Obama nominates chicana as ambassador to Argentina

[rabs]

She is Vilma Martinez, born in San Antonio, Texas.

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Since the early 1970s, Mexican American attorney and activist Vilma Martinez (born 1943) has been a leading advocate for the civil rights of Hispanic Americans, especially at the ballot box.

http://www.telam.com.ar/vernota.php?tipo=N&idPub=147749&id=294507&dis=1&sec=1


Martinez bio:

http://www.answers.com/topic/vilma-socorro-martinez

Argentina diplomatic circles had anticipated this couple of weeks back. Thomas Shannon had wanted the post in Buenos Aires, but it went to Martinez.

Obama has nominated Shannon to be ambassador in Brasilia.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Wonderful credentials. Argentina could use an ambassador with depth, sensitivity.

Things really went into the ditch during the previous regime. This ambassador could be exactly what the doctor ordered. Hope to hear good things about her appointment. WONDERFUL biography. I doubt the Republicans have anyone with even remotely similar accomplishments, and triumph over real adversity.

Thanks, rabs.

[Judi Lynn]

2. More background on Obama's next ambassador to Argentina, Vilma Martinez:

Vilma S. Martinez



Vilma S. Martinez was born October 17, 1943 in San Antonio, Texas. During her childhood, much of Texas was openly segregated.

“We weren’t allowed to go into some of the parks,” Ms. Martinez recalls. “When we went to the movies, we had to sit in the back of the theater.”

At the age of 15, she had the opportunity to work as a volunteer in the firm of a local Hispanic lawyer, Alonso Perales.

“I was very much impressed with the way he was able to help people as a lawyer,” says Ms. Martinez. The experience led her to focus her sights on becoming a lawyer.

“Many people at school tried to discourage me,” she explains, “but I was very stubborn.”

After graduating from high school, Ms. Martinez enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, earning a B.A. degree in 1964. She went on to Columbia University School of Law, receiving her L.L.B. degree in 1967.

Ms. Martinez began her career as a staff attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1967.

“I joined the staff at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when Title VII was new and I worked on Title VII cases throughout the South and an early Northern school desegregation case in Denver, Colorado,” says Ms. Martinez.

In 1970, she became Equal Employment Opportunity Counsel for the New York State Division of Human Rights in New York City and in 1971, she joined the firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel in New York as a litigation associate.

Ms. Martinez was one of the first two women elected to the Board of Directors for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (MALDEF). In 1973, she was selected president and general counsel. She served in that capacity from 1973-1982.

During her tenure at MALDEF, Ms. Martinez worked on a number of issues. She is proud of MALDEF’s major victory in Plyer v. Doe which guaranteed undocumented children the right to a public school education. She was also instrumental in MALDEF’s effort to expand the Voting Rights Act to Mexican-Americans in 1975. They had not been included when the legislation was passed in 1965.

Since 1982, Ms. Martinez has been a partner at the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she specializes in federal and state court litigation, including defense of wrongful termination and employment litigation and other commercial litigation. In 1994, she was hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District to challenge that portion of Proposition 187 which denied a public school education to California’s undocumented migrants. While her suit filed in the state courts successfully won a restraining order, a similar case was filed soon afterwards in the federal courts by MALDEF and other civil rights groups. The federal class action suit, Gregorio v. Wilson, ultimately resulted in nearly all provisions of Proposition 187 being declared unconstitutional in 1998.

More:
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/hispanic_m.html