On Dec. 4 I attended the Hispanic Bar Association of the Inland Empire’s Winter Dinner surrounded by art in the stunning entry hall at the Cheech in Riverside.
The 2024 president, Michael Ortiz of Ortiz Law, gave the event’s introduction.
“Welcome home, family. What better place to have this family dinner than the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture? It represents the breaking through of barriers.”
Ruben Escalante of ACLIENT PC presented the Felix Longoria Legacy Award.
Longoria was killed by a sniper during World War II. His Texas hometown’s sole funeral home had planned to inter him in its barbed-wire segregated Mexican section, and denied use of the chapel for a wake, saying “the whites won’t like it.” But with then-Senator Lyndon Johnson’s intervention, Longoria became the first Latino WWII veteran to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
This year’s recipient was Escalante’s uncle, Richard Marca, of Varner & Brandt.
“There are currently 64 million Latinos in the US, today, as compared to 2 million in 1960, according to the U.S. Census,” Marca said. “By 2050 Hispanics and Latinos will make up one-third of the population in the U.S., and yet today it’s still hard to define: What do Hispanics and Latinos stand for?”
He quoted author Marie Arana: “We may not have a single narrative, but we are united by a number of commonalities. By the fact that we are still considered newcomers, although our ancestors were the first inhabitants of this hemisphere, by being marginalized, virtually unseen, although we are a burgeoning, exuberant population, by being remarkably upwardly mobile. Successful, yet trammeled by prejudice and poverty, by sharing our collective reverence for family, work and joy. Wherever our origin or station, by being a mind-boggling labyrinth of contradictions that is joined by a single tongue, even if we don’t speak it well anymore.”
I reflected on what being Latina means to me, and I came right back around to the first words of the evening: It’s kinship, the feeling of family.
It was a beautiful event among family in service to justice.
