Behind the Dream a Dream
By Dan Onorato & Ron D’Aloisio
What started out with a dream about a project in Mexico with a group of college students led the next summer to over 20 projects involving over 300 students. Sound familiar? Sound like the history of Amigos Anonymous? It’s not. It’s what led to Amigos.
The dreamer was Mario Carota with his wife Estelle—parents of long-time Amigo Joe Carota. Mario is now 90. Estelle, 89, was very ill recently. When Joe told me about his Mom’s declining health, I thought, now is the time to explain their crucial role in the origin of Amigos. For fellow Amigos, this is a brief and little known history of how Amigos came to be. For Mario and Estelle, this is a long overdue tribute written with affection and gratitude.
Christian activists in the Catholic Worker tradition, Mario and Estelle wanted to help the poor and get lay people involved in missionary activity. After a summer’s volunteer experience in Mexico City in 1960, their vision congealed: they decided to engage college students from the US in grassroots projects helping the poor in Mexico. They were not inclined to only think, talk, or pray about problems, so in 1961 they used their U.S. and Mexican contacts in the Christian Family Movement (CFM) to target a barrio in Mexico City called Actípan. They set out from their 15-acre apple farm in Aptos in a bus with their 17 children, a washing machine strapped to the top. In Actípan, with 25 students from Yale who’d agreed to help them, they cleared rubble from what had been a garbage dump to build a school for poor kids. Mexican university students of architecture, whose parents were CFM members, designed the school, and very soon the neighborhood youth picked up shovels and rakes to work side by side with los gringos. In his account of this experience, Mario writes that people “thought I was out of my mind to even think of taking seventeen children to help the poor in Mexico,” but others’ opinions never deterred Mario and Estelle.
At a festive celebration with their Mexican cohorts on the project, Mario acted on his vision of a true international intercambio: he invited the Mexican architecture students to the U.S. to help the poor in this country. At the suggestion of the Fresno bishop they came in the late fall of 1961 to build a church in Fowler, California, where most of the population were poor Mexican farm laborers. Their accomplishment, the beautiful St. Lucy’s church, remains a symbol of people crossing borders to help their brothers and sisters in need.
Before the Carotas returned to Aptos from Actípan, some Mexican friends urged them to visit the poor workers around a hacienda near Apaseo el Grande in the state of Guanajuato. As a result, the next summer Mario and Estelle went to Obrajuelo to organize the people in building a school for their children. As fate would have it, Mario heard of a couple in Apaseo who were active in CFM, so he decided to ask them to help raise money for the Obrajuelo project. The couple were Nacho and Coletta Estrella. Inspired by Mario’s boundless energy and charisma, they not only gathered money and materials for the Obrajuelo school that year, but through Mario became the Mexican partners with Fr. Joe in setting up the first Amigos women’s project in Apaseo in 1963. From then on, through his friendships with many priests who’d been in the seminary with him, Nacho became the key person in Mexico to initiate most of the subsequent Amigos’ projects.
An act of kindness typical of Mario led to the 1962 student project in the state of Michoacán. In 1960 on a very rainy afternoon in Watsonville, Mario had given a ride to a Mexican bracero farm worker and then invited him to dinner at the Carota farm. A friendship was kindled in which Mario visited the farm labor camps in Monterey and saw their often squalid conditions. When Mario expressed his passion to help the poor, his friend suggested Mario do something in his home town of Zinapécuaro. So when the family returned home from Actípan, Mario began organizing students from Stanford to get involved. They called their effort “The International Student Worker Corps.” While the Carotas would be in Obrajuelo, the students would work in Zinapécuaro. Others from the Bay Area also joined in: Joe Spangna from SF State, Ron D’Aloisio and Judy Cavanaro from UC Berkeley, Sal Alvarez from San Jose State, and Jack Walsh, a teacher from Vallejo. Their summer in Zinapécuaro was a life-changing experience. They returned home on fire.
Ron and Judy went to Fr. Joe at Newman Hall in Berkeley and asked if he’d help them organize projects in Mexico for the next summer. Mario and Fr. Joe had been friends for nearly twenty years so Fr. Joe was familiar with what Mario was doing. “Do you think you can pull it off?” he asked Ron and Judy. Their spirited resolve convinced him. A few months later Mario’s International Student Worker Corps became Amigos Anonymous.
Joe Spangna returned to Mexico City to work for Catholic Relief Services. UC Berkeley student Kay Leppert (who later married Dr. Florencio Cabrera) became the leader of the women’s project in Apaseo. A second project was set for Jesús del Monte outside of Morelia in the state of Michocán at the encouragement of Fr. Albert, an American Benedictine priest working near Morelia whom Ron had met. Sal, Jack, Judy and Ron went there. Ron and Judy were the two project leaders, and Ron became the overall student leader of Amigos Anonymous.
Talking about his parents’ legacy, Joe Carota said, “They sowed seeds, and look what happened!” We know what happened. Under the stewardship of another inspiring dreamer, a prophetic Paulist priest who nurtured the seeds of our growth, we too have nurtured others’ growth. Our lives, our sense of responsibility for people in need, our compassion and generosity, and our abiding friendships were shaped by our experiences in Mexico, indelibly. We have Fr. Joe to thank. But in that gratitude and affection we include Mario and Estelle Carota. Thank you, thank you, Mario and Estelle.
This piece is based on information provided by Ron D’Aloisio and Joe Carota. On this website, under the title, “Actipan,” you can find a link to Mario’s own fascinating and inspiring story, written in 1965, called “Actípan: A personal story about an international project with the poor in Mexico.” When you read it, you’ll gain an appreciation for the spirit and vision of these rare activists.
