We celebrate the life and accomplishments of Rodolfo "Rudy" Garcia, who died
in 1993. He was for many decades a prominent and remarkably successful
civil rights and labor rights leader in Tucson who inspired and
set a high standard for many of today's local Latino community
leaders.
In 2001, the Tucson City Council named a southside city park,
formerly Rodeo Park at the southeast corner of South Sixth Avenue
and Irvington Road for Rudy Garcia. As president of the city's
American Little League in the mid-1960s Garcia went to the city
government and called for a southside park for southside kids like
his ball players, who bounced from schoolyards to vacant lots for
their ball games. He was met with vague promises and slow-moving
red tape, so he and his allies went to what then was a vacant lot
and cleared it of brush and debris to the ball players could use
it. Embarrassed by the orchestrated act of civil disobedience,
the city turned the lot into Rodeo Park, now Rudy Garcia Park.
But that was only one very small aspect of the legacy Rudy Garcia
left with his death at age 75. He was a labor leader - a founder
in the mid-1950s of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' Union,
which later merged with the United Steelworkers of America, at
Magma Copper Co. in San Manuel and Superior. He served on every
mining-union contract negotiating team from 1956 to 1983. He often
worked hand-in-hand on other labor-union struggles, including those
of César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, and their United Farm workers
Union.
Rudy Garcia was a political leader, active in local politics and
a key figure in breaking an Anglo-American lock on City Hall. He
helped elect Hector Morales to a City Council seat in the late
1960s and Rubén Romero to a seat in 1971. Latinos have been represented
continuously on the City Council since then. Next he helped integrate
the Tucson Unified School District Board with his active support
of the successful candidacy of Raúl Grijalva in 1974. Raúl Grijalva
served 12 years on that board and 13 years on the Pima County Board
of Supervisors before winning a seat in Congress in 2002.
Rudy Garcia was a civil rights leader. He organized and participated
in demonstrations that pressured local restaurants to serve African-Americans
and was arrested in Hermosillo, Sonora, leafleting against the
Mexican government's abuse of University of Hermosillo student
activists opposed to government policies.
All these accomplishments, and many more - he was a central figure
in the city's creation of El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, for example
- are the legacy of a local hero who entered this country as an
undocumented immigrant. Rudy Garcia was born in Culiacan and raised
Naco, Sonora. He joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and became a naturalized
United States citizen in 1946. Rudy Garcia was special, but he
and millions of other immigrants have contributed immeasurably
to this country and make it a much better place for us all to live.