Twins Peak
Their mother was a chicana firebrand who fought the San Antonio establishment. Three decades later, Julián and Joaquin Castro have followed her into politics, not as outsiders but as Harvard-Educated Lawyers—and symbols of generational change.
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This night would make all of it worthwhile: He was now free to speak out, although his chance would not come until after midnight. He listened patiently to the opponents' contention that the city would be subsidizing the pollution of the county's main source of drinking water, since the 2,800-acre project would rest over a sliver of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. The rebuttal by the city's various chambers of commerce was that the project was environmentally safe and that the alternative—the construction of some nine thousand residential homes on the same property—would yield far worse levels of pollution. When Julián's turn finally came, he spoke not in the voice of his mother's generation, as an aroused activist, but in the voice of his own making—as the skilled lawyer that life's increased opportunities had allowed him to become. He called two of Lumbermen's representatives to the podium and grilled them, after first thanking them, sarcastically, for staging "a wonderful public relations campaign." He challenged the argument that single-family homes would pose a greater environmental threat than the resort and raised the point that the city could exert its regulatory power over lawn fertilization.
"Ju-lián! Ju-lián! Ju-lián!" The crowd was ecstatic. But the young councilman wasn't through. He raised questions about the way the taxing district was structured and then, for dramatic effect, whipped out a stack of audiotapes he had concealed under the table and held them in the air. They contained, he said, the proceedings of a state senate committee hearing held two weeks earlier on the subject of taxing-district abuses. In the end, only one council member joined Julián in voting against the project; the council also flatly rejected his motion to let the matter be decided through a public referendum.
But his side would live to fight another day. In the following months, an impressive coalition of environmentalists and social-justice activist groups like Communities Organized for Public Service collected more than the 68,023 petition signatures required to force a referendum. Rather than face the voters, the project's backers recently withdrew their original proposal and have entered negotiations on a compromise that deals with some of the critics' objections. Of course, all of this was in the future when Julián Castro went home after the council meeting that April night. But the blooming romance between public and public servant was already palpable, underscored by a set of red handwritten posters somebody had abandoned in the lobby outside the council chamber.
"Integrity, Character, Promise. Julián Castro for Mayor."
ROSIE CASTRO IS WEARING HER "Julián for District 7" T-shirt again, the one that's white and maroon-turned-brown from the washing. Between her two sons' campaigns, she has accumulated a wardrobe of political attire and has earned the right to wear it for reasons that go beyond motherhood: She was Julián's campaign manager and holds the same position with Joaquin's campaign as well. She is the reason many of the Castro brothers' supporters believe in them passionately. She serves, as Joaquin puts it, "kind of like a guarantee on a loan. People know that they're gonna get paid back."
We're trying to have lunch at Salsa Mora's, a popular West Side eatery where the waitstaff already knows to begin preparing a chile relleno when Rosie appears. But it seems every other time the door opens today, in walks somebody she knows. "Congratulations on the boys," they'll say. Or, in a triumphant whisper, a wife will gush about her husband: "I just talked Tom into [block-] walking with the boys!"
One of the people to enter this afternoon is Henry Cisneros, the former mayor, who has known Rosie since their Catholic elementary school days. He is trailed by a troop of business and government types, but he pauses for a moment to chat by our table for two. "The boys are doing well," he tells Rosie. "I know you must be very, very proud." Towering over us in a blue-and-white plaid shirt and an orange tie, he apologizes for his tiny, red, watery eyes—the result, he explains, of recent eye surgery. And then, after some unmemorable conversation, he says of the older twin, "He came out very well on the PGA issue."
Cisneros later explains to me how he views Julián's politics so far: "I think Julián's position on the council, especially on this PGA matter, has assumed the proportions of a long tradition in San Antonio—which one might say is the tradition of Henry B. Gonzalez, of Bernardo Eureste, of Pete Torres, of Maria Antonietta Berriozabal—as the person of conscience. As the person who is the sort of protector of the grass roots, community-based person, who is willing to call it as he sees it no matter where everybody is, whether it's the political community or the business community." It is notable, however, that among the role models Cisneros cites for Julián were some of his own strongest critics—and that two of the four, Torres and Berriozabal, lost races for mayor. When I probe him on Julián's future, he says, "It's still too early to tell if that can make him mayor of San Antonio or governor of Texas. But I think Julián has immense promise. His training as a lawyer gives him a measure of moderation. He's honest and smart, which I think are the two most important qualities of a politician."
