Remembering Carlos Guerra’s Life, Scholarship Legacy

[Editor’s Note: Carlos Guerra, our friend and co-founder, died last year but his memory lives on. One way is through his scholarship program for first-generation students at his alma mater, Texas A&M – Kingsville. A fundraiser was held this weekend for that scholarship that raised thousands of dollars, to donate click here. This year’s recipients included Claudia Garcia with a $1,000 scholarship, while Genesis Urbina and Michael Rodriguez each were awarded $500 scholarships. A pledge campaign is set for the winter. The following is a remembrance from one of Carlos’ friends.]

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Scholar in Residence and Chair, Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University

I was stunned by the news about the death of Carlos Guerra last year. Our paths first crossed when Carlos and I shared mutual friends at Caracol: Revista de la Raza, the activist publication in San Antonio launched by Cecilio Garcia Camarillo in the early 70’s. Carlos was featured on the cover of the October 1974 issue. That year I was in Denver working with La Luz, the magazine that Dan Valdes founded in 1972 with me as Associate Publisher and, later, as Managing Editor.

I came to know Carlos better when I taught at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio from 1978 to 1982. My activities as Founding Director of the Institute for Intercultural Studies and Research at Our Lady of the Lake University brought me into regular contact with reporters from the San Antonio news media. He was with the San Antonio Light then.

Through Carlos I became part of a circle of media professionals in San Antonio, a circle in which I felt comfortable, since I thought of myself as a journalist, having written for The Nation, the Texas Observer, Saturday Review, and others. Carlos was always witty, urbane, and jovial. What made him a good reporter was his ability to listen.

A number of years passed before Carlos and I hooked up again face to face. In 1999 my wife, Gilda, and I went to Texas A&M at Kingsville, near Corpus Christi, the school where Carlos and José Ángel Gutiérrez (founder of Raza Unida) were undergraduates together and activists in the politica of the university when it was still Texas A&I University. Carlos and Gutiérrez were both founders of MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization), precursor to MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). Later, participating in a nostalgic reunion of student activists as Texas A&I, I would cite A&I as Command Central for Chicano activities in Texas.

In Kingsville, the university and our farmhouse on the outskirts of town became the centers of Chicano activities . Many notable Chicanos visited us there, including Tino Villanueva, Carlos Morton, Arnoldo De Leon, Rolando Hinojosa, Luis Omar Salinas, Raul Salinas, Jose Angel Gutierrez, and many others.

As it turned out, Carlos  retired in 2009. In 2010, he died in a place he liked on the beach at Port Aransas near Corpus Christi. He was found dead of unknown causes. He was just 63. He was born in nearby Robstown, which is why he came often to Kingsville.

No less a Chicano, foremost he thought of himself as a journalist, He refused to be pigeon-holed. He wrote about “usual folks in unusual circumstances” as he described his writing in his last column for the Express-News. Carlos was a good storyteller as Victor Landa remembers. He would regale listeners for hours with his accounts of the stories he pursued and wrote. Loathe to extol his achievements and accomplishments, he was the first Latino front-page newspaper columnist in the country. Y los misteamos.