http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/320511405

Oral history interview with Albert Garza Bustamante

Albert Garza Bustamante begins with his personal and family background and elaborates on his family's home life and work around Dimmit County, Texas, and as migrant agricultural laborers in Oregon. He expresses his budding interest in politics through the American G.I. Forum. He touches on the race discrimination he encountered in Texas in Nueces and San Patricio Counties during his military service and provides details of his military experience as a U.S. Army paratrooper. He explains how he worked his way through San Antonio College and struggled through Sul Ross State College despite the aid of G.I. Bill veterans' benefits because he had married in 1958. He discusses his successful efforts as a teacher and coach at James Fenimore Cooper Junior High School in San Antonio and recalls how he met Henry B. Gonzalez through Lalo Solis and worked as Gonzalez' aide at the Hemisphere [sic, HemisFair]. He assails Gonzalez' political maneuvering and discusses Gonzalez' career in Washington, D.C. He addresses his decision to run against Albert Peña for Bexar County Commissioner and talks about his confrontation with George Velasquez. He reveals the reason behind the breakup of the friendship between Peña and Gonzalez and for hiring Peña's campaign manager, Peter Penfield. Bustamante describes his unique campaign strategy when he ran for and won election as Bexar County Commissioner in 1972, including the creation of a comic book and his television debate, and discusses his campaign funds. He notes working with the Committee Organized for Public Service (COPS) while he served as a Bexar County Commissioner and cites his efforts to provide facilities at Mission County Park. He comments on fellow commissioner Blair Reeves and commissioners court Judge Plau [sic?] and applauds his efforts as Bexar County Judge to collect deliquent business taxes to fund county hospital programs. He jumps into his election to the U.S. House of Representatives and points to his election as president of the Democratic freshman class in Washington, D.C., entitling him to dine with Ronald Reagan. He tells of his role on the House banking subcommittee during the savings and loan bailout crisis involving the Resolution Trust Corporation, discusses the wheeling and dealing for military appropriations in Washington, D.C., and argues about nuclear disarmament and the handling of nuclear waste. He expounds on his congressional junket into Honduras and Nicaragua to investigate contras (counterrevolutionaries), the Central Intelligence Agency, and illegal gun sales surrounding Oliver North and mentions the dealings in Central and South America involving Manuel Noriega, Omar Torrijos and Pete O'Shea and their rumored drug connections to La Mena [sic, Mena], Arkansas. He talks about his campaign fundraising and his election defeat by Henry Bonilla in 1992 following congressional redistricting and speaks of the investigation on bribery and racketeering charges into contracts and financial dealings affecting his wife, attorney Rebecca Bustamante, contractors Oliver Heard and Evaristo 'Eddie' García, and Falcon Food Services and Management, Inc. He briefly discusses his financial and real estate woes to cover his trial expenses and he laments his choice of attorney, Tony Canales over Bill Clinton's impeachement attorney, Abbey [sic, Abbe D.] Lowell. He discusses his appeal and request for a presidential pardon, mentions Bill Clinton's pardon of Henry Cisneros, and provides details of his imprisonment at the El Paso Prison Camp. He contrasts the relative unity of the African American community through Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition to the disunity of the Mexican American community, and comments on fellow congressmen such as John McCain, Tip O'Neill, and Jim Wright.

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