Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC), Phoenix, AZ
Although the civil rights movement is most often associated with the deep South and the urban North, its influence reached as far as South Phoenix in Arizona. During the 1960s, Mexican-American university students in Phoenix were leading a movement to build Chicano pride and take action on problems that plagued their community, among them racial discrimination, ethnic tension, and poverty. Joe Eddie Lopez, a former union organizer and community activist, believed that the student movement needed to be more broad-based, however. To expand its reach, he helped bring university students together with neighborhood residents to address such issues as discrimination in the education system, inadequate health care, and a lack of employment opportunities for Chicanos. As Lopez reflects, "We were primarily interested in raising the consciousness of the remainder of society to the problems that Mexican Americans were facing throughout the state. We were interested in meeting and confronting the education establishment, and meeting and confronting the government officials because we didn't think that they were employing enough of our people."
An Advocate for Chicano Causes
In 1969, the group became officially incorporated under the name Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC). Its first major organizing campaign was aimed at bringing attention to the unfair treatment of Chicano students in Phoenix's public school system. To protest the exclusion of Chicano history and culture from the school curriculum, and to demand that something be done about high drop out rates and mounting tensions between Mexican-American and African-American students, Joe Eddie Lopez helped form a committee to organize a boycott of Phoenix Union High, the largest public high school in the city. The committee announced that Chicano students would not attend classes until the Phoenix school system hired more Latino teachers and counselors and permitted Mexican-American parents to have a voice in matters that affected their children. Forty days after the boycott was launched, school officials agreed to meet the committee's demands.
Impressed by CPLC's position of leadership during the school boycott, the Southwest
Council of La Raza, a national organization which funded organizing efforts
in Latino communities, provided CPLC with its first grant of $30,000 in 1969.
During its first year, the organization placed a great emphasis on rural development
issues. Many of its early participants came from Arizona's rural areas and were
active in the national Chicano movement being led by Cesar Chavez and the United
Farm Workers. When Ronnie Lopez, who had been serving on the Arizona State Civil
Rights Commission, became president in 1970, CPLC began to focus a great deal
of attention on its surrounding urban community in South Phoenix.
Expanding Services in South Phoenix
Initially, CPLC served mainly as a referral center for Chicanos seeking access to social services. Partly because of language and cultural barriers, many Chicanos found it difficult to make use of existing public services. But CPLC soon realized that referrals alone were not going to address the underlying problems faced by Chicano residents of South Phoenix. Because there were simply not enough services to help lift them out of poverty, CPLC set out to create a number of its own programs, including youth employment counseling, training, job placement and assistance to small barrio businesses. CPLC also recognized that low-income Chicanos had great difficulty in finding decent, affordable housing in Phoenix. In 1973, CPLC was designated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide housing counseling to potential homeowners and renters. Soon this service was assisting over 1,000 families and individuals a year, and it continues to operate to this day.
Although the scope and impact of these programs built CPLC's credibility among
those in power in Phoenix, the organization's leaders avoided entering into
contract with local government during its early years. "Those local institutions
were, as we viewed, part of the problem that affected our community," Ronnie
Lopez points out. "It's very difficult to take money from somebody and
picket them the next day." Like many other community-based organizations
at that time, CPLC was concerned about remaining independent and maintaining
its ability to conduct organizing and advocacy. Nevertheless, CPLC was becoming
successful in gaining recognition and financial support for its work. It secured
a line of credit with a local bank, and obtained its first grant from the Ford
Foundation in 1972. By the mid-1970s, CPLC had become recognized as one of the
premier Latino community development corporations (CDCs) in the country.
Building Leadership Capacity
From the beginning, CPLC saw itself as much more than a service provider. An integral part of its mission was to build leadership capacity in the Latino community. Numerous staff members were able to gain valuable skills and experience working for the CDC before moving on to take public office or assume other positions of leadership in the public, private or nonprofit sectors. For instance, after Ronnie Lopez headed CPLC for five strong years, he was elected Justice of the Peace, and eventually went on to become Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt's chief of staff. CPLC does not see career mobility among its staff as a loss, but a benefit to the organization's long-term growth and stability. Many "graduates" of CPLC have maintained close contact with their former employer, and continue to lend political and business support to the organization.
CPLC has proven its ability to master leadership transitions, which are among
the most difficult challenges that CDCs face. When Ronnie Lopez left the organization
in 1974, his top aid Tommy Espinoza was able to take over the director's position.
Espinoza had first come to CPLC in 1971 without much formal experience or preparation
in higher education. Because the organization's leaders recognized his potential,
however, they were willing to take a chance and allow him to gain skills on
the job. By the time Ronnie Lopez was ready to leave the organization, Espinoza
had become expert in the area of housing, and had the capacity to take on new
management responsibilities.
Pursuing Economic Development
Under Espinoza's leadership, CPLC went through a period of tremendous expansion, particularly in the area of business and economic development. Espinoza was a strong advocate for self-sufficiency, and believed that the organization could achieve this goal by pursuing projects that had the potential to generate income. "I really felt that unless we had a strong economic base, we were not going to gain the kind of power our community needed in order to move forward," he reflects.
In 1975, CPLC took a major step to expand its economic development programs
by securing a $150,000 Special Impact Program (SIP) grant from the Community
Services Administration, a federal agency that funded antipoverty and economic
development initiatives. The award of this planning grant was impressive because
it required the support of Phoenix's local officials, who tended to be very
conservative and suspicious of "left-leaning" advocacy groups. CPLC
was beginning to change its grassroots activist image, however. In order to
become eligible for SIP funds, the organization had revised its by-laws and
method of selecting its board of directors. Up until that point, CPLC was run
by a self-perpetuating 15-member board comprised mainly of neighborhood residents.
