington, D.C. Willie got the coveted opportunity thanks to his mentor, Henry B. Gonzalez, the first Latino congressman from Texas. -In the mid-'50s, he was leading the fight against segregation. You know, San Antonio desegregated in large part because of his actions on city council. And then when he goes to the state senate, he leads a famous filibuster where he's able to block the segregationist legislation that the Texas senate had passed. You have to remember, this is all in reaction to Brown v. Board at the time, 1954. So in '56, a lot of Southern states, including Texas, are passing laws to say, "You know what? We're gonna even make it tougher. We're gonna pass laws that reinforce segregation." Henry B. made sure that most of those bills were defeated. So that is heroic. -Willie was assigned to work in the U.S. State Department. He wasted no time in taking in the sights and sounds of the city. Willie would spend a great deal of his free time with his mentor, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez. They would talk about new ideas and politics. -I think any politicized young Latino coming out of the West Side in that generation came up through Henry B., and Henry provided a pathway for a lot of Latinos like Willie. -Willie successful completed his internship, packed up his old beater, and headed home to finish the year at St. Mary's. In early 1966, the poll tax was eliminated. To spread the good news, Willie and other student volunteers took to the streets, knocked on doors, informing the people they did not have to pay to vote anymore. -Generally, you know, we did everything that folks would do for campaigns -- bumper-stickering, door to door, registering people. And you also look at the fact that there weren't many Latinas involved in politics because many folks thought that, you know, politics was a man's game and it was rough and tumble. And so it was hard for Latinas to be involved. -Willie began voter drives using classmates, volunteers, and even family members. -We'd go out, and just like a bunch of kids, you know, put up signs, just knocking on doors -- "Can I put this sign up?" you know? -I think the first voter-registration drive that he had, he talked to me about how important it was for me to go with him. I remember knocking on one door and talking to a woman, and I asked her if she was registered to vote, and she said, "No." And I said, "Would you like to register?" And she said, "Well, you have to ask my husband. He's the one that decides that." And I asked him if we was registered, and he said, "No. Pa' que? It doesn't make any difference." And I realized how unconcerned a lot of the Hispanic people were about voting. -In May of 1966, Willie graduated from St. Mary's with honors. 2,000 miles away, in Delano, California, events were unfolding that would have a profound effect on Willie and those of his generation. Each year, entire Latino families travel all across America to pick fruits and vegetables. -What makes it really difficult living the life of a farm worker is that, one, it's a hard life. It beats you down. It's hard working under the elements, and you're mistreated. I saw my parents being mistreated in front of me because of who they were and because of the work they did. And then it doesn't pay much. My parents never experienced what a sick day was or sick leave or health benefits or vacation days or a 401(k) till the day he left, his last day in the fields. -We would take off in the summer, and we would go state-to-state and clean the sugar beets, take out all the weeds. And then we did tomatoes.

Speaks Spanish

He had a big truck, and every family would get, like, a little piece of the back of the truck, and you would take your blankets and some clothes and things like that. When you're a migrant worker, you live wherever they give you to live. My dad said that, you know, there wasn't enough work here in San Antonio. You know, like, he wanted us to be on the road all the time, wherever there was some kind of crop. So we ended up in Kansas. We were, like, the people from Texas and we still spoke Spanish, and none of them spoke Spanish, because it was mostly Anglos that lived there. I had a lot of problems living in Kansas because I was ashamed of being a Mexican. I even bleached my hair blonde. I have pictures of me blonde. In Kansas, I really felt discrimination, I really felt how it was to be non-white. And that's why I wanted to be white, because maybe I wouldn't be discriminated against. -In 1964, a temporary worker bracero program created by Congress during World War II comes to an end. U.S. farm workers were now demanding the same wage of $1.40 an hour that was paid to the government-sponsored braceros. In May 1965, 80 flower pickers in McFarland, California, went on strike led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. 