Rediscovered Texas Farm Workers Union photos give glimpse of actions after 1977 march

This is a follow-up to the three-part Texas Standard audio documentary “Searching for the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union.” Check out the whole series here.

Daniel Castro was working at a Louisiana news station in 1977 when the Texas Farm Workers Union passed through on a 1,600-mile march that spanned from the Rio Grande Valley to Washington, D.C.

A fervent believer in political activism since his days documenting social movements in his native Peru and around the world, the photographer and videographer did what his instinct called him to and left his job to follow the union full-time.

“Probably he’s telling people how they needed to be in the march… I can see him pointing his finger. He was always like that. As you could see in the picture, he was a very intense guy,” Mariella Ruiz-Castro said of her late husband, Daniel Castro, who appears in one of the photos. Courtesy of Mariella Ruiz-Castro

“My husband was that type of an individual that he had to be 100% into it. He couldn’t be only a certain percentage and then continue with his life,” said Mariella Ruiz-Castro, Daniel’s wife. “He said that that’s not the way to protest and that’s not the way to look for justice. So he abandoned every single thing, and he went directly to work with them and helped them as much as possible.”

Castro, who later became a longtime professor at Southwestern University until his death in 2015, documented many of the actions the TFWU undertook in the years after the 1977 march, with his images often appearing in the union’s newspaper, El Cuhamil.

But beyond that, Mariella says her late husband – who she described as a street photographer who shot largely in black and white – rarely showcased his images.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that the negatives Mariella sought out after hearing of the Texas Standard series on the TFWU had largely sat untouched for decades.

“I remembered that I saw them, that I put them in a place in a closet that I have upstairs. And I went there … I found the negatives,” Mariella said. “So that is the second time that I have seen them. And the only reason that I know is because he labeled them. He wrote ‘Texas workers.’ And by looking at them through the light, you know, I saw the picture of Antonio [Orendain] and I said, ‘oh, this is Antonio. This has got to be.’”

The photos, which have been shared with the Texas Standard, appear to show mainly two events in 1978 that were also chronicled in El Cuhamil.

One is in the RGV town of Mercedes at a rally on behalf of Texas Attorney General John Hill, the Democratic nominee that year for governor (See El Cuhamil, page 10). Hill had successfully challenged former Gov. Dolph Briscoe – who had soured relations with the TFWU after not supporting the 1977 agriculture bill they had championed – for the nomination.

The second event appears to be in Laredo, where the union was organizing a rally in support of a woman named Sara Camarena Ramirez, whose sister, El Cuhamil writes, died while in the custody of immigration officials.

Ramirez was to meet with Leonel Castillo,  who was head of the immigration commission of the United States Citizen and Immigration Services. Castillo, a Texan, was the first Latino appointed to the role under President Jimmy Carter. The photographs depict protesters with signs critical of Castillo and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Sara Camarena Ramirez dons a black veil ahead of a meeting with Leonel Castillo, immigration commissioner for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Courtesy of Mariella Ruiz-Castro

Interspersed throughout the photos are portraits of such figures like TFWU leader Antonio Orendain and standard-bearer Claudio Ramirez.

Mariella says her late husband saw his photography as being one means of assisting such movements like the TFWU’s.

“He always told me that the American society understands everything when you put images in front of their eyes,” she said. “He also told me that American society likes to see justice to be done for other people, as long as you show them the situation that is being faced.”

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The reflection that Castro sought to evoke with his work also permeated how Mariella began to look at the world.

“He was a guy who thought that social justice was one of those things that was not only an obligation of a human being to defend the people who needed the most, but something that goes with your human side – that you needed to actually get it across in the community,” Mariella said. “He’s the one that taught me the concept of that.”

One of the portraits of Texas Farm Workers Union leader Antonio Orendain. Courtesy of Mariella Ruiz-Castro

Mariella says she intends to look through the rest of the many negatives she has left of her husband’s collection – spanning several places, years and events beyond the TFWU. And while she did not rule out housing them in an archive, she said ultimately what she wants is for them to be open and accessible so they can continue to communicate such lessons to new audiences for generations.

“As long as it is being used to educate people and to attract the interest of whatever the purpose of that is, I will be more than happy,” Mariella said.

“And I think he will be very happy to know that his efforts were not put to rest that way. But they are being used for bringing up the light at this moment that I see a little bit of darkness in the country.”

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See a few more of the photos in the gallery below. All courtesy of Mariella Ruiz-Castro.