2006 Utahns of the Year
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:01/01/2007 03:43:41 AM MST
Andrea Flores' March 27 began when University of Utah students
slipped her posters and advice on coordinating a walkout at West
High School. When the day was done, Flores was sunburned and feeling
an exhilaration she had never before experienced.
At 16, she had helped lead scores of students, most of them Latino,
on a walkout that would spark similar protests throughout the
Salt Lake Valley. In the days that followed, hundreds of students
would walk to the state Capitol, giddy with newly discovered political
clout and hoping someone would listen.
They were acting on their fears about proposed legislation that
would have made felons of immigrants who came to the United States
without documentation. While many of the students were legal,
their friends and family weren't always protected. Some of the
details of the proposed law escaped them, but they didn't like
what they had heard.
"I felt a big sense of achievement," Flores says now.
"I know teenagers are looked down upon."
Students from the U.'s Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan,
or MEChA, helped nudge the West walkout to life. Flores met them
near the school and got their material, then took it from there.
Word spread as friends fired off text messages to friends.
Jose Rodriguez, 19, a U. sophomore, wants it made clear that the
students made the walkout their own.
"It's not about using them," he said. "I believe
it empowered the students - they took control of the situation."
Mel Flores, Andrea's father, came here illegally, but is now
a citizen. He was happy when he heard what his daughter had done.
"She stands for what she believes that is right,"
he said.
- Julia Lyon
His business got started when he loaded his pickup with bags
of cooked pinto beans and sold them at the farmers market in Salt
Lake City. In the late 1990s, he studied what kind of bean recipes
customers asked for and what kind of burritos or tamales they
bought.
"I was born in Mexico, but I was made in Utah," Jorge
Fierro likes to say of himself and his Rico Mexican Market &
Catering business, which employs about 30 workers and brings in
$1.5 million a year.
In 1998, Fierro opened a market at 779 S. 500 East in Salt Lake
City with little more than a counter and a small refrigerator
with a Coca-Cola logo. Farmers market customers dropped in and
business expanded, mostly by word of mouth.
Today, 65 percent of his business involves prepared Mexican-style
meals distributed to grocery stores. He hopes to expand nationally,
keeping in mind his late father's advice not to get greedy. Many
recipes are from his mother's kitchen, made without preservatives
and eaten fresh in the Mexican way.
Fierro did have advantages when he moved to Utah from Chihuahua,
Mexico, on a student visa 20 years ago. He and his six brothers
and a sister had attended college. His parents, owners of a grocery
store and ranch, had taught them the value of hard work.
Fierro worked at Intermountain Health Care for eight years, quitting
in 1996 when he sensed he was getting too comfortable. That's
dangerous, he says. "Too many people do not go on to higher
learning or higher training, working only to become comfortable.
"Education will help us hold our own. But it's tough getting
that across when no members of families have gone to college.
The parents end up with two jobs and little time to raise their
children. It's a vicious chain."
So Fierro serves on various boards to pay his debt to the community.
"In no way could I have developed my business by myself,"
he says. "My product is a Utah product - and that makes me
proud."
- Dawn House
Judge Andrew Valdez Named
By Salt Lake Tribune as One of the
2006 Utahns of the Year
All these years later, it is one of the stories Andrew A. Valdez
still tells to help explain the way he thinks about race.
Valdez was a rookie lawyer back then and a fellow attorney wanted
him to know that a certain judge had described him as "one
of the best Hispanic lawyers" he had seen in years.
It was supposed to be a compliment. Valdez didn't take it that
way. "I wanted to be the best lawyer," he says.
No qualifier needed, not then, and not when he was appointed
to the bench.
That is a message Valdez, now a juvenile court judge, tries to
drive home when he speaks to children - whether in the courtroom
or the classroom.
It doesn't matter where you come from or the color of your skin,
he'll say. You have the power to decide who you are and what you
become.
If you have a caring adult in your corner, all the better.
Valdez had two: his mother, who raised him and three siblings
after their father left, and a white man named Jack Keller. Valdez's
mother, a native of New Mexico, taught her kids that their skin
color mattered less than the quality of their hearts.
Keller befriended Valdez when he was a poor, west-side kid hawking
newspapers on a downtown Salt Lake City street. The self-employed
printer let Valdez work in his shop and taught Valdez to play
tennis on the public courts at Liberty Park. The sport - and the
friendship - exposed Valdez to a wider world, one that led to
college and his career.
