Raúl Héctor Castro ( ; June 12, 1916 – April 10, 2015) was a Mexican American politician, diplomat and judge. In 1964, Castro was selected to be U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, a position he held until 1968 when he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Bolivia. In 1974, Castro was elected to serve as the 14th governor of Arizona, and resigned two years into his term to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina. Prior to his entry into public service, Castro was a lawyer and a judge for Pima County, Arizona. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
A native of Cananea, Sonora, Castro lived in Mexico until 1926 when he emigrated with his family to the U.S. state of Arizona, settling near Douglas. He enrolled in Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff, (Northern Arizona University), and upon graduation returned to his native Sonora to work for the U.S. Department of State as a foreign service clerk. Subsequently, he returned to Arizona to pursue a career as a lawyer and was graduated from the University of Arizona College of Law. Castro served as deputy county attorney for Pima County, Arizona until he was elected county attorney in 1954, and in 1958 he became a Pima County Superior Court Judge.
In 1964, Castro was selected by President Lyndon B. Johnson to become U.S. ambassador to El Salvador at the recommendation of Senator Carl Hayden, despite controversy over Castro's surname being associated with First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Fidel Castro. Following a four-year term, he was then appointed to be U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, and resigned in 1969 to return to Arizona to begin a career in politics. Castro ran for and won the Democratic nomination for governor of Arizona in the 1970 election, but narrowly lost to incumbent governor Jack Williams. Castro would decide to run again in the 1974 election and defeated his Republican opponent Russell Williams, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, by a thin margin. Only two years into his term, Castro was approached by President Jimmy Carter to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina, and resigned as governor of Arizona. Castro left his post as ambassador in 1980, ending his career in public service, and returned to Arizona once again to practice law. He died at the age of 98 under hospice care in San Diego, California. Raul Hector Castro's papers are held at the University of Arizona Special Collections Library.
Raúl Castro was born in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico on June 12, 1916. Castro was one of fourteen children born to his father Francisco Dominguez Castro, a deep sea diver in San Jose del Cabo, Baja California and later a miner in Cananea, and mother Rosario Acosta, who had a third grade education but taught her husband to read and write. Castro's father was involved in a mine workers strike in Cananea and was sent to prison, but was later released as a political refugee to the United States in 1926, with the entire family relocating to Pirtleville, Arizona, near Douglas, on the Arizona-Mexican border and becoming U.S. citizens. Castro's father would regularly read to him from Mexican newspapers in order for his son to be informed on current events, which Castro credited as his first exposure to politics. During his early teenage years, Castro's father died, and his mother became a midwife in order to support her children. At the time that Castro attended elementary school, schools were segregated in Douglas, and he attended the Fifteenth Street School, which was only for Mexican students. Despite this, Spanish was not allowed and Castro was forced to learn English in order to avoid punishment from school teachers. In high school, Castro played football as the team's quarterback, and also competed in track and field. At the time of his high school graduation, embarrassed that he did not have a middle name, Castro adopted the middle name Héctor, as it was the name of a basketball player at the school that he admired. Upon his graduation, Castro was discouraged from attending college by his high school principal, saying that it would be a waste of time and money because no one would hire a Mexican graduate on the border.
Despite being dissuaded from attending college, Castro earned a football scholarship and attended Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff, which is now known as Northern Arizona University. At the time he attended, the school had approximately 475 students. One of the conditions of the scholarship included the requirement of washing dishes three times a week, and Castro worked his way up to become an assistant cook. He also took up boxing, and additionally taught a local sixth grade class in Flagstaff. Castro became a naturalized United States citizen at the age of 23, and returned to Douglas in order to pursue a career in teaching. He was turned down for employment due to being a Mexican immigrant, and was discouraged enough to hop onto a freight train and pursue boxing professionally, earning fifty dollars per fight. Later, he decided to once again return to Douglas and work for the U.S. Department of State as a foreign service clerk in Agua Prieta, a border city in his native Sonora. He was convinced by a friend to quit his job with the State Department and instead pursue a career as a lawyer, and decided to attend the University of Arizona College of Law. In order to pay his way through law school, Castro became a Spanish professor at the University of Arizona due to a sudden opening, but this caused complications with his admittance to law school as the dean felt he would not be able to dedicate himself to his studies while also maintaining a job as an educator. Castro had developed a relationship with the university's president, who contacted the dean of the law school and subsequently convinced the dean to admit Castro. Castro earned his Juris Doctor degree and was admitted to the Arizona Bar in 1949. In 1959, he married his long-time girlfriend, Patricia Steiner. Their honeymoon in Mexico City was the same hotel where Fidel Castro was planning the Cuban Revolution, and the couple received "phone calls and knocks on their door from men carrying pistols who had mistakenly been directed to the wrong Castro." Castro and Steiner had two daughters.
Law career, U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia
After earning his law degree from the University of Arizona, Castro practiced law for two years in Tucson and subsequently served as a deputy county attorney for Pima County, Arizona. At the time, Mo Udall was the county attorney, and upon his retirement gathered all of the deputy county attorneys to inform them that he had handpicked his successor, Ed Larkin. Castro walked out of the meeting, angered by the dictatorial way that Udall had selected his successor despite county attorney being an elected position, and in 1954, Castro decided to run for the position himself. Castro won the election by 65 votes, becoming the first Mexican American to hold such a position in the state. He served in that capacity until 1958 when he became a Pima County Superior Court Judge.
Castro earned a growing reputation during his time as a Superior Court Judge, and received a call from Roy Elson, an aide to U.S. Senator Carl Hayden who offered Castro a position as a United States Attorney. Castro was not satisfied with his offer, as he felt he would be going backwards from being a Superior Court Judge, and rejected Elson while also stating that he wanted to be a U.S. Ambassador instead. Elson informed Senator Hayden of Castro's desire to be a U.S. Ambassador, and Hayden approached President Lyndon B. Johnson about the possibility of appointing Castro. At first, Johnson was opposed to appointing Castro due to the association of the surname Castro with that of Cuban President Fidel Castro, as well as Fidel's brother, Raúl Castro. Not wanting to potentially upset voters in the wake of the 1964 presidential election, Johnson requested that Castro change his last name to his mother's maiden name, but Castro refused and said, "I like my name. I'm not changing my name." Johnson relented, and selected Castro to be United States Ambassador to El Salvador in 1964. During his time as Ambassador to El Salvador, he was presented with the country's highest honor, the Order of José Matías Delgado. After four years as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, he was then appointed as United States Ambassador to Bolivia, and became known as the "Ambassador on Horseback," as Castro would ride into the countryside on horseback and greet the Bolivian citizens. While U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Castro's home was bombed twice by terrorists. He served in the position until the following year when Richard Nixon was elected president, and Castro was subsequently removed from office.