TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Maria Berriozabal (MB)
INTERVIEWER: David Todd (DT)
DATE: February 14, 2006
LOCATION: San Antonio Texas
TRANSCRIBERS: Melanie Smith and Robin Johnson
REELS: 2330 and 2331

Please note that the corresponding videos include roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings. Numbers correlate with the time codes on the VHS tape copy of the interview. “Misc.” refers to background noise or off-camera conversation that is unrelated to the interview.

DT: My name is David Todd and I’m here in San Antonio, Texas for the Conservation History Association of Texas and it is February 14th, 2006, Valentine’s Day, and we have the good fortune to be visiting with Maria Berriozabal. And she served as the first Latina councilperson at San Antonio City Council. And in addition to serving in government, has also been an advocate for justice and equal access to power and some environmental protection throughout the San Antonio area. I wanted to take this time to thank her for spending time with us. I thought we might start with a question about your childhood. You’ve often said and written that you stand on strong shoulders, that you had forebearers that gave you a good foundation and I was wondering if part of that background relates to your interest in justice or conservation or other topics that you could talk about.
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MB: First of all, thank you very much for coming to my house and for this interview. I always like to say that my story is the story of a people, so I do—I’m happy to do it because I represent a lot of others, as you have indicated. I feel that I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me and in my family; it’s a very illustrious honored history that starts with my parents coming from Mexico during the Revolution of 1910
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when the land and the people were being ravaged by the Revolution. And they were people who lived off the land. They took care of the homes for the landowners that owned the haciendas. So they worked, took care of the animals and took care of the fields. Some of them worked inside as servants, but they were humble people. And when the war got to their back door and they saw the—the abuses, the violence against the women, a violation of—of young women and the dangers, they came to the U.S.
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when there was no border. And they formed a community here in—in Texas—Lockhart, Texas, to be specific. By that time, other people had been coming, actually for many, many years, maybe generations, going back and forth to what is now a border. But when they came, and before that, there was no border. You know, up until 1848, this area where we are now in San Antonio was part of Mexico. So people went back and forth. So they came to Lockhart and the only work they could get was being the caretakers—sharecroppers for the landowners, who were Germans, who had purch—who had been
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almost given land with land grants from the King of Spain and they owned vast holdings. And all that was needed—the question that—that I like to remember my dad and mom telling us when we were little is that the landowners, who knew very little Spanish or hardly any, just knew how to ask quantos manos? How many hands, literally, because depending on how many hands you had to work the land, you would get a piece of land. And even children’s hands counted, their labor. So they would get their little piece of land, they would get a little house in the middle of the—of the la—of the farm and then
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they would start, you know, planting the seeds and planting the corn, cotton, sugarcane, sometimes broom—you know, the broomsticks. And right now, you know when—if you’re driving down little roads between Austin and San Antonio, you know, I still see the land there from time to time, we go to the church where my parents married and remember the stories that they told us. It was the time where there was a lot of discrimination. I remember being told stories as a child of lynchings, of how the criminal
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justice system impacted the—the Mexicans who came. And yet the—the pride and love I have for my history is how these families formed a community. They formed their own community. They brought their language. They brought a faith. They brought religion, which I don’t always equate that with faith. They brought their art in whatever they could produce, either crocheting, embroidery, cooking, the music, the dances, poetry that my mother—my mother’s a poet at heart. And—and then they made—they created community. All the way to celebrating the Mexican—celebrations of Mexican Independence. You know, September was one of the biggest festivities in the farms
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because it was right after the harvest and they had a little bit of money to go buy dresses and shoes and go to the dances and, you know, have a good time. So the, you know, in recent years, I’ve been trying to go back and literally—and write stories that I was told when I was little because I want to know, like one time I started thinking about water. What’s this thing I have with water, you know? Like when I got elected to the City Council, I didn’t say like water’s going to be my number one issue that I’m going to deal
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with. I was dealing with housing and jobs and transportation and garbage and potholes and, you know, the neighbor next door and the dog. And then water came up and what I remembered is when I was little that we used to go to my grandfather’s panchito, his farm. They had a well and my uncle Blas would take us to the well and he would take the pail, you know, that was made out of wood and you could hear when it hit the water. And it was so deep, you know, the water was so deep. And I remember that splash and
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then he would bring it up and then he had a dipper and we used to call it a dipa—la dipa. And he would give us water. And I remember that water, how it tasted. It was cold and it was so good and it’s almost like the only water that tasted like that was water from that well. So when I was in City Council the first time since citizen’s started coming, talking about the aquifer and the water and pollution, I don’t think I ever stopped to think that I had a frame of reference of clean water. And like you kind of have to appreciate what
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something is before you a—h—have a responsibility for taking care of it in—in case it’s—so it won’t get dirty. And I—I can’t explain it but it’s almost like, to me, I have a picture and I have a taste for water. So when I hear that there’s benzene in the aquifer, when I hear that they have to close some wells because the children were getting sick or it’s like—it’s so immediate. It—it’s an emotional response and even a physical one. So to me, like understanding how we got to be the people we are has always been very important and I like telling the story of this family. Very humble, very poor, but appreciating nature, very much of the indigenous traditions, the culture of—of the
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indigenous people of Mexico in this case, with their care of the Earth and even to worshipping sun and moon and stars and so on is very important to me.
DT: Was there…?
(misc.)
DT: In addition to this love of the land and connection of land that your forebearers had, did they also have a respect for other members of their community, a sense of what is right and wrong, justice that has kind of carried through in your work in politics?
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MB: Oh, that’s—that’s the most important one. And the message—and eventually, by the time I was born—actually, I was born in Laredo because my parents were going to go back to Mexico. You know, people came because they were going to go back. And when the war started, my grandmother began to worry that there was going to be a war and, you know, they had a left a war. So they were on their way back to Mexico. But a long story, they couldn’t get back and I was born in Laredo. But then they moved to San Antonio and the only job my dad could get was as a laborer and mother stayed at home taking care of children. And when the—the early memories that I have of school and of learning were the words of my father saying you have a responsibility. God gave you a brain, you’re supposed to use it and learn and when you finish your studies, you’re
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supposed to help others, particularly those who have less than you do. And so it’s kind of like a family philosophy and that’s—that’s justice. You know, teaching little tiny children you don’t exist just for yourself. You have a responsibility to others. So the—the values of respeto and the respect for other people, to be helpful, you know, to help other people. And always that there’s a Creator, there’s a God and—and you’ve been gifted and—even though we’re so poor, which I’m being reminded all the time. You’ve been blessed. You know, you’ve got health. You’ve got your family who loves you.
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You can go to school and learn to read and write. So we have to do something with that. So it’s like forever that—that thing in—inside my head, saying you know, you have to do something with it. I have a friend who says Colleen, when you get something good, don’t stop and think well, where did I get it and what I’m supposed to do with it? Just enjoy it. And it’s almost—it’s hard for me. It’s like if you have something, that’s because—if you get something, a blessing I call it, that’s because you’re supposed to give it away. But that’s—that was it and what the church did, because I went to a Catholic
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school, is the Catholic social justice stopped, it’s what I got out of school, which is beautiful that unfortunately the institution doesn’t always do it. But I learned it and have put it to practice. You know, that a—a human has dignity and everything that stands in the way of that human having and fulfilling that dignity is wrong. And people need shelter, people need housing, people need food, people need, you know, to have a—a good quality of life and that’s justice. And they—they need good water and they need
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not to have pollution all around them and so it’s all to—it’s all one. To me, it’s like it’s hard to divide the care of the Earth with care of the people of the Earth.
DT: Could you give us a short history of how San Antonio was developed in a way that has maybe led to their being fissures in the city and places where folks didn’t get basic housing, education and healthcare that they would be entitled to?
