Selected Interview Segments: Ed Idar

  
  
  

Ed Idar, jr.,
Former G.I. Forum Texas State Chairman and Executive Secretary
Copyright 2007 South Texas Public Broadcasting System, INC.

Q: What were some of the first tasks Dr. Garcia asked you to do once you joined the G.I. Forum?

A: He asked me to go an organize New Braunfels. I didn't have a car. I had to take a bus on my first trip to New Braunfels, and, walk about two miles to the edge of town where our contact was. And, he had, what, I guess you might call it a beer joint, and he collected a few guys, but not enough to organize anything, so we agreed that he would set up another meeting, this time he would have some beer available. And sure enough, that time we had 40, 50 people and, I made anther trip by bus and, we managed, I managed to organize a G. I. Forum. And one thing led to the other and, and, uh, I got involved.

Q: What was it like to go into a town where, you maybe only knew one or two people and try and convince them to become part of an organization?

A: Well, I would know something about the town. I mean, it was obvious, in the average small town, if you wanted to find out where the hell the Mexicans were all you had to do was look for the railroad tracks and go on the other side. And that's where the Mexican barrio was and it was-- You would see unpaved streets and, poor lighting, poor drainage, school segregation, and so forth. So, all you needed to do is talk to those people, "You want to do something about this, get better- get paved streets or this or the other, get active and help us. Get to working in your community. Conduct poll tax drives, back to school drives, and go after your city council for one thing or the other." So, it didn't take them long to get them interested because, they had lived with those conditions, but they didn't know exactly what to do about it.

Q: How did the G.I. Forum raise money to support the important legal cases like the Pete Hernandez case and Delgado school case?

A: I was State Chairman for a couple of years, and then the executive secretary for a long time. I used to mimeograph Uh, you remember the old mimeograph? You're too young, probably you don't remember it, but I used to mimeograph letters to our local organizations. If we had a case to finance, I would send out an appeal to our groups to send whatever money they could contribute to the thing. Some would send $50, some of them maybe $100, and that was one way of raising money. Secondly, our yearly queen contests where we used to run, young girls as candidates for state queen. It would start at the local level. Every local group would have a queen or two, and, they would sell votes at a penny each and they would have picnics or dances, or get-togethers or you name it, in order to raise money for the candidate. They would report the money to the state office, I would file a report and so forth, of the monies received. We had the state divided into districts, at a point in time, we would select a district queen. That would be the girl who has contributed the most money to the state office. And then they would be selected maybe six weeks or so before the state convention and they would continue to raise money. And then at the state convention, the district queens would turn in the, whatever money they had raised, and I believe it was from the top three or something like that, that had raised the most money for the state organization, that we submitted them for a vote. There no longer was any money involved. The delegates would select the state queen. And that enabled us to raise four, five, ten thousand dollars. We had very limited means. The Forum never had more than ten thousand dollars at any one time. We didn't have no foundations. We didn't have no corporations, nobody contributing money to our work. We had to do it, con las unas, as the old saying used to say, "with our fingernails." And that was the way we raised money.

They used to call me El Chiqote, the whip. Because I was the one that had to send the memos out asking them to pay their dues or to contribute for this or the other, get active in this and the other. I put out the memos. I made memos about the poll tax drives and the back to school drives. Hector was the one that went out and talked to the people and, got a lot of applause and so forth. Of course he did stimulate them, you know, he did get them to work.

Q: Now that's so much different from a civil rights group like the NAACP.

A: Oh my God. Remember, the NAACP had a leadership that would not be accepted. No matter how intelligent, how smart, how wealthy a black leader could be, he was never taken into the country club. With the Mexicans it was different. We had wealthy Mexicans that were members of the country clubs wherever they lived. They were not interested in this kind of work. I mean, they had it made. So the blacks had a lot of their people who were professionals and what have you that were contributing to the NAACP. We didn't have the same situation. Our people, we didn't have enough wealthy people to begin with, and those that were, were not socially conscious, by and large. There were a few exceptions, but most of them were not. So we had to raise our money in other ways. When we started out it only cost you 25 cents to join the G. I. Forum. We didn't have state dues. After 2 or 3 years, we imposed dues, state dues of $2 a year. So that was difficult.

Q: You mentioned about the people, the wealthy Mexican people not having a social conscience. Can you elaborate on that? Why?

A: Well, in South Texas Well, take my own home county of Webb county. We always had people there that had inherited land. Uh, they had oil in their in their land, they had cattle, they, what have you, they just were not In fact they worked laborers, paid them whatever they could, as little as they could. It was the old caste system in a way, you could say. We didn't have social discrimination, but we had economic discrimination. The wealthy people kind of looked down their nose to the, at the poor people. It was part of the culture. I mean, you go to Mexico you find the same thing over there, or at least you did. I don't know now, but, in those years you could. It was what we inherited from the Spaniards you might say, the whole idea that, those at the top ran the show, and were not concerned with the fortunes of the ones that had to work hard for, to make a living.

Q: You were in charge of the "What Price Wetbacks" AFL-CIO funded secret investigation of the flow of illegal workers into the country. Why was this so important to the G.I. Forum?

A: Illegal immigration along the Mexican border was important for the reason that, most of the people came over were agricultural workers. In the valley they grew a lot of cotton and, they would come on over here and pick cotton and take jobs away from our own people that were either legal immigrants already well documented and everything, or our citizens.

As a result of that, our own people had to migrate away from South Texas and go up north to pick cotton, follow agricultural crops of different kinds. And the wetback, or the illegal alien, took their place in the cotton fields around the valley and so forth. They were paid anywhere from 15 to 20 cents an hour, and our people couldn't live for that kind of money.

Now, the AFL CIO were concerned because, obviously a lot of the illegals also managed to get in to the urban areas in San Antonio and other cities and would compete for carpentry, plumbing or other vocational trades. They would work their way in there and they would lower the wages. And unions were, of course, concerned with that. Along the border we had another problem. I mean, if you had people that were knowledgeable when it came to typing, bookkeeping, that kind of thing, or salesgirls that could work in the stores, they depressed the wages also for our own domestic workers.

Q: Do you think there's a lack of appreciation today for the contributions of the American G. I. Forum?

A: The trouble is that there's not enough knowledge as to what went on. People now days have the idea that the Mexican-American movement started with the groups that were active in the 60's, the, Mexican-American Unity Council, and the, the La Raza Unida that created so much havoc with all those protests and what have you. With La Raza Unida running the Mexicano for governor, but we started way before then. And that's a story that's never been told adequately in my opinion.