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
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
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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Published by the Hispanic Institute of Social Issues in Phoenix, Arizona
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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
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