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MB: San Antonio, interestingly we’re talking about conservation, the city of San Antonio is located where it is because of the San Antonio River. The Franciscan missionaries were sent by the King of Spain to settle this area because they knew that there were friendly Indians here and they could convert them. So they came—and also to teach them, you know, how to channel water and so on. The—they came, the—the Native Americans were here. (inaudible) Paella Indians, and we had been here for generations. In fact, when we were digging for Hemisfair in 1968, they found
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mastodon fossils in where there were—where that kind of animal was, there were people. So it’s—it’s, I mean, it’s ages and ages ago. So there have been people here for a long time. I mean, for millions of year. But the—people say civilization and that’s not the issue. The—the colonizers came late 1600’s, early 1700’s, over a period of about 100 years they would come and they couldn’t make it and they would leave and then they would come back. And they settled on the river and there’s a letter that is from Father
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Massenet—Damien Massenet, who’s a Franciscan—was a Franciscan and that’s the first document that we have of San Antonio, where he writes we came on the Feast of Saint Anthony, which is in June, and we settled in this area because there is a beautiful river with beautiful trees and Indians that we think will be friendly. So—and we’re going to call this river San Antonio. And that was in 177—early 1700’s and that’s where the city was born. So they build the missions, moved some to San Antonio from other places. We have five missions, the Alamo being one of them. And then in 7—in the 1700’s,
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later, 1719, the Spanish king said—sent Europeans to colonize and they were the Canary Islanders. So nineteen Canary Island families came and they were wealthy people, but they crossed Mexico and they lost a lot of their wealthy—a lot of people were killed. But they brought a culture, which was a Spanish culture, together with the indigenous culture that the—that the native people had. But right a—but you begin to have a class difference with the Canary Islanders who came with their own Spanish culture and music and architecture. San Fernando Cathedral, the Spanish governor’s palace, were built in
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that area—in that era and, you know, we have them as products of that time. Unfortunately, we don’t have the buildings that the Coahuiltecan Indians built because they were the shacks, you know. So the earliest history we have in—in actual structures is from the Spanish colonial period. But then the King of Space—Spain did something that I’ve always wondered about him, put the word out that he wanted the Americans to colonize, to come and bring their families. And the ones who came were—were German
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people. They were coming to Fredericksburg; they were coming to New Braunfels. So the—the same ones that had come to the lands that my grandparents worked and my parents came to San Antonio. And they came as merchants. Frost National Bank, Pioneer Flower Mills, Oppenheimer Bank—so these names—Frost, Oppenheimer, Guenther—are names that we still have of the—the major businesspeople in the city. So from when those people came, eventually when the United—this area became—became the United States, English law took over. So even though Spanish Canary Islanders, who
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had gotten land around San Fernando Cathedral and Main Plaza, lost it and they lost it legally because the law was used against them. You know, Reies Lopez Tijerina New Mexico made a big deal of this in the 60’s, you know, wanted the land back. I mean, he didn’t—obviously didn’t get it. But I mean, that’s a big issue because the land was taken in a legal manner. So then what you have, you have a…
(misc.)
DT: So you were talking before we broke about the makeup of some of the early settlers of San Antonio.
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MB: So it—so it’s—so the city is born in inequity with a people that were colonized. The first people are the Native Americans. I am a mestiza, I am Mexican and Mexican is Indian and Spanish. You know, that—that’s the new race. And the—in—in—in San Antonio, the—the people who were here forever were the—the Native American people. And then the Spanish come and—or—and we have two divisions of a class. There’s a class situation. Also there’s the Spaniards, who are European, they’re light. They’re—got blue eyes and blond hair. And then you’ve got the Native peoples, you know, brown
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people and Mexican, which is us, can be any color because we can be blond hair, blue eyes or we can be real dark because it’s a mixture of the European and—and the Indian. But going back to the—to the class, what happens is that you begin to have an economic hierarchy of the—the Europeans that are the wealthy merchants, including the hierarchy of the church, the bishops and the priests that come, they’re Spaniards. And—and then even they lose their property and then you get other people who are Europeans from Ireland and mostly from Germany that create the merchant class that survives to this day.
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And to me, it’s very interesting to—to see, like, who runs the city. This—I coined a phrase, you know, I describe it as seventeen white men and that’s because at a point in my political involvement in this city, I actually counted. I mean, there was an occasion, I ran for mayor in 1990 and I saw who the people were who were trying to talk to me when they didn’t know who was going to win. And it was like a very close race and I had never gotten, you know, a—a call to meet with this elite group of gentlemen. And I did and then we counted and there were seventeen. So I said hey, it’s seventeen white men who run this city because they own the banks, the real estate, the media, newspaper, the
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development community with all its lobbyists, the people who build the houses, who sell the houses, people who control the utilities, the water and that’s your establishment. So in most cities, people say well, that’s the establishment. Yeah, but I like to be more specific. It is seventeen white men because the city is made up of sixty percent almost Hispanic, Latino and there’s six percent African-American and we have seventeen white men who run it. And they—they—they’re the—the—the faces change all the time, but they stay white businesspeople.
DT: And you’re saying that not only is the city sort of stratified by the Indian folks and the Canary Islanders and the Irish and the Germans, but it’s also split geographically. Is that true?
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MB: Well—well, see what happened at some point, the—the division—the—the—the—the cultural division, so to speak, between the Spanish and Mexican Indian disappeared. I mean, that’s why I make the point of mestizo. We became part Spanish and—and part Indian, you know. You know, some to more extent than others. But then they lost their land and so we ended up all together and now we call ourselves we’re Latinos, you know. We’re Hispanic, we’re Latinos, we’re Chicanos, we’re Mexican-American, we’re—you know. And I’m talking about the people here because now we have new people—Salvadorians and some people from Guatemala and Honduras and Brazil and, you know. But I’m talking about the roots of the city which are Mexican and
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Spanish and at some point, we become one. You have people right now that are Canary Islanders, but you would never know it until maybe in their obituary. The other day, this very important gentleman died and it was the first time I knew that he had—his family had come here from the Canary Islands. I mean, to us, he was like an Anglo gentleman, you know, because at some point, you know, that got lost. And the main—well, not the main. I don’t want to say the main because there’s issues of race and—and, you know,
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racism, but economics is the big dividing line. You know, those who have and those who have not in this city, those who have the power, those who have the resources, those who have the political clout, those who have the money, I al—I like to say in speeches I give to young people, if somebody would come from Mars and—and land here and say well, who lives here? Oh, there are all these green people and they all live in one side and there are all of these red people and they live in another side and, by golly, where the red
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people live; it’s a lot better—looks a lot better. And where the other people live, it’s poor. So you divide the city in rich and poor, but also in color and race. Which is not new, I mean.
DT: Could you try to illustrate that? I understand that the southern part of San Antonio has long been flood prone and without water and wastewater service and maybe you can explain how that came to be?
