Texan Julián Castro named CEO of California-based Latino Community Foundation | Opinion

To borrow a Mexican phrase, Julián Castro is tejano hasta los huesos (Texan down to the bone).

The San Antonio native served as that city’s mayor, and has lived in the country’s seventh-largest city except when going off to Stanford University with his twin brother Joaquín, and the time he served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration.

In between, there was a stop at Harvard where both brothers earned their law degrees.

The 49-year-old Texas (he was born on Mexican Independence Day) introduces himself on his Facebook page as a “Texan and proud dad.”

This man from a Republican stronghold will now help determine the future of the country’s most populous and progressive states. Last month, Castro began a new job as CEO of the California-based Latino Community Foundation, the largest network of Latino philanthropists in the country.

The foundation has raised more than $100 million since it was formed in 1989 to dole out to community-based organizations that have boosted Latino communities in areas ranging from pandemic relief to voter registration. It has given out more than $29 million to groups like The Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Youth Leadership Institute, and Community Center for the Arts and Technology.

Castro – in a recent multi-day visit to the San Joaquín Valley – applauded California’s political and cultural expertise.

“There’s a better foundation to create prosperity for low-income people and people of color,” Castro said during a half-hour meeting with The Fresno Bee and Vida en el Valle. “There is a greater commitment to equality, to equity, to justice here.”

The school boards, city councils and state legislators, Castro added, “better reflect the diversity of the state than we see in Texas.”

“But, you know, there is a lot of work to do.”

Castro, who will remain based in Texas, plans to spend a lot of time in California, especially the state’s farm region.

“The Central Valley reminds me in some ways of South Texas, in that you have a tremendous number of Latinos and Latinas … but the power is not commensurate with their numbers,” said Castro, a 2020 presidential candidate.

He attributes that problem to “power dynamics” that exist in South Texas and the grower-driven Central Valley that “doesn’t fully support the prosperity of the Latino community.”

“And we want to help change that.”

Castro wants to duplicate what previous CEO Jacqueline Martínez Garcel started in other parts of the country. She said Castro was the prime candidate for the job.

“The fact that he can resonate with Latinos, not just from California but from Texas, and his time in D.C., can really accelerate this vision of taking the impact of LCF nationally,” Martínez Garcel told The Los Ángeles Times.

She is not alone in expecting Castro to take the foundation to new heights.

Vivian Velasco Paz, chair of the Arte Américas board, is excited.

“He brings renewed energy. He’s been a really progressive voice, and in politics he’s national figure,” said Velasco Paz, who hosted a reception for Castro.

The Fresno Giving Circle was the largest of 20 throughout the state that works with the foundation in convincing Latinos to become philanthropists, said Velasco Paz. That participation has “dwindled a little bit over the last couple of years, she said.

Velasco Paz hopes Castro’s leadership will help turn that around. She noted his multi-day visit to the Central Valley as proof of Castro’s local interest.

Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, praised Castro. “Julián brings the necessary experience and passion for supporting our communities to build upon the organization’s legacy,” he said.

Arianna Paz Chávez, executive director of Arte Américas, is part of the Fresno Giving Circle. She hosted Castro on a tour of the Latino cultural center, which received a $150,000 grant from the foundation’s PoderArte campaign for programming.

The foundation “is a very unique model and represents the potential that we have within the Latino community to support one another and realize our own objectives as a community to invest in ourselves and invest in the work that benefits us,” said Paz Chávez.

Castro told The Bee/Vida en el Valle that he can make a difference through public service rather than running for political office.

“I’m excited in the years to come about expanding beyond California. I see so many possibilities both inside the state and outside the state for growth.”

Here’s a Californian rooting for a Texas!

Juan Esparza Loera is editor of Vida en el Valle