BARRIOZONA Salvador Reza: Learning From the People

Photograph by Jonathan E. Hernández / BARRIOZONA

Salvador Reza

In a social landscape where the word “activist”
seems to have degenerated into a fashionable
trend, Salvador Reza stresses the eminence of
organizing at the family and neighborhood
levels versus a simple media-centered activism,
denounces the lack of a true popular
consultation, and warns about the need to
take into consideration the lessons that can be
learned from the people.

Learning From the People

Interview by Eduardo Barraza
SECOND PART

BARRIOZONA: In Arizona’s social landscape, and
elsewhere, we hear the word “activist,” and
“activism,” but we don’t see the same level of
effectiveness in all those who proclaim themselves to
do activism. In your opinion, having already worked
in different places and issues, what elements do you
consider as really bringing success to any action
deemed as “activism”?

SALVADOR REZA: Well, I’m going to tell you what a
friend of mine, Wing Lam, from Chinatown, in New
York; says: “I don’t want activists, because activists

just get activated, and then when the issue is gone, they disappear, and are not out there anymore.” He says that
he prefers “organizers,” people who organize. I think that organizing, in the long run, implies to work but not
necessarily being in the public eye all the time; rather it means to do the “ant’s work,” as people call it. You have to
be going to the work centers daily, to the corners, with the street taco vendors, finding out what their problems are
or something that’s happening, trying not to be someone who is just passing by. I spoke with Ernesto Galarza just
before he passed away, when I was still at the university, in the seventies, and something that he told us was that,
if we want to organize a place, at the very minimum, we have to work for ten years to earn the community’s trust. It’
s not just coming out of nowhere and then leaving; you have to be there in the barrios. I think that the organization
does not have to be a political organization or a barrio organization; it has to be an organization of families in
different barrios where, for example, the Murphy District, there is already a whole activity going on, an entire
method of defense. You’re not going to reinvent it all again, just simply and plainly being there to contribute with
what you can. With what we can contribute is with what we know about government, with what we know about
how politics at the state or federal level work, and not necessarily just go there and suddenly go as far as saying,
“hey, look, I represent these people,” but in reality, if you have to say that, you don’t represent them or anything;
perhaps you mobilized them for a march and never see them again until the following march, but you did not toil to
see whether they need pavement, sidewalks, or teachers that don’t abuse them at the schools; everything that a
community encompasses in the barrio, and that come from the families, and if you don’t work with the families, you
don’t know what’s happening. This is how I see it. I’ve been part of giant, hierarchic organizations, that at the end
they say that they work from the base up, grassroots, but that in reality they are rather organizations that have a
missionary’s mind; in other words, they have the formula and are going to liberate the “poor little ones” with their
formula. The other day I was talking about Paulo Freire’s popular education, and people asked me what I thought
about it. I told them that the mistake I see in Paulo Freire’s method, is that they don’t go out and learn from the
communities that they are supposedly going to liberate. In reality, they just go and see how they work, how they
function, so they can take them to (liberation) to fulfill the liberators dream as they see them. That was the same
mistake Sub-comandante Marcos made when he went to Chiapas, Mexico; he believed that he was going to
organize the Mayan Peoples, when in reality they were the ones who organized him. They taught him how to really
be a socialist or collective, because they have done things collectively since before the arrival of the Spaniards. One
can learn much from the people, if one goes to learn with the people; not necessarily to try to tell them your
missionary style formula: “I’m going to save you, because you don’t know how to save yourself.”

BARRIOZONA: In recent years, all these outbreaks of racism and rejection, particularly against the immigrant
community, and as you already mentioned it —the problems with the students, street taco vendors, day laborers
and so forth— we arrive to the current situation that can be considered a more vigorous movement. However, we
have seen that part of that movement has been ineffective. In your opinion, what is this awakening lacking, what
are the elements to channel it into something more effective?

