Dear voters, I’d like to introduce myself, if you don’t know me already.
I’m Eddie Espinoza, the Green Party candidate for Congress in TX-34.
The teachings of Jesus are very important to me. Love God above all things, and love thy neighbor as thyself. Human compassion and community building doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Most of my neighbors growing up were hard working immigrants from Mexico trying to make ends meet, just like my parents. Back then hard work was enough to raise a family and buy a home, but now the American dream is harder to achieve for young people and young families.
The story of my family goes back to Pancho Villa and his fight for Mexican independence. My grandfather, Jose Angel Espinoza, was a child soldier with Pancho Villa – his rifle was taller than he was! Abuelo Espinoza stayed with Villa right up to his assassination, and then was captured by the Mexican Army and conscripted to join them. Eventually abuelo Espinoza deserted the Mexican army and went into hiding in Reynosa. He heard about the need for farm workers in the Valley, and crossed the river looking for work in the 1940’s, which was a normal thing to do back then. Abuelo Espinoza was a farmworker in the RGV for 15 years, picking tomatoes, melons, and cotton. Grandfather and father were cotton pickers together, my father started picking cotton in the Valley at 7 or 8 years old. They would live in Reynosa most of the year and cross and live in “family tents” during the harvest season. Grandma cooked their meals over a campfire. After weeks or months of labor they would go back to Reynosa.
The valley gave my grandfather a new start, a new hope, after 20 years of fighting as a soldier in Mexico. All he wanted was safe honest work.
Grandfather and father were excellent farmworkers, my brother and I were not.
We lasted a month and half, over the weekends, and couldn’t handle it. We were picking cantaloupe, tomatoes, and watermelon, or trying to. I was 15 years old. It was too physically demanding, at the end of the day your back was hurting. Later I realized my dad set that up thinking, “these kids need to learn where we came from.” I’d had an after school job before, at a department store. But out in the sun picking crops was a whole nother realm of labor that I wasn’t used to.
Both my dad and mom were hard workers. Mom was a hard-charging individual, sometimes she worked too hard. She really wanted her kids to do well – she always stressed the importance of a good education.
When I was around 17 I saw a TV commercial about the Army GI bill and college fund, $17,000 for college. My brother was a high school football star, a wide receiver ranked as high as 4th best in Texas. I wanted to make my mother proud, like my brother had done with football. So I joined the Army, with the goal of getting job skills and money for college. I never imagined we would be at war.
I was stationed near Frankfort Germany, at an Army base named the Rock. What stood out was the German public transportation – as a soldier stationed overseas, I didn’t have a car on the base, but I could ride taxis, light rails, trains and get to any part of Europe that I wanted to explore for a weekend.
I found out we were going to war with Iraq watching the news on TV. Dick Cheney was on TV in mid-September 1990, calling out the units that were going to Iraq, and my unit was on the list.
The war was branded as a 100-hour war by military spokesmen. That was a neocon thing, someone in a board room planned that. But we on the ground in Iraq saw a different war. I drove my team’s Bradley fighting vehicle into the fight. The US military brought overwhelming force, a wall of destruction. We were hell on wheels.
When it was announced the ground operations were over, that was definitely one of the happiest days of my life. Soon after I had an honorable discharge and got the GI Bill, and ended up studying Political Science at UTPA (now known as UTRGV.)
Once I got into college I understood better what had actually happened during the war I’d fought in.
It was an entrapment type deal. Saddam had a relationship with the US and got permission to take Kuwait and oil fields, the US led him to believe it was ok, then they flipped it on him.
The US govt knew what they wanted – access to the oil fields in Southern Iraq, and the Saudis got nervous with Saddam Hussain right next to them. For the Kuwaiti families and power.
It’s always bothered me – going into a war and not being fully informed about it. All that money spent on missiles, ammo, artillery rounds, attack helicopters, and on and on and on. Could have easily taken care of that assignment with half the price they paid, and could have invested the other half in civil infrastructure back home. And I say that as a soldier who had my life on the line over there! I saw an artillery round land very close to our Bradley fighting vehicle – yet I still think the investment our government made in firepower for that war was far too much.
The next part of my career was as a teacher, where I saw how money and budget cuts impact our community up close. Teaching was all about curriculum, all the administrators were experts, in theory, but the students’ ability to learn was based more on their homelife.
Over my time in the classroom, from 1995 – 2017, the emergence of educational software and technology made things easier. But, the Texas Education Agency would push certain workbooks due to pre-existing contracts, local districts have their own contracts. Not allowing teachers to put forth their own innovations, have our hands tied. I definitely believe there needs to be transparency for curriculum, and we have to stop sending kids to middle school without a foundation of basic reading or math.
No child left untested was the federal testing mandate, plus the state of Texas has lots of tests, too. I’m for solid education, not testing – just like in other parts of our government, in public schools we just need better training and clearer accountability, plus better support for students and families.
Since retiring from the classroom I’ve been a climate and environmental activist. I do it for the kids I taught in the Valley, and for all our kids – I want those tiny humans to have a good future, with clean water, clean air, and a healthy climate. I see the heat waves and drought hitting our area and I fear we might be too late to make the changes that are needed – yet with future generations on the line, we still have to try. I will never give up trying to make things better for our community. That’s how I live the commandment, love thy neighbor.
It takes a neighborhood to raise a child –my whole life I’ve had community support, and I feel a debt of gratitude to the neighbors and community who have always helped out. South Texas communities are like family.I know the names of everyone on my block, both sides of the street. We get together for drinks and to watch football.
God bless Texas. I hope I can earn your vote.
Sincerely,
Eddie Espinoza
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