Raul Yzaguirre, Hispanic Civil Rights Leader Ends Term

McALLEN, Texas (By Lynn Brezosky, AP) December 17, 2004 - Sitting in a hotel lobby in the Mexican border town of McAllen, Raul Yzaguirre marveled at the urbanization of what was once a somnolent center of cattle ranches and citrus groves.

Now, symbols of affluence -- golf courses, luxury cars and gated developments -- mix with the shantytowns of the newest immigrants. And businesses no longer ignore the spending power of the more than 80 percent Hispanic population.

"The culture has changed," said Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza. "I mean, to walk into HEB (A Texas-based supermarket chain) and feel like you're in Mexico is pretty profound. You walked into HEB when I was growing up and it felt like every other American chain. They've adapted. They've Mexicanized their products and services."

When he steps down from a 30-year term as president this month, Yzaguirre will leave the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights nonprofit organization with 35,000 members and a budget of $28 million.

When he took over the group in 1974, it had no money and a squabbling staff.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, a Democrat who represents the district where Yzaguirre grew up, said Yzaguirre has been instrumental in bringing Latinos together.

"Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans ... Many of us consider Raul to have been able to break down the barriers that separated the diverse populations for two or three decades," he said.

Yzaguirre grew up in San Juan, a small town just outside McAllen. Each time he came home from the group's offices in Washington D.C., Yzaguirre said he was reminded of how far Mexican-Americans have come.

His grandfather narrowly escaped lynching when his job kept him out past the Texas Rangers' curfew. Even in Yzaguirre's own childhood, things were segregated, often by signs that read, "No Mexicans Allowed."

Yzaguirre left the Rio Grande Valley on a Greyhound bus after high school and joined the Air Force.

Like Hispanic veterans before him, he returned home to see a disconnect between how Hispanics served their country and how the country treated them. He headed east, determined he would make Hispanics more viable in Washington, D.C.

He helped launch NOMAS, the National Organization for Mexican American Services, which evolved into NCLR. Later, the group became a client of Yzaguirre's consulting firm -- the nation's first, and at the time largest, Hispanic management consulting firm. He was then asked to run NCLR.

The term "la raza," he said, is often misunderstood. The phrase comes from Mexican intellectual Jose Vasconcelos, who in 1925 wrote of "la raza cosmica," meaning the "cosmic race."

"We're Caucasian. We're Arab. We're Jew. We're African and we're Asian, Native American. So we celebrate our mestizos, our mixing, our blending of cultures," Yzaguirre said. "Some extremists have tried to say we're 'the race,' and, of course, the real definition is totally the opposite. It's an inclusive term."

Over the years, the group's clout grew, and Yzaguirre's office walls are lined with photographs of him with U.S. presidents dating back to Jimmy Carter.

In the 1990s, the NCLR helped restore $20 billion worth of benefits to legal immigrants under welfare reform. It has established 100 charter schools. Its housing network puts 1,000 families a year in their own homes. There is a lending arm that controls about $160 million a year.

Despite living with Parkinson's disease, the 65-year-old Yzaguirre won't completely give up his activism.

He is in demand as a lecturer at universities and is weighing an offer to become an adjunct professor. The father of six -- and grandfather of six -- also plans to write a book about the NCLR and his life's work.

Janet Murguia, who served as deputy director of legislative affairs for President Clinton, will take over for Yzaguirre on Jan. 1.