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MB: Well, get a load of this because this is where the environmental water wars begin to happen. The city is—San Antonio is—north is high terrain and south is low. You know, we—the San Antonio River drains into tribu—tributaries and goes into the Gulf, right? Okay, we’re—we’re north and south, north is up, south is down. So the city is born around the downtown, around the river. We get our—the water that we’re getting in the San Antonio River and the water we drink comes from the aquifer, comes from the north, comes from up high where it’s a lot of rock. In the south, it’s—it’s good, beautiful
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land and this is where we started. This is where the city was born, okay? So we have downtown and then the Mexicans start building their houses, humble houses, in what we call the west side. The—and then there’s farms in the whole southern area of the city where white people, but also Mexicans, have their land. And then in downtown, the Germans come so it—this is all around downtown, okay? In the early—late—early 1900’s, as a matter of fact, where we are right now, which is called Beacon Hill, it was the Queen of the Suburbs in 1901. So we live in the Queen of the Suburbs of 1901. Now
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it’s a stone throw, five minutes, six minutes from downtown. So in—in any city, what you have is like the doughnut effect. You have where the city’s born and then you have the suburbs and they’re all around and then the inner city starts to decay. In San Antonio, we’re unique because our whole tourism is born in the downtown. So to—the Alamo, the
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Spanish Governor’s Palace, the San Antonio River, we can’t move them. We can’t build another city, you know, (?) okay that’s too old; let’s go someplace else. No, because we’ve got something that anchors us there. So the downtown has been alive for tourism, which is one of the biggest industry and then the city began to suburbanize. However, the city started moving north, kind of towards Austin and Kerrville. And the development interest—the development interest started buying land, speculating to the sou—to the north side of the city while government, hand in hand with big developers,
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started making big decisions to generate the growth to the north side. So the city, instead of growing like a doughnut, started growing like a pretzel just to one side, okay? And in—we underutilized, disinvested and not invested in the inner city and in the south side because we’re moving, you know, the in—the—the investment, the interest, the economy, the Taco Bells and everything is beginning to be born to the north of the city. Lo and behold, in the 19, like, 60’s, you begin to hear people saying we’re running out of water. We’re running out of water and we have to figure out a way to do this. Well, why
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don’t we build the treatment? Wh—why don’t we build an underground reservoir to supplement our aquifer, okay? And let’s build it in the south side, down, okay? So when I get elected, I’m moving so fast here. But when I get elected in 1980, one of the issues that I dealt with was if I supported a reservoir called Applewhite, okay, the reservoir would be built downstream where all these little rivers, like creeks, like Leon Creek go into Medina—Medina Lake. Toxins in the water from Kelly Air Force Base would go in
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there. It is the worst place that you could’ve built a reservoir. There were carcinogens underneath and all that and still, the city wanted—the city administration, hand in hand with the developers, wanted to build it downstream. Well, we—at that time, I didn’t know that much about the aquifer. I think in those years, we’d discovered in 1975 that we had an aquifer. 1975. So I got elected because I was against the surface water because we had an aquifer that had plenty of water and that’s because I have women and men, but mostly women, older women who mentored me and taught me as an elected
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official about the aquifer. And it didn’t make sense to have an aquifer in the north side of the city, higher up, that has been giving us water since the Franciscans came, that has—and everybody agrees—over 200 million acre feet of water. And we were going to build a reservoir downstream on Applewhite Road, deep south side San Antonio and inundate s—what’s the word—fill it up with water. Build dams and fill it up with wa—destroy the land because we’re going to cover up all these artifacts that we have and all these historic structures because we’re going to build this—this lake that will only have, at its highest,
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45, 000 acre feet of water. And it’s going to cost us in 1980—I mean, in 1987, 200 million dollars that the tax—that the utility people are going to need and we, as water drinkers, are going to drink, the ratepayers. And it doesn’t make sense. So it passed. I was on the City Council that passed the—to build this 200 million dollar reservoir in the south side in a place where there were carcinogens, in a place that the first thing that’s going to dry up will be that because it’s surface and we’re doing it because we have to—
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for the day when we don’t have any water in the aquifer because this aquifer also goes into San Marcos and New Braunfels and there’s some endangered species there. And if they don’t get enough water there, the government’s going to come and, you know, in fact, that’s been a—a big political issue. So to protect the endangered species, that was what one of the issues, we have to do that, okay? Don’t know if it’s making sense.
DT: Yes.
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MB: But anyway, well, what’s happening and this—this—this that I will tell you, it’s like it’s the heart of the politics of—of the city and water is right there. These developers have started building—buying land to the north side of the city. In 1966, when the UT Board of Regents decided to have a medical school in San Antonio, they said we need a teaching hospital. And we had Robert B. Greene Hospital that was a public hospital and we could’ve built the medical school right there because there were acres of land that had been made available through urban renewal because they destroyed all these little
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Mexican neighborhoods and now there was land. They could’ve built it there where UTSA [University of Texas at San Antonio] is now. They could’ve built the medical school. They didn’t. They built it miles away from any development, where the medical school is now in San Antonio, where the—the medical school, the nursing school, the VA Hospital, we have a whole medical complex now there, which is good, but we could’ve had it downtown. Anyway, that was
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a public decision with public dollars because we had to create the Beyer County taxing district to create this hospital. And eventually we closed the hospital that was closest to the people, the maternity wards, the—the—the clinics for poor people where they were. Now it’s over there. Years later, 1969, around there, there’s legislation to create a four-year university because here it is, end of the 60’s and San Antonio still doesn’t have a four-year public university. So we get—we work—I work, I didn’t have a college degree because I couldn’t go to the Catholic Colleges in the city. I just kept
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going to school at night forever. And I worked with my counterparts to get this public school. We got it, this public university. Where is it built? Sixteen miles from downtown San Antonio where there is nothing, on Loop 1604. And what’s under that? The aquifer. And the thinking is we’ll put this economic generator there, we who are friends to the governor and to the mayor and to commissioner’s court, know that it’s going to be built here so we have land. They even donate land because if you dane—donate a little piece, whatever you have around it is going to be very important. So the—
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the university is built there, but what happens is by then the people have learned that we have an aquifer that’s giving us the water and all we have to do is get it from underneath. But if we build over there, we’re going to pollute it. So in 1975, there’s the big first battle on the aquifer, where most—most people in this city learned there is something called the Edwards Aquifer and if we don’t take care of it, it’s going to get polluted because see, all the—the growth has been going—instead of going where there’s land
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that you could be building on the other side of town, it’s going north. It’s—it’s going to where people—where the people have invested. So one of the reasons that people—okay, in 1975, when there is a proposal to build the super mall at the corner of 1604 and 410, we—we—the people are outraged and we actually get petitions. We have an election and we vote it down. But we don’t win because of—we cr—our City Council created a moratorium and it was—the courts didn’t support it. But the furor was so much that the—the mall was not built. It’s being built now, two of them. But—and—and
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nobody’s outraged about it, seemingly. Henry B. Gonzalez, who was our Congressman then, attaches a very important piece of legislation to the Clean Air Act and it’s called the protection of a sole source of water. So if you have a community that has a sole source of water, it has certain protections. In other words, you can get federal insurance. So the feds are not going to help you and developers need help, even from the feds when they’re doing their stuff privately. So that creates a stumbling block to the development of what’s supposed to be immediately around UTSA, okay? So once you have this mud
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puddle, as one of the councilwomen that served with me would describe it; she says Applewhite is just a mud puddle. Once you have that mud puddle, what happens? You don’t have a sole source of water anymore. It doesn’t matter how, you know, unreliable it’s going to be. So we say no—well, Henry Cisneros, because he had a lot of power, you know, in many ways, he gets it through without public input. We had two weeks from the time a report is made in a committee where I had gotten kicked out—me and the other
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councilwoman who knew about water. We get kicked out of this committee who was going to decide what are going to do about water for the future? So after another friendly bunch gets in the committee, they produce a—a document that I still have and it says okay, for us to have water for the year 2030, where we’re going to be so many millions of people, we’re going to need conservation. We’re going to need to reuse. We’re going to need surface water. And we’re going to need 45, you know, thousand. It’s not a lot, but just enough, so we need Applewhite. I mean, that whole fat report was just to get
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Applewhite in there, okay. And one week we get it, two weeks later, we vote. And it passed. Well, there were some tenacious people who I call the water people who started getting signatures to have an election. We have an election, that election is held in May of 1990 concurrent to when I was running for mayor and the people win. They say get us out of Applewhite even though we had already spent 60 million dollars. So we didn’t. You know what’s located now where that was going to be? Toyota. In that land. How—how—how things—anyway. So Applewhite is dead. But then the developers come back
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again, this Nelson Wolf is elected instead of me and instead of paying attention to the wishes of the people who said no to Applewhite, he brings it back. He calls it something else, the 20-50 plan. And the 20-50 plan is to create Applewhite. Well, we work again, we defeat it again. Something ridiculous like 330,000 dollars that we got against like 700,000 of the developers and we win, you know. That’s why we like to say that in San Antonio, every time you have given people the opportunity to vote, they vote for their
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water. Even—even if it means taxing themselves, which we have to buy land over the aquifer. So in—in this long answer that I’ve given you are some pieces of history of the south side versus north side issue that we always have in the city. You know, the—the south side that—that now beginning to see investment because of Toyota, because of Brook City Base, because of—well, Brook City Base. Where—where people, until very recently, didn’t even have water. I mean, people in the City of San Antonio that didn’t
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have water. It’s the disparity of—of economics, of ec—economic disparity that I trace back to governmental decisions over the last 30, 40 years that have dictated growth to one side of the city. And that we have had no balanced growth.
