When I’m asked, “What generation are you?” usually the person asking me that question doesn’t appreciate the history of a lot of Latinos in the United States. 

Because there are many Latinos like me who can say the same thing: My family has been in the United States for several hundred years. Parts of my early family came from northern Portugal and parts came from Spain. They moved to what is today Mexico but back then, back in the 1500s, it was New Spain. My fifth great-grandfather, Tomás Sánchez, was part of an expedition with the Spanish army and they were traveling from the interior of New Spain to the Rio Grande River. And when they came to this little spot that they called Laredo, he said, ‘I’d like to settle here.’ And so he and five families founded Laredo, Texas, in 1755, named after a little town in Spain. He was essentially their first mayor, and all during the centuries my family has been cattle people, farmers, public officials, mayors, and school board members. I was born in Laredo, like both my parents, but before I became the nation’s first Latino secretary of transportation and secretary of energy, I was a Colorado state legislator and Denver’s 41st mayor.

I didn’t really ski until my mid-20s, when I graduated from the University of Texas School of Law (I was the first in my extended family to earn a law degree) and moved to Colorado in 1973 to work as a civil rights attorney. After our kids grew up and I retired from political life, my wife and I sold our house and moved into a high-rise condominium in Denver. But being in a high-rise in the expanse of the Rocky Mountains, as you can imagine, can be a little confining. So, five or six years ago, we found a place in Edwards. We just thoroughly enjoy coming up here, hiking, riding our bikes, and skiing. It’s just refreshing to be up here. 

Because we’re not here frequently enough, I cannot say that we really know the community very well or that we have many friends here, but what has struck me about Edwards and this valley in general is that all the workers—and we have had a lot of work done on our home—are from the Latino community. They have their own roofing companies. They have their own construction companies. They have their own gardening companies. They’re electricians and plumbers. Latinos are very entrepreneurial. In fact, if you look at the data, the largest number of small businesses in the United States are being formed by Latinos. The gross domestic product of the Latino community in the United States would make it the eighth-largest GDP in the world. 

People don’t know that story. But again, it goes back to my history, right? Most of the Latinos here are doing all the everyday work—working in construction, cleaning hotel rooms, working in restaurants and stores. If all those people were to leave, the local economy would be devastated, and the ski industry would collapse. And let’s not forget that they’re buying cars and washing machines, and they’re shopping at the grocery store. They’re paying sales taxes, they’re trying to buy homes, and they’re very much part of the fabric of the economy here, both as workers and as consumers, but they’re mostly invisible. 

I think it would be wonderful if people in this valley could find a way to recognize the contributions of these Latinos and their families. A lot of them are recent immigrants and they’re here to work. If people simply paid attention and every once in a while, whether in a store, a hotel, or a restaurant, if they would just say thank you—to recognize their worth and what they’ve done and sacrificed so that we can all enjoy the benefits of society, that would be wonderful. 

In the state capitol, I chair a nonprofit that every year pays 25 Latino college students $800 a month for five months to become interns and learn about government. The same thing could be done here in the valley. You can pay community college students to do interesting work for the town or county and give them an internship. They would be exposed to local government and contribute their ideas. And they have a lot to contribute. But someone has to make the effort. So let’s find a way to include the Latino community as part of the political, economic, and civic fabric of Vail. If you look at my life, and the lives of many other prominent Latinos throughout the Southwest, when people are given the opportunity, they excel.

When I titled my autobiography Not Bad for a South Texas Boy, I wasn’t bragging. That’s what my professor wrote on my first English paper at the University of Texas. I think he was surprised that I could write in English and was probably surprised I could write decently.

What do I say to young Latino kids today when I meet them? “Believe in yourself.” That means you’ve got to have confidence in your background, in your upbringing, and in your culture. Believe that you can contribute just as much, if not more, to this community and this society as anybody else. I never planned to become a state legislator and a mayor, or that I’d go to Washington. These things happened to me because I focused on what I was doing at the time, and somebody noticed. So I tell young people today, “Whatever you’re doing, do it to the best of your ability and somebody will notice. Have a vision. Aim high. Be bold.”