Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 58
not many Black students from Austin showed up, and to the credit of the powers that be,
those that did were allowed to sit together with us. Uneventfully, we opened one little
gate toward social progress in Texas.
This was my one and only fight for freedom during my college years, but it undoubtedly
left me with a keen recognition of the human need for equal opportunity and the price
that it had. As I narrate in greater detail later in this book, I nursed the essence of
freedom and its related responsibilities as a child at home. However, as it is for most
youngsters in America’s climbing classes, I was just an observer of what my adult
protectors actually had to endure. It was necessary for me to return to the country of my
birth to be pressed into service of the fight for liberty again. Ten years after contributing
my grain of sand to integrate A&M’s basketball arena, I would engage in another effort
to help secure freedom, this time for myself, my family, and for the land where I was
born.
My first memories of how it feels not to be free go back to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1952.
As I relate later, this was the place of my birth. One of the most remote and mountainlocked
lands in the South American continent, Bolivia’s Andean high plateau, where
most of its mineral wealth was found, was generally inhospitable and difficult to access,
uninviting to large waves of new immigrants. Until the late 1960s, its rich green forests
and lowlands were virtually inaccessible. Since the Spanish colonial days, the High
Andes remained a source of raw minerals for the industrial nations. Historically, its main
exports were silver metal and tin ores. It is said that enough silver was taken out of the
prolific Cerro Rico de Potosi during the second half of the 16 th , and all of the 17 th and
18 th centuries, to literally build a solid precious metal bridge from that magnificent mine
to Madrid. The story of how such riches were extracted from the bowels of completely
isolated mountaintops is really the story of Bolivia. And Bolivia’s story, no doubt,
unavoidably helped shape the views I hold today.
Bolivia’s mineral saga, then known as Alto Peru, grows larger with the discovery of
silver in its mountaintops. Recorded stories from the time tell us about a windy night in
1545 when a native sheepherder by the name of Gualca was camping on the
mountainside of what later became Cerro Rico, and accidentally found a pure silver
vein. Careful not to share the location of his discovery with anyone, he nevertheless
showed his new wealth to his companion, named Huanca, causing his jealousy and
anger. Feeling himself rejected, Huanca went to their Spanish patron and enviously
revealed the discovery. In true Colonialist form, the mentioned Spaniard (a soldier by
the name of Villarroel) registered the portentous find as his own mineral claim on April
25, 1545. He thus deprived the true finder of any benefits, perpetuating only his name
and story to pass into documented history as another proof of the great power of the
Iberian conquerors.
Almost immediately after the Potosi discovery, the largest precious mineral rush in the
world ascended to the mountain with a fury and longevity not equaled in Cortez’ Mexico,
Autobiography.doc 58 of 239