Letter #79 – Requiem for a Nixon Redemption

in Featured Letters from Yorba Linda by Carlos D. Condé — November 8, 2010 at 3:49 pm | 0 comments

There are some who will always treat our 37th president, Richard Nixon, with an asterisk. He was the first president in American history to resign in lieu of impeachment for his involvement in the Watergate affair. They will remember him for this, and ignore his achievements in foreign relations like the opening to China, the winding down of the Vietnam War, and his domestic initiatives, particularly his embracing of the U.S.’s Latino community and its socio-economic issues.

I am perhaps biased because I was a member of President Nixon’s administration, first on a Presidential committee and then as a White House aide on communications involving the U.S. Spanish Speaking community.

Until Nixon, it was mostly about Mexican-Americans and even then centered more on what they could contribute politically than about their socio-economic needs. Nixon put all U.S. Latinos—Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans–under one umbrella coalescing wants and needs and making them part of the American fabric.

He deserved better for his opening to Latinos just as he did for his realpolitik with China, but on the former, he was met with contentiousness and skepticism despite his good intentions.

In October, some of Nixon’s old (literally) Latino hands met at his Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California for a symposium on President Nixon’s Latino legacy and the work of his Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking People.

I participated as a former White House aide along with Martin Castillo, Nixon’s Special Assistant and the committee’s first chairman, and his successor, Dr. Henry Ramirez. It also included CCOSS members, Manuel Oliverez, and G. G. Garcia; economic development leader, Theresa Speake, and voter outreach consultants, David Gonzales and Stuart K. Spencer. Hosted by the Nixon Foundation, we weren’t there as apologists but to explore the effects of Nixon’s programs for Latinos and take measure of this efforts.

Detractors cast Nixon’s programs as being all about politics. We prefer to define it as the politics of integration and assistance. It focused particularly on his involvement with this under served minority group, an effort which some of his detractors to this day continue to deride and disparage. It’s a misguided but not surprising attitude.  Nixon did not exploit or abuse whatever involvement and success he had with the Spanish Speaking community.

Before the advent of the modern Latino in the early sixties, there was only one viable class of this Spanish speaking minority– the Southwest’s Mexican Americans. Puerto Ricans were still on the fringes and the Cuban Diaspora was about to start. The Caribbeans and Central Americans were at that time inconsequential. Until then, our national leaders, Democrat or Republican, had spectacularly ignored the Latinos because they were a politically apathetic group with little rate of return.

The Latino political awakening has it genesis in the 1960 Kennedy campaign through its “Viva Kennedy” organizations. Except for the few campaign “pachangas,” Kennedy’s involvement with Latinos, can hardly be termed inclusive or participatory. Kennedy, with his Boston Brahmin lineage, was barely conversant with Latino minority issues and won its support mainly because he was a Democrat and because he was Catholic.

Texan Lyndon B. Johnson had a closer affinity but he operated with a master-vassal mentality allowing himself to appropriate a few low-level, sub-cabinet appointments. LBJ did achieve major reform legislation with his Civil Rights Act of 1965 which was of significant importance to Black Americans and also to Latinos because of its ripple effect.

Nixon, of a California Quaker background, didn’t have a close association with Latinos growing up or when he started his political career. However, Nixon was able to grasp the Latino problems and their frustrations and when he won the presidency wanted to include them in his reform agenda even though they did not support him.

Entered Nixon’s Latino forces led by Castillo using his counselor abilities to make the case and Ramirez with his academic background and civil rights experience to shape the projects, giving authenticity to Nixon’s pronouncements.

The Latino strategy under Nixon was not to vie for glorified Cabinet positions but to go for the mid-level jobs in key departments where most of the federal programs and funding were developed. Toward the end of Nixon’s first term, his Latino team had placed over 75 of its own in government executive level positions where the wheeling and dealing occurred.

In another key accomplishment, Nixon stipulated that Latinos be counted as a separate minority group in the U.S. Census thus making them more identifiable and eligible for government sponsored programs and minority enterprise.

There were other projects in the works when Nixon’s reign came to a spectacular end over Watergate. I had left the White House a few months earlier but not before I answered a subpoena from the Watergate Grand Jury which wanted to know about my work and any dirty tricks I might have known about.

There were none but the Watergate appearance was costly considering my lawyers’ fees. I was absolved and in retrospect, I didn’t mind the targeting and the inconvenience. We were believers in the mission President Nixon assigned us in assisting the Latino minority. It was a worthy task.

Photo: The author (left) behind the President with Dr. Henry Ramirez, the second Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish-Speaking People.

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