DT: Well, so you’ve told us a little bit about how the city’s subsidies and, I guess, ordinance as well have directed growth towards the north and then since UTSA and the medical school. Are there some other examples, I guess more current ones about the city has directed growth? I guess there was San Antonio Ranch and then the most recent thing, PGA Village?
00:41:57 – 2330
MB: Yeah, but there’s a big one—there—there’s a big one, after UT—after UTSA. After—in 199—89, USAA was one of the biggest employers of the city, h—had some of its leaders get together and decide they wanted a theme park where they would feature Hispanic art, Hispanic—Hispanic entertainment and that’s what Fiesta, Texas is. Fiesta,
00:42:22 – 2330
Texas was put—was put right in front of one of the most sensitive areas of the recharge zone with a tax abatement. We paid to build over our water. And in that year, there’s Maria Berriozabal, and I have a tape where I spoke for 45 minutes, talking about how—what a bad decision was. But at that time, the only people who were there w—were the people that I call like the water people, a very small group of people who—who would organize consistently to be at City Hall. Now when we did Applewhite in 1994, I think, we got a really good coalition of people because the way we win elections is you have to
00:43:09 – 2330
have a coalition that includes people from all sides of the city. So we did that for Applewhite, too. But when Applewhite was—when the tax abatement for Fiesta, Texas was granted back in 1989, I think it was, there was not a soil—I mean, things get rushed in so fast and there’s only me on the City Council by that time speaking up against it. So the vote was 10 to 1, I being the only one who voted no. And it was really the only time that I was really lobbied very forcefully, even to the point of…
(misc.)
DT: Talk a little bit more about the tax abatement that fueled the construction of Fiesta, Texas. How was it structured? What was the political support for it?
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MB: Well, in—in the USAA, whoever leads it is one of the seventeen white men in the city. And what ha—the way they work is like if one wants something, all the others helped in their own way because they’re a construction company, they’re the engineering companies, they’re the—the media and—I mean, they help each other. I mean, not that they’re all going to be in Fiesta, Texas, but you know, they help each other. And if you’re an elected official in—in the 1990’s in San Antonio, you’re going to be listening to them because the message is it’s growth. We need to be a big league city to bring this
00:44:45 – 2330
theme park, you know, that’s going to rival Orlando and Disney World, is what we want to be a big league city. So you don’t want to be against development. And San Antonio still, in 2005, you’re not going to win elections if anybody even smells like you’re no growth. You know, there are cities where people say we don’t want to grow anymore, that’s it. Uh huh, here you don’t. Here, everybody’s pro growth and if—if you want to get elected because to get elected, you have to get the money of these people who wanted to go that way. So you know? So at that time, it wasn’t even like—I mean, there was no swell of opposition not to build Fiesta, Texas with a tax abatement. In fact, it was very
00:45:31 – 2330
hard for people to get it that it involved water, which is amazing because we had just done Applewhite. And like I said, there were a few, very few people, but not enough to make the council change its mind. So that tax—it was a 25 year tax abatement and what happened is once they got it for 200 acres, there’s not—the land for Fiesta, Texas is not 200 acres. It’s a very small part of it. But now you have La Cantera, which is the mall—a mall and now there—there’s less—the shops at La Cantera. So all that development that’s at the junction of 1604 and—and 10, the northwest corner is that whole
00:46:22 – 2330
area. So what you did, you gave a—a tax abatement to spur growth in 1989, but here it is 2005 and we’re still on that steam, you know, because it kind of reverberates. Plus all the development that has occurred on both sides of 10, getting closer and closer to Burnet because at the same time that’s happening, the city has a very aggressive annexation program where you keep annexing that land. We do what’s called finger annexations. So you’ve got a—a road and you annex just both sides. So they say we’re just clean—the staff will come and say we’re doing an annexation but we’re just cleaning up. You know,
00:47:02 – 2330
we’re kind of just kind of, you know, doing a little finger annexation on both sides. Well, next year they’ll come to fill it up. So right now, we—we’re already down to Camp Bullis in San Antonio to the north. So that’s the Fiesta, Texas abatement that had babies of its own, even—you know, eventually in growth. By that time, the—the growth between, let’s say, the medical center to 1604 is just incredible. Well, then we’re kind of filling up that corner, right? So then, lo and behold, here comes Lumberman and says well now, we want to have this PGA Resort, big league city. The golfers are going to
00:47:54 – 2330
come from all over the world to golf because it’s going to be so beautiful. We’re going to have th—the tournaments here and these very important businesspeople will come and they’ll see what a beautiful city it is so they’ll bring their businesses here. And not only that, but we are going to maintain the pristine land there because if we don’t get it, we’re grandfathered and we can build 9000 houses. Okay, so people don’t want houses because the houses are going to have pollution and you’re going to put herbicides in—in your—
00:48:30 – 2330
on your lawn, so the lobbyists for Lumberman comes and tells the council, you know, well, you know, we’re grandfathered and if we don’t get this PGA special district, we’re going to build and we’re going to hurt the aquifer.
DT: Could you explain the grandfathering exemption for those who don’t understand it?
00:48:47 – 2330
MB: Yeah. The—the—some people bought land many, many, many, many, many years ago and there are certain regulations that are in effect when they buy their land. It can be as early maybe like 1950. I’m just using that date. Well then, here comes 1970 and then we get the bright idea to start protecting the aquifer. What if their land is right there? Well, they’re grandfathered, so they abide by the old regulations. But they have to update their—their grandfathering. For example, the—the land of PGA, it was purchased under a certain legislation, local legislation. In 1995, we are beginning to wise up, you know, on the aquifer and protection and there’s a swell of support for protecting
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the water. We enact a water quality ordinance that was very important and it was a good ordinance, you know, for 1995. A lot better than what we had before, before we had virtually nothing. So a gentleman who’s the owner of one of the most active companies in development is the chair of a committee that authors the water quality ordinance. They pass it. That day there is joy at City Council. People are actually toasting with aquifer water because once and for all, we are protecting our water. And their regulations, not as
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stringent as I would like them, but they’re better than nothing. What these gentlemen do, before the ordinance takes effect, they go and they file plats. The—the plat for PGA is what we call the road to nowhere because they literally went and filed the plat that all it is is a picture of a road. Evans Road. And they got grandfathered. Not just them, but a bunch of others. So by the time the ordinance took effect, they were grandfathered. So in that—grandfather is people have vested rights, property rights to your land and grandfathering means that legislation comes in after you buy it and then you’re
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grandfathered, okay. But in this case, this grandfathering is occurring over our only source of water. So grandfathering and vested right have water quality connotations, you know what I mean? So when PGA comes and we start saying wait a minute, they’re not grandfathered because all they filed was this plat to nowhere, the attorney of the city interprets it. No, they—they are grandfathered. I mean, that’s a plat, they filed it. So we built PGA on—on a plat that had we had more vigilant and courageous elected officials, they would’ve said no even if we had to defend it in court. So that’s, you know, what
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happened in PGA. So you know, when our attorney, who’s a—a brilliant person would go before City Council during the PGA hearings and talk about this plat to nowhere, it’s like—it’s like yawning and, I mean, not paying attention to this lady with this information. I mean, and it’s a big thing. So big that after PGA went through, Mayor Garza, former Mayor Garza appointed a committee on vested rights. It’s called I think a vested rights committee to write another water quality ordinance to see if we can solve
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the issue and, as we speak, the report is going to be coming to the council in a couple of days. And how many people know, you know, we’re trying to send each other emails and so—and so on to tell people who go to City Hall because the issue’s still not over.
