I don’t know how many hundreds attended Pierre Jimenez’s funeral Wednesday. The governor was there. So was the mayor. In the crowd, I spotted Pat Vigil and Cisco Gallardo and Rich Gonzales and Adrienne Benavidez and Antonio Esquibel Sr. and Arturo Jimenez and Paul Lopez and Judy Montero and Delio Tamayo and Ron Montoya and Veronica Benavidez and Rosemary Rodriguez and Nita Gonzales. Just to name a few.
These names might not mean anything to you. Who they are is not important. What they are is. They are teachers, school-board and City Council members, cops, firefighters, veterinarians, veterans, poets, nonprofit leaders, company owners. They are the articulation of a continuum represented by Pierre and by Lena Archuleta.
At 90, Lena was 30 years Pierre’s senior. She came of age before the civil-rights movement that would define Pierre. In her youth, such a gathering of so many accomplished Latinos was inconceivable. “You have to remember, 60 years ago things were different,” retired Judge Roger Cisneros said earlier this week. “We had few Hispanic teachers. We had no one in the state legislature. No one on City Council. We didn’t have any judges. If someone graduated from college, it was a big deal.”
When I moved to Denver in 1998, I visited the office of the Latin American Research and Service Agency. Lena was one of its founders. On the wall near the front entrance, two photos hung. One was of Corky Gonzales, the other of Bernie Valdez. How neatly this epitomizes the two branches of Latino activism in the city, I remember thinking. The Bernie school sought to give Latinos a voice by working within the system. The Corky school took the battle to the streets.
I believed a bright line divided the two, but I’ve come to understand how simplistic that was. Lena and Pierre helped teach me that. Yes, Pierre was a lightning rod where Lena was not. He was willing to shout when Lena would not. But as different as their strategies were, they understood the relationship between the two.
“They both taught us to overcome our own fear,” Ramon del Castillo tells me. “Each played a foundational role. One breaks the door down. The other walks down the path. As each generation walks down that path, it breaks down barriers.”
Pierre and Lena both saw education as the only way to accomplish true equity in society. Both understood the work remaining on that front. This is the task this generation carries.
“We have many talks about what we stand for,” 30-something Cisco Gallardo says. These conversations, he says, now take them beyond the realm of Chicano rights to that of human rights.
Some of you will read this and declare we are past such overt ethnic displays. But this is not for you. This is for the young people who follow. The young people who possess vision and the young people who have not yet learned to see and who do not believe they can succeed. This is for the young people who do not understand the legacy they have inherited and the responsibility they have to further it.
City Councilman Paul Lopez, who is 32, told me about a time he spoke at a school where most of the students were Latino. They clustered in the back of the classroom. He told them something I will never forget. “Do you think your parents and grandparents sacrificed the way they did, do you think they marched in the streets, do you think they bent their backs in the fields, do you think they bled in war so you could sit at the back of the room? You must understand at what price these seats in front became available to us. They shall not ever, ever be empty.”
Move forward, he told them.
This is what rings in my ears these days. Move forward, Lena Archuleta said. Move forward, Pierre Jimenez said. Work hard. Claim your place.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
