| barriozona |
| HISTORY IS ABOUT TO CHANGE Grassroots Journalism |
| Published by the Hispanic Institute of Social Issues |
From Phoenix, Arizona to the World Wide Web
Salvador Reza: Organizer From the Root
Barriozona interviews the man who has organized day laborers, taco vendors and fights to defend
the rights of immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona.
the rights of immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona.
By Eduardo Barraza Read Part II Read Part III
Phoenix, Arizona, June 16, 2007 - BARRIOZONA: How does Salvador Reza begins 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, 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 a more specific work began?
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.
Read Part II
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 a more specific work began?
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.
Read Part II
ORGANIZING The work of Salvador
Reza is essentially of an organizer. Here
at a meeting at the Tonatierra Center in
Phoenix, Arizona, he talks to a group of
people who meets regurlaly with him.
Photo by Eduardo Barraza/BARRIOZONA
Reza is essentially of an organizer. Here
at a meeting at the Tonatierra Center in
Phoenix, Arizona, he talks to a group of
people who meets regurlaly with him.
Photo by Eduardo Barraza/BARRIOZONA
Eduardo Barraza is a journalist and writer,
Barriozona Magazine's editor, and director of
the Hispanic Insitute of Social Issues.
E-mail: editor@barriozona.com
Barriozona Magazine's editor, and director of
the Hispanic Insitute of Social Issues.
E-mail: editor@barriozona.com
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