The Castro Chronicles

Raúl Castro, the former Arizona governor, opens the front door
of his Nogales home even before I can ring the bell. He’s been waiting
behind those grand wood doors.

Castro is 93. Am I wrong to think that old people, those of a
certain generation, those who’ve accomplished things, are just this
way? Punctual. Organized. Not a moment to waste.

“Come in,” he says. “We’ll talk in the living room.” Because he came
up before the ubiquity of blue jeans and open collars, he’s dressed for
the occasion, too—dark slacks, powder-blue shirt, a tie knotted
tight to his neck and a zipper jacket to quell the morning chill that
settles over the border this time of year.

My interest in talking with Castro isn’t to write a look-back,
although we do spend quite a bit of time talking about the prominent
characters from his past. Mostly, I want to hear what Castro has to
offer right now, today.

In May, Texas Christian University Press published an autobiography,
Adversity Is My Angel: The Life and Career of Raúl H.
Castro, co-written by historian and author Jack L. August Jr. The
title is a nice play on words, but it has a literal meaning.

From his earliest days in the Mexican settlement of Pirtleville
outside of Douglas, dirt-poor, scouring the desert for mesquite beans
to help feed the family’s 11 children, adversity has followed Castro
like a guardian angel. It has been his motivation.

Every Arizona school kid, as a condition of graduating eighth-grade,
should be required to read Angel and write a paper—all the
words spelled correctly, the grammar impeccable—on what it means.
They would find many lessons, about the importance of education,
patriotism, the power of will, the necessity of never giving up.

“In all my 93 years, I’ve heard people complain about what can’t be
done,” says Castro. “I wanted to write this book because I got tired of
hearing the griping. This is a great country, a country of opportunity.
But you can’t sit back and expect others to do the work for you. You
have to be active and participate.”

The book’s most potent message is about overcoming obstacles such as
discrimination. Castro’s story proves what a pitiful obstacle
discrimination is: He faced the worst of it, but it shrank to
irrelevance before the force of his ambition, the strength of his
values and the locomotive of hard work.

Not only did he become governor in 1975—still Arizona’s only
Hispanic governor—but he also served as Pima County attorney, a
Superior Court judge, and American ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia
and Argentina.

But all of this came within a whisker of not happening.

If he’d been arrested in that Los Angeles train yard in 1940 …

If he hadn’t fallen into that garbage hole, hiding him from the
police …

We’re sitting on Castro’s plush white couch, surrounded by wife
Pat’s collection of antiques from around the world, and I say:
“Governor, tell me about your years as a hobo.”

In 1939, after graduating with a teaching degree from Arizona State
Teachers College in Flagstaff, now Northern Arizona University, Castro
returned to Douglas to find a job.

But no one would hire someone of Mexican descent to teach. He tried
for civil service jobs, too, with immigration, the FBI, the post
office, and the result was always the same: He easily passed the
written exam, but when he showed up for the oral exam, and it became
obvious he wasn’t blue-eyed and blond-haired, Castro was sent on his
way.

“It bothered me a great deal,” he says. “Here’s the U.S. government
participating in this discrimination.”

Unable to find work, he decided to leave Douglas. His mother,
Rosario, called a family meeting. Two of his brothers said the family
should return to Cananea, Mexico, the copper-mining town where Castro
was born in 1916.

His father, Francisco, a Basque Mexican, had died in 1928. Francisco
never went to school. He spent his early years as a pearl diver on the
Baja Peninsula and later was jailed for union organizing in Cananea.
Authorities eventually relented and agreed to release Francisco, but
only if he left Mexico.

Early in 1918, the Castro family entered the United States at Naco,
south of Bisbee. They crossed legally, as political refugees.

At the family meeting, Rosario spoke up: “Don’t forget, we came to
this country as refugees and were accepted. We owe this country
something. We have a responsibility. If any of you want to leave, there
is the door.”