Keller's influence lives on in The Village Project, a mentoring
program Valdez started his first year as a judge that pairs wayward
kids with adult mentors.
It also is part of the reason Valdez moved back to Salt Lake
City's west side after becoming a judge. "I love being around
people who look like me," Valdez says, then adds,
"I am hoping when they see me, they see a reflection of
themselves."
That is, a guy who dreamed, worked hard, got an education, made
it. Period.
- Brooke Adams
Bursting with reds, oranges, blues and yellows, the large paintings
of Ruby Chacon capture mundane moments in the daily lives of her
Mexican-American family, such as her mother rolling tortillas
or her grandfather tending a goat.
Observers note the irony of the big, bold canvases springing
from such a petite woman. But Chacon, 35, has defied expectations
all her life.
The daughter of working-class parents - her father was a miner,
her mother cleaned houses - Chacon endured a guidance counselor
who told her she would never graduate from high school. She became
the first person in her family to do so.
Once Chacon began her career as an artist, people told her to
paint landscapes because her Latin-styled portraits of family
members would never sell. But her paintings and public murals
have supported her full time while heralding Salt Lake City's
emerging Latino art scene.
Two events in particular shaped Chacon's identity as an artist
and a Utahn. The first was the murder of her 3-year-old nephew
in 1996 by her sister's boyfriend. Chacon saw media coverage of
the case as callous and dehumanizing, and vowed to fight stereotypes
by portraying positive images of Latino life through her art.
The second event was her participation in the 2001 Utah Hispanic
American Festival, which opened her eyes to the state's Latino
population boom and, for the first time, connected her to its
Latino community.
In recent years Chacon has become something of a quiet activist,
volunteering on community boards and seeking donations for the
children left behind after last month's immigration raid in Hyrum.
But she believes her art says as much as her words.
"I'm painting my history," says the artist with the
dark flashing eyes and the hair down to the small of her back.
"I have to be the one to tell my own story and not leave
it in the hands of other people, because they'll screw it up."
- Brandon Griggs
The question always makes Alma Armendariz laugh: "Don't
you work?" other immigrants will ask.
They're confused because Armendariz's work looks a lot like friendship.
A promontora, or outreach worker, for Holy Cross Ministries,
Armendariz's job is to help people who have just arrived in Utah
find their way, maybe first to the food bank or medical clinic.
As the immigrant integrates into the culture, Armendariz or one
of the five other Holy Cross promontoras may teach him or her
to ride the bus, apply for a job or take a prenatal class on infant
care. Eventually, the immigrant is ready to open a bank account
or get a driver license.
"We are like mentors or sponsors. In the beginning, they
depend on the promontora. But later, they need to be self-sufficient,"
Armendariz says.
Her territory is Heber City and Park City, where she also works
in Holy Cross' after-school program at St. Mary's Catholic Church.
Other promontoras work in the Salt Lake Valley and Wendover.
A native of Parral, Chihuahua, Mexico, Armendariz came to Utah
with her husband, Aniceto, and four children in 1995.
They settled in Heber City, where Aniceto worked construction.
Alma's first job was cleaning the restrooms in the campground
where they lived in a travel trailer.
Frustrated with the language barrier and inability to find affordable
housing, they returned to Mexico the same year. Their hearts remained
in Utah, though, and they returned intent on helping other immigrants
as well.
Eventually, both began working for Holy Cross. Aniceto was a
promontore, like his wife. They built a home and Aniceto was ordained
a deacon in the Catholic Church.
The family was given permanent resident status in September 2005.
That same month, Aniceto was shot and killed as the couple returned
home from evening Mass.
Alma remains in their Heber home with their three boys, all young
men in college, and 14-year-old daughter.
- Kristen Moulton
A unified voice
On a glorious day last spring, Utah Latinos suddenly had voices,
faces, impact. That Sunday, April 9, more than 40,000 people assembled
on the streets around Salt Lake City Hall. They proclaimed not
only their existence in this once-homogenous state, but their
unity as a people and a political force here and in countless
other cities nationwide. The march came at a time when Utah was
engaged in a national conversation about illegal immigration and
reminded all of us of the rich heritage Latinos have long maintained
throughout the state. So today we honor the Latino community,
in all its richness and diversity, as The Salt Lake Tribune's
Utahns of the Year. To do so, we introduce you to five individuals
who serve as exemplars of the passion, achievement, and even the
sorrows, of the entire community.
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