story by photos by andrew buckley the conscious
TRANSCRIPT
46 • October / November 2013
Story by Sara PintiliePhotos by Andrew Buckley
The Conscious
“What I want to do is uplift consciousness, heal this planet and boogie.”
of Carlos Santana
48 • October / November 2013
itting in a practice room in his Las Vegas office, Carlos Santana flipped through the last issue of Latino Leaders.
“Oh! I know him!” Santana said cheerfully, as he pointed at a picture of Esai Morales, one of the featured people in the July/August issue. He thumbed through the issue as he tapped his boots, as if an up-beat melody wafted into the room that only Santana could hear.
He sat on a drum stool with his recognizable hat and patchwork boots, that put any other pair of patchwork boots to shame, and talked about mu-sic, women dancing, being Mexican and integrity.
“What do we have in Mexicans that is really, really beautiful to offer the world?” he asked. “So-mos gente noble. We are noble people, man. You come to my house, and if I only have a couple of tortillas and frijoles, I’m going to share it with you. That’s the beauty of Mexican people. They work hard over there and over here.”
“I am proud that I was born in Méjico,” he said. “I am very, very proud to say I have never shown up late or drunk or missed a concert, other than Mother Nature saying, ‘you’re not playing today.’”
Lightning and electric guitars don’t play together, he said with a laugh.
He credits a lot of this to his heritage and the lessons his father instilled in him at an early age. He told a story of when his father once bought a box of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and split it in half, Santana said as he mimed the action as he voiced an accurate portrayal of cardboard ripping. And his father told him and his brother to not come back until the box was gone and their pockets were full of money.
Earn your keep. He continued learning this at a young age, while
playing music for money for tourists in Tijuana. “Song mister? 50 cents a song,” was the
second thing he learned in English. The first thing? “Stick it up,” courtesy of watching Roy Rogers. Santana had a crystal clear vision of what he was
going to do in life. He wanted to be like his father, because people adore him and his musical ability.
“Music was a way of life for us,” he said about the Santanas.
Santana played all over Tijuana, mainly strip clubs during the week and church on Sundays.
“I discovered I was professional, the moment in Tijuana someone paid me and I could buy my own tacos,” he said. “And bring back money to [my mom].”
The money he earned helped pay for his sis-ter’s dental needs, the legal papers to travel to America and other essentials for the family.
“I think the first time I knew I had some-thing is because I gave myself chills,” Santana said about the first time he discovered his talent
50 • October / November 2013
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then I gotta give someone else chills.”He soon left Tijuana and ended up in San
Francisco for his junior high school educa-tion and beyond. He went to Philharmonic West while working at Tic Toc Burgers.
But he figured out that he could play the music that Cream, B.B. King and other blues players were performing at the time, he left his normal routine and hit the streets.
“I made a decision not to be a week-end musician. I wanted to be a fulltime musician. There was no guarantee, ex-cept that I was going to have fun.”
There were a lot of things presented to him during this time, but he listened to his mother’s voice in the back of his head to keep a straight path while paving a way in those turbulent times. He said it was a wonderful time to grow up. Santana spoked fondly of Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr. and how they helped with the Civil Rights Movement.
“I had to be solid with my convictions. I wasn’t born to win popularity contests. I was born to make a difference,” he said about being in the States in the ‘ 60s. “That turns me on more than anything else. To know that I can wake up, even today, right now, and I can show up any-where, Telemundo, Univision, anywhere you want, and I can make a difference.”
Santana credits this to the ‘ 60s, say-ing those 10 years made for the most important decade of the last century, citing protests, Ronald Reagan, Vietnam and the importance of the real Hippies as why.
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“And I was in the middle of it. Ground Zero for conscious revolution in San Francisco.”
And the music just got stronger, he said, listing bands including The Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones. The young people today, they have to go through the classic rock bands to find their stuff. It is because a lot of the music of today is very lightweight. It is very hollow, shallow, predictable, disposable and unnecessary, he said.
“You are not going to remember a lot of this music 10 -- you are not want to remember this music 10-15 years from now, no? But you remember The Doors. And you remember Jimi Hendrix. You remember The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. You remember Santana,” he said. “The reason I say that with a lot of conviction is because we were trained like soldiers not to bulls**t music. Don’t mess with sound resonat-ing and vibration. It has to come from the heart.”
