Joel: Oh, sorry.
Can you hear okay?
-: Yeah.
Joel: Okay.
I'm Joel Zapata in Amarillo, Texas,
today is June 5th, 2016, with the Civil Rights
and Black and Brown Oral History Project
out of Texas Christian University.
And this is Socorro, or Coco Medina.
And could we please start off by just
telling your life story from the beginning?
When and where were you born, and who were your parents,
and where were they from and what did they do for a living?
-: Yes, I come from Mexico.
I was born in Mexico, came to the United States at age one.
And then later on, we went to live
in Mexico until I was age five.
And then I started school here in Amarillo, Catholic school,
and went on through school all the way to college.
I went to school here in Amarillo,
and then I went to Denver, Colorado,
and did my college education in Denver, Colorado.
I have been very active in the community
ever since I was very, very young.
My parents are from also, from Mexico.
My mother was a pharmacist my father was, he had no school.
He, went as far as like the second grade in Mexico.
He worked for the railroad all his life.
And that's basically where I come
from, from the area of Michoacan, in Mexico.
Joel: And when you arrived in the United States,
where did you arrive in the United States here,
directly to Amarillo? -: Directly to Amarillo,
My father had been here 20 years, and then he went
to Mexico and married my mother.
my mother had me and my sister,
or my sister and I, and then she
went back to Mexico, back and forth.
Finally, she settled here when we were school age.
And so we were raised in Amarillo,
in the Mexican-American neighborhood.
El Barrio, the original Barrio,
close to the railroad tracks, yeah.
Joel: Can I ask what year it was,
just to make sure-
-: We're talking about 1953, 54.
Joel: And your dad had already been here
since the thirties, basically.
-: Exactly, he had been here since he was 20,
and he married my mother at 43, so he had been here a while.
Joel: And what was your impression
of Amarillo when you got here
as a teenager or a little girl?
-: Well, when I was little,
when I was a little girl, I went to Catholic school.
My parents were always very careful
that we had that religious foundation, all of that.
So, I went to the Catholic school, and my father,
he always wanted us to have our culture very rooted.
He wanted us to know where we came from,
he wanted us to know our history.
My mother was a educated woman.
Like I said, she had been to pharmacy school.
She was a pharmacist in Mexico.
Didn't speak English, but you know,
she was able to really guide my sister
and I, I only have one sister, and guide my sister and I,
and believed in education, wanted us to get educated.
But both were very proud of being Mexican.
They would always say,
"we want you girls to be so proud of being Mexican,
"that when people see you, they want to be Mexican, too.
"That's how proud we want you to be."
And so, every year we would go
to Mexico and spend the summer.
My mother would put us in folklore ballet,
and she would take us to the nuns
to teach us religion and all of that in Spanish,
so we grew up bilingual, very bilingual.
We were not permitted to talk slang at the home,
even though when I was growing up, you know,
in the Barrio world, you know,
you have your friends and you learn to speak slang.
So I grew up as a Mexican-American.
I grew up with Chicanos, because at the time,
they're the generation that was my age.
Most of them were second generation,
even though I was born in Mexico, but came so young.
So I considered at that time that I was part
of the Chicano group, and going to high school and all that.
We had situations like when we'd have other kids
come and join our table at high school,
we'd say, you know, who brought her here?
You know, how come?
She's not one of us and things like this, so, you know,
that's a kind of a thing that went
on when I was growing up in my teenage years.
Joel: You went to Palo Duro High School.
-: No, I went to Caprock High School.
Joel: Oh, Caprock High School.
When you were growing up,
was school segregated still in Amarillo,
or had they become de-segregated?
-: There were de-segregated, but I suffered some
of the segregation when I was younger.
I used to go to summer school, and I remember going
to a donut place and them telling me they couldn't serve me
because the lady said, you know, I'm sorry,
but we don't, you know, we don't serve Mexicans.
And, and I thought, well,
I wonder why she doesn't know how?
You know, how to serve Mexicans?
I couldn't quite understand it.
And there was a time when my parents baptized a baby,
they were padrinos to a baby
from the air base, and the people were Anglo,
and when we went to eat at the restaurant,
they passed everybody a menu, but not us.
And the father of the baby said, you know,
we need another menu, and then they told him,
you know, that they were segregated,
that they didn't serve Mexicans.
And I was young, and I remember that incident.
So yeah, you know, I caught some of that in my early years.
Joel: And how did the Mexican community
usually react to that?
Did they protest it, or when did you
see it changing In Amarillo?
-: In Amarillo, we protested, but kinda like quietly.
There wasn't really an open revolution type thing.
There was not really an openness in saying, hey, you know,
we would get aggressive was, hey,
did you see how she treated me?
Or, you know, things like this, or he,
if they were not Mexicano, Mexican, or Chicanos.
So yeah, we had some conflict,
but it was not open to have, you know,
any kind of demonstrations or anything like that,
that did not happen in Amarillo.
I learned about that when I went away to school in Denver.
That's when I learned.
Joel: So you went from Caprock High School,
then you went to community college, correct, and...
-: I went to the Rocky Mountain Art Institute in Denver.
Joel: And then you went to the University?
-: University of Denver.
Joel: Okay, and what were your experiences there?
What did you learn there about
your own history that you maybe hadn't learned in Amarillo?