No one left. Alfonso, one of the Castro brothers who argued for
returning to Mexico, later joined the U.S Army, fought in four wars and
retired a colonel. He died with shrapnel all through his body.

Making good on his desire to depart Douglas, Castro hopped a freight
train out of town and became a hobo, traveling the country by rail. He
did stoop labor on farms in California, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.

Alongside Mexican and Filipino women, he worked 12 hours a day
clearing sugar-beet fields for $7 an acre, and slept under trees. At
fairs and carnivals, he boxed to earn $50 here, $100 there.

Castro usually wore coveralls when he traveled. But he also carried
his NAU letterman’s sweater with three As on it, which helped him get
rides while hitchhiking.

In Ogden, Utah, he hopped a freight to Los Angeles. When it pulled
into the yard at sundown, the L.A. police were waiting to chase the
hobos emerging from the cars. In those days, a vagrancy bust meant 15
days in jail.

When Castro jumped down from the train, he fell into a hole filled
with garbage and stayed there, hidden from the police. After 45
minutes, the yard was empty, and he crawled out of the hole wearing his
college sweater, brushed it free of garbage and went on his way.

“If I’d been arrested that day, I never would’ve become governor of
Arizona,” says Castro. “With an arrest record, I couldn’t have become a
lawyer or held elected office.”

The life forced upon him didn’t send Castro to despair. He found
important lessons in it.

At boxing matches in Pennsylvania, he heard the crowd shouting,
“Kill the dago! … Kill the wop!” In those days, there were few
Mexicans in the East, so the crowd assumed he was Italian.

In Minnesota, Castro encountered hostility toward Finnish people
from Swedes and Norwegians. He saw signs on the street saying, “We
don’t rent to Finns,” and, “No Finns wanted.”

“It made me think, ‘This is a crazy world,'” Castro says. “But I
quit feeling sorry for myself, because I saw somebody else being picked
on besides me. It wasn’t just Mexicans, and it was true everywhere I
went. It gave me encouragement, in a sense.”

Castro’s break—the start of a work life spent wearing a suit
and tie rather than swinging a pick in the mines—came in 1941. He
landed a job at the American consulate in Agua Prieta, Sonora, across
the border from Douglas.

“I felt it was time for someone of Mexican descent to excel, to
become a professional,” says Castro. “I wanted to get away from the
common slogan in those times, about the dumb Mexican and the dirty
Mexican. I didn’t want to be dirty, and I didn’t want to be dumb.”

Seven decades later, the young college graduate who hid from the cops
is still sought after, though for very different reasons. As we talk,
his home telephone rings repeatedly, followed by the yapping of the
family dog, Fabio, named after the romance-novel cover model who seemed
to be everywhere a few years back.

“It’s always like this,” says Castro of the phone. “You should see
my schedule.”

Co-writer August says the extraordinary arc of Castro’s life
naturally attracts attention. Hollywood producers have already put out
feelers about a movie.

But Castro is also terrific before audiences. August recalls a
speech he gave a couple of years ago to a group of conservative
Republicans from Scottsdale.

“Raúl got up and spoke for an hour with no notes, and here’s
a 92-year-old guy, and they were laughing and crying,” says August.
“He’s so inspirational. Any Democrat who can get a standing ovation
from those Republicans, my hat is off to the guy.”

On the day after my visit, Castro will go to Tucson to pick up an
award from the Daughters of the American Revolution, given to Hispanic
Americans who have excelled. The week before, he was at book-signings
in Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, and he is a regular speaker at
schools.

He can still drive, but prefers not to. He has someone chauffeur him
around Arizona, delivering his message of hope and possibility. He
feels so strongly that young people need to hear his story that he pays
his own travel expenses.

Castro has always kept moving, feeling the push of ambition at his
back. It comes from being lost amid a family of 11 kids. Mom Rosario, a
midwife and curandera, a traditional herbal healer who sometimes
took payment in cans of lard or live chickens, ran the house like a
boot camp, never hugging her kids before bed.

