Sunday Editorial: Jose Canseco May Be The Better Hitter, But Mario G. Obledo Was The Better Man...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor of The Tribune

PORT ISABEL, Texas - In the era of grotesque publicity that we live in, it is easy to focus on the so-called celebrities, the made-for-TV types, the whiners who get ready airtime on national news programs, the bad eggs who do their deeds and continue to come calling for adulation. Yeah, Jose Canseco, current darling of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas press, could fit perfectly in any of those aforementioned categories. The disgraced Hispanic ballplayer is in town to play before fans largely ignorant of his awful history, and ready to shower him with cheers of the sort better-suited for real heroes.

But we spend too many words on Canseco.

Better words surface when we consider another Hispanic, this one being Mario G. Obledo.

The collective response from residents of the Valley: Mario who?

It is Mr. Obledo (shown in photo above), from Southern California, that Hispanics should cheer. He died this past Wednesday - at about the time news hit the region about Canseco's visits to area ballparks. Obledo did more in one day for the Hispanic community than Canseco could ever do - even if he dedicated the rest of his years to bandaging a horrible reputation as that once-Somebody major league baseball player who used illegal drugs to enhance his performance on the field.

There was no mention of Mr. Obledo's passing in area newspapers. Nothing, anyway, that would approximate any sort of mournful gratefulness. Canseco, on the other hand, was big news - in print and broadcast. Here, in a region inhabited mostly by Hispanic-Americans? Yep, here...

Mario Guerra Obledo began his life in San Antonio. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served aboard a ship during the Korean War, got his pharmacy degree from the University of Texas before earning a law degree from St. Mary's University. In his later years, he would join the Harvard Law School faculty as a teaching fellow. Most of his adult life was spent in California, where he served in various state government positions, including Secretary of Health & Welfare. Through it all, Mr. Obledo fought every slight he detected being aimed at Hispanics - from vigorously attacking Taco Bell's use of a chihuahua in its "Yo quiero Taco Bell" advertisements, to telling Anglos in California they could go back to Europe if they didn't like Hispanics.

Indeed, when then-President Bill Clinton presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, Mr. Obledo was honored for having "created a powerful chorus for justice and equality." In fact, some called him the "Godfather of the Latino Movement" in the United States.

News reports of his day show that, always, Mr. Obledo took the discrimination fight to the streets, going public at every opportunity. In the 1990s, when someone put up a sign at the California border saying, "Illegal Immigration State," he threatened to burn it down, and do it personally. In radio interviews, he was brutally honest about his approach. In one instance, in 1998, he said that Hispanics would soon take all of California’s political institutions. When outrage ensued, he again launched his handy, favorite suggestion; that being, that those who didn't like it could go back to Europe.

But atop his mountain of accomplishments were creation of various important political and civil rights institutions that included the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and the National Coalition of Hispanic Organizations. Mr. Obledo also served as president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and chairman of the National Rainbow Coalition, the leftist political organization that grew out of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign.

There is no question that Mr. Obledo was not as well-known to South Texas residents - apparently, not anywhere near as known as former Oakland A's oufielder Canseco - and therein lies the sadness of this man's passing and the failure to acknowledge the many, many contributions he made to help an often-oppressed sector of the American citizenry.

Mr. Obledo was 78 at the time of his death in Sacramento.

Jose Canseco is in his mid-40s, for some damned reason drawing more adulation here than the entire region ever aimed at Mario G. Obledo. In the parlance of the sport that keeps supporting Mr. Canseco, Jose this week carries the under-achieving Laredo Broncos of something called the United Baseball League on his big, broad shoulders. Mario G. Obledo carried millions of Hispanics on his much-smaller shoulders for decades - fielding bigotry cleanly and hitting memorable, game-winning societal homeruns...

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