| BARRIOZONA |
| Bilingual Community Expression Published by the Hispanic Institute of Social Issues |
| The chronicle of the contemporary struggle for the defense of immigrants in Arizona would be impossible to understand without taking a look at the profuse and difficult work of Salvador Reza, an organizer in the strictest sense of the word. BARRIOZONA presents a three-part interview where the history and the man give a just dimension to a social movement that many have usurped. |
| Photograph by Eduardo Barraza / BARRIOZONA |
| Salvador Reza |
| An Organizer from the Root |
| Interview by Eduardo Barraza FIRST PART |
BARRIOZONA: How did Salvador Reza begin to become
involved in the labor’s scene of Phoenix, Arizona?
SALVADOR REZA: Here in Arizona I have been involved
specifically in the rights of people. In May 1992, we
passed through Arizona in the Peace and Dignity
Journeys run. The run departed from Alaska toward
Mexico City —and to Teotihuacan. I was participating and
started running in San Bernardino, California, in a
“tributary route” that joined with the main Peace and
Dignity route. When we crossed through Arizona, I
perceived that there is much energy in this land; there is
a strength emanating from the land itself, from nature,
involved in the labor’s scene of Phoenix, Arizona?
SALVADOR REZA: Here in Arizona I have been involved
specifically in the rights of people. In May 1992, we
passed through Arizona in the Peace and Dignity
Journeys run. The run departed from Alaska toward
Mexico City —and to Teotihuacan. I was participating and
started running in San Bernardino, California, in a
“tributary route” that joined with the main Peace and
Dignity route. When we crossed through Arizona, I
perceived that there is much energy in this land; there is
a strength emanating from the land itself, from nature,
but also from the Indigenous Peoples. That is what especially attracted me here, not so much the abuses against
our people, those are everywhere. I decided to stay here, joined the organization Tonatierra, and continued to do
the same I used to do in California, but now from a deeper perspective, rooted in the indigenous principles.
BARRIOZONA: What is your main motivation in the work you do?
SALVADOR REZA: Well, for me the main motivation —and it didn’t begin this way— is that I have been always
involved against injustice since I arrived to the United States, since in my first school recess at a school in Ysleta,
Texas, I was swatted three times with a wooden board for speaking Spanish. Since then I have it in my inner
being: that what’s going on is not fair. But what motivates me deeply is to see that we don’t understand things in
a deeper way, our memory has been stolen from us. For example, there is many people struggling to obtain an
immigration reform without seeing that in reality —just like as we are now flying in the airplane* and you look
below— there are no markings on the mother Earth; there are markings like the rivers, the seas, but no markings
drawn by men. Therefore, we have to understand that in reality we are struggling for the freedom to travel
throughout our mother The Earth without having barriers, because in the same way birds like the swallows
migrate from North to South and South to North, we’ve done the same for thousands of years, and due to the fact
that some sick minds invented nationalism, we are told that a nation begins here and another ends. In reality,
they have forgotten that we have our natural Peoples that live in harmony with the land, where we have been for
time immemorial. We are descendants of these Peoples, and that is something that is never spoken nor mentioned
in demonstrations and rallies, and if you talk about it or you want to say something about it, the pro-migrant
leaders tell you, “no, don’t talk about that, that is something from the past, it doesn’t have anything to do with
this,” when in reality it is the root of everything. Since the Papal Bull Inter Caetera was proclaimed (in 1493), in
which indigenous virgin lands were granted to European countries, Europeans brought their emergent nationalism,
even though most of them were under feudalism there was an emergent nationalism, and they imposed it here. So
all this motivates me, but more than anything, you cannot be just fighting for political ends, you have to go deeper
than that.
BARRIOZONA: Once you were established in the city of Phoenix, what was the first set of issues you faced, and
how did a more specific work begin?
