By Gonzalo Santo, Exclusively for “El Magonista” | Aug. 15, 2024 | Photo Collage Courtesy of El Mago Staff
Armando Vázquez-Ramos was born in Mexico City on August 10th, 1949. He passed away at his home in Long Beach, California on August 4th, 2024, six days short of his 75th. birthday.
He was universally known and respected by many generations of his students, colleagues, compañeros, and mentees, as “el Profe”.
Armando came from a large family, he was the second oldest of seven brothers – two of whom preceded him in death. His mother, Doña Lourdes Ramos and father, Don Fernando Vázquez, brought the family to the U.S. in 1961, when Armando was 12 years old. His beloved grandmother, Doña Luz Montes, helped raise him, too.
He leaves behind his daughter Luz and his son Armando, Jr, as well as the mother of his children, Dolores Ramos, four younger brothers, and many nephews and nieces.
Armando graduated from Lincoln High School in East L.A. just a few months before the historic school walkouts of March 1968, when Chicano students and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District protested pervasive ethnic discrimination and unequal conditions in schools. Armando became a disciple of the activist teacher Sal Castro, who championed ethnic studies and mentored the Chicano students, and also the legendary champion of immigrant workers’ rights and advocate of no borders, Bert Corona (he also inspired Armando’s other activist brothers).
In 1968, Armando became a student at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) thanks to the late Dr. Joe White, who came to Lincoln High School to recruit Chicano/Latino students to attend college. Armando jumped at the chance. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Mexican-American studies and a master’s in psychology. More importantly, Armando help lead the fight to establish the Chicano & Latino Studies Department that exists today at CSULB, a department he would later join as a teaching faculty. From that position, Armando was able to teach, inspire, and mentor thousands of students, many of whom are now prominent educators, social activists, labor organizers, and politicians.
But that was only one front – una trinchera – of Armando’s indomitable, multifaceted, lifelong activism. In 1969 he joined forces with other Chicano activists, priests and nuns to fight the white-dominated Los Angeles Archdiocese for ignoring the Latino community and refusing to offer mass services in Spanish. They burst into the Cathedral at the midnight mass on Christmas chanting slogans in Spanish, and Armando, of course, got arrested.
He also found time that same year to found and direct his first nonprofit, the East Long Beach Neighborhood Center, now known as the Centro de La Raza. At this center, Armando and his staff provided family services, economic opportunities, and immigration services to low income families in Long Beach. There is a magnificent exhibit at the Centro you can now visit (go to: https://artslb.org/event/centro-de-la-raza-john-a-taboada-legacy-photo-collection/ [artslb.org]).
During his over 25 years of teaching at CSULB, Armando was active with the California Faculty Association (CFA), the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the National Education Association (NEA). In 2004, he co-founded the CFA’s Statewide Latino Caucus for the California State University System and served as its Founding Co-Chair with Professor Gonzalo Santos as well as served as Coordinator of the Founding Conference.
In 2010, Armando established the non-profit California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc. (CMSC) to research, develop, promote, and establish policies and exchange programs with and between higher educational institutions, governmental agencies, and social organizations in California and Mexico (www.california-mexicocenter.org [california-mexicocenter.org]). A number of conferences and collaboration agreements resulted between CMSC and the extensions of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), Universidad de Guadalajara, and Universidad de Colima in the L.A.-area, as well as other collaboration agreements between CSULB and the UNAM, Universidad de Guadalajara, and Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas.
In 2014, he launched, along with his daughter Luz, what became the premier Dreamers Study Abroad Program, designed exclusively for DACA recipients. Over the past ten years, over 800 DACA recipients have benefited from participating in this study abroad opportunity, visited their families, learned about their country of origin, and returned legally to the U.S. under the Advance Parole status, which allows them easier access to legal paths to regularize their status.
Also on 2014, Prof. Vázquez-Ramos helped convened the now historic Campaign to Promote Ethnic Studies (CPES) Summit at CSULB, which help spark several campaigns to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in California high schools. He helped secure the Long Beach Ethnic Studies Program with a 5-year funding commitment by the Long Beach Unified School District Superintendent and the teaching commitment by CSULB faculty, a successful model for college classes at other districts like El Rancho USD and Norwalk-La Mirada USD.
El Profe dedicated years of his life to march for immigrant rights and lobby, along with Dreamers and his associates, the U.S. and Mexican Congresses, the state legislatures and governments of California and Mexico City and other states of Mexico, to adopt just and humane pro-immigrant reforms, fund bilateral higher education exchange programs, and attend to the urgent needs of millions of U.S.-born children deported with their parents to Mexico. He believed in transnational solidarity and organizing of homeland Mexicans and diaspora Mexicans, and similar unity among all Latino diasporas and their Latin American homelands. His vision of North American integration was tied with his vision of equal justice and solidarity among all peoples, admitting no borders. And he practiced what he preached. His solidarity with Cuba, which he loved and visited and collaborated academically with many times, was particularly salient.
In 2022, Profe Armando received from then-Mayor of Mexico City, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, the Key to the City, in recognition to his lifelong commitment and many contributions to the just causes of Mexicans in the U.S. – especially the Chicano/Latino students and more recently the Dreamers. Dr. Sheinbaum, now president-elect of Mexico, sponsored the presentation of a book co-edited by el Profe with 36 moving testimonies of Dreamers in his study abroad program; she graciously accepted to write a preamble to the book, and spoke of her deep commitment to the Mexican diaspora, thanking Profe Armando and his collaborators for their selfless work. The book, Anthology of Dreams from an Impossible Journey, went on to receive numerous awards.
More recently in June, two months prior to his untimely passing, el Profe achieved his two last, great achievements, crowning a life of activism and erudition: first, he became the strongest advocate for one of her Dreamer mentees and most active collaborators, Karina Ruiz from Arizona, to become the first Dreamer elected to the Mexican Senate, which she did! Karina takes office September 1st. And second, he successfully presented his last co-edited book on the Mexican diaspora, at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles – the magnificent, erudite, binational, UNAM-CMSC academic anthology, La identidad de los mexicanos en el extranjero: Una mirada desde diversas perspectivas. Not exactly slowing down, he was indefatigable.
We could mention many other projects in which he played a pivotal role: the restoration of the David Siqueiros mural America Tropical in Plaza Olvera, the exhibition of La Raza magazine historic photographs at the Autry Museum, co-curated by his lifelong friend, Luis Garza, and Luis’s own photographic exhibitions in Tijuana and L.A.. He never stop giving it his best.
A life well-lived, a legion of battles well-fought, a field of dreams well-seeded, el Profe now rests.
We, those fortunate to have been touched by him, continue on with his legacy. ¡La lucha sigue!
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made to a memorial Fund:
In the coming months, there will be a community event celebrating Profe’s life, details are pending.