Santana integrated into the music scene easily, because his band was doing something different than the majority.
Everyone was playing blues, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Queen, he said. Everyone was playing blues, just louder. Bigger Marshals, bigger amplifiers, but it was still the blues. They were playing musica tropical. Women loved and danced differently to musica tropical.
He showed the dancing, explaining the differ-ences between Stones fans and his fans. The music validated the divine sensuality that was encoded in them, he said about the women dancing.
“Look at Santana’s band, man,” he said he heard people saying. “Look what they are do-
THE SANTANA BAND
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ing to the women. They are dancing differently.” And then other bands started adapting elements of
musica tropical into their sets.Santana and his band went on to perform at the legend-
ary 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair, win 10 Grammys, be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and sold more than 100 million records to date, according to the band’s website.
“Make yourself indispensable and necessary,” he said. “Don’t make yourself unnecessary and a victim… Walk like you got the stuff and people need it.”
Santana tells people to envision what they want to do in five years and how much money they want to make and how are they going to do it.
“I’m learning not to tell people what to do, who to be or how to do it. That’s an imposition,” he said. “I’m learning more to invite people to say, as soon as you open your eyes in the morning say ‘I am a beam of light that comes from the mind of God. Therefore, I can cre-ate miracles like Jesus and Virgen de Guadalupe, and I am unstoppable.’”
With all of Santana’s brands, shoes, hats and partnership with Casa Noble, the money goes to the Milagros foundation and other causes to help people be just that – unstoppable.
“When someone looks at me and says, ‘Mister Santana,
CARLOS SANTANA
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2010 1972 1974 1980 1987
1973 1979 1983 2012
I want to thank you from the center of my heart, because I am the first one in my family to go to college because, you made it possible. Thank you.’ And I’m like, ‘alright man.’ That’s my platinum album. That’s my Grammy. That’s my Oscar. That’s my Heisman trophy.”
He also stressed the importance of people just be-ing people.
“It’s never too late for you to live your light,” he said. “Put aside your darkness and illusions and your sense of doubt. Get rid of doubt. Get rid of hesitation. This Mexican has never sang Mañana.”
He explained that a man told him that he should sing this “racist” song, and Santana blew him off, refusing to be stereotyped in anyway. He talked about the Frito Bandito, a cartoon mascot for Frito-Lay in 1960s-’70s as an example.
“We need Spanish language people to dictate without being vulgar, brutal or violent how you want to be repre-sented,” he said. “We are not represented on American TV other than Telemundo and Univision. Other than George Lopez. And in the movies, it is the same thing.”
Santana spoke of when he scolded a few Hollywood actors about playing the same roles over and over -- a pimp, a wife beater or a drug dealer.
“Do you really need the money that bad?” he asked them, showing them hunching over in shame.
“If we want to change it, why don’t we just treat people like children of God and get rid of the flags and the stereotyping...,” he said. “I don’t even speak Latin. The Pope speaks Latin... I speak Chicano, man. So why are you calling me Latin? Every few years, they call you some kind of name, Spanish, Latino, this and that. Man, I am a child of God. And that’s all I want to be know as. A child of God. My name is Carlos Santana. And that’s it.”
SUNDAY DECEMBER 11 2016 11BOpinionSTAR-TELEGRAM.COM
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Star-Telegram Editorial Board members are:Gary Wortel, president and publisherMike Norman, editorial directorFaye Reeder, Arlington/Northeast marketing directorCynthia M. Allen, editorial writer/columnistJuan Ramos, editorial director/La EstrellaSara Pintilie, editorial writer
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OUR MISSION: EARNING THE PEOPLE’S TRUST DAILY
When Arlington CityCouncil veteran RobertRivera confirmed that hewould not be seeking aseventh term in office, heincluded this in his an-nouncement:
“Although public safety,roads, and adding jobs ismy focus, ultimately at-tempting to help anyonewho asked became mymost important responsi-bility.”
The 12 years he hasspent delivering on thatapproach to his role as acouncilman probably ex-plains why his Facebookpost of his decision toconclude his time in officehas gone viral.