6 months later, over 1,000 grape pickers would walk off the fields in Delano. A wildcat strike in Texas followed. Willie, returning from his second summer internship, joined the farm-worker cause. The farm workers' strike inspired alienated Mexican-American youth in their own fight for justice. -Resistance has many forms, and the resistance to our exclusion in society, the denial of our just rights included redefining ourselves and renaming ourselves. -They tell us, "Oh, you're a Spaniard," you know, because to be a Spaniard means you're closer to be a white man, you know, and we're not white, you know, and we're not Spaniards, because we're mestizos, we're Chicanos, we're mixed people. -Because we'd never been taught our history, suddenly we started looking back at all the history of prejudice, discrimination, and brutality against our people. -I think there was two sentiments. Anger was certainly one of them. But the other one was a passion to lift up our people based on the belief that we could. What that showed was you could act and do something and make something happen. Everything from California to Chicago to Texas -- influenced by the African- American Civil Rights Movement, influenced by antiwar movement, influenced by the Chicano movement. All of that came together at that moment. -Our parents, when they saw us Chicanos, you know, out on the street, the idea of protesting was sort of like, "What?" Men saw that as an embarrassment, that we'd go out on the street and protest. "Why are you putting yourself down by calling yourself Chicano?" You know? That was the first time I had heard "viva la raza." -Viva la raza! -And it was all new to me. I felt, you know, like an outsider because I hadn't been exposed to it yet, but it was very exciting. -There was a gulf, a generational gulf between our parents' generation and us. You know, the idea of become part of this society, assimilate, learn English, and so forth. So here we are, the generation, and we're saying, "Hey, man, we want to learn Spanish. We want to be bilingual. We want to preserve our culture. There's nothing wrong with that. We're Americans, but we don't have to give up Mexican culture. We don't have to do that." -We were a very unique generation. We were the first ones who didn't think we needed to be assimilated, unlike everybody else. And we didn't think we had to be grateful to Anglos. We didn't owe them a damn thing. And so we had all that resentment. Now, mind you, we're also the first generation that is, in large numbers, graduating from college. We'd gather at Woodlawn Lake and sit there on Sunday afternoons or Saturday afternoons, kind of like a little study circle. There were a lot of things that we were aware of, but the most horrible thing was that we felt we couldn't make any change until we became active. "How do we do this? How do we become active and effective?" At St. Mary's University, they're all getting together to talk about SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. They're aware of SNCC. At the time, we're all students, you know, reading about what the African-American community's doing. So the black Civil Rights Movement is very important. -It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to be politically active. You paid a price. You paid a price with your job or beatings and jailing. -In 1963, Latino political gains were put to a test when five Mexican-Americans won all city-council seats in the small Texas town of Crystal City, They soon faced a backlash from the Anglo political establishment. -In the smaller towns, you had the Texas Rangers that would come and stand there for the election. You had people who couldn't vote because their chief source of income, their employer had already said, "You either won't go to the polls or you will vote this way," and people didn't have options. -Didn't you lose your job just after the election results were announced? -Yes, sir, I sure did. The Texas Rangers refused to recognize the election. Governor John Connally forced the Rangers to hand over the keys to city hall to the newly elected city council members. -The Rangers were especially brutal relative to Latinos and Latinas in South Texas. My first face-to-face encounter was when Willie Velasquez and Jos\ �ngel Guti\rrez went down to Rio Grande City to defy the injunction on the farm workers. Before we got there, one of the organizers, Magdaleno Dimas, had been beaten badly by Rangers. That was my first encounter, again, face-to-face with something the Rangers had done. -All five council members, facing constant intimidation, were eventually forced out. After years of educational neglect, Mexican-American youth began walking out of high schools and cities throughout the Southwest, protesting the inferior education. -My dad, when he came home, and he was watching the television, and they showed the news and they showed Willie, when he got him, he told him, he says, "Why did you do that?" He said, "Just leave things alone." Willie kept explaining to him, "No, we have to demand better rights. We have to demand better education," and it was a big, big argument at home, 'cause we had two entirely different points of view. -This was a sign of the times in the moment. We all felt the same way, that rage. We analyzed the world the same way. We need to find openings. And we couldn't find any, so we then created our own. -Jos\ �ngel Guti\rrez, Ignacio "Nacho" P\rez, Juan Patl�n, Mario Compean, and Willie Velasquez became known as Los Cinco -- the five. Together, they founded and created MAYO, the Mexican American Youth