Alonso S. Perales: In Defense of My People

Abstract

Alonso S. Perales:In Defense of My People Emilio Zamora (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Alonso S. Perales is among the members of the Nicaraguan delegation at the signing of the United Nations Charter, June 26, 1945. Perales is the third man standing from the left. UN Photo/McClain. [End Page 110] Introduction On June 26, 1945, the last day of the inaugural United Nations (UN) conference, Nicaragua's delegation waited behind stage at the stately Herbst Theater of the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center in San Francisco, California. On cue, Mariano Argüello Vargas, Nicaragua's minister for Foreign Affairs, led his delegates past a grand display of national flags and to a large, round table at center stage where the Central American nation took its turn to sign the United Nations Charter.1 Argüello Vargas took a seat while his fellow delegates stood behind him in symbolic concurrence of the Nicaraguan people.2 [End Page 111] The ceremony was like all the other forty-nine, except for one detail. A non-Nicaraguan named Alonso S. Perales stood with the delegation. The presence of Perales, a Mexican American attorney and notable civil rights leader from Texas, may have looked unusual to some, but it did not surprise members of the assembly who had seen him participate in the deliberations of the two-month conference.3 This also made sense to persons who knew of Perales's longtime membership in the U.S. diplomatic corps and his appointment as the Nicaraguan general consul in San Antonio. Perales served with the U.S. State Department in Central America and the Caribbean during a highly contentious era. President Theodore Roosevelt had affirmed the Monroe Doctrine and the United States' role "as an international police power" in Nicaragua. Subsequent administrations intervened militarily to prop up weak regimes and suppress anti-government insurgencies. The U.S. military occupied Nicaragua intermittently between 1912 and 1933, a time that coincided with Perales's diplomatic assignments in the region.4 Perales began serving as Nicaragua's U.S. consul in 1930. During that time, he had established close ties with Nicaragua's political elite, which he maintained after his diplomatic career ended. While still serving as consul, Perales secured the appointment to serve at the UN meeting. Serving the Nicaraguan nation in San Francisco was especially gratifying for Perales because it allowed him to connect the local and regional claims for equal rights for Mexicans in the United States with the global, postwar cause for peace, freedom, and justice. As a participant in the twelve UN committees [End Page 112] charged with drafting the UN Charter, Perales used the minority experiences of Mexicans in the United States to give added weight to the global cause for human rights and to call on the world organization to require member nations to enact the legislation necessary to guarantee these rights. The most influential nations, such as the United States and the Soviet Union, hypocritically blocked the "interventionist" idea. Perales, however, could return to Texas with news that he had played a part in formulating the global statement of equal rights that the Mexican civil rights movement had been advancing at home.5 This article addresses the salient moments in the extraordinary life of Perales that led to his participation in the UN meeting of 1945. Its main purpose is to bring about greater appreciation for his transformative role as a diplomat, civil rights leader, and author and to underscore how little the public knows about him and the civil rights movement that he helped to lead.6 It shifts our attention away from ideology as a monolithic and strict category of analysis for understanding Perales and the Mexican American civil rights cause of his generation. Historians who have studied Perales and this movement have mostly employed ideology as a point of theoretical departure rather than a provisional category that incorporates the defining ideas, beliefs, and actions as well as the uncertainties and inconsistencies in a broad and complex political context. Perales and many of his civil rights associates were generally conservative, but they were also subjects and actors involved in...