Historic Laredo

The political machine wanted VISTA gone and
it began exerting pressure at state and national
levels to remove them from Laredo, finding the
assistance of then-Governor Preston Smith, who
provided in 1967 a legal means to rid the city of
VISTA by interpreting a War on Poverty guideline
that allowed states to have the last word on how
federal funds would be utilized.
The barrios remained hotbeds of dissension as
old and young met on the common, dusty
ground of their poverty. The political machine
did in the end what it knew best to do—it
absorbed into its machinations the doling out of
jobs and federal funds. It politicized poverty, and
by doing so allocated funds to suit itself and not
the dwellers of tar paper shacks. It eventually
wrested the administration of the War on
Poverty funds from the Economic Opportunity
Development Corporation, a panel of public officials,
civic organizations, and barrio representatives.
Under the jurisdiction of the Webb County
Commissioners Court, the War on Poverty generated
a bureaucracy that went into an administrative
feeding frenzy on the enormous federal
grants pipelined from Washington. It is said that
too large a segment of the funds paid the salaries
of people who were not poor. It is said, too, that
there was in-fighting among the poverty agencies
over federal funds. “We did the best we could,”
Díaz De Leon recalled. “We would choose good
people for a team and then City Hall would send
us un alacrán (a scorpion),” he said.
Ask ten Laredoans if the War on Poverty was
effective, and you’ll have ten diverse answers.
There were benefits, to be sure, that directly
affected the poor, such as Project Headstart, hot
lunches for poverty-level school children, day
care centers for working mothers, more available
health care, and job training that improved
chances for a better job. There were, too, deluxe
stables built by the poor, but for which the poor
had no use or desire.
The success of the War on Poverty may not
be measurable at all. Nearly six million dollars
in federal funds came and went like a vapor.
It should be noted that there were many dedicated
War on Poverty workers who committed
themselves to the letter of the law and the spirit of
easing poverty, and it is likely these individuals
can count successes in lives they changed through
education, in the hope they inspired, in the
despair they abated, and in respite and relief they
brought to the daily struggle of the aged poor.
❖
Above: This contingent of Laredoans
posed for a picture before leaving for
the national Marcha de los Pobres in
Washington, D.C. in May 1968.
COURTESY OF JUAN RAMIREZ
Inside column: Community activists
were relentless in getting City Hall to
establish a minimum wage and to
appoint a minimum wage commissioner.
Some of the placards read “Abajo
Sueldos de Pobre” (Down with
Poverty Wages); “¿Para qué prometer
si no cumple, Mayor?” (Why promise
if you don’t deliver, Mayor?) and
“Business is going up. Why aren’t
minimum wages going up too?”
COURTESY OF JUAN RAMIREZ
BATTERIES, LOTS OF BATTERIES
There is an ineluctable drama and poignancy
to the content of a June 20, 1978 CBS News
broadcast that zeroes in on patronismo in Laredo
and on the winds of change that blew through
City Hall in the late 70s. These were the years in
Chapter VII ✦ 61