Arizona's only Latino governor reflects on career

TUCSON - He lives not far from where it all began. Raul H. Castro, former judge, governor and ambassador, lives in a 102-year-old house in Nogales, just footsteps from the Mexican border. On the other side lies the country where he was born. But it is in this country where he would make his mark.

Prevailing against often stifling racism, he would rise to serve two U.S. presidents, as well as the people of Arizona.

The second-youngest of 14 children born to Francisco and Rosario Castro, Castro, now 92, moved with his family at a young age from Cananea, Sonora, to Pirtleville, near Douglas.

His father, who worked for Phelps Dodge in Douglas, died when Raul was 12.

He persevered, enrolling at what was then Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff on a football scholarship. He also served as captain of the track team and was the undefeated Border Conference boxing champ.

The same year he graduated - 1939 - he became an American citizen. But when he returned to Douglas hoping for a teaching job, he was turned down. The schools, he says, would not hire a Mexican-American.

Disheartened, Castro took to riding the rails.

"I was boxing on the road for a couple of years - New Orleans, Pennsylvania, New York. I would fight at carnivals, wherever, get $50 or $100."

And so it might have ended there.

But then fate intervened in the form of Castro's youngest brother.

"He was in school in Flagstaff," says Castro. "He said, ‘I'm going to drop out. You got a degree and you're nothing but a hobo and a boxer.' "

Castro told him to stay in school, returned to Arizona and soon went to work with the U.S. State Department as a foreign service clerk in Agua Prieta, Sonora.

Five years later, fate intervened yet again.

"The consulate-general of Juarez came there on an inspection and said I was doing a great job but I was wasting my time because I could never go any farther there," says Castro. "I hadn't gone to an Ivy League college."

In 1946, he enrolled in law school at the University of Arizona, working his way through school by teaching Spanish.

Not that it was easy getting into law school. "The dean told me no, that Mexican-Americans just did not graduate."

So he called the president of the university and told him to cancel his contract as a Spanish teacher, something the university desperately needed. Castro got into law school.

"If I get offended, I am motivated," he says.

After passing the bar in 1949, Castro, a Democrat, went into private practice, then became deputy Pima County attorney. In 1954, he was elected Pima County attorney. Four years later he was elected as a judge of the Pima County Superior Court, serving until 1964, when he became a U.S. ambassador, first to El Salvador, then to Bolivia.

After resuming his law practice in Tucson, he was elected governor of Arizona in 1974, resigning in 1977 to serve as ambassador to Argentina.

He quit the ambassadorship in 1980 to work for Jimmy Carter's failed re-election campaign, then returned to Arizona, practicing law in Phoenix.

In 1993, he and wife, Pat, moved to Nogales. "I couldn't stand living in Phoenix," says Pat, now 84. "I wanted something cooler with less traffic."

Her husband was less than thrilled. "I did not want to go to Nogales," he says. "I was born near the border."