ustxtxb_obs_1963_06_14_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

…… … /1Wi91 .pf \( i , .!aw—–.–z-R-4,– . a\\ ,-“:s,…,7e –c …., c ` es ,.. .,..;…`f. r:: 7 -._…, . -a .”….”4., …. ova, .,,,,,, ….Vora vf…..ra… a `… ‘a.. ….,……. rrSirrin.- … oCal ,. 0711Cb0. r. t …. -‘. 6k m rp-a. -.raw –d.001.rer 1…-1.7, …ft./217,4’Y”. ..*7, , ” ‘ etw -;. e’r 41vr .”: *. e07,, ,:rt , e rs r ..5r t .6V A-N/ \( cr. Map of West Side Politics various charges and accusations and had come to the conclusion that they had no shred of truth to them. This gave force in the convention to the accepted impression that Bonilla’s election would be a victory for Johnson and Connally and a pullback from broad-based political militance by Texas inexicanos. THESE MATTERS, taken together, simply overpowered the strongest factor working silently for Bonilla Fuentes’ enmity \(for there is no more Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio. Surely the absence of the most important Latin-American office-holder in Texas since Lorenzo de Zavala from the state P.A.S.O. convention held in his own town was a fantastic political fact. Yet the delegates were never asked to choose between Pena and Gonzalez; this confrontation was avoided for the nonce, even if, because of the mutual antagonisms now publicly explicit, it became more likely in the future. Gonzalez has been, for the most part, a loner in public life. He has not joined P.A.S.O. on his general theory that an office-holder’s belonging to a political club tempts him either to use the club for his own ambitions or to divide his allegiance to his oath of office, or both. Thus, Gonzalez chose to keep his distance from P.A.S.O., and now, within that distance, hostility has appeared. Lalo Solis is a close political and personal friend of the congressman. Some years back Solis took on as a pupil in west side politics a young man named Albert Fuentes. Solis believes he taught Fuentes most of what Fuentes knows about politics, but that the pupil turned on the teacher, contradicting him. When, in 1962, Fuentes ran his vigorous, but decisively unsuccessful campaign fOr county treasurer in Bexar, Solis did not oppose Fuentes, but he did not help him, either. That year, before the first Democratic primary, P.A.S.O. endorsed -Price Daniel for governor, a decision with which Pena and Fuentes were associated. Solis, on the other hand, chose to join Don Yarborough’s campaign staff as a. state campaign organizer, for which work he took a leave of absence from his county job. When Yarborough, not Daniel, got into the runoff against Connally, Pena and Fuentes joined in the work for Yarborough. Solis says that after the election, Pena, while not firing him, reduced his salary from $400 to $250 a month and stripped him of the authority he had previously had as assistant road foreman in the county. The Bexar chapter of P.A.S.O. suspended Solis for having supported Yarborough, and Solis says Fuentes supported this suspension. Solis says further that when his son was seeking work in the shersheriff told Solis his son would not have got the job, had Pena had his way. Pena denied to Solis that this was the case; Pena says today that Solis is a fine man, and that he still thinks of him as his friend; but the seeds of the trouble had taken hold 4 The Texas Observer in the fertile sod of west side politics, and now they have sprouted. The Solis-Fuentes feud underlies what now threatens to become a Gonzalez-Pena feud. Solis and Eddie Montes of Gonzalez’ staff in San Antonio were associated, in the talk and kibitizing at the P.A.S.O. convention, with Pena’s critics. Solis said flatly that Gonzalez had not been invited to attend. When Pena won the chairmanship and Dr. Garcia walked out of the convention, taking part of the Corpus delegation with him, but not William Bonilla, Dr. Garcia sent word back into the convention to Bonilla to propose that Gonzalez be invited. Bonilla so proposed; Pena said from the platform that this was’ a fine idea, but that Gonzalez had been officially invited. Contacted laterafter the convention had adjourned, without any of the P.A.S.O. leadership calling him to invite him Gonzalez, in San Antonio for the weekend, said that he had received only “a form letter that began “Dear Sir,” advising him of the convention, and not inviting him to address it. Gonzalez said he was not affronted; in fact, he said, he might not have come anyway because of evidence that has convinced him that Fuentes would like to run against him for congress. “I have been aware for some months that he has been bad mouthing me, as they say in east Texas,” Gonzalez said of Fuentes. He said he had been told Fuentes had stated he was building an organization on the west side “so that any time I wanted to run, I’d have to go see himto do this quietly, and then hit me.” Gonzalez, though one of the state’s most liberal congressmen \(if not the most libhas been criticized with vigor in many liberal quarters in San Antonio recently. A Negro, Rev. William Claude Black, ran for city council this year in San Antonio, and despite direct requests from Black, Gonzalez refused to back him. Gonzalez explains this is in keeping with his policy against taking part in city politics. To the criticism that he endorsed John Daniel for county Democratic chairman, he replies he did so only after being assured by Pena that there would be no west side candidate. It is not denied by Gonzalez’ close friends in San Antonio, however, that the congressman’s association with promotion of a multi-national HemisFair project in San Antonio was relevant to his desire not to antagonize the business community with an endorsement of Black. The feeling is growing that in San Antonio affairs, Gonzalez’ influence is becoming more conservative than before. In addition, Gonzalez’ not infrequent accolades for Vice President Johnson in statements on the House floor have created an impression that Gonzalez and Johnson are political allies. In the informal discussions of the P.A.S.O. convention, Gonzalez’ absence gave force to the argumentadvanced both by the Pena-Fuentes group and by the pro-Pena, but not pro-Fuentes Casso groupthat Bonilla’s candidacy was