Organization. MAYO would grow to become one of the most important activist student organizations throughout Texas and the Southwest. -We're not focused anymore on farm worker issues. We're still concerned about that, but now we're focused on a whole range of other things -- political representation, conditions of the schools. -We were a little army. We were ready to go. The minute that the call went out from the central leadership, people would respond. We were thousands, so it didn't matter if the Rangers came with a company of 8 or 10. When you're facing thousands, doesn't matter how many bullets you got. That took a lot of political courage, but we did those things. It was Willie's final summer internship in Washington. On his last day, as he said goodbye to his mentor, Congressman Gonzalez, he was shocked to learn the congressman disapproved of his activism and would not help the farm workers in any way. -The breakup between Henry B. and Willie was like a breakup between father and son. It was not just a generational difference. You know, Henry B. was training Willie to essentially take his place. -From that day forward, Willie and Congressman Gonzalez would never see eye to eye. Along with his hectic MAYO activities and now with a full-time job running the Mexican American Unity Council, a new self-help organization he and a MAYO colleague started, Willie was quickly becoming overextended. He was alarmed with the growing nationalistic and militant rhetoric at the MAYO rallies. The establishment political machine also took notice, especially Henry B. Gonzalez, who began a steady attack against Willie and his activist colleagues. -I picture my own role as having a responsibility to smoke out and to expose these false and mistaken voices of hatred. -He went after everybody. So, Willie wasn't just his only target. The whole movement, he went after. -On their march toward self-determination, Jos\ �ngel and his MAYO colleagues pushed for a third political party. Willie was against the idea. Jos\ �ngel and MAYO prevailed. A third political party, La Raza Unida -- the united people -- was finally a reality and began running candidates throughout Texas and the Southwest. -Willie didn't believe that a third party could make an impact on the nation or the state, because he felt that the United States had always been a two-party system and that that was not ever gonna change. -When MAYO transforms itself into a political party, that's really when Willie left. I mean, he did not believe in the Raza Unida party. -The Raza Unida party had an eight-year run in Texas and California. Initially successful in small communities, it did poorly in statewide elections. Facing constant attacks from Congressman Gonzalez and enduring harsh criticism from his MAYO colleagues, Willie had reached his breaking point and submitted his letter of resignation to the Unity Council. As 1970 approached, Willie, beaten down, was without a job. Then, Jane Sarabia, a VISTA volunteer, came into Willie's life. -We started dating. Everything that we did -- we went to meetings, and then you always ended up at a bar, you know, and listened to music, and all you ever talked was what was going on. I remember the first time we danced. I was a crazy dancer, I loved to dance, and he was just really, like, stiff. And so I would just dance around him while he was, you know, just doing his thing. -A year later, Willie and Janie got married, and they would eventually have three children, Carmen, Catarina, and Guillermo. The next two years would take a toll on Willie. He took a job at the Southwest Council of La Raza in Phoenix in hopes of building a nonprofit voter-registration program. -We were blocked in the early years, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure against all the Latino organizations from Henry B., from the IRS. The national institutions were very concerned about the left politics of the Chicano movement. A move to Washington didn't get Willie any closer in receiving his permit. Willie and Jane, with a heavy heart, returned to San Antonio. -The FBI had all the protest movements of the day infiltrated. They were destabilizing us. It's no accident, in my view, that when Willie Velasquez tries to create Southwest Voter, his organization was delayed. No one waits five years for a 501(c)(3) authorization. -In 1973, the future looked bleak for Willie and Jane. They moved in with Willie's parents to save the little money they had. On July 24, 1974, like a miracle, The Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project was now a legitimate national nonprofit organization. The battle to empower Latinos had begun. -We are going to try to consciously make an effort to really make this country stay true to its basic ideals. -By 1975, Southwest Voter did what most thought was impossible in such a short time, having a presence in five states. But the fruits of their labor had still not paid off. -He said, "Look, I'm doing all this registration. People are getting registered, they come out to vote, but they don't win." -When LBJ signed into law the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Latinos were not explicitly included until 1975. So in 1975, we see the inclusion