Baldemar Velasquez

Baldemar Velásquez (born February 15, 1947) is an American labor union activist. He co-founded and is president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO. He was named a MacArthur Fellow (the so-called "Genius Grant") in 1989, and awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle in 1994, the highest honor Mexico can bestow on a non-citizen. Velásquez was born in February 1947 in Pharr, Texas. He was the third of nine children born to Cresencio and Vicenta Castillo Velásquez. Baldemar's father was born into a Mexican American family in Driscoll, Texas. His grandfather died when Cresencio was just 11 years old, forcing the young Cresencio to seek employment as a migrant worker. Baldemar's maternal grandparents fled to Pharr in 1910 after the...