Roberto “Dr. Cintli” Rodriguez, a Chicano activist, writer and associate professor emeritus of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona, who sidelined as a columnist for The Progressive Populist, died July 31 of heart failure in Teotihuacan, Mexico, where he moved to study the area’s history and archeology. He was 69.
Dr. Cintli, who took his nickname from the Nahuatl word for “corn,” had a long record of standing up for justice. “He was a warrior for justice with a lifelong curiosity to connect with our ancestral reality,” his former wife, Patrisia Gonzales, who remained a close friend, wrote at FaceBook. “He was committed to making the world a better place and he shared his life experience and knowledge bravely to ignite the fire in others to never stop fighting for what we all know we deserve.”
On assignment for Lowrider Magazine in East Los Angeles in 1979, Rodriguez was taking photos on Whittier Boulevard when he captured the assault of a man by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. In the midst of photographing the beating, officers turned on Rodriguez, and beat him so badly he spent three days in the hospital, and when he was released, they arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon and assault and battery on a peace officer, Natalie Robbins noted in the Tucson Sentinel Aug. 2.
Though the charges were ultimately dropped, the assault galvanized Rodriguez, who devoted his life to fighting brutality and writing about Chicano culture. He filed a civil suit against Los Angeles County for violating his First Amendment rights, and won a $205,000 judgment in 1986, using the money to start a bilingual magazine, Americas 2001, which he published from 1987 until 1988. He later co-founded a database of killings of Latinos by law enforcement.
Rodriguez was a champion of Mexican American Studies classes in Arizona public schools and was one of the only UA faculty members to be arrested for protesting an Ethnic Studies ban in 2010, Robbins noted.
“His spirit would not allow him to stay quiet on an issue where he thought there was some wrong happening against people, especially people of color or anybody who might be brutalized for their differences,” said Gonzales, who met Rodriguez in 1990. They worked together as associate professors at the University of Arizona after receiving doctoral degrees at the University of Wisconsin. They co-authored the nationally syndicated “Column of the Americas,” which appeared in TPP, and they collaborated on other publications and a 2005 documentary on migration. — JMC.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2023
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