DT: And how did the city, besides recognizing their grandfathered exemption from current water quality regulations, encourage the construction up there? Did they sign some sort of non-annexation?
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MB: The—no, what happened is when the—the first request from Lumberman’s—I have the expert right there—the first request from Lumberman’s was for a special taxing district, which is to make of the land of Lumberman’s its own baby city. They could ha—they could vote for their own—it—even sell bonds. And there was one councilman then who ran for mayor and didn’t win, a councilman, Julio Encastro, who r—who was questioning special—the special taxing district and he actually helped on that issue. And we were incessant in our request that there not be a special taxing district, for many
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reasons. We didn’t want PGA with our money or with our water. And—but the City Council didn’t pay attention to us and they passed it, okay. The—the lack of respect of that council for the public was awful. They’re one of the worst councils that I have ever seen dealing with the people because they wanted PGA and—and the—the clout, the political clout behind PGA was incredible, incredible. Again, it’s the circling of the
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wagons of the establishment for one thing and—and anybody who questions it is persona non grata. Not only that, but all the—the—the discussions were in executive sessions so we couldn’t even—we didn’t know what was happening. So when it passed, we vowed to go and get signatures, which we did. And we gathered 100,000 signatures. One of the biggest signa—petitions in—in the country. A hundred thousand signatures is a lot of signatures. Seven—I mean, the histor—the signatures themselves and how they were ratified is a story in itself, but 70,000 were ratified. We were asking for an election. The
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ordin—the petition said either we want an election or repeal your ordinance. Well, what the mayor did is he went and he had a little chat with the people from PGA and essentially they did a metamorphosis and they said we appeal—we are going to repeal it. We’re not going to have an election because we’re going to repeal it, okay. And it—we know that PGA did not want an election. They had said if you have an election, we’re out of here. So what the City Council did, it repealed it and—and immediately passed
00:56:11 – 2330
this other ordinance that was really the same thing. It was really the same thing. The only thing they took out was the special taxing district. They called it a non-annexation agreement. In other words, an agreement not to annex the area, which will help them, okay? So that passed. Am I missing something here? Excuse me.
(misc.)
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MB: They repealed the tax—they did not go forth with a special taxing district and they created a non-annexation agreement which was the same thing and we were still against it. E—essentially, we lost, okay. We l—I mean, the people lost and PGA went through. What happens when the legislature met after all this, the legislature passed the—the commissioner’s court worked with PG—oh, and PGA—we lost because PGA—we beat that PGA Village, okay. They went away, okay.
DT: PGA left.
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MB: PGA left, so.
DT: But government remained.
00:57:31 – 2330
MB: And we—we won, okay. In that one, we won because it didn’t get built, okay. No. Because commissioner’s court, not the city, commissioner’s court goes to PGA Tours and they cut a deal with them to bring PGA Tours to San Antonio because the property is in the county, okay. But then what they do, because PGA had promised some very outspoken community groups in the city that they would have living wages paid there, so essentially this very powerful organization stayed quiet because they were getting a living wage out of the PGA area. So this second PGA Tours has to abide by
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that commitment they made to a very powerful community group. And—but they—so they have to pay for it. And we have letters; we have emails of people saying okay, so how are we going to pay for this? You know, the lobbyists writing each other. Well, the county judge went to Austin to the legislature and it was passed, the special taxing district legislation that allows that was passed in Austin and bypassed us. So PGA Tours came. I mean, they didn’t get it one way, they got it another way. And the reason that we went ahead with our 100,000 signatures that we didn’t want the special taxing district was done anyway.
[coughs]
DT: And to bring us up to date, is construction…?
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MB: Being built.
DT: Beginning now.
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MB: Not only that, but the construction around the area of houses, shopping strips is incredible. So what was happening at—at 10 and 1604 is now happening at 1604 and 281. So now it’s not only northwest, now the growth is northeast to an area that it—it—it’s one of the most sensitive. Last remaining sensitive areas in the aquifer, recharge area.
(misc.)
[End of Reel 2330]
(misc.)
DT: Well, we’ve just been talking about PGA Village and your opposition to some of the subsidies and agreements that facilitated that development. But before that, there were dissenting votes that you took in the case of Sea World and Fiesta, Texas and the Alamo Dome and, again and again, you go against the grain and I was wondering where you find the courage to be the odd person out? How do you find that?
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MB: I don’t think there’s a choice. Like for ten years that I was on City Council, I never once voted for a zoning case over the aquifer because at that time, developers were coming almost every week with zoning cases that would build over the water. And at that time, there was—there wasn’t that much building. And I just—I—I could never—it’s—it’s like it doesn’t matter who—who’s on the other side. It’s like it’s wrong and I’m just going to keep on doing it. And in fact, the clerk sometimes would remind me, hey, you haven’t voted. Are you going to vote no? Sure, I—I forgot because it was a such a
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routine thing. Every week or every other week voting no. The—the issue of the Alamo Dome, it’s like to—to tax the people with a regressive tax to build a stadium where we don’t have a team? To build it in—in an area that—that is some of the poorest people in the city? To build it in the area where we have—we have a very small African American community, but around that area it’s concentrated still a little bit, or at least it used to be? To build it there and destroy a neighborhood? Because they’re not going to benefit. I mean, little houses are not going to benefit next to this huge animal. It’s wrong. It’s li—and I—I’d have to born all over again. I mean, look at all the issues. It’s environmental,
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it’s—it’s justice for people. It’s people who are left out of the loop. It’s just wro—it’s abusing poor people because of the taxation. It’s regressive, it’s bad. The issue of the tax abatement, to one of the wealthiest companies in—in—in the city and in—and in the country. Again, tax abatement means, you know, a small businessperson on Commerce Street is paying his taxes to have his little business and yet multimillion dollar businesses don’t pay. That’s wrong. Not only that, but it’s over our water and it’s an—another economic generator. It’s like I don’t know, it’s wrong. So it doesn’t take like great
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courage or it—it—it’s just that it’s wrong. What you have to have is like a lot of inner strength because you don’t get bennies for voting no. I mean, you know, the—the newspaper with me, the strategy is just ignore her. Don’t give her publicity. Just ignore her. Don’t—don’t go after her because my community supports me and my district was passionate about me. And then you make more enemies, you know, because they’d come to my defense and then they don’t want that. So just ignore her. I mean, I know that that was the strategy. And—but what—what I think one needs to do that, kind of to go
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against the grain, is to see the way I see the political arena and getting involved in the community on these issues. One has to see the—the struggle for the long haul. It’s not just something for now. Maybe now what—what has to happen is somebody has to say it, particularly if you’re an elected official to use that podium to say it’s wrong and this is why it is wrong. One, two, three. This is who’s going to get the raw end of the d—of the deal. This is who’s going to suffer and just to say it. I mean, truth has its own value even
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though—even if nobody listens or nobody cares or it—it has to be put out there. And one has to have a lot of confidence in one’s truth and in one’s voice, that even if you’re not going to win, that it’s still worth it because that little piece will go together with other pieces. And for me, it was very affirming when we had the election on Applewhite to see how many people were so upset about it and felt left out. I was running for mayor in that election and I went to a lot of homes, you know, people’s living rooms to talk and I was not campaigning number one, Applewhite, and number two, me. No, I wanted to be
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mayor. That was what I would talk about, but invariably somebody would ask about Applewhite. And what about Applewhite? Oh, and I was—I would be so happy because I would get to explain and when they heard—and many times it was the first time we knew we ha—we have 200 million acre feet and we’re building something for 200,000—200 million that’s going to get us 45,000? And we’re supplementing it? And people would say well, that’s stupid. Yeah. And then they’d get so angry and, you know, you go—so people would pick it up like this. It’s just that people don’t know and—and, I
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mean, how many people are watching TV at that time, you know, the cable and how many people read the paper? And then the paper cleans it up. The paper—you’re not going to read that in the paper.