Castro says this led to his difficulty in showing affection as an
adult. As he grew older, he says, “I wanted somebody to care about me.
I wanted recognition.”

But Rosario inspired him, too, telling her son he could accomplish
whatever he wanted. Young Raúl took it to heart.

“He always believed in himself,” says August. “Like a lot of guys
who run for office and lose, but keep trying and finally win, there’s a
sense of destiny to them. Raúl has that. He’s a very competitive
guy, and it has served him well.”

Castro ran for Pima County attorney in 1954, over the objection of
Mo Udall, the future congressman and presidential candidate.

Udall, the sitting county attorney at the time, one day summoned all
of his deputies, including Castro, to a meeting. He told them not to
bother running for county attorney in the upcoming election, because,
as Udall said, he had handpicked his successor and was certain the
friendly press wouldn’t object.

Annoyed, Castro left the meeting and returned to his office. An hour
later, Udall came and asked why he’d left. “I said, ‘Mo, I have news
for you,'” says Castro. “‘I’m going to run for county attorney, and
obviously, you think you’re the kingmaker, and that’s all there is to
it.'”

The two traded words. Castro stood up angrily. “Look, if you don’t
like it, I’ll knock the hell out of you,” he said, and as he began to
storm around his desk, Udall walked out.

Castro won the election. He later won another election as a Pima
County Superior Court judge. In 1964, after turning down an offer to
become U.S. Attorney for Arizona, which Castro thought was a step down,
he let it be known he’d like to be an ambassador.

Arizona’s powerful Sen. Carl Hayden took the idea to then-President
Lyndon Johnson, who agreed.

But LBJ asked if Castro would be willing to change his last name to
Acosta, Rosario’s maiden name. Johnson feared Americans would confuse
him with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s brother, defense minister
Raúl Castro.

Castro refused. He told Hayden, “You tell the president I like my
name.”

LBJ relented, and Castro got the El Salvador job. He went on to
become American ambassador to Bolivia and Argentina, the latter posting
ending in 1980.

Pride has always run deep in Castro, as has his sense of
responsibility.

While attending college in the 1930s, he’d return to Douglas in the
summer to work in the smelter and help organize its union. As a former
farm worker himself, he knew and admired César Chávez,
and considered his objectives noble and good.

But he’s troubled by modern demonstrators who take to the streets
waving Mexican flags.

“I disagree with that,” he says. “‘Viva Mexico!’ That’s for the
birds! If you want to wave a flag, wave the American flag. Suppose I
went to Hermosillo and carried the American flag. They’d shoot me in
five minutes. I’d be dead. I don’t believe in shouting and breaking
windows. We have to unite.”

He’s always been a conservative Democrat who sees education as the
equalizer.

At the same time he served on the Superior Court, Castro also was a
Juvenile Court judge. The defendants, many of them Mexican American,
were tough youngsters, drained of hope, who saw little reason to either
follow the law or stay in school.

Castro would look down at them from the bench and say: “What do you
think I am, English or Swedish? You think I came from a rich Anglo
family? I was born in Mexico of poor immigrant parents. I picked cactus
fruit in the desert for food when I was a child, and I’ve worked in the
fields. But I worked hard, and went to school, and improved myself.
Today, I am a judge. You can do the same.”

Every Monday morning, the judge would check attendance records at
Tucson, Pueblo and Sunnyside high schools. Absenteeism in those days
was very high, and Castro says it was mostly Mexican children.

“In the evenings, I’d go to the parents and ask, ‘Why wasn’t
Marguerita or Jose in school today?'” says Castro. “They cared less.
Their aunt was sick, and they had this excuse and that excuse.
Education was not a priority. Education? Who cares? Get to
eighth-grade, get out, goodbye. It’s gotten much better, but you’ll
find the absenteeism is still highest among blacks and Hispanics.”

