Alpha Hernandez
(March 28, 2014)
At the close of her senior year of high school, Alpha Hernandez received a rare and undeserved grade of B in a typing class. She and the teacher both knew she was a candidate for valedictorian, but this was Del Rio High School in 1965. It had not been consolidated with San Felipe High School, so Alpha was one of the very few "Mexicanas" in her class who had achieved high enough to break the norm. It was no secret that the typing teacher favored another student (who just happened to be white) for the honor. Alpha appealed to the teacher for fair treatment, to receive the grade she deserved, but to no avail. Although they both knew what she had rightfully earned and what was at stake, the teacher did not budge. Even as a high-school girl, she did not take unfairness lying down. She went to the school administration and showed her work with no mistakes. She could not be denied, and she went on to become the first ever non-white, and certainly the first ever Mexican American woman, valedictorian of Del Rio High School.
Her academic prowess and tenacity in pursuit of justice proved to be prophetic. She would go on to become a defender of the poor and disenfranchised and, as eloquently put by the director of her firm, David Hall, leader in her community and indeed in all of Southwest Texas. She went on to UT-Austin, where she was a founding member of the Mexican American Student Association and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Latin-American Studies in 1969. After short stints as a social worker in Texas and a job counselor in California, and an internship in Washington D.C., she went to law school, graduating from the UCLA School of Law, receiving her Juris Doctorate in 1976 and fulfilling her mother's dream of pursuing higher education. She was licensed in California and in Texas and was admitted to practice law in the Western District of Texas, United State Tax Court, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of the United States of America. She worked for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles for a year, and then jumped at the opportunity to open a new TRLA office back home in Del Rio.
In 1977 the Legal Services Corporation under Board Chair Hilary Rodham was expanding into every county in the country. As part of that expansion Alpha served a brief apprenticeship in Crystal City, then moved to Del Rio as soon as her father, the Del Rio Parks Superintendent Felix A. Hernandez, remodeled an office building for her. One of her earliest projects was desegregating Del Rio schools and instating bilingual education (monitoring the implementation of the order by Judge William Wayne Justice in US v. Texas, 342 F. Supp. 24 (E.D. Tex. 1971), spelling out detailed instructions on how to implement an effective desegregation plan, including bilingual education).
Early on she realized that a legal services lawyer is most effective when working directly with client community leadership, and she labored for over three decades with those leaders to create a legacy of community-based organizations to serve her community: Buena Salud (health clinic), Amistad Family Violence and Rape Crisis Center (domestic violence shelter), Casa de la Cultura (cultural arts, community center in the San Felipe Barrio), Familias Unidas de Val Verde County, Inc. (self-help housing program), Project N.I.N.O. (a children's benefit organization), and the Adobe Association of Del Rio (sustainable adobe building initiative). There can be no doubt that the low-income residents of Del Rio are in a better place because of Alpha's effective work with these groups.
She also litigated several significant cases for her clients and has argued at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (only one step below the United States Supreme Court) more times than anyone in TRLA. One of the most important was Hernandez v. Cremer, which she ultimately won before a split panel in the court of Appeal. 913 F.2d 230 (5th Cir. 1990). She represented Carmelo Hernandez, a US citizen who had been born in Puerto Rico. He was denied reentry into the US after a trip to Mexico because the INS inspector thought that Puerto Rican birth certificates were inherently suspicious. Hernandez spent 46 days in Mexico, working sporadically for 1 meal a day; he lost his job in Houston, his apartment, his clothing. Alpha won an injunction, affirmed on appeal that revised the way INS officers must process re-entry cases at border ports-of-entry. After Hernandez, inspectors must treat voter registration cards as probative evidence of citizenship.
She protected women from sex discrimination at work. Estrada v. City of Eagle Pass instructed city leaders on the perils of sex discrimination and opened many jobs to women, including that of City Manager. She worked with several TRLA colleagues to establish federal recognition for the Traditional Tribe of Kickapoo in Eagle Pass, and, in Cuellar v. TEC, established the principal in unemployment insurance hearings that merely filing a controverting affidavit does not give the employer an automatic win. And she played a major role in protecting Hispanic Voters in Val Verde County from an onslaught of votes from military officers who had passed through or had yet to arrive at Laughlin Air Force Base, but were no longer or had never been county residents. Their votes had elected a Klansman to the county commissioners court; he was forced to withdraw when his Klan activities in Germany came to light during the litigation in Casarez v. Val Verde County. After the program merger in 2001, Alpha became the manager of the immigration practice area team. She and Luis Gonzalez, her paralegal who died in December, carried on a robust immigration practice for TRLA under the highly restrictive rules of LSC and TAJF. Their compassion and effective advocacy stabilized and improved the lives of hundreds who sought to make their homes in the US.
She fought and won an effort to protect Sierra Blanca from becoming a toxic sludge waste site. She was able, after the flood of 1998, to win the fight to keep the Casa de la Cultura open when it was under threat of closure on multiple fronts. Most recently, she worked to ensure the future of Del Rio by defeating an attempt by SAWS to pipe such severely high volumes of water from the San Felipe Springs to San Antonio that the springs would have been critically compromised, and Del Rio would not survive. All this went on while successfully fighting to keep her office open in the face of branch closings and reductions in force at TRLA, in efforts to ensure proper defense of the chronically underrepresented in Del Rio and in Southwest Texas. The community recognized her for these victories and many more by naming her Woman of the Year at the 2011 International Women's Day Conference.
Her achievements would not have been possible without the love and support of her family and community. Alpha was born January 23, 1947 in Del Rio, TX, to Felix and Maria Hernandez, baptized and raised at El Principe de Paz United Methodist Church. There she served as Youth sponsor for 22 years and served on the Board of Ministries as President, on the United Methodist Church Rio Grande Conference and on the Board of Higher Education, always guiding and encouraging youth to work to achieve academically and instilling a love of service to the community in the young people she worked with at church and beyond.
Alpha ended her battle with cancer at her residence in Del Rio Friday, March 28, 2014, at the age of 67. Left to cherish Alpha's memory are her husband, Rodolfo Felipe Reyna and her children, Teresa Tonantzin Hernandez Reyna and Rodolfo Cuauhtli Hernandez Reyna, her mother, Maria G. Hernandez, her brother Felix G. Hernandez III of El Paso, TX (wife Estela and children David and Monica), her brother Apolonio Hernandez of Del Rio, TX (wife Julia and children Apolonio, Pauline, Jose and Patricia), her sister Diana H. Gonzalez of Del Rio, TX (husband Angelo Gonzalez and children Carmen, Angela, Ben and Bethany) and her sister Denise Hernandez of Del Rio, TX (husband Jose David Perez and children Jose Francisco and Juan David). She is predeceased by her father, Felix A. Hernandez, her nephew, Felix C. Hernandez and her great-niece, Sarah Hernandez.
The family would like to thank the following persons for the loving care they provided Alpha during her illness: Dr. Amy Lang, Sara Perales, Marie Perales Morin and Carmen Gonzalez, RN.