Raymond Telles First Hispanic Mayor Turns 90 - Tejanos Thank You For Your Service
Telles will celebrate his 90th birthday Sept. 5 with family on the West Coast. He still looks like a well-dressed diplomat with an American flag pin on his lapel.
Telles is, in the eyes of his admirers, the symbol of dignity, El Paso's outstanding elder statesman, the Mexican-American leader who gave his gente a voice in politics.
Telles is best known as the first Mexican-American mayor of a major city in the Southwest, long before Henry Cisneros in San Antonio and Federico Peña in Denver.
He challenged the political circles dominated by Anglos in El Paso in the 1940s and 1950s and disproved the notion that Mexican-Americans could not be elected to public office or effectively run a city.
Telles was one of the highest- ranking Mexican-Americans in the federal government in the 1960s. He became a close friend of John F. Kennedy and part of the president's inner circle of advisers.
He once escorted Kennedy to El Paso and had been scheduled to travel to Dallas with Kennedy, who had decided to appoint him ambassador to Mexico.
Mario T. Garcia describes Telles' election as the first Mexican-American mayor of El Paso in 1957 as a groundbreaking event in the history of El Paso and in the history of Mexican-American and Latino politics in the United States.
The rest of the story by the El Paso Times is here.
Telles is, in the eyes of his admirers, the symbol of dignity, El Paso's outstanding elder statesman, the Mexican-American leader who gave his gente a voice in politics.
Telles is best known as the first Mexican-American mayor of a major city in the Southwest, long before Henry Cisneros in San Antonio and Federico Peña in Denver.
He challenged the political circles dominated by Anglos in El Paso in the 1940s and 1950s and disproved the notion that Mexican-Americans could not be elected to public office or effectively run a city.
Telles was one of the highest- ranking Mexican-Americans in the federal government in the 1960s. He became a close friend of John F. Kennedy and part of the president's inner circle of advisers.
He once escorted Kennedy to El Paso and had been scheduled to travel to Dallas with Kennedy, who had decided to appoint him ambassador to Mexico.
Mario T. Garcia describes Telles' election as the first Mexican-American mayor of El Paso in 1957 as a groundbreaking event in the history of El Paso and in the history of Mexican-American and Latino politics in the United States.
The rest of the story by the El Paso Times is here.
posted by Tejano Insider at 2:12 PM
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