In the more than 300comments publicly ex-pressing appreciation andsaying how much he willbe missed, the commen-ters conclude he put theresidents ahead of any-thing else, that he hasbeen a blessing to Arling-ton, that he has alwaysbeen available, and thathis dozen years of servicehave been amazing.
Others called him achampion for the people,that he is hard-working,that he is greatly respect-ed and a remarkable man,a faithful servant, and thatthey consider themselveslucky to have had himrepresenting the city.
There are lots and lotsmore of such expressions,but I think you get thepicture — Robert hasearned the kind of acco-lades for exemplary per-formance that mostanyone who serves inelective office would cher-ish.
One of the commentssummed up very simplyhow that result wasachieved, “You haveshown by your words anddeeds that you care aboutArlington and its resi-dents.”
It became my own expe-rience while serving asmayor to first encounterRivera as an 18-year-oldwho had decided heshould be a city council-man in order to ensurethat the Texas Rangersremain forever in Arling-ton.
His idea was for the cityto purchase the team asthe best way to achievethat objective.
Beyond his naiveté atthe idea that seemed per-fectly reasonable to him,there was the sincere andserious demeanor thatrevealed a love for his cityand its future that shouldbe encouraged.
Though he would notyet win that council seathe sought, his interest inpublic service netted himan appointment first to thecity’s Library AdvisoryBoard and later to theArlington Convention &Visitors Bureau boardwhere he would emerge asits chairman.
In that role he co-found-ed Touchdown Arlington,the organization thatwould lead the effort tobring the Dallas Cowboysto Arlington.
He was entirely readyfor that leadership posi-tion as a result of his expe-rience in working tire-lessly for voter approval tobuild The Ballpark inArlington, now calledGlobe Life Park.
As it turned out, thateffort did keep the TexasRangers in town. So hisoriginal motivation as theyoungest person to everseek to be a council mem-ber had come full circle,and he played an activepart in its success.
And he did so as a car-ing, positive and enthusi-astic resident who had notbeen elected to any office.But that was still to come.Maturity and a growingsense of civic pride wouldpropel him further.
In 2005 and after gain-ing knowledge of the ener-gy, needs and spirit of thecommunity through nu-merous charitable andservice organizations heserved and led, he won hisfirst City Council election,then repeated the feat fiveconsecutive times.
Now we will see whatcomes next for RobertRivera.
Many believe, as I do,that his days of publicservice are not only notover, but will becomemanifest in other opportu-nities.
In the meantime, wecan join with the socialmedia sentiment that wasexpressed by another ofhis admirers, who correct-ly concluded that Arling-ton is a better place thanksto him.
Richard Greene is a formerArlington mayor andserved as an appointee ofPresident George W. Bushas regional administratorfor the EnvironmentalProtection Agency.
Robert Rivera hasbeen a quintessentialrole model for service
BY RICHARD GREENE
As we walked down tothe University of Texas atArlington theater fromJulienne Greer’s office, theassistant professor of theat-re arts: social robotics andperformance, had to cradleher robot, NAO, like asleeping toddler.
The robot’s armsslumped against her body,making it difficult for herto pull her keys out of herpocket. She dropped them,joking about its toddlerqualities.
Once inside, we situatedNAO onstage for photos, ascurious students askedquestions, fascinated aboutwhy a robot belongs in thetheater.
This 2-foot-tall robotknows Shakespeare.
NAO doesn’t just recite.It performs Sonnet 18 (ShallI compare thee to asummer’s day?) with anactor’s flourish. You can’thelp but get sucked intothe performance.
NAO (pronounced“now”) is a fascinatingmachine. It can tell stories,dance, answer questionsand now, thanks to Greer
and the UT Arlington Re-search Institute, performsonnets.
“I’m humanizing socialrobots so people want tointeract with them more,”she said.
Greer doesn’t just wantto pull a robot out of boxand set it in front of a per-son.
Using her extensivebackground in physicaltheater, video game workand humanities, Greercreates a more affectingway for robots to emote.She doesn’t want robots’interactions with humansto be — well — robotic.
“I want to take the expe-rience of theater and say,‘How can we take all ofthat and do that with arobot now and 20, 30, 40years from now?’ ” shesaid.
