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El Centro de la Raza in Seattle, Washington, United States, is an educational, cultural, and social service agency, centered in the Latino/Chicano community and headquartered in the former Beacon Hill Elementary School on Seattle's Beacon Hill. It was founded in 1972 and celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2007. El Centro de la Raza continues to serve clients in Seattle, King County and beyond. It is considered a significant part of civil rights history in the Pacific Northwest. Their website points out that they are "probably the only organization in the world to hold the Nicaraguan '10th Anniversary Medal of the Sandinista Revolution' (1989), and the 'Thousand Points of Light' award (1991) from the Bush administration." El Centro founder Roberto Maestas (July 9, 1938 - September 22, 2010)〔(Prominent civil rights leader Roberto Maestas dies ), KOMO news, September 22, 2010. Retrieved September 23, 2010.〕〔Jerry Large, (Roberto Maestas, leading advocate for social justice, dies at 72 ), ''Seattle Times'', September 22, 2010. Retrieved September 23, 2010.〕 was the 2004 "Seafair king", the first Latino ever to receive this civic honor. On April 25, 2011, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to rename the segment of South Lander Street between 16th Avenue South and 17th Avenue South (immediately south of El Centro) as South Roberto Maestas Festival Street.〔(Council Bill Number: 117136, Ordinance Number: 123588 ), Seattle City Clerk's Online Information Resources, City of Seattle. Retrieved .〕 ==History== El Centro was founded October 11, 1972 by Americans of Mexican ancestry calling themselves Chicanos, a socio-political term made popular in the 1960s, and other Latinos and people of different ethnic backgrounds. The militants occupied Beacon Hill School in Seattle, which had been closed due to declining student enrollment. The group was inspired, in part, by the 1970 occupation by Native Americans of the decommissioned Fort Lawton in Seattle's Magnolia district, which had resulted in the founding of the Daybreak Star Cultural Center. The initial spark for the occupation was the fact that about seventy Latino students and ten staff of the Chicano: English and Adult Basic Education Program at the Duwamish branch of the incipient South Seattle Community College had found themselves without an educational home.〔 The occupation also took place in the context of the activist spirit of the time, including opposition to the Vietnam War and growth of the migrant workers union, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). By the 1960s thousands of Latinos, nearly all of whom were seeking employment, found themselves in the largely Anglo-American metropolis of Seattle, lacking a traditional community center: a ''barrio'', with a Latin American-style plaza. They redressed this lack by renovating the old school with their own hands, having obtained a lease from the city for $1 a year.〔 The founders of El Centro crossed racial and ethnic boundaries. Founder Roberto Maestas, executive director until 2009, was close to Black activist and community leader Larry Gossett, Asian leader Bob Santos, and Native American urban activist Bernie Whitebear, as well as fishing-rights advocates in the Frank family. Maestas, Gossett, Santos, and Whitebear were called the "Gang of Four" around Seattle as they set about building an unusual ethnic alliance.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=10964 )〕 Thus El Centro de la Raza became very multiethnic from the beginning, interpreting its name as "The Center for the People of All Races" (when poorly translated without context it means "The Center of the Race"). From the early days, people who worked at El Centro engaged in an on-going conversation regarding how to address questions of race and racism in a society that includes a diverse array of peoples. From the beginning, El Centro de la Raza was a community project that stressed commitment to struggle for Civil Rights for all persons. The people who occupied the building joked that they were simply implementing advice from Washington governor Dan Evans, “advocating use of empty schools for community needs, such as child care”.〔Johansen, Bruce. “Beacon Hill Confrontation: Chicanos were Following Slogan ’Power to the People’”, ''Seattle Times'', October 22, 1972, N.p.〕 Leaders of the building takeover quickly won a pledge from Seattle Public Schools superintendent Forbes Bottomly that no effort would be made to evict them by force. The school district even arranged to open a back door for fire safety. The school had a sprinkler system, but its water long had been cut off.〔 After three months of occupying the building and numerous rallies, petitions and letters, the Seattle City Council agreed to hear their case. At one point, pressing for an audience, supporters of the occupation had laid siege to the City Council’s chambers. The Council finally approved the lease, but mayor Wes Uhlman vetoed the action. Supporters then occupied the mayor's office and were arrested. An accord was finally reached. A five-year lease was signed January 20, 1973 at $1 rent annually.〔Johansen, Bruce E. and Roberto Maestas. El Pueblo: The Gallegos Family's American Journey. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983.〕 Many of the occupiers were blue-collar tradespeople who set to work cleaning the building, repairing light fixtures and windows, painting peeling walls. Artists created murals "depicting life on the old family farms as well as the agonies of migrant work. On one wall, a young boy stood beside a burro; on another, an older man lay across the field of a factory farm, nailed to a cross, surrounded by tractors whose grills took the ghastly gray shape of skulls" (Johansen and Maestas, 1983, 128). What had been a vacant, decaying shell was successfully recuperated, and came to be a "home" for some unlikely allies: blue-collar trades people and white-collar intellectuals, Native American, Asian, Latino, Black, and European-American, men and women.〔 More than 20 years later, Maestas would remark, "I found that the only way to get things done in this city is to do it -- and then work it out… It took five to six years for the building to become up to code. Everything had to be repaired, replaced or installed. With the help, love and dedication of the community, the organization's building was refurbished piece by piece. Money was donated. Grants were awarded. Materials were donated, as well. Laborers volunteered time. Plumbers gave services. Heating and plumbing were installed. The roof was fixed. Vinyl siding was put in place. The classrooms were spruced up.”〔Martin, Cecilia. “( El Centro de la Raza: A Look Back )”, ''University of Washington Daily'', September 3, 1996.〕 By 1982, the main floor of the old building was a beehive of activity. By 1995, all three floors of the building were in use. The organization continued to practice direct action. When the Washington Natural Gas Company cut off El Centro's heat, for example, the teachers and children of the child-development center moved to a place they knew would remain warm: the reception area of the company chief executive officer’s office.〔Johansen and Maestas, ''op. cit.'', p. 133.〕 In ensuing years, Latino culture became far more widespread in Seattle. Taco carts, trailers, trucks, and buses became common along Seattle's arterials, even in the traditionally Scandinavian Ballard neighborhood. In the decade ending in 2000, according to the Census Bureau, the Latino population in King County jumped 115 percent, to 95,242. Maestas estimated that this omitted another 10,000 undocumented Latinos, "and that's a conservative figure".〔Lacitis, Erik, (Taco Trucks Offer Mexican Cuisine North of the Border ), ''Seattle Times'', July 19, 2003.〕 In 2007, El Centro celebrated its 35th anniversary with a gathering of nearly 1,000 people at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「El Centro de la Raza」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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