SALVADOR REZA: More exactly, the problems began when we started receiving complaints from the people, for
example, from the school Marcos de Niza, in Tempe, Arizona, following orders from the Superintendent, the school
began requesting legal documents to the people, when in reality, that is protected under Plyler vs. Doe Supreme
Court Decision, legal documentation cannot be requested from the children by school districts; they cannot
interfere with the education of young people and children. So we went to see the Superintendent of the Tempe
School District, and the first time we spoke with him, he laughed at us —more precisely, he treated us vulgarly and
in a bad manner. He told us “get out of my office, and don’t want to see you here, blah, blah, blah.” The next day
we brought the media to him and had a press conference in front of the school with the parents of the children and
the youth. We denounced the violations of the U.S. law. With this, the Superintendent began to check with his
lawyers; they told him that he was messing things up, and within 24 hours he reversed everything, let the young
people come to school, and dismissed the practice of requesting legal documents to the students. Until this date, I
believe that is the only thing they have not violated in Arizona, because they have violated everything else,
including superior education, and also adult education; people cannot enroll in them without legal documents.
What happened in Marcos de Niza was one of the first things we did at the political level. At another level, the
spiritual level, it was beginning to participate in ceremonies with the Dineh, (Navajos), the Lakota, very hard
ceremonies, like the “Sun Dance”; it teaches us who we are in relation to the four elements, where we come from.
Ceremonies give us clarity and strength to continue moving ahead, because if we just go along with politics, we
don’t get anywhere.
BARRIOZONA: What were the issues that came after the situation at the Marcos de Niza school?
SALVADOR REZA: Well, many, small issues, but one that began and made the anti-immigrant wave stronger was
when driver licenses were denied to undocumented, in the eighties and the early nineties anybody could get a
driver license, but the law that allowed driver licenses changed. Tonatierra organized some protests against that,
in one of these protests Don Pedrito attended —Don Pedro F. Ruiz is an elderly man who is in his nineties. His
daughter was an Arizona MVD’s Supervisor. I saw him unsure about what to do, since his daughter was there
representing the State. But given that he is a veteran movement organizer —he walked with Cesar Chavez and
also was a union organizer in Mexico— he did the right thing and protested against that law, despite the fact his
daughter was the one who had to represent Motor Vehicles. It sometimes reaches that level when you are
committed to social change; one family member is on one side and another member in the other. Unfortunately,
however, the driver license law passed and is enforced even today. Some Arizona legislators submit a new bill
yearly to permit licenses for undocumented drivers, but they know nothing is going to happen; they do it just for
public consumption, because they have neither the votes nor the support. We were some of the first ones that
began protesting against the driver license law. After that, an attack came against street taco vendors, when they
were going to sweep away every street taco vendor from the city of Phoenix, supposedly because their business
were contaminating the environment, they were dirty, and were attracting drug addiction. Every evil in the city of
Phoenix was attributed to the street taco vendors. An administrator interpreted a law applicable to carnivals and
applied it to Taco Vendors; his interpretation stated that taco vendors couldn’t be more than four days in on a
single place; in other words, every three months they could be only four days in the same place, when some of
them have been there for ten years. Street vendors didn’t even know they were going to “cut their heads,” until,
by mere coincidence, I read about it in The Arizona Republic. When I read the article, I became very angry —rather
because I love tacos, to begin with— but also because of the injustice. That same day I visited three or four taco
street vendors. I went to their food trucks and asked them if they knew about the plans to eliminate them from the
streets, but they didn’t. I showed them the newspaper’s article, told them what was happening, and asked them if
they wanted to have an emergency meeting. They agreed, and about sixty people showed up at the Tonatierra’s
headquarters. I informed them what was going on and asked them if they wanted to fight it; they said yes. The
next day I invited Stephen Montoya right away, he’s the Phoenix attorney who won the case regarding the INS
roundups at the city of Chandler (in 1997). He came and informed us that, legally, the City of Phoenix could do
what they were doing, but that politically we could win the case —which I knew—, so then he suggested us to talk
to several people who told him they could help us. I told him, “no, what we need is that you support us legally,
and we take care of the political aspect,” because I didn’t want others to manipulate us as they always do. Then
we went and submitted and appeal on the last hour of the last day before the City ordinance was to be
implemented, so we appealed it to the City of Phoenix Board of Adjustment. When an appeal happens, it generally