This year, her group ofresearchers won a UTAInterdisciplinary ResearchProgram grant proposalcalled “Shakespeare andRobots: Examining theimpact of a theater in-tervention on psychologicalwell-being in older adults.”
She will work withSchool of Social Work’sLing Xu and Noelle Fieldsand three Research In-stitute members: KrisDoelling, Mike McNair andJeongsik Shin.
The grant is part ofUTA’s strategic plan toboost more interdisciplin-ary research on campus.
Interdisciplinary re-search can promote a newway to tackle a problem ora fresh approach to age-oldquestions. It can produceexciting and refreshingelements, like a Shake-speare-reciting robot.
Greer’s study, when itbegins in April, will haveolder adults listen as NAOrecites the first 12 lines ofShakespeare’s Sonnet 18,and the people will recitethe last two lines.
“The pilot data will sup-port our long-term goal todevelop a robotic platformthat can promote socialconnectivity and decreaseloneliness among olderadults,” the study says.
There have been pre-vious studies on participa-tory arts and older adults,but not many with theater.Participatory arts havebeen shown to greatlyimprove most people’swell-being, but they havealso been shown to beparticularly good for seniorcitizens.
Arts can create a dia-logue on how you feelabout something, Greersaid.
That dialogue can lessenisolation and bring moresocial interaction, especial-ly with older adults. Robotscan also help create thatdialogue.
This study will be abuilding block to eventu-ally creating an effectivecompanionship robot, a
“smartphone with person-ality.”
Greer has been workingwith robots for years, figur-ing out the best ways arobot can approach andinteract with a human andget positive results. Shetackles the problem like anactor would a script.
As actors we behave theway we want the audienceto respond, she said.
In one study, she foundthat people like robots tobe courteous and not ap-proach a person directly.
People still fear robots,she said.
Greer believes this fear isHollywood’s doing, sayingwe have only seen sexual-ized female androids orhomicidal robots onscreen.
Terminators and West-world’s hosts are not theaccurate portrayal of robotsin the real world. Most arelike NAO, a toddlerlikemachine that has certainfunctions that have to beprogrammed in.
Greer jokes that in theextremely unlikely event ofmalicious robot, all youwould have to do is go uptwo stairs.
NAO even has troublewith carpet and wantssomeone to hold its handwhile walking.
Robots are nowhere nearbeing dropped into house-holds, she said.
That fear, and those bigsociological questions, aresomething Greer wants todelve into and solve.
“As robots become morehumanized and humansbecome more mechanized,we start asking: What ishuman?”
Sara Pintilie is aStar-Telegram editorialwriter.
SARA PINTILIE [email protected]
NAO, a sonnet-reciting robot, is part of a UTA interdisciplinary study on participatory arts and older adults.
Shall AI comparethee? UTA robotrecites Shakespearefor science study
BY SARA PINTILIE
VIDEO
See NAO in action at
star-telegram.com/opinion.
Would you like tochange Fort Worth for thebetter, with an effect thatwill last for decades?
Do you wonder how tomost efficiently use yourprecious time as a volun-teer?
I have a suggestion foryou: teach a child to read.It’s fun, it’s deeply re-warding, and you can do it— with a little support.
Fort Worth will changedramatically for the betterif its residents fulfill thepromise that every child inour schools will be reading
at grade level by the endof third grade.
Mayor Betsy Price, FortWorth school district Su-perintendent KentScribner and Fort WorthLiteracy Partnership lead-er Matt Rose announcedthe “100X25” initiativeearlier this fall, with thetarget of 100 percent ofour third graders readingat grade level by 2025.
No other goal is moreimportant, and none ofour other educationalgoals can be attainedwithout successfullyachieving this one.
Reading at grade levelby third grade is essential,since it is at this age chil-
dren convert from learningto read to reading to learn.
Reading at grade levelby the end of third gradeis the best predictor ofsuccessful graduationfrom high school.
Children who are notreading proficiently at thisstage are four times morelikely to drop out of schoolcompared to those whoare reading well.
Guaranteeing that allchildren in our schoolscan read at grade level bythird grade is, withoutdoubt, an achievable goal— but it will become areality only with the assist-ance of the entire commu-nity.
The teachers in ourschools are working veryhard, but they do not havethe manpower to reachthis goal on their own.
