Juan de la Cruz Machuca: Pioneer of LULAC and Advocate for Mexican Americans (1893–1979)

Juan de la Cruz Machuca, founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) in El Paso, educator, and civic leader, son of Maria Garcia and Hilario Machuca, was born in El Indio, Maverick County, Texas, on November 24, 1893. The family moved to Marfa when he was about six, and his father worked as a janitor at the Presidio County Courthouse. He attended the Convent and Academy of Our Lady of Mercy, organized by the Sisters of Mercy, in Stanton, Texas. As the only Mexican American attending school there, he learned English. Back in Marfa, his father fought to permit him into the Marfa High School but was warned of potential violence to his son in the all-Anglo school. Juan, however, won over fellow students and later was elected homecoming king and graduated with honors in 1911. He was the first Mexican American to graduate from a public high school in the Big Bend area.

Machuca taught at an El Indio school for two years and then in 1913 served as principal at El Indio where he worked for ten years. During the Mexican Revolution he was a quartermaster for the Red Cross. He also worked as a deputy sheriff in Presidio County. Machuca married Esther Nieto on June 26, 1915, and they had one son, Louis, on April 8, 1932.

  The family moved to El Paso where he worked as a principal of the San Elizario elementary school. From 1924 to 1930 Machuca worked as an inspector with the U.S. Immigration Service where he witnessed abuses and became aware that some officers were members of the Ku Klux Klan. El Paso city directories list that he worked as deputy county tax assessor in the mid-1930s. By the late 1930s he was a clerk for the El Paso Smelting Works. He also worked as a correctional officer at La Tuna, a medium security prison, from 1942 to 1963.

Machuca founded the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) chapter, Council No. 8, in El Paso on October 12, 1932, and became its first president. The founding meeting was announced in the El Paso Herald-Post. In the 1930s the local council sought to get more Mexican American teachers and a new Bowie High School, “campaigned for repeal of prohibition, worked with the school board to clean up schools in the South El Paso barrios, hosted dances, helped delinquent children, established a Boys Club of America chapter,” and “funded a new playground in South El Paso, advocated child labor laws, sponsored health weeks, ran poll-tax drives, and generally protested discrimination against Mexican Americans.” He and Frank J. Galvan, Jr., of Council No. 8 edited “LULAC Extra” to argue against political bossism and apparently against poll tax fraud. The council fought segregation in schools, theaters such as the Plaza Theatre, and public meeting places. They also battled against re-classification of the Mexican descent in the U.S. census intended to further racialize Latinos. El Paso LULAC favored the Bracero Program due to competition with Mexican Americans and their support of U.S. labor unions who also did not want labor competition. His LULAC council also helped elect Raymond Telles as the first Mexican American mayor in a city in Texas in 1957.

Machuca played an important role in reviving LULAC News, the monthly newsletter founded in 1931, which apparently was not published in 1935 and not again until December 1936 likely due to the Great Depression. The January 1937 issue showed Machuca as “Director of Publicity and Editor.” In this issue he explained the News was a medium for councils to communicate with each other and that it served “as literature so that the general public may know what LULAC stands for.” His last issue as editor was June 1938. Here he thanked men and women’s councils from Laredo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Seguin for sponsoring monthly issues. He supported the feminist activism of Alice Dickerson Montemayor. In 1953 he had the foresight to help prepare for the twenty-fifth anniversary of LULAC and worked on its February 1954 News issue requesting brief biographies and photos of all past presidents. “LULAC Through the Years, History of Former LULAC Presidents” appeared in February 1954 in LULAC News for the first time. He also served as a LULAC district governor in 1955.

Machuca chaired three national LULAC conventions in El Paso. In 1942 Council No. 8 lost its charter because of inactivity due to World War II, but it was rechartered as Council No. 132. In 1946 the council supported the election of member Ernesto Valdes to the school board and also supported immigrants seeking U.S. naturalization. In 1955 he was honored with an oil portrait of himself by an unknown artist at an event recognizing his contribution to LULAC. In 1965 he served as the first national business manager of LULAC. He reported 142 LULAC councils across the nation in 1964. He was a member of LULAC councils 8, 46, and 132. In 1968 he was on the local board of Project SER, a LULAC employment project. Like him, wife Esther was a noted LULAC leader.

Machuca was also a member of La Liga Civica and Knights of Columbus Del Norte Council 2592 and attended St. Patrick Cathedral. During the Depression he joined the El Paso Unemployed Alliance. In 1934 he spoke before the El Paso Citizens’ Democratic Association, worked with a precinct committee to elect Governor James Allred in 1936, and served as a delegate to the Democratic state convention. He was also a Boy Scout master. In 1969 he was as an officer in the Trans Pecos Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association.

Juan de la Cruz Machuca died in El Paso on March 2, 1979, shortly after LULAC’s fiftieth anniversary. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in El Paso. Both a street, Machuca Drive, and an apartment complex were named after him in El Paso in 1972, and the Machuca couple was celebrated in the 1979 fiftieth Texas state LULAC anniversary publication. In 2025 he was honored as a LULAC Legend in El Paso.