Julián's long-term challenge, as Cisneros sees it, will be whether he can avoid the label of a populist politician who has less to offer other segments of his constituency. It is a question I had asked myself as I watched Julián do his work on the night of the PGA vote. He tells me he's not strictly anti-development, but something about the way he poked holes in the developers' proposal suggested that he enjoys the feeling of single-handedly taking on the big system. He believes he can work well in the middle, but on the council, where he has shone is on the left, mostly alone. Julián knows this himself, and so he is already expressing support for a PGA Village compromise without the special taxing district, even if it's built over the aquifer.
Striking a balance will be the key to Julián's and Joaquin's political success in other ways. Texas is still a place where ethnic minorities who are running for office are assessed first and foremost by the color of their skin—witness Tony Sanchez and Ron Kirk, the Democratic nominees for governor and U.S. senator, respectively—and held suspect as people who might be tempted to pander to their ethnic community. "To me," says Julián, "the ideal would be for people to be able to run based on their ideas but still mean something to the community they come from, because that's also part of what inspires people." This is the role Cisneros once played for him. And yet, Cisneros' case is illustrative of the ethnic quandary: While he developed broad electoral appeal in his hometown by focusing on jobs and economic development rather than on Mexican American issues specifically, the national media, he says, wanted to make him the Hispanic Jesse Jackson. "I didn't get invited to the Today show because I was the mayor of San Antonio," Cisneros recalls. "I got invited to the Today show because I was the highest-ranking Latino spokesperson on a particular issue and I was the mayor of San Antonio."
The twins' own stand on ethnicity and politics is influenced by their dual experience of growing up in a Chicana activist's home while receiving their education and training at some of the nation's most elite mainstream institutions. As they see it, it is a privilege to no longer have to fight solely for ethnic rights, and they honor the dirty work that their mother's generation carried out to make that position possible. Luis Fraga, the twins' former mentor at Stanford, says, "I see them as clearly combining the best of the outside critic and the best of the traditional insider. Their reality is the reality of Hispanics, of Mexican Americans, of Chicanos in San Antonio. But it's also [Leland] Stanford, the robber baron. And Harvard—even more! And the walls of power and privilege at Akin Gump. And now the city council of San Antonio."
Finally, the Castros will have to figure out how to pace their political ambition so they don't look like young men in too much of a hurry. Julián stole the title of youngest councilman from Cisneros by one year—Cisneros was 27—and knows that if he runs for mayor in 2005, when Ed Garza, now 33, will have reached his two-term limit, he will be 30 and likewise steal the title of youngest elected mayor. The Castros' urgency to get places is highlighted by a stack of cardboard boxes Joaquin has in his room at his mother's home (Julián bought his own house a few blocks away): Of the six boxes he brought back when he graduated from Stanford, four remain unopened. "It's like that part of my life, moving away and coming back, hasn't been entirely reconciled with the present," he says. "We've always been in a hurry." But when I ask him what he's in a hurry to do, the younger twin is briefly stumped. "To achieve, I guess," he responds slowly. "But I still don't think that we have a specific plan. I've just always had a feeling, in politics, that things would turn out all right."
Whether they eventually do or don't, Rosie Castro vouches for her sons with the confidence of a mother who knows her children. "The heart—that they have now," she says. "The values and the sense of who they're working for—that they're working for people and that that in itself is a privilege—that they've got down pat." And so she remains close to their side, their staunchest friend, believer, companion. Like the night the three of them, along with two of Joaquin's campaign aides and me, were dining at the venerable Mi Tierra restaurant at some unthinkable hour. Julián had ordered a bowl of menudo; his twin, chicken-tortilla soup. The place was classic San Antonio—all bright streamers and donkey piñatas and Mexican guitaristas serenading guests at their tables—and Rosie decided she wanted entertainment. When the musicians strolled by with their guitars, she took out a wad of bills and requested a tune.
First, they belted out "El Rey," that classic ranchera anthem to the Mexican macho that some of us Mexican Americans sing as effortlessly as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance, if often with a sarcastic smirk. "They like this song," she said. "Their grandmother used to sing it to them." Then the Castro brothers made the second request, and the musicians launched into a decidedly more lyrical bolero. Yet another incongruity: The verses about tortured love hardly fit the image of two highly educated, non-Spanish-speaking, moving-up-in-the-world young men. But it turns out they had learned the song in a middle school mariachi class. So the twins watched the musicians and became lost in the poetry, Joaquin sitting back with his arms crossed over his chest and a tight grin on his face, Julián leaning forward and tapping his fingers on the table, mumbling along what he remembered. However fleeting it might have been, for that brief moment the Castro twins were, indeed, just two boys. And their mother turned to me with a satisfied smile.
"Either way," Rosie said, lifting her eyebrows, "win or lose—we celebrate."
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