[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 20, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E580]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HONORING RAQUEL RUBIO GOLDSMITH

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. RAUL M. GRIJALVA

                               of arizona

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 20, 2010

  Mr. GRIJALVA. Madam Speaker, Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, honored teacher, 
researcher and community activist, retires after 40 years of teaching 
at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. 
She coordinates the Binational Migration Institute housed in the 
Mexican-American Research and Studies Center at the University of 
Arizona, where she began teaching in 1983. She retired from Pima 
Community College in 1999 and has received many honors for her teaching 
and mentoring of students and younger faculty.
  Born in the border community of Douglas, AZ, she is the oldest of a 
family of nine children. At the age of 16, Raquel graduated from high 
school in Douglas and was granted a scholarship to the Autonomous 
University of Mexico (UNAM). She had no choice in 1952 but to accept, 
since the opportunities in higher education were extremely limited for 
Mexican Americans, especially those from rural communities and working 
class backgrounds. Her father was a railroad worker.
  In Mexico City she was fortunate to live with a great aunt who was a 
concert pianist and introduced her to a world of artists, 
intellectuals, and writers. She received undergraduate and advanced 
degrees in law and philosophy from UNAM. Upon returning to Douglas in 
1961, she met, and later married, Charles Barclay Goldsmith. Barclay 
was a reporter and a recent graduate of Stanford University. He joined 
the United States Diplomatic Corps as a cultural attache shortly 
thereafter and they were stationed in Merida, Mexico, and later in 
Buenos Aires, Argentina. Several years and two sons later, they moved 
to Pittsburgh, PA, where Raquel worked in a poverty program and Barclay 
completed a Masters in Fine Arts in directing from Carnegie Mellon 
University. In 1969 they moved to Tucson, where Raquel became a 
founding faculty member of Pima Community College. With others, she was 
charged with establishing the curriculum in an educational environment 
that followed a participatory democracy management model, from the 
janitor to the students to the faculty to the administration. All had a 
voice.
  Professor Rubio Goldsmith flourished in this creative world, and she 
became a leader in institutionalizing diversity at all levels, 
instituting open-enrollment, establishing Mexican-American, African-
American and Women's Studies, teaching Yaqui and Tohono O'odham 
histories and languages, and pioneering classes for credit in barrio 
community centers. She championed computer technology even before it 
had a widespread role in higher education. She fought tirelessly for 
hiring minorities at all levels, and became a master teacher and 
constant advocate for students. She was especially focused on older 
female students, and helped form an exemplary program for female 
bilingual aides in public education. With her support, many of those 
women went on to become bilingual teachers not only in Spanish but in 
the native languages of the borderlands.
  Professor Goldsmith also established a long record of publication and 
centered her research on women of the borderlands. She researched the 
cultural impact of a community of Mexican nuns in Douglas and the 
importance of gardens for women in the isolation of the desert. She 
became a recognized specialist in women's studies, focusing on Chicana/
Mexicana women. She pioneered surveys to document human rights 
violations suffered by migrants (and citizens) that offered the first 
important empirical evidence of the impact that growing border 
militarization was having in border communities, and how those impacts 
were moving into the interior.
  Recently, her research has centered on the post-1994 period that has 
led to a ``funnel'' effect of migrant movement that has caused so many 
deaths. Her cutting-edge scholarship is acknowledged by invitations to 
present at local, national and international forums and participate in 
academic, policy-making and community-based discussions. Professor 
Goldsmith has always made an effort to present academic research to the 
community by setting up presentations in neighborhood centers. At one 
time she conducted local radio programs on Spanish-language radio, 
teaching the history of Mexico and having on-air, call-in cultural 
discussions with the community. She believed that information should be 
shared with the community instead of isolated at educational 
institutions.
  Professor Rubio Goldsmith has also devoted herself to working in 
promoting human rights. From her student years to the present, she has 
engaged in community-based activism. She worked on local issues with El 
Concilio Manzo in Tucson in the early 1970s and issues of immigration 
advocacy with them through the mid-1980s. She led the Zapatista 
movement in Tucson with Pueblo Por La Paz, participating in Chiapas 
with Zapatista convocations. She was the co-author of a play about the 
Zapatista uprising, ``Tres Dias/Thirteen Days'', performed by 
Borderlands Theater locally and the San Francisco Mime Troupe 
nationally. She is a member of Derechos Humanos and has been a board 
member of the Little Chapel of All Nations. She has been an active and 
tireless supporter of Raza Studies in high schools, and has served on 
the advisory council of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (Instituto de 
los Mexicanos en el Exterior) of the Mexican Ministry of Foreign 
Relations.
  Professor Raquel Rubio Goldsmith has been a wonderful mother to two 
sons, Chris and Pat. Christopher Goldsmith is a poet and has been a 
teacher of English for many years at Tucson High School. Patrick 
Goldsmith is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. 
She has two grandchildren, who are the joy of her life, and is married 
to Barclay Goldsmith with whom she has shared a lifetime. Our community 
is very blessed for the service of Raquel Rubio Goldsmith, whose life's 
work continues to enrich us all.

                          ____________________