SALVADOR REZA: What’s happening —and this is how I see it— is that everybody knows they want legal
documents, and that they want to work without fear, but they don’t know why they’re marching, because we do not
dictate the law; we are just reacting to the laws that the Ultra Right is dictating to us. The Minuteman, who were
never autonomous nor a movement that came out of nothing, rather was a well financed movement, well
orchestrated from the high political spheres; right now, for example, they have penetrated strong sectors of the
State Legislature, from where the anti-immigrant laws are coming out. At the same time, they’ve penetrated the
Republican Party at the federal level, where the propositions are being pushed by them. Yet, we have not been able
to put our own propositions or push our own interests, because we don’t even know what we want. What I mean
by this is that —just in Phoenix— you have legislators of Mexican descent that come out as if they are leading the
marches, however, when they take the votes in the Legislature, they vote for sanctions against employers (who
hire undocumented workers), supposedly to punish the employers for the mistreatment they give to the migrant
worker, but they know well that what they are doing is playing the Ultra Right’s game, because the one who is
going to receive the mistreatment, the abuse, and everything else, is the migrant worker. They are still going to
employ them, but they are going to underpay him or they are not going to pay him at all. Not knowing where we are
heading and what we want, some individuals come and tell the workers: “no, what we want is just a work permit.”
Fine, for a day laborer who just arrived to the country, that is being persecuted by the police on 36th Avenue and
Thomas Road or in the City of Chandler or anywhere, and that he’s being harassed, to him a work permit is
awesome, but what they don’t tell him is that he won’t qualify for a work permit, because he doesn’t have stable
employment. According to this proposition —how this law is proposed— implies that he has to be tied to a stable
employer, and this comes from Think Tanks from the Right; they propose what you need to accept and what’s not
acceptable. We just react to that, and we react by saying: “yes, we’ll settle for this.” Now, there is not a profound
analysis of what it is, what we can and can't do, and to what extent we can —without legal documents or not— to
influence, if not directly through the vote, indirectly. Many times, there are movements of marches and all that, but in
reality these marches carry out two messages: one from the ones who seek full citizenship, and the other from the
ones that just want a work permit. And the ones who carry out the message that they want just a work permit are
the ones that are going to be heard by the Ultra Right, and probably the ones that are going to reap the political
capital at that level. But the rest of the people are going to be in a worse situation, because what the reform will
bring is the criminalization of thousands and thousands of people, and if you think we are being persecuted right
now by ICE, just wait until this bill Strive Act is approved. We are going to be persecuted, twenty times more, where
they will pick you up from bus stops, the streets, the street corners, and the workplace, so they can maintain fear
against us. That’s why, for me, what we need is just not to fight for whatever we can achieve, but to fight for what
people really want. When millions and millions of people come out to the streets like they did in the 2006 marches,
nobody really asked them what it is they want. They were told what they could obtain, but never asked the millions
of marchers, “What is it you want?” In the march that just happened on May 1, 2007, nobody was asked what they
want; they were told what’s being sought, but not asked what they want. And if we don’t have a public
consultation, in which we really are representing what people want, then we are not doing things right. Now, if
people say, “we want a work permit,” I am sure that they’re going to add, “yes, we want a work permit, but without
having ties to an employer,” then we’d win something. And if we can get the legislators to accept that, then we are
winning even more. I seldom lose political battles; once in a while, I lose, but very seldom —I lost with the Governor
last year. What we need to analyze first is what people want, and then push it to wherever we can, but not begin
from the stance of “no, I am just going to ask for this because it is all that I can get; this is the little slice of cake
they are willing to give me, and that’s all I’m getting.” That’s easy to do when in reality you don’t have a public
consultation with the people, face to face, everyday. For instance, anything that I do, affects directly in one way or
another the day laborers of the Macehualli Day Labor Center, but also the ones that are on the street corners. I
have to be aware of that, because it is easy to say, “you know what, yes, it’s okay, a work permit would be just
fine,” but in the process you are already eliminating about 118 thousand day laborers that are on the streets every
day, and in reality this translates into 500 thousand day laborers. Not just them, you are also affecting all those
people who are going to stay in between jobs, you are affecting all the people that in one way or another are going
to be wanted by the law, and persecuted with new laws which are turning police officers into immigration agents.
For one to accept that, one has to be aware that people know the consequences of what they are accepting. And I
don’t believe we are consulting with the people; what we see is proselytism, as if they (the leaders) are the
intellectual ones, the intelligent ones, and the people don’t know anything, so they are going to tell the people what’
s best for them. Unfortunately, that is what’s happening, and since we don't even have the main stream media or
anything else controlled, —the Right does— they can manipulate the message, send the message, send the
message, send the message, send the message —continuously— until all of a sudden, an Anglo person sees a
Mexican national looking for work on the streets, he or she is going to say, “he is a filthy person, he comes to rob
my house, he is a drug addict.” And the message is sent daily, daily, daily, daily, daily, and daily. We don’t have the
means to play it down, and even when we are able to play it down, instead of really playing it down, we end up
playing the game of the same people that are shooting at us the same message through the English TV channels.