Dennis Chávez
Teaching the US Senate Spanish
This article originally appeared in Lonely Planet Santa Fe & Taos 1 (2003).
It was the most tumultuous election in New Mexico history: Entrenched Republican Senator Bronson Cutting was known to many as ‘patron’ for his generous political favors. Democrat Dennis Chávez was a junior-high-school dropout who had educated himself while working in a grocery store to help support his family, going on to attend Georgetown University and serve in the US House of Representatives. It was 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, and one of New Mexico’s first elections by secret ballot.
When the results were tallied amid rumors of stolen ballot boxes and intimidation at the polls, Cutting had won by less than 1% of the vote. Stormy accusations of fraud had still not been settled when Cutting’s small plane went down above the New Mexico mountains, killing all aboard. Chávez was appointed by the governor to take his place, and became the first Hispanic senator in US history.
As the only Spanish speaker in Congress, Chávez was immediately drafted to help build diplomatic relations with not only Latin America, but also the newly acquired, Spanish-speaking US territory of Puerto Rico. The new senator helped negotiate treaties that would build the Pan-American Freeway from Argentina to the United States, and went on to use his growing influence to help disenfranchised Native Americans protect their nations’ sovereignty.
After WWII, he became one of the first Latino activists when he criticized veterans programs that refused treatment to Hispanic soldiers, famously noting that “We are Americans when we go to war, and when we return, Mexicans.” Shortly afterward, Chávez introduced the bill that he would fight for until his death, the Fair Employment Practices Commission. It would guarantee equal employment rights for all people, regardless of ethnicity.
Chávez died in 1962, two years before his long battle was finally won. The landmark Civil Rights Legislation of 1964 included, finally, equal employment under federal law. The inscription beneath the senator’s image in the National Statuary reads (in Spanish, Diné and English), “We have lost our voice.” But few have echoed so profoundly.