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In the past few decades, a lot has changed in the
field of law. Thanks in large part to affirmative
action policies implemented since the mid-1960s,
what used to be a strictly white, male-dominated
profession, has become markedly more diverse. Today,
according to the U.S. Census, close to half of all
law school graduates are women, and minorities make
up almost twenty percent of all recent graduates.
Nevertheless, a closer look at the figures reveals a
more troubling picture—particularly regarding
Hispanics and Latinas. As the 2000 Census reports,
Hispanic women make up a mere 1.2 percent of all
practicing lawyers in the United States (and
Hispanics of both genders make up only 3.3 percent).
What to make of these statistics? Although they seem
discouraging at first, numbers alone can never tell
the whole story. The best way to understand the
challenges and opportunities that meet Latinas in
the law is by looking closely at the lives and
experiences of actual Latina lawyers such as Mari
Carmen Aponte, Margaret Montoya, Linda Madrid,
Maritza Ryan, Nina Perales, Brigida Benitez, and
Christina Sarchio.
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Linda Madrid |
Christina
Sarchio |
Mari Carmen
Aponte |
As a young teacher in a
New Jersey, Puerto Rican community in the ’70s, Mari
Carmen Aponte was struck by the inequality at the
local schools. “I thought that there had to be a
systemic remedy,” she says. So when Nelson Diaz, a
local community organizer and the first Puerto Rican
to practice law in Pennsylvania, suggested she apply
to law school, she jumped at the chance. She applied
and was accepted to Temple University Law School, as
part of a special affirmative action program.
As one of a tiny number of Latinas in law school
during the ’70s, Aponte felt she had to work extra
hard to prove herself. “There were no safeguards—it
was sink or swim,” she says. A small network of
other minority students and some dedicated
professors helped her get through the grueling
classes. “I always somehow seemed to find support.”
During her very first case as a student lawyer,
Aponte says, the judge told her that “people like
her” should be at home instead of in the courts. But
Aponte won the case and was even congratulated by
the judge afterwards. “After that, no matter what
they threw at me, I felt I could handle it.”
After winning a prestigious White House Fellowship,
she began a three-decade career as a lawyer and
legal consultant. Throughout that time, Aponte
worked long hours. “I never married or had children,
because I felt that that was not an option that I
had,” she says. Nevertheless, she is happy when she
reflects on how things have changed for Latinas in
the law: “The women that came behind me feel that
they have options, and that’s the way it should be.”
Margaret Montoya also began her career in the ’70s.
As a college student in California, she was active
in the Chicano and antiwar movements. “I really saw
that understanding how to use the rules really
helped in achieving objectives,” she says. She
became the first Latina to attend law school at
Harvard University.
At Harvard, Montoya faced a variety of challenges
from non-minority students opposed to affirmative
action. “It was just incendiary, with students
telling us that they were intellectually superior,
and that we had taken the place of people who should
have been there,” she remembers.
Today, as a professor at the University of New
Mexico School of Law, Montoya teaches her students
about the legacy of affirmative action. “If they are
beneficiaries of affirmative action, they have the
responsibility to pay it back so that others can
follow in their footsteps,” she says.
Linda Madrid, managing director, general counsel,
and corporate secretary at CarrAmerica Realty
Corporation, is paving the way in the world of
business. As the chief compliance and ethics officer
at her company, she is responsible for ensuring that
the board and senior officers run things both
legally and ethically. “To be a good lawyer, you
have to have the highest of ethics,” she says. “You
have to be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff,
the truth from lies, the relevant from the
irrelevant—both in facts and in laws.”
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Brigida
Benitez |
Margaret
Montoya.
Photo by Vangie Samora. |
From left to
right: Maritza Ryan and Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor. |
Madrid is excited about
the changes that she’s seen since she started her
career in the mid ’80s. “When I came out of law
school, women particularly felt they had to make a
choice” between work and children, she says. “Now
there are dialogues taking place on a monthly basis
with managing partners of law firms who are saying,
‘We need to figure out how to change the practice of
law so it can be a place where women will stay.’”
Since she was a young girl, Col. Maritza Ryan had a
legal career in mind. “I did forensics in high
school, as well as drama—which probably didn’t hurt
in the courtroom!” she says. After graduating from
West Point and serving as a military officer for
several years, she found out about the Judge
Advocate General’s Funded Legal Education Program, a
scholarship open to regular Army officers. Under
that program, the Army sponsored her degree at
Vanderbilt University Law School and subsequently
put her through the Judge Advocate General’s Corps
basic training.
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