The dreamer was Mario Carota with his wife Estelle—parents of long-time Amigo Joe Carota. Mario is now 90. Estelle, 89, was very ill recently. When Joe told me about his Mom’s declining health, I thought, now is the time to explain their crucial role in the origin of Amigos. For fellow Amigos, this is a brief and little known history of how Amigos came to be. For Mario and Estelle, this is a long overdue tribute written with affection and gratitude.
Christian activists in the Catholic Worker tradition, Mario and Estelle wanted to help the poor and get lay people involved in missionary activity. After a summer’s volunteer experience in Mexico City in 1960, their vision congealed: they decided to engage college students from the US in grassroots projects helping the poor in Mexico. They were not inclined to only think, talk, or pray about problems, so in 1961 they used their U.S. and Mexican contacts in the Christian Family Movement (CFM) to target a barrio in Mexico City called Actípan. They set out from their 15-acre apple farm in Aptos in a bus with their 17 children, a washing machine strapped to the top. In Actípan, with 25 students from Yale who’d agreed to help them, they cleared rubble from what had been a garbage dump to build a school for poor kids. Mexican university students of architecture, whose parents were CFM members, designed the school, and very soon the neighborhood youth picked up shovels and rakes to work side by side with los gringos. In his account of this experience, Mario writes that people “thought I was out of my mind to even think of taking seventeen children to help the poor in Mexico,” but others’ opinions never deterred Mario and Estelle.
At a festive celebration with their Mexican cohorts on the project, Mario acted on his vision of a true international intercambio: he invited the Mexican architecture students to the U.S. to help the poor in this country. At the suggestion of the Fresno bishop they came in the late fall of 1961 to build a church in Fowler, California, where most of the population were poor Mexican farm laborers. Their accomplishment, the beautiful St. Lucy’s church, remains a symbol of people crossing borders to help their brothers and sisters in need.
Before the Carotas returned to Aptos from Actípan, some Mexican friends urged them to visit the poor workers around a hacienda near Apaseo el Grande in the state of Guanajuato. As a result, the next summer Mario and Estelle went to Obrajuelo to organize the people in building a school for their children. As fate would have it, Mario heard of a couple in Apaseo who were active in CFM, so he decided to ask them to help raise money for the Obrajuelo project. The couple were Nacho and Coletta Estrella. Inspired by Mario’s boundless energy and charisma, they not only gathered money and materials for the Obrajuelo school that year, but through Mario became the Mexican partners with Fr. Joe in setting up the first Amigos women’s project in Apaseo in 1963. From then on, through his friendships with many priests who’d been in the seminary with him, Nacho became the key person in Mexico to initiate most of the subsequent Amigos’ projects.
An act of kindness typical of Mario led to the 1962 student project in the state of Michoacán. In 1960 on a very rainy afternoon in Watsonville, Mario had given a ride to a Mexican bracero farm worker and then invited him to dinner at the Carota farm. A friendship was kindled in which Mario visited the farm labor camps in Monterey and saw their often squalid conditions. When Mario expressed his passion to help the poor, his friend suggested Mario do something in his home town of Zinapécuaro. So when the family returned home from Actípan, Mario began organizing students from Stanford to get involved. They called their effort “The International Student Worker Corps.” While the Carotas would be in Obrajuelo, the students would work in Zinapécuaro. Others from the Bay Area also joined in: Joe Spangna from SF State, Ron D’Aloisio and Judy Cavanaro from UC Berkeley, Sal Alvarez from San Jose State, and Jack Walsh, a teacher from Vallejo. Their summer in Zinapécuaro was a life-changing experience. They returned home on fire.
Ron and Judy went to Fr. Joe at Newman Hall in Berkeley and asked if he’d help them organize projects in Mexico for the next summer. Mario and Fr. Joe had been friends for nearly twenty years so Fr. Joe was familiar with what Mario was doing. “Do you think you can pull it off?” he asked Ron and Judy. Their spirited resolve convinced him. A few months later Mario’s International Student Worker Corps became Amigos Anonymous.
Joe Spangna returned to Mexico City to work for Catholic Relief Services. UC Berkeley student Kay Leppert (who later married Dr. Florencio Cabrera) became the leader of the women’s project in Apaseo. A second project was set for Jesús del Monte outside of Morelia in the state of Michocán at the encouragement of Fr. Albert, an American Benedictine priest working near Morelia whom Ron had met. Sal, Jack, Judy and Ron went there. Ron and Judy were the two project leaders, and Ron became the overall student leader of Amigos Anonymous.
Talking about his parents’ legacy, Joe Carota said, “They sowed seeds, and look what happened!” We know what happened. Under the stewardship of another inspiring dreamer, a prophetic Paulist priest who nurtured the seeds of our growth, we too have nurtured others’ growth. Our lives, our sense of responsibility for people in need, our compassion and generosity, and our abiding friendships were shaped by our experiences in Mexico, indelibly. We have Fr. Joe to thank. But in that gratitude and affection we include Mario and Estelle Carota. Thank you, thank you, Mario and Estelle.
This piece is based on information provided by Ron D’Aloisio and Joe Carota. On this website, under the title, “Actipan,” you can find a link to Mario’s own fascinating and inspiring story, written in 1965, called “Actípan: A personal story about an international project with the poor in Mexico.” When you read it, you’ll gain an appreciation for the spirit and vision of these rare activists.