Sal Balcorta

An Interview with Sal Balcorta, by Sito Negron
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An Interview with Sal Balcorta
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Balcorta has been at La Fe for the last eight years this go-round, and has helped La Fe build a $3 million Child and Adolescent Wellness Center, which includes a pediatric medical and dental center, a pharmacy, and meeting rooms.Other plans, for housing and a $1.4 million cultural center, are in the works.

Balcorta's office is small, with a mural on an arch above his desk.
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Balcorta is 47.He has two children, Claudia, 26, and Alejandro, 24, and a grandchild, Adriana, 17 months.He's a poet (among his favorite poems are those about his children) and uses his writing in his speeches around the country.The interview was conducted during the first week of January, with some follow-up questions the following week.It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Negron: Let's start with something simple ~ your name, your age, and a little bit about your background.

Balcorta: My name is Salvador Balcorta, I'm 47 years old.
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Balcorta: People tend to forget La Fe is a product of the War on Poverty years, and it's an organization that was really founded on the principles of creating a better community.Most of the people who were involved in the start of La Fe were housing activists.
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Balcorta: No, the first site for the clinic was at 600 Ochoa, which is a block south of where our clinic is located now.
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Balcorta: 1971.
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Balcorta: The Newark Maternity Hospital, which is what used to be part of Freeman's Square, which used to be part of Houchen Community Center.
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Balcorta: You're right, they might want to come in and help us, right?
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Balcorta: I think there's still aftereffects of that scenario, and most probably that's a scenario that occurred almost 28 years ago.It was all a part of the urban renewal type of scenario, what people in the barrio dubbed 'urban removal.'

Negron: One popular conspiracy theory holds that it was actually a way to diffuse the potential power of a united group of activist, that by spreading people out it might be easier to keep them from organizing.

Balcorta: I've heard that too, and I've heard that what was happening is you almost had the catalyst of a movement in this neighborhood, in this barrio, people were leaving Segundo Barrio to go to places like Utah, to go to places like Oregon, to go to places like Washington, to go to places like Iowa, Wisconsin...it was almost like a training ground, if you will.
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Balcorta: Ricardo Sanchez and Abelardo Delgado were examples of people who lived in South El Paso at different times and then they left.There's Bert Corona, a big-time activist in California, but he's much older.
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Balcorta: Like most young men, at times I saw some of the gangs and some of the issues involved with gangs like drugs and stuff as being adventuresome, something different, something unique, not understanding the consequences that come about.
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Balcorta: Right behind the Wellness Center on 6th and Florence, right across the street from Roosevelt Elementary.
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Balcorta: I think one of the things we've learned is to be a little more polite and diplomatic in how we say things, but I think that it's very important that we continue to speak from the heart and that we continue to speak the truth.
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Balcorta: Our budget is almost $10 million now, we've got 200 full-time employees.
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Balcorta: Community Voices is supposed to be a bringing together of the different health care organizations agencies groups in town to make better use of the small amount of funding that we've got.
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Balcorta: For the most part it's the city, which has the larger part of the budget.
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Balcorta: Different times, different leadership roles.

Negron: That's it?

Balcorta: Yes.

Negron: The state's Children's Health Insurance Program was meant to insure about 68,000 El Paso children.It didn't go well.You got involved in the collaborative.Has it been as successful as you hoped?

Balcorta: We're still going through some hurdles, and some learning processes.
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Balcorta: We've got about, the last number that I heard, was 15,000.

Negron: What's your favorite place in El Paso?

Balcortaa: My favorite place?What do you mean?

Negron: Anywhere ~ a restaurant, a gallery, the mountain, a park...

Balcorta: It's probably the office.It's my life, man. Isn't that crazy?

Sito Negron wrote and edited for the El Paso Times for 10 years.He quit in December 1999, and spent most of 2000 hiking, doing Tai Chi, and watching television.While on the couch one day, he noticed he was growing roots and sprouting.So he went to California for an intensive, month-long Tai Chi teacher training retreat, followed by a return to El Paso in August, when he started to work for StantonStreet.