takes from one month and a half to two months to have a hearing. At that time, the neighborhood associations —
that in reality were Donna Neill and Paul Barnes, the same racists we have today— were in charge of the
neighborhoods, so we took people to their meetings. They were only ten of them and we would take sixty to
seventy street taco vendors. In one meeting Tupac Enrique Acosta (from Tonatierra) suggested to them to have
talks only between street taco vendors and neighborhoods to see how we could work together, and to leave the
City aside. They came to a meeting, about ten or twelve of them; the racists didn’t return, only a work team of
about four stayed, then later it was reduced to only two —Alma Williams and Paul Barnes. For a year and a half we
negotiated the ordinance, and finally we reached some agreements that we submitted together to the City, and
the City approved what is in effect until this date; the Mobile Vending Ordinance. When the people from the City of
Phoenix asked me how many people we were expecting to attend the last meeting where the ordinance was
going to be approved or disapproved, I told them that about one thousand. They wouldn’t believe me, but more
than a thousand showed up; we filled both of the sides of the meeting room. To me, as I saw it, street taco
vendors —without them even knowing— are organized the same way the Calpullis were organized, because they
are organized in families, and a single food truck puts food on the table for about six families, among cousins,
uncles, whatever; among them, each Mexican family has about ten to fifteen members, so just with what I had
accounted for, let’s say that each food truck was going to bring 60 people each, and there were about 70 to 80
trucks, I figured that about a thousand people were coming easily. The nicest of all things was that the women
came with their children. The ladies would tell me: “I can’t come because I am still breastfeeding my baby.” So I
would tell them, don’t worry, bring your baby, breastfeed him right there, in front of the City Council people; when
they look at you, start feeding your child.” So the people at the City Council didn’t know what to do. At the end,
things like that changed the Council’s minds, because they could see the street taco vendors were indeed families,
so that changed the relationship with them. Besides that, the City government looked good on both sides. That
was a very interesting struggle. After that one, the struggle of day labor workers on the streets arose, and they
asked us to help them too. I wanted to see what was happening at the north side of the city, so we became
organized once again to the point in which they permitted the worker center at the Macehualli Day Labor Center. I
would tell the City Council and staff not to become involved, to just give us the permit, but they wanted to have
the control, which they later regretted, because the racist anti-migrant crowd sprang on them. Right now, the Day
Labor Center is very useful to the City and Palomino neighborhood, but politically they don’t want to be linked to it,
because they see the work center ties as harmful to their political aspirations due to the anti-immigrant wave that
we are witnessing.
our people, those are everywhere. I decided to stay here, joined the organization Tonatierra, and continued to do
the same I used to do in California, but now from a deeper perspective, rooted in the indigenous principles.
BARRIOZONA: What is your main motivation in the work you do?
SALVADOR REZA: Well, for me the main motivation —and it didn’t begin this way— is that I have been always
involved against injustice since I arrived to the United States, since in my first school recess at a school in Ysleta,
Texas, I was swatted three times with a wooden board for speaking Spanish. Since then I have it in my inner
being: that what’s going on is not fair. But what motivates me deeply is to see that we don’t understand things in
a deeper way, our memory has been stolen from us. For example, there is many people struggling to obtain an
immigration reform without seeing that in reality —just like as we are now flying in the airplane* and you look
below— there are no markings on the mother Earth; there are markings like the rivers, the seas, but no markings
drawn by men. Therefore, we have to understand that in reality we are struggling for the freedom to travel
throughout our mother The Earth without having barriers, because in the same way birds like the swallows
migrate from North to South and South to North, we’ve done the same for thousands of years, and due to the fact
that some sick minds invented nationalism, we are told that a nation begins here and another ends. In reality,
they have forgotten that we have our natural Peoples that live in harmony with the land, where we have been for
time immemorial. We are descendants of these Peoples, and that is something that is never spoken nor mentioned
in demonstrations and rallies, and if you talk about it or you want to say something about it, the pro-migrant
leaders tell you, “no, don’t talk about that, that is something from the past, it doesn’t have anything to do with
this,” when in reality it is the root of everything. Since the Papal Bull Inter Caetera was proclaimed (in 1493), in
which indigenous virgin lands were granted to European countries, Europeans brought their emergent nationalism,
even though most of them were under feudalism there was an emergent nationalism, and they imposed it here. So
all this motivates me, but more than anything, you cannot be just fighting for political ends, you have to go deeper
than that.
