Raul H. Castro, Arizona’s Only Hispanic Governor, Dies at 98

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/us/raul-h-castro-ex-governor-of-arizona-dies-at-98.html

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Raul H. Castro, Arizona’s first and only Hispanic governor and an American ambassador to three Latin American countries, died Friday in San Diego. He was 98.

His death was confirmed by a family spokesman, James Garcia.

A former prosecutor and Superior Court judge, Mr. Castro was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as ambassador to El Salvador in 1964 and to Bolivia in 1968.

A Democrat, he was dismissed by the administration of Richard M. Nixon and returned to Arizona, where he ran for governor in 1970 and lost to the incumbent, Jack Williams. Four years later, he defeated Russell Williams, a Phoenix businessman, by about 4,000 votes.

He resigned the governorship in October 1977, when President Jimmy Carter named him ambassador to Argentina. He returned to Arizona in 1980, where he practiced law until his retirement.

Raul Hector Castro was born in the city of Cananea, in northern Mexico near the Arizona border, on June 12, 1916. His parents, Francisco Castro and the former Rosario Acosta, moved with him and his 10 siblings to Pirtleville, Ariz., when he was 2, after his father, a mine union leader, was forced to leave Mexico. His mother became a midwife.

Raul Castro adopted the middle name Hector as a teenager to honor a local athlete he admired.

He won a football scholarship to Arizona State Teachers College and, after graduating, picked crops for two years because local schools would not hire Hispanics. He later earned his law degree from the University of Arizona Law School. He was elected prosecutor in Pima County.

Mr. Castro is survived by his wife, the former Patricia Steiner; their daughters, Mary Pat James and Beth Castro; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

In “Adversity Is My Angel,” his autobiography, written with Jack L. August Jr., Mr. Castro recalled that as a teenager, he attended a Fourth of July picnic in a park in Douglas, Ariz., where George W. P. Hunt, Arizona’s first governor, was speaking. (Arizona became a state in 1912.)

“At one point, he looked over at us,” Mr. Castro wrote, “pointed right at me and said: ‘In this great state of ours, anyone can be governor. Why, even one of those little barefoot Mexican kids sitting over there could one day be governor.’ ”

In 2002, the site was renamed Raul H. Castro Park.