HISPANIC HERITAGE: TEJANOS IN THE "WAR TO END ALL WARS"

 

By Juan Montoya

A few years ago I used to live near the U.S. post office on Los Ebanos Blvd.
One Sunday, I wanted to mail some letters and decided to walk from my house. At that time, the lobby at he post office remained open during the weeknds.

Along the way, I noticed a pile of  books behind a residence piled near a trash can in an alley, apparently waiting for the garbage truck the following Monday.
I glanced at some of the titles and was struck by the wealth of literature that was being thrown away.

There was a copy (1933) of the complete works of Shakespeare, Candide, by Voltaire, several tomes by Jack Barnes, a U.S. Communist and Socialist leader, and one by Jose Angel Gutierrez, of Raza Unida fame, among others.

Then I glanced at the name of the owner in one of the books. The books used to belong to an old friend of mine named Ricardo Molina.
Molina, to those of us who knew him, was an ardent Hispanic rights advocate who was also instrumental in the civil right struggle in the Rio Grande Valley.

He was, at the time I knew him and I was working for the Brownsville Herald, the acting engineer for the City of Brownsville. He was hefty for a Mexican, and at first blush appeared to be gruff. But he, as it turned out, was more militant for Hispanic civil rights than most young activists.

However, after a few minutes with him, his gentleness was discernible and his genuine concerns for the rights of Hispanics surfaced.

Ricardo had died a few years before I came upon his collection in that alley behind his home. I know that he would have been hurt by the treatment that his unthinking descendants had given his lifetime collection of great books.

I returned in my car after I mailed my letters and scooped up as many books from the trash as I could. I think they filled two boxes with a few spilling over into the back seat of my car.

One of the books caught my eye. It had a beige fabric cover and something had gnawed away a part of the right bottom cover. Its author was one J. de la Luz Saenz.

I knew nothing about Saenz then, but the title (in Spanish) was "Los méxico-americanos en la Gran Guerra y su contingente en pro de la democracia, la humanidad, y la justicia."

It turned out to be the diary – apparently one of only two – of a Mexican-American soldier in World War I, a subject I had never heard about. It was published by Artes Graficas in San Antonio in 1933. Even more intriguing was the listing of the contributors from throughout South Texas to its printing.

There were people from as far away as Laredo, El Paso, San Antonio, Edinburg, Port Isabel, and even one from Brownsville.

As I leafed through the book, I knew that I was holding a unique narrative of a Mexican-American soldier and writer. Only later would I find out that Saenz was a school teacher in segregated schools for Mexican kids who had enlisted in the U.S. Army after he tired of hearing the Mexican population called "slackers" by whites. In fact, he recounts parents helping him to build schools for the students in isolated hamlets in rural South/Central Texas.

Saenz took part in trench warfare and graphically describes its horrors.

I knew that even though the book might have been worth some money, it was even more valuable as a resource for students who might want to learn more about Hispanics of the era.

I ambled over to the John Hunter Room at the Arnulfo Oliveira Library at Texas Southmost College and struck a bargain with Javier Garcia, a library assistant and writer who worked there.

In return for a photostatic copy of the book, I would donate it for their historical collection. Garcia agreed and the school kept the book. I understand that several students used it to write papers for their classes.

I then learned that the collected papers of José de la Luz Sáenz (1888-1953) are stored in the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas-Austin.

Here' the biographical sketch provided by the collection's archivist:

"José de la Luz Sáenz was born May 17, 1888, in Realitos, Duval County, Texas. He was one of eight children of Rosalío Sáenz and Cristina Hernández. Growing up in South Texas, José de la Luz heard stories of his indigenous ancestry from his father, from whom he inherited a strong feeling of pride in his heritage. In 1900 the Sáenz family moved to Alice, Texas, where José de la Luz graduated high school in 1908.

After attending a business college in San Antonio, Sáenz obtained his teacher's certificate and began his lifelong vocation as an educator in South Texas. He married María Petra Esparza in 1917, and together they were the parents of nine children: Adán, María de la Luz, Enrique, Evangelina, Eduardo, Eva Olivia, Cristina, Beatriz, and José de la Luz, Jr.

Following the entrance of the United States into World War I, Sáenz volunteered in 1918 for service in the armed forces. He served in the 360th Regiment Infantry of the 90th Division from Texas, stationed in France and occupied Germany.

During his years in Europe, Sáenz kept the diary which was published in 1933.

In his diary, Sáenz linked the American World War I "rhetoric of democracy" with the Mexican American struggle for civil rights.

Upon his return from the war, Sáenz translated his experiences and sacrifices—and those of the many other American soldiers of Mexican descent—fighting for democracy into a movement for Mexican American civil rights in Texas.

Sáenz had an early involvement in the establishment of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. He was a member of the LULAC Board of Trustees between 1930 and 1932, and was president of the McAllen chapter in the 1930s. Through his numerous writings and his leadership in local activist organizations, Sáenz continued to battle discrimination.

During the Depression, Sáenz found work through the federal Public Works Administration (PWA) and continued his career as a teacher and school administrator in the South Texas towns of Moore, New Braunfels, Benavides, Premont, La Joya, Oilton, and Edinburg.

United States involvement in World War II – and the participation of his own children in the war effort – brought renewed vigor to his belief that these contributions to the defense and promotion of American democracy made Mexican Americans deserving of equal legal and social treatment, and his writings and actions fighting discrimination demonstrated his continued leadership.

Professor José de la Luz Sáenz died on April 12, 1953. He is buried in the National Cemetery at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

(P.S. After I told some of my friends this story, I learned that there was a translation of his war diary in the works as well as a story of his life by noted Chicano professor Emilio Zamora. The book has been translated and is now available to new generations in English.)

To order one, click on link: https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781623491147/the-world-war-i-diary-of-jose-de-la-luz-saenz/

(It's must reading if you want to learn what our ancestors endured in the struggle for equal rights in the early 1900s.)

As an aside, when the county was deciding on a name for their new engineering building, someone suggested naming it after Ricardo Molina, but then-county judge Gilbert Hinojosa decided against the idea because he said naming it after a Chicano advocate wouldn't fly with the die-hards on Harlingen.

If Ricardo could hear me, I would thank him for turning me on to this piece of knowledge, even if it was from the great beyond.