BARRIOZONA: Once you were established in the city of Phoenix, what was the first set of issues you faced, and
how did a more specific work begin?
SALVADOR REZA: More exactly, the problems began when we started receiving complaints from the people, for
example, from the school Marcos de Niza, in Tempe, Arizona, following orders from the Superintendent, the school
began requesting legal documents to the people, when in reality, that is protected under Plyler vs. Doe Supreme
Court Decision, legal documentation cannot be requested from the children by school districts; they cannot
interfere with the education of young people and children. So we went to see the Superintendent of the Tempe
School District, and the first time we spoke with him, he laughed at us —more precisely, he treated us vulgarly and
in a bad manner. He told us “get out of my office, and don’t want to see you here, blah, blah, blah.” The next day
we brought the media to him and had a press conference in front of the school with the parents of the children and
the youth. We denounced the violations of the U.S. law. With this, the Superintendent began to check with his
lawyers; they told him that he was messing things up, and within 24 hours he reversed everything, let the young
people come to school, and dismissed the practice of requesting legal documents to the students. Until this date, I
believe that is the only thing they have not violated in Arizona, because they have violated everything else,
including superior education, and also adult education; people cannot enroll in them without legal documents.
What happened in Marcos de Niza was one of the first things we did at the political level. At another level, the
spiritual level, it was beginning to participate in ceremonies with the Dineh, (Navajos), the Lakota, very hard
ceremonies, like the “Sun Dance”; it teaches us who we are in relation to the four elements, where we come from.
Ceremonies give us clarity and strength to continue moving ahead, because if we just go along with politics, we
don’t get anywhere.
BARRIOZONA: What were the issues that came after the situation at the Marcos de Niza school?
SALVADOR REZA: Well, many, small issues, but one that began and made the anti-immigrant wave stronger was
when driver licenses were denied to undocumented, in the eighties and the early nineties anybody could get a
driver license, but the law that allowed driver licenses changed. Tonatierra organized some protests against that,
in one of these protests Don Pedrito attended —Don Pedro F. Ruiz is an elderly man who is in his nineties. His
daughter was an Arizona MVD’s Supervisor. I saw him unsure about what to do, since his daughter was there
representing the State. But given that he is a veteran movement organizer —he walked with Cesar Chavez and
also was a union organizer in Mexico— he did the right thing and protested against that law, despite the fact his
daughter was the one who had to represent Motor Vehicles. It sometimes reaches that level when you are
committed to social change; one family member is on one side and another member in the other. Unfortunately,
however, the driver license law passed and is enforced even today. Some Arizona legislators submit a new bill
yearly to permit licenses for undocumented drivers, but they know nothing is going to happen; they do it just for
public consumption, because they have neither the votes nor the support. We were some of the first ones that
began protesting against the driver license law. After that, an attack came against street taco vendors, when they
were going to sweep away every street taco vendor from the city of Phoenix, supposedly because their business
were contaminating the environment, they were dirty, and were attracting drug addiction. Every evil in the city of
Phoenix was attributed to the street taco vendors. An administrator interpreted a law applicable to carnivals and
applied it to Taco Vendors; his interpretation stated that taco vendors couldn’t be more than four days in on a
single place; in other words, every three months they could be only four days in the same place, when some of
them have been there for ten years. Street vendors didn’t even know they were going to “cut their heads,” until,
by mere coincidence, I read about it in The Arizona Republic. When I read the article, I became very angry —rather
because I love tacos, to begin with— but also because of the injustice. That same day I visited three or four taco
street vendors. I went to their food trucks and asked them if they knew about the plans to eliminate them from the
