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Saturday, Feb. 20, 1999

Hispanic leadership emphasized

Prepare to be majority, speaker tells LULAC

By GUY H. LAWRENCE
Staff Writer

   On the verge of becoming a majority in Texas in the next century, Hispanics need to be ready to assume more leadership positions, a political activist told an audience Friday.
   Based on U.S. Census estimates, Hispanics will become the majority population in Texas by 2008, said Jose Angel Gutierrez, a founder of La Raza Unida Party and now a political science professor at University of Texas at Arlington.
   "We have this bright future because we have the critical mass," Gutierrez said. "We have the means now to take government and to lead. We have to get busy to work on our skills, our abilities, our competency to build that social capital, so we can be excellent leaders."
   Gutierrez was the keynote speaker at a League of United Latin American Citizens banquet at Omni Bayfront Hotel that honored outstanding community leaders.
   Census estimates say Hispanics already are the majority population in California, Gutierrez said.
   Gutierrez said Hispanics have to rise to excellence rather than sink to mediocrity, and to address the problems of the Hispanic community in areas such as education.
   "We have had problems for a long, long time - problems that others have not been able to solve," Gutierrez said. "Now it is our turn and we will solve it. It is our future."
   The banquet was the culmination of National LULAC Week, which celebrates the civil rights organization's 70th anniversary. LULAC, which was founded in Corpus Christi in 1929, has become the oldest and largest Hispanic organization in the country.
   Gutierrez, who also is a lawyer, said La Raza Unida Party worked off the success of LULAC in pushing for bilingual education, early childhood education, scholarships and school desegregation. La Raza Unida Party was formed in 1970 to challenge the state Democratic Party.
   "The 70 years of struggle that they carried on, we stand on their shoulders, to move their agenda a little further," Gutierrez said.
   Staff writer Guy H. Lawrence can be reached at 886-3792 or by e-mail at lawrenceg@caller.com

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.