Kika de la Garza dead at 89

Photo courtesy of City of McAllen

The newsletter’s top position this morning is reserved for one of the stalwart-change leaders in the U.S. Latino community, Rep. Kika de la Garza. De la Garza passed away this week, he was 89. I’ll grant that it’s nearly impossible to give his life an accomplishments their due honor in the brief space allotted to a news report, but NBC News’s Suzanne Gamboa did a very good job of it:
“De La Garza, a Democrat, was a founding member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and served in the U.S. House from 1965 to 1997, a service that began with Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office and ended with Bill Clinton in the presidency.
“Only the second Mexican American from Texas elected to the House at the time, De La Garza became a force in the politics of agriculture because of his long tenure on the powerful House Agriculture Committee. He rose to wield the gavel as the committee's chairman.”

Descanse en paz, Kika.