Belen Borrego Robles (born 1936) is a former national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and served as the group's first national woman president. She has many years experience working for the United States Government in positions relating to immigration and customs.
Belen Borrego Robles was born in 1936 in El Paso, Texas, where she also grew up. [1] [2] She was the fifth of 10 children born to Dolores Ortega Borrego and Joaquin Borrego. [1] She is a graduate of Bowie High School, class of 1954. [3] Robles married Ramiro Robles at age seventeen. [1]
When Robles was job searching in 1956, she was told that "Mexicans are only hired as elevator girls and cooks." [1] She went on to work at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) starting in 1957. [1] In 1971, she went to work for the United States Customs Service. [1]
Robles joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in 1957. [1] Robles became deputy district director of the El Paso area LULAC council in 1964. [4] Previously, she had been president of the Ladies LULAC Council 9. [4] In 1994, she ran for national president of LULAC at the national convention held in El Paso. [1] Robles went on to become the first woman to serve as national president of the organization. [5] [3]
In 2001, she ran for mayor of El Paso. [6] Belen has served on the board of trustees for the El Paso Community College and the Texas Association of Community College Trustees. [3]
El Paso Union Depot is an Amtrak train station in El Paso, Texas, served by the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited. The station was designed by architect Daniel Burnham, who also designed Washington D.C. Union Station. It was built between 1905 and 1906 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) is a national non-profit civil rights organization formed in 1968 by Jack Greenberg to protect the rights of Latinos in the United States. Founded in San Antonio, Texas, it is currently headquartered in Los Angeles, California and maintains regional offices in Sacramento, San Antonio, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Raymond L. Telles Jr. was the first Mexican-American Mayor of a major American city, El Paso, Texas. He was also the first Hispanic appointed as a U.S. ambassador.
Private Marcelino Serna was a Mexican who enlisted as an American soldier and settled from El Paso, Texas. He became one of the most decorated soldiers from Texas in World War I. Serna was the first Hispanic to be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the largest and oldest Hispanic and Latin-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was established on February 17, 1929, in Corpus Christi, Texas, largely by Hispanics returning from World War I who sought to end ethnic discrimination against Latinos in the United States. The goal of LULAC is to advance the economic condition, educational attainment, political influence, housing, health, and civil rights of Hispanic people in the United States. LULAC uses nationwide councils and group community organizations to achieve all these goals. LULAC has about 132,000 members in the United States.
The Little School of the 400 was a program in Texas to teach Spanish-speaking children 400 English words before they entered kindergarten during the late 1950s.
Alicia Dickerson Montemayor was an American civil rights activist from Laredo, Texas, the first woman elected to a national office not specifically designated for a woman, having served as vice president general of the interest group, the League of United Latin American Citizens. She was the first woman to serve as associate editor of the LULAC newspaper and the first to write a charter to fund a LULAC youth group. Montemayor urged the inclusion of girls and women into Latin American activism and also promoted the interests of middle-class Mexican-Americans. She is a designated honoree of Women's History Month of the National Women's History Project.
Lucy G. Acosta was a Mexican-American activist with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). She was a political appointee under various mayors of El Paso, Texas. She was elected to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1987. The Lucy G. Acosta Humanitarian Awards were named in her honor, and have been presented every year since 1993.
Domingo García is an American lawyer and politician. He serves as the 51st President of League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). He previously served as a member of the Dallas City Council, Mayor Pro Tem of Dallas, and a member of the Texas House of Representatives. He was elected the president of LULAC in 2018.
El Segundo Barrio is a historic Hispanic neighborhood in El Paso, Texas. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in El Paso. It was one of the main ports of entry into the United States from Mexico for many years, and became known as the "other Ellis Island" as a result.
The 1917 Bath Riots occurred in January 1917 at the Santa Fe Street Bridge between El Paso, Texas, United States, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The riots are known to have been started by Carmelita Torres and lasted from January 28 to January 30 and were sparked by new immigration policies at the El Paso–Juárez Immigration and Naturalization Service office, requiring Mexicans crossing the border to take de-lousing baths and be vaccinated. Reports that nude photographs of women bathers and fear of potential fire from the kerosene baths, led Carmelita Torres to refuse to submit to the procedure. Denied a refund of her transport fare, she began yelling at the officials and convinced other riders to join her. After three days, the discontent subsided, but the disinfections of Mexicans at the U.S. border continued for forty years.
The following is a timeline of Latino civil rights in the United States.
Kimie Yanagawa Sanematsu (Tokuyama) was an American educator. In 1953 she was the first Japanese person to be naturalized in the United States since 1922, and the first in El Paso, Texas. News from the time period also stated that she was the first Japanese woman to be naturalized in the United States under the McCarran immigration act.
Kate Moore Brown was an American musician, clubwoman and traveler who lived in El Paso, Texas. Brown was one of the first graduates of El Paso High School. She was the first person to teach music in the public schools in Texas and El Paso and was the first woman to own a bicycle in El Paso. Brown is also one of the original creators of the El Paso International Museum which later became the El Paso Museum of Art.
Birdie Alexander was an American educator and music teacher. She was a charter member of the Music Supervisors' National Conference. Alexander is credited with laying the foundations of music education in the Dallas public schools.
Sylvia R. Mata is an Ecuadorian social advocate, community leader, economist, and column editor. She is the current President of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Queens Council for Arts and Education and the Vice President of the NYS LULAC for women. She is also the founder and Vice President of ArteLatAm; an arts organization with its headquarters in Queens, New York.
Alicia Rosencrans Chacón is an American politician. She is best known for several firsts in El Paso, Texas. Chacón was the first woman elected to El Paso government when she became county clerk in 1974. She was also the first Hispanic woman to serve on the Ysleta Independent School District Board and as an alderman in El Paso. She later became the first woman and first Hispanic person in 100 years to serve as a judge for the El Paso area. A school, the Alicia R. Chacón International School is named after her.
Belle Christie Ferguson Critchett was an American social activist and suffragist. Critchett was active in Texas, especially in El Paso and was part of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA). She worked with suffragist Maude E. Craig Sampson to increase opportunities for Black women voters. Later, she became president of the El Paso chapter of the League of Women Voters.
A. Louise Dietrich was an American nurse, activist and suffragist who was based in El Paso, Texas. Dietrich came to El Paso in 1902 and stayed to help with the typhoid fever epidemic. In El Paso, she started the first nurses' registry in Texas and also created the El Paso Graduate Nurses Association. She worked at several hospitals both in El Paso and in other cities. Dietrich was one of the organizers and founders of St. Mark's Hospital in El Paso. Dietrich was active with the El Paso Equal Franchise League and later became a president of the Texas League of Women Voters (LWV). Dietrich served as secretary in both the Texas Graduate Nurses Association and the Texas Board of Nursing (BON). After Dietrich's death, she was honored by the Texas House of Representatives for her lifetime of work in nursing and other activism.
Alonso S. Perales was a Mexican American lawyer, diplomat, and civil rights activist based in Texas. He was a founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and served as the second president, helping write its constitution. Perales also served as a diplomat in the Eisenhower administration.
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