To increase its business expertise, it placed several people with economic development
and financing backgrounds on its board.
The Tortilla War
After its initial planning phase, CPLC was awarded a $1.5 million SIP grant
to implement its economic development strategy. Because the SIP program encouraged
equity investments in start-up ventures, CPLC's first small business development
project was a Mexican-American food plant. Unfortunately, CPLC faced its first
major disappointment when ten small Mexican-American food manufacturers filed
suit against the organization, arguing that it was unfair for CPLC to use government
funds to compete with small for-profit enterprises. Although the court ruled
in CPLC's favor, the organization decided to sell the plant to a Mexican-American
entrepreneur. The so-called "tortilla war" had taught CPLC a hard
lesson about the need to establish clear communications with the community.
Upon reflection, Espinoza concluded that CPLC should have reached out to local
manufacturers to explain the organization's mission, the purpose of the project,
and how it would have ultimately benefited the whole community. "It is
important to recognize that money and power are not your strengths," he
states. "Your strength is your community. If you don't have that, then
you don't have a CDC. That is a point that people sometimes lose track of."
Capitalizing on Real Estate Development
After the tortilla war, CPLC's leaders decided to shift their economic development
strategy. Instead of launching small-scale businesses, they began to undertake
physical development, which seemed to have great potential for generating income
and creating jobs in Phoenix's rapidly growing real estate market. Over the
next few years, CPLC developed a facility for an electronics training school,
a small industrial park, a day care center, and its own headquarters. CPLC also
began to make use of HUD Section 202 funds for the development of multi-unit
housing for the elderly and handicapped. To date, CPLC has developed six senior
housing projects with a host of supportive services. To pursue these kinds of
property development and management opportunities, CPLC set up a subsidiary,
Tiempo, Inc., in 1980.
Creating Access to Credit
Another one of CPLC's priorities in the 1970s was creating access to credit
for Chicanos, who were often "redlined" by mainstream banks and tended
to be unfamiliar with the banking system. In 1979, the organization created
a community development credit union that offers financial counseling and deposit
and lending services to individuals and small businesses throughout its impact
area. Currently, CPLC operates six loan funds for small enterprises in urban
and rural areas of Arizona. The main stipulation for their small business loans
is that they create jobs for low-income workers. These funds have helped start
dozens of small enterprises throughout Arizona, including a restaurant, a jewelry
store and a physicians group that serves economically disadvantaged families
in South Phoenix.
Broadening the CDC's Geographic Reach
While expanding its economic development efforts, CPLC began to broaden the
geographic reach of its programs. Using funds from the federal Office of Economic
Development, CPLC started a rural demonstration program in the small town of
Somerton near the Mexican border. Within two years, the Somerton office was
providing services to over 3,000 people in the area. Today, the Somerton Center
specializes in assistance to Mexican immigrants who wish to apply for legal
residency and naturalization. Through English tutoring, peer support and job
search assistance, the center helps immigrants to become integrated into the
community. Soon after it opened its branch in Somerton, CPLC also launched a
program in Tucson to serve the rural development needs of Pima County.
The Struggle of the 1980s
Like many other CDCs, CPLC suffered great financial losses during the period
of federal cutbacks in the early 1980s. Fortunately, CPLC had already begun
to secure a wide range of social service contracts with city and state agencies
in the mid-1970s, and was therefore not entirely dependent on federal funds.
It had also secured sources of core funding for its administrative operations
from a number of foundations. Nevertheless, when the Community Services Administration
was disbanded in the early 1980s, CPLC was forced to cut its operating budget
by 60%, and eventually had to reduce its staff by half. Although the organization
survived these tough times, it realized the importance of maintaining a diverse
base of funding. During this period, CPLC also came to question its earlier
expectation of becoming truly self-sufficient by generating profits through
its economic development ventures.
Widening the Safety Net of Social Services
Over the years, CPLC has continued to develop a wide net of services that reach
diverse segments of the Mexican-American community, including migrant workers,
the elderly, students, the handicapped, homeless families and individuals, immigrants,
substance abusers, teenage parents, and victims of domestic violence. For example,
it has developed a bilingual shelter for abused women and children, a bilingual
residential treatment program for chemically-dependent men, and a center that
provides pregnant and parenting adolescents with counseling, high school equivalency
preparation, job training, prenatal care and free on-site day care.
Measuring Success
Today, Chicanos Por La Causa is one of the largest CDCs in the nation. It has grown from a small group of student activists to a huge corporation with over 350 full-time staff and several offices throughout Arizona. Among its recent, successful projects is the Museo Chicano Cultural Center in downtown Phoenix and a self-help housing program in Somerton that enables families to use low-cost mortgages and their "sweat equity" to construct their own single-family homes. CPLC's current president and CEO Pete Garcia does not measure his organization's success by its phenomenal growth, however, but by its tremendous impact on the Mexican-American community. It has opened numerous doors, built leadership and instilled pride among Chicanos. What is more, it has built respect for Arizona's Latino community within mainstream corporate and government circles.
Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC)
1112 East Buckeye Road
Phoenix, AZ 85034
(602) 257-0700
site by Dtek Digital Media