Individual one-on-onetutoring is the most suc-cessful method to helpstudents learn to read,thus providing a greatopportunity for communi-ty volunteers.
You don’t need to be areading expert. If you cancommit to one hour perweek, you can teach achild to read.
Reading Partners willshow you how and willsupport you along the way.
Reading Partners is anot-for-profit organizationdesigned to support volun-teer reading tutors. Itscurriculum is well-de-signed, easy to follow andhas been rigorously tested
to prove its effectiveness. The training and sup-
port provided by the Read-ing Partners staff are won-derful. I am in my secondyear as a Reading Partnerstutor, and my studentshave made great progress.
This program works,and it is fun for both thestudent and the tutor.
Fellow Fort Worth resi-dents, there are childrenin need of your help rightnow.
This isn’t complicated.None of us want childrento fail in school, and we
definitely do not want topay for the consequencesof poorly educated adults.
Volunteer one hour perweek and change thetrajectory of a child’s life.
If you cannot volunteer,you can support this wor-thy organization with adonation.
Search “ReadingPartners North Texas,”click the “volunteer” but-ton, and join the team!
Robert Rogers is a localphysician and earlyeducation advocate.
Volunteers can help teach all FortWorth kids to read by third grade
BY ROBERT ROGERS
Special to the Star-Telegram
‘‘NONE OF OUR OTHER EDUCATIONALGOALS CAN BE ATTAINED WITHOUTSUCCESSFULLY ACHIEVING THIS ONE.
14A FRIDAY MAY 13 2016
OpinionSTAR-TELEGRAM.COM
S 1
WEATHER
GARY VARVEL, THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR DAVE GRANLUND, POLITICALCARTOONS.COM
EDITORIALS
Imagine you fractured abone in your foot.
You go to a hospital andthey tell you to come backwhen they have a bedopen. You ask how longand they shrug, sayingthere are 300 people onthe waiting list.
So you leave and try tofigure out the next step.You ask yourself: How doI get this fixed? How do Ideal with the pain? Willmy foot get worse? Couldthe lack of care causeother issues?
Fast forward twomonths: You finally get abed and treatment for theworsening foot but nowyou have a weird pain inyour leg. The hospital,strapped for beds, timeand staff, can only fix theimmediate problem. Youleave and the foot getsbetter, but the leg paingets worse. You go to thehospital but the waiting
list is now close to 400people.
Sounds awful, right? For Texans who suffer
from mental illness, thisscenario rings too true.
As of April 1, Texas statehospitals had a waiting listof about 400 people, offi-cials told The Texas Tri-bune.
The Star-Telegramreported 392 inmates wereon that list as of last week.
Waiting times vary fromweeks to months, andpeople are asked to waitwithout any care. Whenthey do get care, it usuallyis for the immediate crisis.
For example, a womanattempts suicide, getsadmitted to a hospital fora few days and is dis-charged for what is calledan isolated incident. Butthe hospital doesn’t ad-dress the woman’s historyof addiction, other suicideattempts and mental ill-ness.
We can’t necessarilyblame the hospital. How
can doctors focus theirtime on the complexity ofunderstanding this wom-an’s mental illness when400 people need theirtime?
“The ultimate issue isthis lack of resources,whether it is state hospitalbeds, whether it’s pri-vately licensed psychiatricbeds, or capacity at localmental health authorities,that creates a funnel ef-fect, or bottleneck effect,at the hospital ER,” JohnHawkins, a Texas HospitalAssociation senior vicepresident, told the TexasHouse Mental HealthSelect Committee on April27. “ERs don’t necessarilyhave the right expertiseand/or medications toprovide service to thoseindividuals.”
The problem with onlystabilizing the immediateproblem is that the trueissue never gets solved.
It’s like putting a ban-dage on the problem butnot understanding why itkeeps falling off.
These patients needcare. Actual care. Not aquick fix to salve thesymptoms, but a workingsolution to treat theirdisorders.
Mental illnesses don’twait because a person hasto. And they shouldn’thave to.
Mental health
care shouldn’t
have to wait
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Texas Attorney GeneralKen Paxton talked thisweek about the felonysecurities fraud charges hefaces in state court and acivil fraud case againsthim in federal court, buthe’s still not explainingwhat happened.