of Latinos in addition to African-Americans. And what this did, it brought safeguards against any abnormalities in voting procedures. -Even with a new law, many of the 254 counties that make up Texas had illegal gerrymandered voting districts. -Not only did they have total disregard for the law, but then they had purposely taken the Latino community and cut them in four pieces and create their own districts. You were never going to win. It was designed for you to lose. -To protect the rights of Latino voters, Willie teamed up with lawyers from the nonprofit civil rights organization MALDEF -- the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. -When the Voting Rights Act is extended to language minorities, that's when, essentially, the lion's share of voting-rights lawsuits occur. That creates a new wave of activity. -The first county that I went to speak to, they had not redistricted since 1898. -They don't want you there. They don't want to draw the district. The law's very clear. Then you tell them, "Then I'm gonna sue you." -Threats were always lurking for this risky work. -"If you know what's good for you, boy, you'd be out of town by sundown." -I was coming down the stairs. I saw these two men in a pickup truck, and one of them was running his hand through a rifle. So when I got right next to his door, I told him, "That sure is a pretty rifle. I think my daddy would love to have one of those. Excuse me." And I got in my car and I backed off very calmly, I turned very calmly, and I'm telling you, when I hit the next street, I stepped on that pedal so fast. -We went from zero representation to three, four, five, to six elected local officials immediately after the lawsuits were settled. -It was the first time we had ever elected anybody to anything, not even dog catcher -- you know, anything. So there was a lot of firsts -- first city councilperson, first person on the school board, first mayor. Yeah, over and over again. -Willie looked at those small places where there was an overwhelming majority of Latinos, but they had no representation whatsoever. -One of those communities was Rosenberg, Texas, in Fort Bend County, known as the home to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1930s, and discrimination against Latinos was common by both businesses and Anglo residents. -We could buy our medications, we could buy our snacks, but we couldn't sit at the counter. It was just understood -- We could not sit there. -We thought, "Okay, that's how it is." You know, they tell us not to stay in here, we won't, and we accepted it because I don't think we knew better. It didn't feel right, but we didn't know what to do. -Through the years, Mexican-Americans running for office had failed miserably. Southwest Voter answered their call for help. -I remember Willie went in and just started asking around, "Who's doing something?" and Dora Olivo's name came up and literally went to her house, knocked on her door. -People come into your life, and Willie was one of them, clearly one of the ones that came in through this community, like a lot of other communities that he went to, to teach us about being effective in the political process. -We were looking for people like her that we could build off of and that was part of our strategy and that was part of offering the best our people could provide and offering the best the voters could get. -Right here, this was our first voter-registration office. We actually had a base to work from. -There were so many who had never registered. They just never thought that it made a difference. They thought that their votes didn't count. They just thought that, "Why bother?" -Like an old-fashioned hoedown, the Fort Bend County Coalition was born. Folklore dancing, plays, and popular bands were used to entice residents to register and vote. -At one point, we were all so energized, I don't think we could've been stopped. -A lot of the people that came together, the ones that made the tamales, that helped us with the fund raisers just to bring people together. -I mean, it was just a tremendous registration drive. -Women worked very hard in those drives. The role that women played was instrumental in making this thing happen. -Once you create a system where the minority community can realize their vote, they get excited, and they come out and vote. -And their efforts finally paid off. The first Mexican-American in Rosenberg's history was elected to city council. -That's what Willie did in a lot of these little communities. He started that snowball that then gathers its own momentum. -We've gotten Hispanics elected to the city council, to the county court, we've got judges now that are Hispanic. It's all better now. -Eventually, Dora threw her hat in the ring and ran for state representative and won. From teacher to state representative, Dora spent 14 years in the Texas House of Representatives. What comes to me is, "Okay, what was it all these years?" And for me, it changed me. It changed me. That's what Willie did for us. He gave us hope. If you have hope, everything else comes. -Presidential campaigns had ignored the Latino vote in the past. By the 1960s, with the numbers growing, they started to take notice.