streets, but they didn’t. I showed them the newspaper’s article, told them what was happening, and asked them if
they wanted to have an emergency meeting. They agreed, and about sixty people showed up at the Tonatierra’s
headquarters. I informed them what was going on and asked them if they wanted to fight it; they said yes. The
next day I invited Stephen Montoya right away, he’s the Phoenix attorney who won the case regarding the INS
roundups at the city of Chandler (in 1997). He came and informed us that, legally, the City of Phoenix could do
what they were doing, but that politically we could win the case —which I knew—, so then he suggested us to talk
to several people who told him they could help us. I told him, “no, what we need is that you support us legally,
and we take care of the political aspect,” because I didn’t want others to manipulate us as they always do. Then
we went and submitted and appeal on the last hour of the last day before the City ordinance was to be
implemented, so we appealed it to the City of Phoenix Board of Adjustment. When an appeal happens, it generally
takes from one month and a half to two months to have a hearing. At that time, the neighborhood associations —
that in reality were Donna Neill and Paul Barnes, the same racists we have today— were in charge of the
neighborhoods, so we took people to their meetings. They were only ten of them and we would take sixty to
seventy street taco vendors. In one meeting Tupac Enrique Acosta (from Tonatierra) suggested to them to have
talks only between street taco vendors and neighborhoods to see how we could work together, and to leave the
City aside. They came to a meeting, about ten or twelve of them; the racists didn’t return, only a work team of
about four stayed, then later it was reduced to only two —Alma Williams and Paul Barnes. For a year and a half we
negotiated the ordinance, and finally we reached some agreements that we submitted together to the City, and
the City approved what is in effect until this date; the Mobile Vending Ordinance. When the people from the City of
Phoenix asked me how many people we were expecting to attend the last meeting where the ordinance was
going to be approved or disapproved, I told them that about one thousand. They wouldn’t believe me, but more
than a thousand showed up; we filled both of the sides of the meeting room. To me, as I saw it, street taco
vendors —without them even knowing— are organized the same way the Calpullis were organized, because they
are organized in families, and a single food truck puts food on the table for about six families, among cousins,
uncles, whatever; among them, each Mexican family has about ten to fifteen members, so just with what I had
accounted for, let’s say that each food truck was going to bring 60 people each, and there were about 70 to 80
trucks, I figured that about a thousand people were coming easily. The nicest of all things was that the women
came with their children. The ladies would tell me: “I can’t come because I am still breastfeeding my baby.” So I
would tell them, don’t worry, bring your baby, breastfeed him right there, in front of the City Council people; when
they look at you, start feeding your child.” So the people at the City Council didn’t know what to do. At the end,
things like that changed the Council’s minds, because they could see the street taco vendors were indeed families,
so that changed the relationship with them. Besides that, the City government looked good on both sides. That
was a very interesting struggle. After that one, the struggle of day labor workers on the streets arose, and they
asked us to help them too. I wanted to see what was happening at the north side of the city, so we became
organized once again to the point in which they permitted the worker center at the Macehualli Day Labor Center. I
would tell the City Council and staff not to become involved, to just give us the permit, but they wanted to have
the control, which they later regretted, because the racist anti-migrant crowd sprang on them. Right now, the Day
Labor Center is very useful to the City and Palomino neighborhood, but politically they don’t want to be linked to it,
because they see the work center ties as harmful to their political aspirations due to the anti-immigrant wave that
we are witnessing.
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| * The interview was conducted during an airplane flight from Phoenix, Arizona, to Mexico City. |