Chicana Wonder Woman: Vivian Santiago Cavada
José Angel Gutiérrez
joseangelgutierrezbooks.com
voiceofthemainland.blogspot.com/voces-index
During my grade school years, my palomilla (buddies) and I would trade comic books that were in English and featured superheroes and one superheroine, Wonder Woman aka Princess Diana of Themyscira. She was Diana Prince when she appeared as a civilian. She was invincible and became a symbol for strength and leadership sorely needed by women then and still. She became the archetype of force, strength and power. Among her superhuman abilities was the infamous Lasso of Truth. Once she got you in her lasso, you had to tell the truth. There was no escaping the lasso or the truth. It was also a moral tool because beyond truth-telling it forced obedience, neutralized enemies and dispelled evil. Believe me, that was Vivian Santiago; Wonder Woman incarnate. She became Cavada when she married Abel, a fellow law student. Both became lawyers. Regrettably, she has just passed away at age 80 with funeral services pending.
Vivian also became Viviana when she joined the Chicano Movement despite being part Puerto Rican on her father’s side. There is a lot to say about her upbringing and “independent” life. Best you read the oral history interview I did with her back in June 1998 in Corpus Christi, Texas (https://sites.libraries.uta.edu/tejanovoices/xml/cmas_066.xml).
About then, I was preparing my research agenda to write the book which became Chicanas in Charge: Texas Women in the Public Arena (AltaMira Press, 2007). She insisted I not put her among those women. A subsequent publication by the few Chicana PhD’s in political science in Texas, Políticas: Latina Public Officials in Texas (UT Austin Press, 2008), did not bother to mention her. They should have. Viviana is central to the story of the Chicano Movement via Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), the Raza Unida Party (RUP), the accomplishments of the Crystal City Independent School District, Chicano electoral victories in Robstown and Taft; plus her legal career.
Along with a few others, Alberto and Juanita Luera, Ruben Barrera, Bill and Linda Richey, and Rafael Torres, while at the national gathering of student activists held by MAYO at La Lomita near Mission, Texas the holiday season of 1969, she opted to volunteer to help with the walkout in Crystal City ongoing at the time. The alternative organizing project was forming the Colegio Jacinto Treviño in Mercedes, Texas. MAYO had a national recruitment program, Voluntarios de Aztlán aka Chingaremos Brigade, to come to the Winter Garden area in Southwest Texas to help organize Raza for political empowerment. Young students mostly from across the country came to help as Voluntarios. MAYO was forming a series of non-profits at the time to garnar foundation monies via grant applications. Among those entities formed was the Committee for Rural Democracy and Viviana was made the director. She and I once traveled to New York to promote our grant application to the Carnegie Corporation for $1.5 million dollars. We proposed to train 30 Chicanos and Chicanas to become school superintendents. At the time, there were only 5 such certified persons in Texas, all men. We played the good cop (Vivi, as I called her) and bad cop (Me) routine that instilled fear in the Carnegie administrator evaluating our proposal.
We were on the 15th floor of the corporation’s building and in her mini-skirt and Chanclas (sandals not heels and winter time) while standing by the wall to wall glass windows and tapping them, said, “You have made Jose very angry. That man is dedicating his life to help us with self-determination. With his PhD, he can make this program happen and work. He may jump out of this window because you don’t believe him. You folks need to give us money. You never have. You are complicit in our systemic poverty, low educational attainment and lack of a future into the American Dream.”
I just stood there watching her perform. The man in the expensive suit who had a file of newspaper clippings on us including the “Kill the Gringo” speech attributed to me. He looked at Vivi, me and a school administrator also with us, Amancio Cantu and said, “Give me a minute.” He walked out. We stood there wondering what to do next; it seemed like an eternity. Amancio and I wanted to leave. Vivi motioned for us to just wait. He came back and said, “We will fund you.” That program produced over 50 certified school superintendents because we were funded for a second cycle. She wrote grant after grant to foundations and for government contracts. She was our financial spigot and my number 2 in leadership. Vivi and I seldom finished a sentence when we talked to each other. It was if we both knew what the other was going to say. She was sharp, quick, pointed in her remarks, and very perceptive. She could almost predict outcomes given her analytical skills.
When we started to set up cooperatives Vivi took an interest in helping with one, the pig farm. That coop fed so many for so long. Everyone had bacon, hams, pork cheeks to make tamales, and lots of ribs. She helped expand our federal housing projects when she was president of the Housing Authority board. She helped Urban Renewal get more money also. She helped organize the Chicano contractors into vertically integrated cooperatives. She and my wife at the time, Luz, wrote up a proposal to fund a migrant health clinic and succeeded. From that model, 17 more such clinic were created in Texas. The community elected her to the school board where she served until she got pregnant. She left Cristal and the school board because she thought the community would not look at her with respect or favor if she was an unmarried woman and pregnant. She never came back. On January 3, 1974, she did have her first born son, Ivan Antonio, in New Mexico. He was later adopted by Abel Cavada. Both of them went to law school in Houston and became lawyers by 1978.
She worked for legal aid temporarily and had more babies ( Adelita, Camilo Che, Alamar) but finally divorced. She then went to help organize in Robstown which the RUP had taken control of the city and school board. Then, the RUP also took over Taft near Robstown.
In 1995, she set up her own practice in Corpus Christi specializing in bankruptcy. Her reputation as an efficient and accomplished bankruptcy lawyer got her clients from all of South Texas. Somewhere along the line she met Mike Murdock, a self-proclaimed messenger from God, probably when he was first starting his preaching in Houston out of his garage. She worked for him for years making him wealthier than you can imagine. She was a whiz with tax matters, business deductions, setting up other corporations, and reporting some of the charitable donations. He is still asking for monthly donations of $31 for his The Wisdom Center Church, now in Haltom, Texas. That relationship ended and she returned to Corpus Christi and re-started her legal business. Like most of us from that Chicano generation, our time is up. She began getting sickly and has left us. Her daughter, Adelita, also a lawyer now, continues the bankruptcy case load. Remember the Chicana Wonder Woman, Vivian Santiago Cavada, a true legend in her own time but not noticed.
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