The first Hispanic from the Rio Grande Valley elected to Congress, Kika de la Garza, who was House Agriculture chairman for 14 of his 32 years in Congress, died on Monday at age of 89. He was chairman during the farm recession of the mid-1980s, one of the hardest times for agriculture since the Depression.
Former president Bill Clinton tweeted, “Kika de la Garza was a good man, very effective congressman, valued friend, & a champion of opportunity and social justice. I’ll miss him,” reported the McAllen Monitor.
When he became chairman, in 1981, de la Garza was the first Hispanic to chair a House committee since 1945. A conservative Democrat, de la Garza stoutly defended farm subsidies as a tiny part of federal spending that ensured the U.S. food supply. He opposed cuts pushed by the Reagan administration and backed programs to help the “colonias,” settlements in the Southwest inhabited by Hispanics and often lacking public services.
To read the House biography of de la Garza, click here.