-: Well, what happened is, you know, I started reading a lot
of the publications that, well, that came
out in the paper about Corky Gonzales, you know?
And so I thought, it really interested me
because I thought, you know, I've suffered some of this,
even though nobody really pointed it out to me,
I knew that it was not right.
Some of the things that were happening in school,
you know, when the counselor told me, you know, Socorro,
I hate to tell you, but you might want to be a beautician,
because I don't think you really,
you know, are college material.
My sister said, "oh, that's crazy."
My sister was older than me.
She said, "No, you are college material,
"and you're gonna go to the college, okay?"
So, you know, I remember that.
And when I started going to the
Crusade for Justice, it was very appealing to me.
I was going to school, and at the same time,
like weekends, I would go to like, tutors
at the Crusade for Justice with Corky Gonzales.
And they had like a dance school,
they had an art center, and we did walkouts.
I was involved in the walkouts and all that.
And I thought, this is great, you know, this is great.
I'm finally in a position to express,
and to know that I'm not alone.
'Cause here, I felt alone, I thought, well,
maybe that's the way we're supposed to be treated, okay?
We used to go to the grocery store,
and they would tell my mother,
do you want your groceries delivered?
And mother would look at them.
She didn't speak English.
And so then they would go a little higher.
Do you want your groceries delivered?
Pretty soon, he was in a yelling voice,
and my mother would get fearful.
And she'd say,
(speaking foreign language)
And I think, well, I don't know.
I didn't speak English either,
and so my mother would understand
liver, and she would say, no, hija,
we've already bought liver last week.
You know, because she thought delivered,
she thought talking about liver, hígado, you know?
And so all of those things, I used to think,
you know, all that my mother went through,
and all that we went through, there was a reason for it.
We were treated less than what we are.
But then that's when I took such passion, you know?
And I worked in Denver, I remember having walkouts.
I remember that was sometimes it got kind of rough,
kind of rough, and then, you know,
Corky Gonzales came out with Yo Soy Joaquin.
And I just loved that.
You know, that, that there was a lot
in it that that made me feel like, you know,
I know how that feels.
And that's when I really became aware.
And in my paintings and things, you know,
I wanted to express some of that.
And there was a lot of artists there, Chicano artists,
that they were beginning and they were so good,
and we would have like, the priests would come
and give masses outside in the parking lot.
And, and it was a nice eye opener for me,
that I wasn't alone, that no, I didn't have to be quiet,
that yes, I could reach and help,
and help others to open their eyes to know
that you're not supposed to be marginado,
you're not supposed to be, you know,
cooped up and not able to be who you are.
So that's where I learned to, you know.
Joel: So you were obviously part
of the Chicano movement in Denver.
Was there any such thing
as a Chicano movement at all in Amarillo?
Did the communication of it reach Amarillo?
-: I think that when I came back to Amarillo,
I became very active in community action things,
but it was always more calm.
Let's not make any waves, you know, let's get it this way.
Let's talk about it, let's go and visit
with so-and-so, and let's not make a big noise.
So in Amarillo, it was never really like it was in Denver,
and in Denver, I met other leaders, you know,
not necessarily, you know, knowing them or anything,
but they would come to the Crusade for Justice,
And I met Jose Gutierrez.
He was really young then I remember, and also Tijerina.
And so I knew that there was movements everywhere.
When I came to Amarillo, my goal was
to use the channels that were there
to get in and help people, and that's basically what I did.
I got married, went to Lubbock, came back,
and when we came back, my husband and I,
we really concentrated on the community.
We did a lot of community work through a center here
that's called Wesley Community Center.
It's a Methodist institution.
And through that center, the director,
(speaking foreign language)
was very much for social justice.
But again, very careful, very mellow,
trying to get things done in a way that
it wasn't so visible that it would
scare that people in this area, you know.
(chuckling)
So then later on, I was part of starting
the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
My husband and I were very involved in
the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
really wanting people to develop
their businesses and to gain respect.
We applied for a radio station,
and right now that radio station
exists as one of two 100,000 watt FMs.
And we worked, we established it, it was a first Hispanic
24 hour station in Amarillo,
covered 26 counties, it's expandable.
We thought it was so important to have a vehicle to come to
(speaking foreign language)
you know, because when you go knocking
door to door, you don't get far.
But when you have a massive means of communication,
26 counties of an area where lot Mexicanos don't
really communicate because they don't have a way,
you know, we were able to get that, and it was hard.
It was very hard getting financed and all that, it was hard.
Joel: Okay just to get it on camera,
and so anyone who watches it can know,
what was the name of the radio station?
-: The radio station, it was KPQZ La Picosita Zeta.
Joel: And what year did you fund it?
-: Well, we started La Picosita since 1991,
we went on the air like five years later.
It took that long, because we had to do
all about the licensing, and there was
several people applying for the license, not just me.
But at the time the license was
for a minority, and in order to get that license,
it had to be open to people to come
and apply to receive that minority license.
And so it takes awhile to go through that process.
And at the end, I had enough points to get the radio station
and we had it, we were very successful
in helping the community, but it's hard in this area,
because people were worried, you know,
what are these Mexicans doing?
They're only speaking Spanish.
Are they trying to get together
and then overthrow the system, or what?
They had all kinds of question marks.
So we had a lot of opposition.
We had a lot of opposition from-