After Argentina, Castro and his wife returned to Paradise Valley,
where Castro practiced law. By 1993, Pat had tired of battling Phoenix
traffic and began scouting the state for a new home. She grew up in
Wisconsin, was a widow with two girls when she married Raúl in
1954, and always appreciated Latin culture.

She chose Nogales. But her husband balked at returning to the
border. “I said fine,” recalls Pat with a laugh. “You can rent an
apartment in Phoenix and come down on weekends. Now, he wouldn’t live
anywhere else.”

Their elegant home, built in 1906, sits on a hill 75 yards from the
border fence. The location gives the Castros an unobstructed view of
Nogales, Sonora, where white-columned homes stand alongside
laundry-line shacks, both clinging precariously to the hillsides.

The proximity of the international line makes the border war a fact
of their daily lives. Two or three times a week, they hear gunshots.
Down the slope from their back porch, there’s a chain-link fence that
illegal aliens climb and damage, requiring frequent repair work. And
there have been nights when Drug Enforcement Administration agents have
set up stakeouts in the Castros’ garage.

But like many of those living on the border, they can’t imagine
being anywhere else. Pat certainly prefers Nogales to the different
kind of chaos in Phoenix, just as she preferred the life of an
ambassador’s wife to politics.

When Castro was elected governor, they lived in a motel in Phoenix.
They didn’t have a home of their own until a radio-station owner
donated one, in Paradise Valley.

“The first thing we read in the paper is, ‘Why does a Mexican
governor need a $350,000 house?'” says Pat. “That kind of thing got
under my skin. I was delighted to leave for the perks you get as an
ambassador, rather than the slights you get as governor.”

Castro’s resignation as governor still rankles. He served two-plus
years before leaving in October 1977 to take the ambassador’s job in
Argentina. He felt he’d have more prestige and more ability to improve
relations with Latin America if he represented the whole nation rather
than one state.

“But the Hispanic community especially felt let down,” Castro says.
“They worked their butts off to get me elected, and I do have regrets
about that.”

Moving slowly but steadily, Castro leads me around the elegant old
house on a tour—the back porch overlooking Mexico, the winding
staircase to the second floor (now equipped with an elevator chair to
make the trip easier), and by the front door, the first thing visitors
see, an American flag.

As much as anything else, Castro is an American patriot. He calls
the day he became a citizen one of the best of his life.

I think of my grandparents, two of whom were born in Ireland. They
came to Boston legally, faced the no-Irish-need-apply signs, worked
hard, assimilated, respected the laws and prevailed. Our stories are
the same. They’re stories of triumph.

And that’s the main point Castro wants young people to
understand—the infinite possibility this country allows.

“But they’re motivated too much by self-satisfaction,” he says.
“They get a job at McDonald’s or some restaurant and think that’s
enough. It isn’t. The minimum isn’t good enough. They need to sacrifice
to make something of themselves, and too many of them don’t think they
can make it.”

But if they hear his story, Castro is convinced they’ll think
otherwise.

In 1926, Arizona Gov. George W.P. Hunt came to Douglas for a Fourth
of July celebration. He gave a speech at a park on Tenth Street.
Hearing there would be free sodas, hot dogs and hamburgers, Castro and
two of his pals attended. He was 10.

The boys gathered at the bandstand beneath where the governor, a
legendary figure in Arizona politics and history, was speaking. Hunt
was built like a beer truck. He wore a pith helmet and a white linen
suit, and had thick glasses and a walrus mustache.

He talked about the opportunity America offered. “Anyone can become
governor of Arizona,” he thundered, then paused and pointed down at
Castro. “Why, even one of those little barefooted Mexican kids sitting
over there could one day be governor!”

Castro laughs as he recalls the event. “I didn’t know what a
governor was and couldn’t have cared less,” he says. “I was there for
the hamburgers.”

In 2002, Douglas renamed that park. It is now called Raúl H.
Castro Park.

This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2009.