Rebeca Romero

The Albuquerque Journal's Business Outlook on April 26, 1999 brought a pleasing smile to my face. The headline reads, "Spotlight surprises 22-year-old bank CEO." And the article reads in part, "At 22 years old, Rebeca Romero knew there would be reaction when her father named her president and CEO of the Taos-based bank her family has operated for three generations. Word of her appointment has gone national now, and financial publications have come calling. Romero found herself on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week and in the pages of several other trade publications recently.

`I knew about it the day before, but I was just shocked,' she said of seeing her name on the newspaper cover. `I read it every day - this will definitely be (in) our family scrapbook.'

Rebeca Romero was named president and chief executive officer of Centinel Bank in February. The bank was founded by her grandparents, Eliu and Elisabeth Romero in 1969. Her appointment was announced by her father, Martin Romero, chairman of the board of directors, at the 30th annual stockholders meeting.

As I read this, I smiled. It brought back memories of my days in the Nation's capitol in the late 60's during the LBJ presidency as an advocate for Mexican American causes. I was Executive Director of the Inter-Agency Committee of Mexican American Affairs (IACMAA) and as such I became painfully aware of how completely the Mexican American had been methodically ignored by the economic mainstream in this country. In 1968, Howard Samuels, head of the Small Business Administration, under LBJ, put together a program dubbed "Black Capitalism" whose aim was to "kick start" black businesses in the nation's urban centers.

As Chairman of the IACMAA Vicente Ximenes was my boss. When we learned that once again the Mexican American was being left out we went to work. Vicente was the visionary, I was the point of the lance. We went to see Samuels and we got him to expand the program to make it a little "Brown."

There was not a single Hispanic bank in the country at the time chartered as a National Bank by the Federal Reserve System. I put together a list of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans who were struggling to get into the banking business. The list included Francisco Bravo of California, Avelino Gutierrez and Lorenzo Chavez of Albuquerque, Eliu Romero of Taos, Daniel Valdez and Juan Sanchez of Denver, Leveo Sanchez of Santa Fe and Houston, Al Ortiz of Santa Fe, several Cubans from Miami, several Puerto Ricans from New York and numerous others, including a newly elected congressman from New Mexico named Manuel Lujan. We did not discriminate politically! A complete list is somewhere in boxes in the loft in my garage. We found a way to bring all of these people to Washington and to New York to air our grievances with the Federal Reserve Bank and others. As a result several banks were chartered. Francisco Bravo in Los Angeles, Leveo in Houston, Sanchez in Denver, Gutierrez in Albuquerque, two Cuban banks in Miami, etc.

One of them was Eliu's bank in Taos, not under a Federal Charter but under a State Charter.

That explains the smile when I read about Rebeca Romero.

"Un granito de arena, una semillita que sembramos treinta años pasados y ahora enfloreció," came to my mind.

For those who are "culturally deprived" and do not understand Spanish, I apologize.

¡Como los hombres Rebeca! More power to you!

Rebeca is just 22 and already she has received one of the top honors given to women in New Mexico, the Governor's Award for Outstanding New Mexico Women. "It was an incredible honor to be picked with 30 other women from the state. I'm very proud and honored," she said. Rebeca is also a founding board member of the Bridges Project for Education, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping low income minority and first-generation students attend college. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, a nonprofit group that cultivates leadership, employability and citizenship skills for the youth of Taos. She is a graduate of Taos High School and Wellesley College in Massachusetts, my daughter Cecilia's alma mater, ('81). I might add that Hillary Rohdam Clinton ('68) is also an alumni.

Vicente the visionary, and I, the executioner, did the same kind of yeoman's work in many other areas; Health, Education, Science and Engineering, migrant workers and garbage workers concerns, etc. And we always left someone in place to follow-up. In the instance cited above we convinced Howard Samuels to hire Carlos Rivera and in the dying days of the LBJ presidency he was right there in place helping us push our agenda. Where is Carlos now? He is Mayor of El Paso, that is where.

We did it in the 60s and 70s, i.e. when it counted. We even helped a few Republicans. Hillary Sandoval of El Paso was appointed Administrator of SBA in the Nixon Administration after all the "barullo" we made about the absence of SBA programs which involved the Hispanic community.

We helped ease the pain for a large number of people and in the process made a few millionaires.

Bully for us!

Read On! Enjoy!

God Bless America

By José Andrés "Andy" Chacón, DBA
Free Lance Writer & Ex-Adjunct Professor, UNM
Chicano Motivational Speaker.