I don’t know how Guillermo (Bill) Vidal will do in his six months as Denver mayor. I don’t know what any person can do in six months as mayor. But after a conversation with him last week, I started wishing every mayor went into office with the clock racing and the knowledge that, when it ran out, there would be no return to politics.
The combination is limiting and liberating. Limiting for obvious reasons. Liberating because if one has no further political aspirations, one has little fear of political repercussions.
A person can write an inaugural speech and decide the very first political point will be about the need for sensible, humane immigration reform.
“I stand in front of you today as a Cuban immigrant whose life — if only for a brief moment — has become directly intertwined with our city’s destiny,” he told the crowd at last week’s ceremony. “Like other immigrants, both legal and illegal, I came to this country in search of a better life.”
A person can draw upon that immigrant experience to address concerns about the use of force by this city’s police. He can reassure the public of the professionalism of the majority of public-safety employees, but add: “Believe me, I know what it is like when your government rules by force. We are blessed that this is America, more importantly, that this is Denver, Colorado. . . . As citizens we rightfully expect the actions of our officers to make us feel safe — not afraid.”
That passage and his decision to lead with immigration led to some debate among his staff, Vidal tells me the day after his inauguration.
I’d met him before, but we’d never had a conversation. We’re sitting in his new office, his name now emblazoned — “Guillermo (Bill) V. Vidal” — above the entrance. If you know anything about his story, even that arrangement of his name is significant.
“I’m 60 years old, and six months happens in a blink of an eye,” he says. “I have this small window and so I have to ask. ‘What do I bring to the table that’s different?’ Well, the one thing I bring is that I’m an immigrant, so I wanted to start with that message. I know it’s controversial, but I was compelled to do it, and I would have regretted not doing it. Even my message to the folks in public safety. I love them, but I also know the kind of community I don’t want to come from. . . . Perhaps that was the most important speech I’ll ever give. I felt I had to bring myself into it.”
Vidal, as you may know, published a memoir in 2007 called “Boxing for Cuba.” The subtitle is “An Immigrant’s Story of Despair, Endurance and Redemption.” He was born to a well-to-do but dysfunctional family. In 1961, his parents sent him and his two brothers, the twins, Juan and Roberto, to the United States beyond Fidel Castro’s tightening grip. Vidal was 10. He and the twins ended up in an orphanage in Pueblo, where daily cruelty was visited upon the boys. Their parents arrived in Colorado about two and half years later. Even now, Vidal struggles for composure when speaking of those days.
Vidal’s writing is most powerful when describing the family’s painful adjustment to American society. He’s a man who knew privilege and then poverty, an immigrant who abandoned Guillermo for Bill and eventually came to understand himself as both.
We talk about his plans for the next six months, which include speeding up planned projects, preparing budget notes for the mayor who will take office in July and encouraging city employees to remember no gesture that helps the public, whether it be paving alleys or expediting permits, is too small.
“I know the privilege it is to have this position because of the difference you can make in people’s lives,” Vidal says, but no, he’s not interested in a future political career.
“I’ve had a long career as a public servant. I’ve been working since I was 14.”
His wife, Gabriela Cornejo, a Chilean immigrant and a 30-year public servant, recently retired and he intends to join her.
We talk about his new job, but I keep thinking about his book, replaying a scene he describes in the orphanage. He and his brothers learned to fend off the boys who would beat them by forming a circle, back to back to back. As they became men, the trio drifted apart, but his brothers are among the family at his inauguration.
During a lull in the employee reception after the ceremony, the twins approach their little brother. One pulls him close and hugs him, a long, tight, tearful embrace, and it seems to me that all the distance they have traveled, over all this years, can be summed up in that one moment.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