Speaking Spanish

...Senator John F. Kennedy. -The Kennedy campaign was the first generalized national effort of reaching Latinos in presidential politics. In 1956, we saw the same thing -- Eisenhower-Nixon mobilizing middle-class Latinos in California, but it never went beyond California. In looking at the Nixon campaign in 1960, he had to come to a fork in the road, and he had to decide, "Am I going to keep cultivating this Latino relationship I've had for decades, or am I gonna break away from it?" So he seriously considered that, but ultimately he said, "I can't go with this ethnic angle in the campaign." -Texas Senator John Tower was the first Republican to actively court the Latino vote. -I was in the advertising business, and John Tower's staff calls. He wants to reach out to the Latino. 92% of all Latinos voted as Democrats, and John Tower thought that it was gonna be a real, real close election, and he said, "The Latino vote may make the difference." I didn't know where to go. Somebody said, "You got to visit Willie Velasquez." -All kinds of people came into that office -- Democrats, Republicans -- and we welcomed everybody, because we wanted everybody to know what we were doing. -I called on Willie, and he received me with open arms. And we would go to the Esquire bar, and he spent countless hours with me. I said, "I don't know anything about politics, but I did know how to make a good message." -

Singing in Spanish

We came up with "El Corrido de John Tower." and we filmed him in the Latino communities all over Texas. In the end, it paid off. He got 37% of the Latino vote, which was an amazing breakthrough. -John Tower.

Speaks Spanish

-San Antonio had not had a Latino mayor since Juan Segu^n in 1841, who was forced out at gunpoint. In 1977, the Justice Department forced San Antonio to create more equitable single-member voting districts. Many political observers had their eye on a young mayoral candidate, a Harvard-educated West Side son, Henry Cisneros. -The moment we all thought that Henry Cisneros could be mayor of San Antonio, Willie put together some of the biggest voter-registration drives in San Antonio. He knew the kind of turnout that we needed to have and the percentage of support that Henry needed from the Latino community. He went to work knowing that that little organization could have an impact on who would be the first Latino of a major metropolitan city in the country. -It was a perfect storm. It was just right for the perfect candidate to come out to bring out the largest percentage of Latino vote ever. -Because of that turnout, he was able to win that race with over 60% of the vote. That was quite a feat, and we can see from Henry's example that Latinos do care, that they do what to participate. Willie was a big part of that. They worked together hand in glove and created history. -I owe a lot to Willie, Southwest Voter, and all of the activists of that era. I owe a lot. You know, you work the way Willie did, and then someone else gets the spotlight. But I tried my best never to forget and always to remind everyone in my circle where we came from, who we had to be accountable to -- the community -- and people like Willie, who make it possible. -The following year, Willie accepted a semester fellowship to teach at the Institute of Politics at Harvard. While there, he met the former governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, not knowing that their paths would one day cross again. -I think that it was a wonderful opportunity for him, and being in the place where everybody wants to be was something that, I think, got him going again. -A rejuvenated Willie Velasquez returned to San Antonio, ready for the Southwest Voter's national debut. He would bring in an unprecedented gathering of national Latino political leaders and kick off a major voter-registration drive. The nonpartisan historic event attracts both Democrats and Republicans. -We felt that we were ready to do something significant, and a lot of people were of the opinion that it was time that we organized one big push to demonstrate our capability in voter registration. We're talking about going forward. We're talking about registering one million people. We're talking about getting something done that had never been done before and also bringing this to the attention of the country, and I think, to a great degree, it was successful. -It was a beautiful event. The Republicans were so excited about the turnout, about Bush coming, and then you had the Democratic event in the evening when Ted Kennedy came. There were so many people that they had to keep on opening rooms. -The main person that was running the event was talking with the advance person from the White House. Not thinking, she says, "Oh, we'll make sure we get him a flight. He'll make it, you know, at this time and be able to come in." And they said, "Ma'am, we have Air Force One. We'll be okay." -With the success of the John Tower campaign, Lionel Sosa was attracting more and more Latinos to the Republican party. -When Ronald Reagan hired us, we, again, did 35%-plus on a national basis. -But this year, that isn't saying much. -We didn't want to turn them into Republicans. Our strategy was let them stay Democrats, but let them vote for this man just this once. -Vote my conscience, huh? Okay. President Reagan. -Every year that the Republicans reached out, that percentage went higher and higher until it got to 44% with George W. Bush. -I've learned about the culture, a bit about the language, and a lot about the Latino character. -There was an effort to connect with Latinos on the fiscal responsibility point of saying, "Less government