When the state chargesagainst him were unveiledin August, Paxton’s at-torney said he was “look-ing forward to the oppor-
tunity to tell his side of thestory in the courtroom.”
And last month, whenthe Securities and Ex-change Commission fileda civil securities fraudcomplaint, another Paxtonattorney (the first onequit) said his client “looksforward not only to all ofthe facts coming out butalso to establishing hisinnocence in both the civiland criminal matters.”
On Thursday, he wentto court in Dallas, seekingto get the state charges
thrown out. Afterward, hetold reporters “these arefalse charges and we willprevail.”
And in a four-minutevideo paid for by his politi-cal campaign, the attorneygeneral said these are“crimes I didn’t commit.”
Paxton is accused ofseeking investments in aMcKinney technologycompany while “intention-ally failing to disclose” toinvestors that the compa-ny was compensating him.
Proclamations of in-nocence are one thing.Explanations are some-thing else. Texans deservean explanation from theirattorney general.
Paxton still denies
charges, won’t explain
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The University of Texasat Arlington, already thesecond-largest school inthe University of TexasSystem, is getting ready togrow again.
UT System regentsapproved plans Thursdayfor a $125 million additionto the Arlington campus,the 220,000-square-foot
Science and EngineeringInnovation and Researchbuilding.
The Texas limestone,steel-and-glass structure isset for construction begin-ning this fall, with sub-stantial completion ex-pected in summer 2018.
“The project will add900 teaching seats inlecture halls and class-rooms, which will supportenrollment growth across
campus, especially theplanned growth in theCollege of Engineering,the College of Nursingand Health Innovationand the College of Sci-ence,” a news release said .
UT Arlington enrolled37,000 students last fall,more than 51,000 whenonline programs are in-cluded. It’s a major driverof the economy of Arling-ton and Tarrant County asa whole. Science, engi-neering and nursing aresome of its key attractionsfor students.
Congratulations to UTA.
Put another feather in
UT Arlington’s cap
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
30 • June 2013 lat inoleaders.com
GET CURIOUSHector Ruiz sheds light on his upbringing and the David and Goliath story that changed the microprocessor industry.
Story by Sara PintiliePhotos by Jordan Gomez
32 • June 2013
HECTOR RUIZ lead a revolution as the CEO of AMD. A revolution that freed his industry to compete fairly. Not bad for a man who started as a shoe shiner in Mexico.
Ruiz met with Latino Leaders one sunny day in Austin, his home town, to chat about his life, his curiosity, his love for play-ing the guitar and
how that all is explained in his new book, Slingshot: AMD’s Fight to Free an Industry from the Ruthless Grip of Intel.
“Frankly, I wanted to be an auto mechanic. It was my dream. I love cars. I still do,” he said. Ruiz worked part time in a garage and wanted to pursue it as a career. During this time, he helped out a teacher and nearby Method-ist missionary, Olive, with chores.
Olive brought up the issue of learn-ing English to Ruiz as avenue to become a good mechanic. She taught him the basics so he could be able to read the car manuals, which were mostly in English. Then she suggested to go to high school in Eagle Pass to learn even more English. Ruiz did, he crossed the border everyday until he graduated. Officials got to know him by name.
After completing high school, he still wanted to be an auto mechanic.
“If you really want to be a good mechanic, you ought to spend at least one year at a university,” Olive told him.
Olive paid for one year of his university, and Ruiz went to University of Texas.
“I look back and realized that mission-ary lady was really smart, she knew what she was doing,” Ruiz said. “Because once I got here, I fell in love with the school. I fell in love with engineering. I was doing well in school and I went on to get a Ph.D and that was it. I look back and I realized that she had figured it all out.”
Ruiz humbly guessed that Olive’s motive to push him was because she saw that he needed to be challenged more and he was a decent human being; and if he was educated, he would do things to help others.
He followed up a bachelor’s in Electri-cal Engineering with a master’s and then he went to Rice to complete his Ph.D.
“Here’s this kid who used to shine shoes in Mexico, and all of a sudden, here’s this president giving me a thousand shares. I
thought ‘Oh my God’ it cannot get any better than this.’”