DT: Well, the people who were responding to you, in terms of Applewhite opposition and in terms of opposition of PGA Village, seem like a really disparate…
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MB: It’s very…
DT: And I was wondering how you helped forge that kind of consensus among people who were from totally different backgrounds?
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MB: The—the—the—the people have their own—the people have their own values and people value their water. People don’t want to be taken by their government. They don’t want to be lied to. They don’t want to be not given information they need. So all you have to do is just give it—give them that information and make sure that you give it in enough places with enough different people. That’s what I was doing is I was working along with other people, mostly women, in a coalition. There was a—a woman who was a state representative, Karen Connelly, and she was very active in getting African
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American people to work actively. There were some women who are very active in the LULAC [League of United Latin American Citizens] organization, which is a—a mostly Hispanic, very active in civil rights issues and human rights issues and say they saw this as a human right issue. And then there were the environmentalists who are there already. So what you need is you need the environmentalists on their own that essentially end up being middle class—upper middle class white. You can’t win just with that. You need a swell of people in the Mexican American community and then you need the African American, as small as it is, you need
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that because the word’s out—word goes out with the ministers and so on, that’s wrong and we’re going to vote no. And our—our—and then you have to find a catchy phrase too. We had no means no. Like the—the first time it was, you know, we don’t want it and then we actually had another chance to go back again. But in—in both instances, it was—it—you know, some people say oh, he’s such a wonderful leader, look at what he did. But one of the things that happens in—in—with humanity, I call—you know, they call it the one-hundredth monkey theory? That it’s in the people, there’s this goodness,
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there’s this knowledge, there’s this truth in a lot of different people. So anybody who comes up and has a microphone and somebody puts a camera in front of them and says what they’re feeling, it catches. And then if a lot of their leaders are saying it, it catches. I—I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s I don’t want to give—I don’t believe in the model of leadership of—of—of a (?). Personalizing it, you know. Well, it’s because he’s so good or she’s so good. No. It’s because there’s a community that is intelligent, that knows what their rights are and it just takes somebody to come and do it. And once
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you connect, that’s what does it. So credit goes to the people, you know, the—like in Applewhite—I mean, in PGA. The biggest inspiration was seeing, like there was this man in his—an older, older gentleman, maybe in his 80’s, that would get as many as a thousand signatures a day sometimes. Just to know how long it takes to get a signature, sometimes you will work real hard to get ten in an hour, okay because not everybody’s going to sign it. And, I mean, that—that’s an incredible feat. Ladies—older—these
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Mexican American ladies on a hot day, standing out of the grocery—out in the grocery store getting signatures. I mean, what’s—what is that? It’s because it catches. And I think the way government is, everything is done to prevent us from getting that epidemic. You know, it’s that the media stands in the way, politicians ha—who have sold out stand in the way, because while you’re doing all this, there are people that are getting the bennies on—on—on—and—and they’re in the newspaper and they’re getting the awards
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and oh, responsible for the city being the great city that it is and here you are over here doing your thing, so it takes a lot to see value in that. And that you don’t have to win in the sense of the world to be effective.
DT: We talked a little bit about the politics of some of these water sources and protecting them, but I was wondering if you could also explain something about the downstream end of actually providing the water once you’ve, you know, trying to protect it, to actually get it to some of these people who haven’t had infrastructure, haven’t had the water connections, particularly in the south end of the city, which I think, for many years wasn’t given the kind of service as the rest of the city. And also wastewater connections. Can you speak to that?
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MB: It—it—you know, if—if you can put that, let’s say it’s an omission. An omission is for people not to have water. An omission is just as important—well, maybe not just—not as important because water is life. But is health service—health insurance. Another one is jobs that have good wages so that people can support their families. Another one is decent housing. Another one is to have an equal education so that they will learn what everybody else is learning so that they’ll be able to compete. All those are—they’re—they’re basic needs that people have. And in the southern area of the city, water is just
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one more of an area that’s left behind. You’re not going to have a swell of opposition because there’re people that don’t have the water. Most people don’t even know it. I—I don’t know, it—it—it’s just—it’s injustice. It is government and the policy makers putting all their apples in this economic development basket. If you’re for economic development and, by golly, if you’re a consensus builder, going to get in there like this. A consensus builder is somebody that’s going to bring everybody together in diverse city. Everybody loves each other and as long as you don’t step on the toes of the seventeen
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white men and you get them on your side, then you’re a consensus builder. Where does—in all this equation of power, where do the people in the south side with no water, a lack of—of good streets, I mean, I don’t know if I’m answering right, but we—it’s not even rated. I mean, it’s not even—doesn’t even get to the gauge that’s analyzing the power issues of the city.
DT: Well, I…
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MB: People who are out. Katrina—you know the faces of Katrina? We have them in this city. If we—if we were to send the word out, you have to get a vaccination because some pandemic is coming, how are they going to get it? I mean, I could tell you the story of the Medicare Prescription D and what I went through for a month with my parents. And the people don’t have advocates. I mean, they’re people left out of the system. I mean, they’re—they’re not there
DT: Well, how did groups like COPS and others bring flood protection and water services and wastewater services to these folks in the south that have been (speaking at the same time). How does that happen?
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MB: Having paid organizers and having the archbishop of San Antonio, that’s a very influential person in a Catholic city, behind it. Archbishop Flores was approached about organizing this group and he gave it his blessing. So what they did, they hired a very intelligent young man who devoted his time to interviewing like 2000 people and asking them what’s your biggest issue? What’s your biggest issue? And finding that water and drainage, you know, their neighborhoods used to flood, that that’s an issue that would touch everybody and that was a good organizing tool. Water. In—in this case, water destroying their properties and endangering their children and their families. And then they went to the different parishes to get the parishes to buy into it. So the pastor had to say yes, I’ll belong to COPS and once he said that, he would pay so many thousands of
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dollars every year for the church to be a member. So it’s built on an—an inst—on an institution that’s very powerful. So it’s not just people on their own, doing their organizing. There’s a powerful institution that’s the Catholic Church that has parishes that they—that they call locals. And then they—they organized that way. And now it’s not as effective as it—it used to be at all, it’s very different. I think they’re just a part of the establishment now.
DT: Can we stop for a moment?
(misc.)