means more money in your pockets. Mexican-Americans, you guys are hardworking folks. Maybe we can find common ground here." -We are now emerging into the arena of national politics. I can tell you that if one were to put it on the scale of who did a better job, the Republicans did an extraordinary job targeting the Hispanic community, designing an approach towards getting it, and going after it, and then doing it well. -California and Texas alone have 28% of all the electoral votes you need to be president of the United States. Add on Illinois, add on New York, and you've got a situation where Mexican-Americans, Hispanics, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and all of us have, an extraordinary opportunity to have impact. That party that ignores that vote is gonna be punished at the polls -- no question about it. -He really believed that at this moment in history, it was called upon us to do these things, which, in his mind, was not radical at all. In his mind, this is the way immigrant groups had always succeeded in this country. And that's the way they lifted themselves up. -If you want to know if we're going to be successful, then simply look at your own ancestors. Did they do it? Did they do it? And were they successful? Well, my God, if they did it, and if they were successful, we're gonna do it, and we're gonna be successful. Thank you. -For the next four years, Southwest Voter would be in full throttle, registering thousands upon thousands of new Latino voters. In 1987, Velasquez was being considered as Deputy Manager for the Dukakis campaign. It would have been his first job out of the nonprofit world. On his way home, a stop was scheduled in New York City for Willie to receive an award at a foundation conference. -The dinner was that night, and he said, "Andy, tell these people I can't make it. I'm just not feeling good." And I thought, "We're here in New York City. You just have to go get the award." I thought, "Something's up." -He looked bad, you know? He said, "Man, my ulcers." He said, "No." Man, you know, he looked jaundiced, you know? -I had been waiting while the doctor was talking to Willie, and so then they brought me in, and he said, "Willie has terminal cancer." And I wanted to be brave for Willie, so I didn't want to cry in front of him. -Willie was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer and given four months to live. He lasted four weeks. He took this family picture four days before he died. -We were at his bedside a long time until he passed. Yeah, he died in my arms. So... -Along with family and friends, over 2,000 mourners attended Willie's funeral, many of them political leaders from around the country. President Ronald Reagan sent condolences. Democratic Presidential Candidate Michael Dukakis delivered Willie's eulogy. -Willie died with no health insurance, because he believed in Southwest Voter so much that when it got into hard times economically, he sacrificed his salary, and he sacrificed his benefits, and when he got cancer, he had no health insurance, 'cause he had put it back into Southwest Voter. That's how much he believed and paid a personal price. -It is so important for people today to understand the impact that Willie's work had. He was a visionary who could see 40 years ago what we're still talking about today, that you need to get out there and register Latinos to actually vote if they're gonna have any impact in the political process. -Willie Velasquez coined the term "su voto es su voz." Back then, they were working with clipboards and going door to door. We still use that method, but we're also using the new methods -- through cellphones, through computers, talking to voters, and educating Latinos about the issues. So while the methods have changed, the heart of community organizing with Latinos has not changed. -The city of Mission in South Texas is the nerve center for the Libre Initiative, a conservative voter-registration organization. Their purpose -- to introduce Latinos to the Republican party. -There are millions and millions of conservative Latinos who need to rise up and drive a different conversation and drive a different set of ideas. We're gonna connect with over five millions Latinos in this election cycle alone. The folks who align with us, we want to make sure that they're out there getting mobilized, voting. You know, if Willie was around today, I'm more than certain that I would have accepted the call to collaborate and build bridges together. -10 years after his death, Willie is posthumously given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. -No person in modern America who has run for public office wherever Hispanic-Americans live has failed to feel the hand of Willie Velasquez. His appeal to the Hispanic community was simple, passionate, and direct. Su voto es su voz -- Your vote is your voice. -It's the highest honor a civilian can receive. After three decades, as ideological enemies Henry B. Gonzalez finally spoke of Willie. "He was an enormous contribution," said the congressman, "This presidential recognition is well-deserved." -I have no doubt that in the years to come, and I believe sooner rather than later, that one day we're gonna watch a Latino or Latina with his or her hand on the Bible, getting sworn in on the 20th of January as president of the United States. And when he or she does, I hope that they'll be thinking about Willie and his work. -To discover more about Willie Velasquez, visit pbs.org/voces. "Willie

Velasquez

Your Vote is Your Voice" is available on DVD. To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. This program is also available for download on iTunes.