Opinion: Remembering pioneering Latina lawmaker Olga Mendez
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Long before there was Sonia Sotomayor, there was Olga Mendez, another accomplished woman of Puerto Rican descent who made her mark in New York. If you didn’t know who Mendez was, let us introduce you now.
Mendez wasn’t a judge, but she was a pioneering politician whose career, in the largest sense, paved the way for Latinos, both men and women, to advance in New York and beyond. In 1978 she became the first Puerto Rican woman elected to the New York Senate. She represented East Harlem and the South Bronx for more than 25 years. (Sotomayor, incidentally, grew up in the Bronx, while Mendez, like Sotomayor’s parents, was from Puerto Rico.)
Mendez, who was born in the town of Mayaguez, died this week at the age of 84.
People outside the circles of Empire State politics or Latino civil rights groups might not have heard of her. But her influence in New York was widely felt and after news of her death, testimonials began pouring in.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement, ‘When I first entered public service eight years ago, Olga sat me down and impressed upon me -- in her inimitable way -- the importance of reaching across partisan lines to do what’s right for your constituents.’
In its obituary, the New York Times noted that Mendez was defined as much by pragmatism (she once switched her affiliation from Democrat to Republican) as her ethnicity, but added that she was not shy about sharing her pride in her heritage, writing, ‘Mrs. Méndez insisted on being known as Puerto Rican and rejected the terms Hispanic and Latino.’
Today’s New York Daily News ran an editorial headlined ‘Do it for Olga’ and urged state lawmakers and Gov. David Paterson to pass and approve legislation on farm labor rights.
Among the causes she championed was equal labor rights for New York’s farmworkers, an issue that drew the unlikely attention of a politician representing parts of Manhattan and the Bronx when she discovered that some of her constituents were traveling to western New York to toil in the fields.
The paper added, ‘They should honor her memory by passing the bill.’ Services for Mendez will be held in New York on Monday.
-- Steve Padilla
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