DT: The discussion we had about trying to pull together these coalitions and you said that often your biggest enemy is the lack of time, that a proposal comes up—Fiesta, Texas, I guess would be one where there just isn’t adequate time to build that coalition’s—gin up the network. Can you talk about how that has worked here in San Antonio?
00:17:00 – 2331
MB: The biggest power that a government has and that elected officials that want to do their thing, kind of taking sides with a business establishment is—is doing it fast. If you do it real fast, if you have a public hearing at 9 o’clock in the morning and—because you have to have notice, okay. I don’t say any people are not doing that, but if you schedule
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something, you know, a week ahead of time, but you do it at 9 o’clock in the morning or you have an agenda with 50 items and you have to sit there all day long because you don’t know what time your item is coming, those are tricks to get people disempowered. So that the converse, wh—what the citizens have to do when they feel strongly about something is take the time that it takes to organize, which is very labor intensive. It—you need people to be just passionate about it so that they can go to the neighborhood
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associations, like we did on PGA—Conservation Society, League of Women Voters, the Farm Workers, the spelunkers, the—and group that—that you can think of. And then something very special, that there was a core group of people that understood that you had to do it differently in different parts of town. I’ll never remem—I’ll never forget one day that in the middle of a Sunday, because we have to keep at the computer—that was a lot of help. I had never done something like this with the help of email and this—the PGA was the first time that we used it. And I used it as much as we could. I got in the
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middle Sunday morning, got a notice from a—a lady who was at some shopping center in the deep north side, saying I need help. Somebody needs to come because there are a lot—if you—if you stay far enough from the door of Wal Mart, or I don’t know what it was, people are really signing. But we can’t lose it. So—but it has to be an Anglo. Or then we would send a no—I would send out a notice to my Mexican American friends saying we have to go to Market. They’re going to have a festival at Market Square and we need to go, but ideally, it should be Mexican Americans. You know, but we would
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help each other like that. But when I got that from this lady in Government Canyon, so she lives—saying they—that they need somebody there fast, but it had to be Anglo because if you didn’t, you’d get kind of—they fine you. And like that, it was just an Anglo lady, going to her car with a bunch of things in her hand and nobody stopped her. And she was getting away with it because we weren’t supposed to be there, you know, because you couldn’t go get signatures in private places. I mean, they made us—
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another—another tool that government had was how far you could get signatures at the library, at the Alamo Dome. I was kicked out of the Alamo Dome. I went to the Susan Komen Walk for Life and I said good, I’m going to be there and while everybody’s organizing themselves, I’ll go with my petitions. They—they kicked me out from the Alamo Dome, from a library, from Saint Mary’s University. I mean, we were kicked out of the best places of the city. So it’s—it’s like constant. But then what happens, too, after you—you feel that you’ve been stymied by so many people, then you begin to form
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a bond, like those of us who are out. You know, we’re together, we’re out, we’re together, we’re doing this. And I submit that ev—for myself, even when you lose, there’s a bonding that happens. It’s like we lost together. For me, as an elected official, to lose things with my constituents, it’s like, I mean, it—it’s like you feel so close to people. And it’s—it’s a wonderful things. Which sounds so dumb because you’re losing, right? But if you see it for the long haul, there will be another one and people learn and people know the next time they can do this, hopefully.
DT: I understood that in this latest instance with PGA Village that some of the groups that had been out, that had been outside the halls of power, I think COPS was one that you mentioned, that somehow they became part of the establishment and lost maybe some of their edge and some of their effectiveness. Can you talk about what happens…?
(Speaking at the same time)
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MB: That’s not a different—I mean, it’s just something that happens. And that is that you have organizations that start, let’s say for lack of a better word, from the left because they’re out of the system. And COPS organized very much at the beginning under Sol Alinsky principle. You—you change the environment of the decision maker and confuse them so much that you’ll have an advantage and you equalize the playing field. So they did that for a long time on water. In fact, the—the first water quality ordinance that was passed was when their group was very active. The—but then what happens, they make
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so much noise that the powers that be start paying attention to them. I mean, they can feel the chamber so their leaders have a lot of clout. They have leverage. So then they begin—first they begin outside the system. Everything is public, surrounding the elected official with all these people, going to the bank and getting packets of dimes to get change and then you get the change to make packets and you—you—you—you mess up the system with the tactics that are kind of dirty and not nice. Okay, but they used to do
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it. But then people started—they did it so much and became such pests and they could gather so many people, thousands at a—at a hall, that the elected officials began to say okay, now leaders, let—let—let—let’s talk to you. So then they started use—th—the organization, whether it COPS or any other one, starts talking to the leaders who make the decisions. Then they, important quote; they get a seat at the table. Where before they’ve been out, they actually get to sit at the table. And the danger of sitting at the table is that you become one of the inside. And then you’ll get more to deliver to your
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people by sitting at the table and cutting deals, very frankly, than you’re going to being at the back getting the nickels to pennies and pennies to nickels and whatever. So you begin to feel—or to be effective by working in another way. So people call it, they got co-opted. I don’t know what the right word would be but people begin to work inside the system instead of everything public outside. There’s two ways to do things. Outside and inside. Your—you work outside because you don’t have a place at the table, but once you get it. But then what happens by the time you’re at the table, there are others that are
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picking up the struggle outside. So then how does that group outside relate to the one that’s already at the table? And at the—in—in up—in the PGA, what happened is that the first organizing meeting that was had to do something about this thing that was a done deal, we started as—as a done deal. And this lady, Mrs. Fay Sinkin, lady in her 80’s, called us to her living room and said you know, we got to do something. So she was very strategic in the people she invited. And then the COPS organization, I don’t think they
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were invited because her husband was surprised that they were showing up. Or they called and said we’re coming. So they came. But when they saw there are all these environmental groups and Mexican American groups and Conservation Society meeting, they—they better know what’s going on. So then they came, but they did not become part of what we called ourselves, which was Smart Growth. We decided to give ourselves a name, a coalition and COPS was there. And at first they said we’ll be part of it but then they said no, we’ll be—we’ll get our signatures just as COPS. So th—they
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got, I mean, they worked real hard and they helped to get, I mean, a—about half of the signatures were COPS. They’ll say that more than half, but I think it was—we did—Smart Growth, all of us together, got one half and they got another half, more or less.
DT: This is for the water quality…?
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MB: For the—no, no, for the PGA.
DT: PGA.
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MB: Okay, so then when you get—when you’re a group of people and you have 100,000 signatures, you have leverage. So if you are already one who has the ear of the mayor, what are you going to do? You’re going to go sit with the mayor and use the 100,000 signatures for your own leverage and leave everybody else out, which is what they did. And then what they got out of it was that this new agreement, this metamorphized agreement was going to have a clause that would give the workers living wages who worked in the golf courses and the hotels. Well, who’s ever heard of
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people working in the hotel for living wages, so that’s good. But then they kind of went away; they weren’t part of the group anymore. So you can describe it as, you know, they negotiated themselves into that situation, they got something for their people. Or they were—or they sold out. Depends how people want to say it.
DT: Um.
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MB: And then we—we, the others, were left alone because then the mayor, in his announcement, said we h—have the COPS or—the COPS organization has—has said it’s okay. And then they—they—they said oh no, we never said it was okay, you know, but they did.
DT: Speaking of this sort of seat at the table, stakeholder issue, you’ve been both inside and outside. I mean, you were a dissenter but you were a City Council member for, gosh, a decade. And then in the years since then, you’ve been a private citizen working on some of the same issues. How do those two roles compare for you personally?
