Historian Cynthia Orozco graduated from Cuero High School in 1976, but when she went to UT Austin for college, her true education and life’s work began.
“It was my first exposure to Mexican American history,” she said in an interview at the Cuero library. “That history was not in the textbooks at that time.”
Orozco said the subject piqued her interest, and she wound up writing a 20-page research paper on LULAC, or the League of United Latin American Citizens.
“I got intrigued by research, and I’ve been doing research since I was a sophomore in college,” she said.
Through her original research on LULAC, Dr. Orozco became an award-winning author, educator and historian. Her latest book, Pioneer of Mexican-American Rights Alonzo Perales, is the basis of a current exhibit at the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute (MACRI) in San Antonio. The traveling exhibit opened at MACRI on June 29 and continues through October 19 when it will go to Alice, the birthplace of Perales.
“I think people are shocked to find out that there was somebody as successful, prolific and commanding as Alonzo Perales,” Orozco said.
In the 1920s while in his 20s, Perales was one of the few Latino attorneys in Texas. He was also a U.S. diplomat as well as a public intellectual, writing influential articles and books.
“He’s the principal founder of LULAC,” Orozco said, “and he was an orator, completely bi-cultural and bi-lingual, educated in Washington D.C.”
Orozco said that after his death in 1960, his family kept his papers until 2009.
“That’s way too long,” she said. “They should have been in a library in the 1960s.”
Though not an archivist, Orozco advised the family about the University of Houston’s U.S. Hispanic Literary Recovery Project, which wound up organizing a conference about the importance of Perales’ papers. Now the U of H library is the home of the Perales papers.
The Cuero Municipal Library has a copy of Dr. Orozco’s latest book on Alonzo Perales as well as another one entitled Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican- American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist. It’s on the Local Author bookshelf, unless checked out, in which case you can request a hold.
