LEAD Summit XIII “El Plan de San Bernardino"
Dedicated to the Memory of "El Profe" Armando Vazquez-Ramos (†)
Rest in Power
Please consider donating to Go Fund: Honor Profe Aarmando Vazquez-Ramos Legacy, organized by Luz Vasquez-Ramos
Lea la versión en español - En memoria
En memoria de (in memory of) Professor Armando Vazquez-Ramos (†)
Armando Vazquez-Ramos (born August 10th, 1949), known and respected widely for many generations of students, collaborators, and mentees, as "El Profe", passed away at his home in Long Beach, California on August 4th, 2024. He was 74 years old.
El Profe knew a thing or two about activism! He tirelessly promoted educational opportunities for the Chicano/Mexican and Latino population for more than 5 decades. He walked it like he talked it...and as many have repeated numerously over his years of activism, just speak to Professor Vazquez-Ramos long enough and you became immersed in his passion and fervor.
Armando Vazquez-Ramos was brought to the United States from Mexico City by his parents when he was 12 years old. Activism had been in the family DNA as he comes from a union activist family with leadership roles since the 1970’s. The whole family became active in union organizing in large part to the influence of Bert Corona, a Labor Activist known for fighting for the right of Undocumented Workers.
He became a student at CSU Long Beach in January 1968 and earned a bachelor’s degree in Mexican-American studies and a master’s in psychology. Vazquez-Ramos was from Mexico but grew up in East Los Angeles. He graduated from Lincoln High School months before the first protest of the school walkouts in March 1968, when Chicano students and teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District protested unequal conditions in schools. As a Cal State Long Beach freshman, Vazquez-Ramos returned to his alma mater to join one of his role models – social studies teacher Sal Castro, a prominent leader of the East LA School Walkouts.
As a student leader, he would join others in co-founding the Chicano and Latino Studies department in 1969. That activism also spread off campus as a group of CSULB students and community members went on to found Centro de la Raza in late 1969. He taught on Chicano/Latino education, history, immigration, politics, public policy, and U.S.-Mexico relations, where he was also Coordinator of the California-Mexico Project.
He had been active with the California Faculty Association (CFA), California Teachers Association (CTA) and National Education Association (NEA) for over 25 years. In 2004, he co-founded the CFA’s Statewide Latino Caucus for the California State University System and served as Founding Co-Chair with Professor Gonzalo Santos and Coordinator of the Founding Conference.
In 2010, he established the non-profit California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc. to research, develop, promote, and establish policies and programs between higher educational institutions and cultural organizations to enhance the teaching, mobility and exchange of faculty, students, and professionals between California and the U.S., with Mexico and other nations in the Western Hemisphere (www.california-mexicocenter.org).
As an innovator and immigrant rights advocate for decades, in 2014 professor Vazquez-Ramos also established the California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program, a precedent-setting model which has allowed over 160 Dreamers the opportunity to study abroad in Mexico through 6 travel-study classes, and returned them legally to the U.S. through DACA’s Advance Parole provision.
But most significantly this pilot project had pioneered a method that enabled Dreamers to adjust their legal status through marriage, and receive permanent resident visas upon return, as a model for other colleges and universities to replicate this opportunity for their students, and could enable thousands of Dreamers to return to their birthplace to meet their families, discover their homeland and study as adults.
On October 18, 2014, Prof. Vazquez-Ramos co-convened the now historic Campaign to Promote Ethnic Studies (CPES) Summit at CSULB, with El Rancho USD Board President Dr. Aurora Villon and CSU San Bernardino’s Dr. Enrique Murillo (LEAD Projects) that went on to spark and/or bolster several parallel movements to make Ethnic Studies a graduation requirement in California high schools. Through the CPES, he established the Long Beach Ethnic Studies Program with a 5-year funding commitment by the Long Beach Unified School District Superintendent, for up to 12 ethnic studies classes with CSULB credit per semester at all 6 LBUSD comprehensive high schools. As the program’s administrative coordinator, he had grown the program to provide 15 Saturday College classes at LBUSD, the El Rancho USD and the Norwalk-La Mirada USD.
Professor Armando Vazquez-Ramos also worked at the CSU Chancellor's Office - Office of International Programs (1993-1996) to promote California-Mexico exchange and North American Studies programs, and since 1998 had led travel-study groups to Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela for students, faculty and union leaders; and the Public Policy Alternative Spring-break in Sacramento, focused on California-Mexico and higher education policy.
In 1999 he established the California-Mexico Project and through the Latino Political Roast raised scholarship funds for students to study abroad in Mexico and promote educational exchange. Thus, in 2008 Assemblymen Jose Solorio and Kevin De Leon co-sponsored Assembly Concurrent Resolution 146, to recognize the CSULB California-Mexico Project and directed the California Research Bureau to conduct the study “The California Research Bureau Report on California-Mexico Study Abroad Programs”.
He promoted the establishment of Mexican universities in the U.S. and served as consultant to create extensions of Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM), Universidad de Guadalajara and Universidad de Colima in the L.A.-area, and established collaboration agreements between CSULB and the UNAM, Universidad de Guadalajara and Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas.
Through these agreements, he hosted several Mexican professors as Visiting Scholars at CSULB, has organized four California-Mexico Policy and Higher Education seminars at CSULB and 2 in Mexico City (2006 and 2012), he was the Grand Marshall for the 2015 CSULB Chicano/Latino Graduation, served as the 2016 University of La Verne’s Latino Graduation Commencement Speaker and led the celebration of the 2014 Chicano and Latino Studies Department’s 45th Anniversary.
Most recently in February 2024, El Profe helped co-organize the Building Academic Exchange Bridges Across Borders (California-Mexico and Beyond) 2024 meeting along with LEAD CSUSB, in Mexico City, and was coordinated and hosted by the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). A LEAD delegation of a dozen CSUSB faculty, staff, and students attended the meeting in Mexico City and got to spend quality time with El Profe, witnessing first-hand his ongoing advocacy for binational higher education exchange opportunities and the value of international partnerships.
Part two of the bi-national meeting will take place at LEAD Summit XIII, and it was Professor Armando Vazquez-Ramos who insisted on the name and theme “El Plan de San Bernardino" to mark a new era that will address education as the principal issue by which to frame the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship.
The summit will also showcase as its featured exhibit the “Anthology of Dreams from an Impossible Journey,” a compilation by the California-Mexico Studies Center (CMSC) – the summit’s major partner – for its 12th anniversary in 2023. The book features 38 stories shared by Dreamers, selected from 215 participants in the CMSC’s Summer 2021 Dreamers Study Abroad Program.
LEAD Summit XIII is dedicated to the memory of our Profe.
QEPD - Rest in Power!