34 • June 2013
“The more I got into the univer-sity and the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew,” he said was the most significant thing he learned about his schooling. “I was very curi-ous. I was curious to learn more...This sort of insatiable appetite for curiosity I had that was driving me.”
“I was just in awe how much there was to learn. And I wanted to learn as much as I could, he said about his motivation with an endearing-yet-shy smile. He talked about how he had to understand how things worked, challenging teach-ers for the “why” in their lessons.
“My dream was to teach,” he said about what he wanted to do with his doctorate. “I still think I would be a great teacher.” The crinkles around his brown eyes showed that this man knew how to laugh. Teaching jobs were scarce in the ‘70s, so Ruiz turned to other career choices until a teaching availability opened up.
After schooling, he went to Texas Instruments (T.I.) and learned about one of the policies firsthand. The company would put someone on a problem that was the least experienced to get a new perspective. T.I. pulled Ruiz to figure out the imperfections of a silicon wafer. He figured out the prob-lem with an unorthodox solution and the president personally thanked him with a thousand shares of T.I. stock.
“Here’s this kid who used to shine shoes in Mexico, and all of a sudden, here’s this president giving me a thou-sand shares. I thought ‘Oh my God’ it cannot get any better than this.’”
He became a troubleshooter for the company until he moved to Motorola in 1978. They wanted him to build a factory in Scotland. The microprocessor factory did well and when he got back, he got to oversee the best factory in Motorola. He reached President of the Semiconductor Sector with Motorola.
“I couldn’t believe my lucky stars,” he said.
He then moved on to Advanced Micro Devices, a small company that was in-novating the microchip world. He started as the COO of the company with the understanding he would inherit the CEO
position when it was available. He did and revitalized the company entirely.
“One of the things we did, to me, that was much more different from any other company was to drive all of your actions based on what the customer’s needs are, not what the competition is doing,” he said. “My belief was back then, and still is, if you are in a business, doesn’t matter what business it is, and you know your customer better than anybody, and you can anticipate what your customer wants, needs, and you really have a deep understanding of that...then who cares what the competition does because you are going to be better.”
Because of Intel’s unfair competi-tion in the microprocessor industry, which is explained thoroughly in Ruiz’s book, AMD sued Intel and
won a $1.25 billion settlement. “We had the largest antitrust suit in
the history of the United States, and we prevailed in that suit,” he said. “We were able to convince all the authori-ties around the world, not just in the United States, that we were right.”
Ruiz left AMD in 2009, and now he is now an excited founder of Advanced Nanotechnology Solutions, Inc, a startup that will focus on developing things like 3D microchips, wearable technology and cognitive computing.
“A lot of people talk about how much progress we made in technology, I think, how little we made,” he said with a youth-ful smile, eyes still filled with curiosity. “For what I think we should be, we are a long way from there. And it’s exciting just to try to see if you can be part of it.”
Why a book?
Slingshot: AMD’s Fight to Free an Industry from the Ruthless Grip of Intel is available on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.
“There are two things I thought would be valuable:
• The story behind AMD was not well known. What you read in the headlines is just never right. I thought the story of the company, the people that work there, de-serve that people know the real story behind what AMD went through.
• I know what I went through as a Latino growing up in this country. And I’m still shocked, even today, that there are a lot of latino kids that wonder if they have what it takes, whether they can make it. I scattered little vignettes of my life in the book to say to kids. ‘Of course you have what it takes. It’s not that. Find a way to feel excited about where you are. Don’t worry about who you have been. Think about something that will really excite you in the future. And get curious. Get curious. And get excited.’ If I could inspire a few people to say ‘shoot, if Hector can do it, than I should be able do it.’ That was the other reason.”
-- Hector Ruiz
“One of the things we did, to me, that was much more different from any other company was to drive all of your actions based on
what the customer’s needs are, not what the competition is doing.”
16A FRIDAY MAY 27 2016
OpinionSTAR-TELEGRAM.COM
S 1
Attorney General KenPaxton has filed a federallawsuit over which rest-rooms are open to trans-gender students in publicschools.
Bring it on.His enticing a small-
town school board toadopt a policy to serve asthe basis of the suit wasimproper.
And we might all wishwe could settle differencesover respect for trans-gender individuals withoutlegal confrontation.