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MB: They’re pretty much the same, I think. I mean, I don’t feel any different. The issues are the same and what—when I was at City Hall inside, what I did, my—I thought my main responsibility was to provide access to my constituents to City Hall. In other words, there was a zoning issue and I didn’t have the votes even though it was my district. They would vote against me in my own district because, you know, you pay back people who are not team players. So what I did is I was forced to organize more than the average councilperson because if there was an issue in a neighborhood, I would
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tell them, okay, I can’t do this by myself. We have to do it together. You have to get a lot of people to City Hall. You have to get your friends who live in other districts. You—we have to organize for this zoning case. And then some other issue comes up; we have to organize for that issue. So it’s like you’re inside, but what you’re doing is you’re giving power, or sharing that power and your platform with a people so that they can use it. And it’s very valuable because during PGA, we didn’t have that. We didn’t have somebody inside—well, we had a little bit maybe. But not like somebody who was really with us that would tell us, you know, this is going to happen. This is happening. You know, you’re—you’re inside out. I call it inside out because you’re working outside but you’re inside. And people that are inside can provide a—a—a big service to people
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outside without compromising their integrity of what they have to do in that position. And then outside, it’s just outside. It’s like it’s free. In a—in many ways, it’s a lot better because you let it all hang out. You’re outside. You’re out anyway. You’re not going make any friends. They’re not going to love you, they don’t love you now. What have you got to lose, you know?
DT: Tell me something else. You’re a past board member and a president of the National League of Cities and I’m curious if, in that experience, if you saw many of the things, environmental debates, the problems with trying to share power and have access to power. If those were unique to San Antonio or if they were repeated in other cities?
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MB: That was—that was a very—this is the 80’s in San Antonio and it was, in a way, a lone—a—intellectually lonely time for me because my mentors in public office who—who helped me be an elected official were the mayor of Minneapolis and Saint Paul—the mayor of Minneapolis and the mayor of Saint Paul. Or the mayor of Fresno. Or the mayor of other cities, Seattle, San Francisco. Cities that I kind of wanted to see because I saw how beautiful they were and how they made decisions. And I served with them in committees and I would see what they did and how they debated and—and I couldn’t do that here. I mean, I’d come home with a batch of ordinances on what we could do on housing and Henry Cisneros told me one time, that’ll never happen. This is San Antonio. It’s not Minneapolis. You know, like being shot down. I learned about linkage fees. I
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learned about impact fees. I mean, you can—real estate fees. I mean, there’s money out there that we can get, commuter taxes. There are things that you can get to put money in your public coffers that are legal, but here we don’t even talk about them. Not only that, but oh, be tight, that woman is talking about linkage fees, impact fees. We don’t do that here. You know, linkage fees that you link a—let’s say somebody wants to build a building in downtown San Antonio or some business. You say okay, and—but they want a waiver, a—or a—an abatement. They say okay, we’ll give you your tax abatement but,
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you know, there’s a need in the city. The need is for—it’s called exacting. You—you exact things from them, so—for the public good, in exchange for what you’re giving them. Whether it’s a training program, whether it’s housing, whether it’s linear parks, whether it’s pocket parks—Mayor Lindsay in New York did that. And I actually flew with Henry Cisneros in a private plane to talk with Mister David Ch—of Chase Bank. I’ve learned all the wonderful things they were doing with—with downtown and bringing the harbor back to life. But then we couldn’t do them here. So for me, the National
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League of Cities was a place where I learned a lot of things that helped me a lot in my own public service and I had some wonderful mentors. But it’s like San Antonio was so behind in—in—in some of the things that I wanted to see. Housing—some things we were able to get, like a Housing Trust that—that I—I was able to get that. And—and other things. But I—I—long answer or short answer to another answer is that it was lonely because I learned the possibilities that cities—the things cities could do and how
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you could be, but we weren’t ready. I mean, Oregon has land use, this is the line and you don’t go beyond this line. And the people vote for it and they vote a governor that’s for that. Can you imagine if we had a—a mayor and a—and a City Council that would say we’re going to have land use in this city and you cannot go past 1604 (inaudible). No water extensions. You’d—you’d pack your city and you’d have a healthier quality of life. But that’s not what we’re going to do. Not yet, anyway.
DT: Well, let me ask you a sort of closing question. San Antonio may not be ready yet, but for younger generations, it may be ready when they come to the fore. What would you tell them about your experience in sharing power and access and providing environmental protections that might mean something to them and might be useful to future generations that deal with these same issues?
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MB: Well, first of all, that we have a much more informed citizenry now that’s 20 years later. This year I will have been elected the first time 25 years ago. That’s a long time and I have—some things haven’t changed. Some things haven’t changed as much as I would like for them, but what I see now that I had not seen before is new groups of people organizing around issues like the environment. They’re baby groups that were born after PGA. They’re people who had their first experience with government because it was so ma—so massive and they’re doing their own things. I relate a lot to young people in this city and I see that—that I have a lot of hope—a lot of hope in the young
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people. I have hope in the technology, what we can do with—with—with Internet. That’s new. And then what’s happening is that things are getting so bad, like with national policy on the environment, with national policy on our rights as individuals that I think people are—are becoming very concerned. More than I have seen in a while. But to me, what I would say to young people is to look at their lives for the long haul. It’s not just what—I have a friend who used to tell me in the middle of City Council battles where I was losing them, we are called to be faithful, not effective, which is a horrible
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saying for a politician who wants votes. We are called to be faithful, not effective, which means there’s truth and certain truths are our environment has limits. Our Earth will not re-create a lot of its gifts. We can exhaust them. We have a diverse—we have diverse ecological systems that need to be protected. We have diverse communities that need to live free. Vandana Shiva, who’s a leader in India, says that the greatest problem that we have in the world today is intolerance of diversity. Cultural diversity and ecological diversity. And I think that’s true. So if—if we as individuals and young people work to
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understand who they are and be very certain in their own truth, understand, like I said, that the Earth has limits, that we are not the—the masters and mistresses of the Earth, we’re together. God put us here to take care of each other, the Earth takes care of us and we take care of the Earth. And that we need to respect our brother and sisters. Like to live a life that way. It’s a good thing to do and at the end when—when you’re dead or when you’re—know that you’re dying, if we’re so lucky to know, to say, you know, what
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I did with my life was tried to protect what was given to me, which is this life, the people around me, the greater community and this Earth that we were given. I mean, just that is good. And that’s a good way to live.
DT: That brings us back to where we started, where you were talking about your father said that you have to take care of your brain and teach it and then, you know, the family around that and your community and the Earth around that. Am I following you?
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MB: E—exactly and I’m a fortunate woman that I still have my parents. They’re 95 and 96 years old. And maybe I can close with this. I, you know, growing up, I would read that the Native American people have this admonition that when you make a decision, you have to make it with having in mind seven generations. And I always used to think, golly, seven generations is—I mean, how am I going to make a decision now and think of seven generations? But a couple of Christmases, I was in my mother’s and daddy’s living room holding a little baby; he’d just been born. A.J. was just like a month
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old. And my father was sitting at—at—at the sofa and he wanted to see the baby, so I got close for him to see the baby. And I was touching my father’s knee with my knee and I was holding the baby and then all of a sudden something struck me. And I said wow; here I am with my father and this baby. And my father knew his mother; it’s my father’s generation. He knew his parents. He knew his parent—his grandparents and he knew his
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great-grandparents. My father has us, his children, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren and he’s known them. That’s seven generations. So it’s not a—seven generations is not a lot and that’s a good admonition. That’s what we do, particularly when it has to do with the environment, to have in mind seven generations. But I submit the ones that came before and the ones that will follow us.
DT: Very wise. Thanks very much.
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MB: Thank you very much.
(misc.)
[End of Reel 2331]
[End of Interview with Maria Berriozabal]