Representative of Raul M. Grijalva, a former political radical who became a democratic devoted Arizonian congress delegation, which was one of the most tilted lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday. He was 77.
Mr. Grijalva (declared Gree-hahl-vah) last year revealed that he has lung cancer and in 2026 is not running 13. He died of complications of his treatment, his office said. In Washington, he was missing for almost a year, missing hundreds of votes in a narrowly divided house.
The son of the Mexican immigrant, who worked on Arizona ranks, was Mr. Grijalva as a young man activist on the side of Raza Unida, a hard left movement to gain political power for Mexican Americans. In the end, he relieved himself and became a democrat and moved up in Tucson’s politics for almost 30 years before he successfully ran to Congress at the age of 54 in 2002.
In Washington, Mr. Grijalva was advocate of hard work and environmental protection, gained a rating “F” from the National Rifle Association and opposed the fence on the border of Mexico. He was known for the informal style that favored ties over ties, and once in the joke he offered that his slogan of the campaign should be “Grijalva: not just another nice face”.
Grijalva, co -chairman of the progressive committee in the house for decades, was the first member of the congress to support Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for President in 2015. After President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Poor performance in the presidential debate against Donald J. Trump last June, Mr. Grijalva was last June to leave the council.
“What he has to do is responsibility for keeping this chair – and part of this responsibility is to get out of this race,” Grijalva said The New York Times.
In 2018, when the Democrats gained the majority control over the Chamber of Deputies in the election subject of the first term of office, Mr. Grijalva was taken over by the Presidency of the Committee on Natural Resources, which oversees the problems he cares about.
In this role he pushed stricter regulations on mining on public land and on coastal oil drilling. And when Trump’s administration proposed to weaken the law on endangered species at the command of land owners and industrial groups, Mr. Grijalva said: “Trump’s administration seems to know no other way to manage the environment than as an obstacle to profits in the industry.”
Mr. Grijalva joined the indigenous American leaders and sought federal protection of historically tribal countries near the Grand Canyon. In August 2023 President Biden intended 1,500 square miles in the region as a new national memorial.
As progressive, Mr. Grijalva was often out of step with his generally conservative state, including immigration. When Arizona’s legislators underwent an immigration intervention known as SB 1070 in 2010, which opened the door to what critics called racial profiling of law, National Groups called on to boycott the state.
This unpopular attitude resulted in the strictest re -elected race of his career, in which he published 50.2 percent of the votes in November 2010.
Otherwise, Mr. Grijalva was easily re -elected from his deep blue neighborhood, which includes parts of Tucson and a long section of the southern border.
His career Survived the accusation Women’s employee that he had created an enemy workplace because of his alcohol use. The woman was paid more than $ 48,000 by the Natural Resources Committee to settle her complaint in 2015. The House Ethics Commission reviewed this case in 2019 and found that the payment was acceptable.
Before his election to Congress, Mr. Grijalva acknowledged that he had a problem with drinking. After he was accused of driving under the influence of alcohol in 1985 and spent 12 days in the alcohol abuse program.
In 2018, Mr. Grijalva told the television interviewer that he had a problem with drinking years ago, but overcame it. “Once you are struggling demons and you beat them, you beat them,” he said.
Raul Manuel Grijalva was born on February 19, 1948 at the Canoa ranch, south of Tucson. His father, Raul, came to the United States under the BRACERO program, an agreement between the US and Mexico, which allowed Mexicans to work as agricultural workers; His mother, Rafael, came from Ajo, Ajo. And she didn’t speak English.
His survivors include his wife, Ramon and their three daughters, Adelita, Raquel and Marisa. He lived in Tucson.
Mr. Grijalva graduated from Sunnyside High School on the south side of Tucson in 1967 and won a bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Arizona, also in Tucson.
He watched his political awakening to shame, which he felt like a teenager over his Chicano inheritance. “Actually, I was forced to feel that I wanted to be Anglo,” he told Tucson in 1975. “I realized what I was doing, and my embarrassment turned to anger.”
His early activism included pushing the Arizona University for Mexican American study program and the leading protests to carve the “folk park” from the city golf course in the Mexican American neighborhood. Some of the protests have become violent.
In 1972, Mr. Grijalva lost the Tucson School Board as a candidate of Raz Unida, which was founded in the southwest to advance in Chicano nationalism. He began to cultivate a milder picture and engaged in reach to the non-hippan.
Two years after his defeat he acquired the headquarters of the School Board in 1974 and remained a member until 1986. He was elected to the PIMA Supervisors Council in 1988 and resigned in 2002 for 15 years and resigned to Congress in 2002.