But emotions are run-ning high and differencesare sharp. The court sys-tem is built to handle suchdisputes, just as it eventu-ally settled the similarlyemotional issue of same-sex marriage.
Ten other states joinedTexas in filing the suit inWichita Falls. It’s focusedon a policy adopted Mon-day in Harrold, about 30miles away, at the urgingof Paxton’s staff.
Harrold SuperintendentDavid Thweatt said Pax-
ton’s office called him lastweek.
“They just said, ‘Wouldyou be willing to pass thispolicy?’ ” he toldStar-Telegram reporterMonica S. Nagy.
A school district in Ari-zona is also named in thesuit. That’s importantbecause Arizona and Tex-as fall under differentappeals court jurisdictions ,increasing the odds thatthe U.S. Supreme Courtcould ultimately decidethe case.
At issue is whethertransgender students havea right to use a publicrestroom that correspondsto their gender identity.
In Harrold, whereThweatt says none of the100 or so students identi-fy as transgender, the newpolicy says school rest-rooms must be “used onlyby individuals based ontheir biological sex.”
The Education andJustice department issueda directive May 13 sayingschools must allow trans-gender students to choosetheir restroom.
Paxton’s transgender
potty lawsuit could end
up with best solution
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
“Board of Regents apol-ogizes to Baylor Nation.”
Finally. On Thursday, the Bay-
lor University board ofregents released a newsstatement apologizing andsetting forth new policyimplementations in thewake of the school’slong-running sexual abusescandal.
Baylor’s handling ofreports of sexual abuse oncampus brought mediaattention to the Wacouniversity after a formerfootball player was con-victed of sexual assault inAugust.
That month, Baylorhired Pepper Hamilton ,an independent law firm,to review “Baylor’s in-stitutional response toTitle IX and related com-pliance issues through the
lens of specific cases.” The process turned into
a slow, frustrating crawlas university PresidentKen Starr released letterafter letter reassuringstudents, but never thor-oughly addressing theproblem.
An action plan wasimplemented in February,but it seemed like a placeholder until Baylor re-ceived the results of thePepper Hamilton review .
The report was releasedto the public on Thursday,nine months in the mak-ing.
The law firm found thatthe “institutional re-sponse” to abuse on cam-pus was a “fundamentalfailure.”
The word failed appears31 times in the 13-pagedocument as the law firmexplained its investigationin detail.
The Pepper Hamilton
report made us angry. Itwould make anyone angryto read how much Baylorfailed at adequately pro-tecting students .
Apparently, regentsread the report and be-came as angry as every-one else.
“We were horrified,”board Chairman RichardWillis said in the newsrelease. “The depth towhich these acts occurredshocked and outraged us.Our students and theirfamilies deserve more.”
Baylor failed, but theboard succeeded in own-ing up to the failure andmaking sure Baylor willoverhaul its system andmend the cracks.
“We have committedour full attention to im-proving our processes,establishing account-ability and ensuring ap-propriate actions are tak-en to support former,current and future stu-dents,” Willis said.
The board removedStarr as president, thoughhe will remain a law pro-fessor and perhaps chan-cellor.
Head football coach ArtBriles was “indefinitelysuspended with intent toterminate.”
These two have been atthe heart of the scandalfrom the beginning.
Athletic Director IanMcCaw has been “sanc-tioned and placed onprobation” and “addition-al members of the admin-istration and athleticsprogram have also beendismissed.”
Anyone who was a partof the problem seems tobe taken out of the solu-tion.
The board accepted allof Pepper Hamilton’srecommendations .
Although the board tooka frustratingly long timein taking “extensive cor-rective action,” the resultsare exactly what we want-ed from the university.
We wanted an apology. They gave one. We wanted wrongdoers
out of the picture. They removed the ap-
propriate people.We wanted a plan so
this never happens again. They implemented 10
pages of recommenda-tions and created an exec-utive-level task force tosupervise implementation .
They will work with theNCAA on possible sanc-tions and will build asafety network for stu-dents.
Baylor is taking theright steps to rebuild trust.
Now comes the follow-through.
Baylor report:
Slow. Thorough.
Apologetic.
Brutal.
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITORIALS
WEATHER
JOHN COLE, THE SCRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE RJ MATSON, ROLL CALL