Susana Martinez has been scaling walls since she was a kid.

At 11 and of a mind to ignore her mother's warning, she couldn't stop herself from trying to conquer the garden wall bordering her family's three-bedroom, 1,400-square-foot Thomas Manor brick home in El Paso.

"Don't run on that wall, Susana," her mother, Paula Aguirre, would tell her. "You're going to fall." Little Susana would climb the cinder-block wall anyway and start racing with a friend along the narrow, rounded top of the wall.

"I fell and cut my thigh," Martinez said. "I didn't cry. I just remember thinking, 'Oh no!' I was more afraid of my mom."

Martinez's father, Jacobo Martinez, was a boxer, so her mother had experience caring for wounds. When Aguirre poured peroxide onto her wound, Susana clenched her teeth. The peroxide foam gurgling from the bloody gash caused her to throw up the cherry Icee in her tummy.

But she did not cry.

It was a moment of truth that has lasted a lifetime in ways big and small. Now, 41 years later, that little girl has grown up to be governor of New Mexico, and Martinez still bears the elongated, almond-shaped scar on her left thigh.

In a larger sense, the challenge of the wall and her mother's talent for patching things up became symbols. She learned the quality of perseverance in her Hispanic home, and has used it to succeed as a prosecutor and politician.

Immigrant family

In this nation of immigrants and migrants, the Martinez family followed a well-traveled path, starting with that moment of truth when Martinez's grandparents chose to leave what was familiar in Mexico for uncertain opportunity in the United States. A 1930 U.S. Census Bureau record lists Martinez's paternal grandparents, Adolfo and Francisca Martinez, and shows their citizenship status as "AL" for "alien," the census-form indication for "all foreign-born persons neither naturalized nor having first papers."

Both sets of grandparents were Mexican immigrants. Her father's parents disappeared from his life early on, so he was raised by aunts. At the age of 5, he became a shoe shiner and slowly moved up to becoming a renowned El Paso boxing coach, a police officer and then a security business owner.

And Susana Martinez's mother helped run the family business, never neglecting the household while taking care of three children, including Martinez's older sister, who has a mental disability.

"My mother was responsible for everything," Martinez said as she remembered her mother riding the city bus to drop the children off at day care and to buy groceries or pay the bills. "If something broke in the house, Mom would say, 'You can't wait for someone else to fix it. So we'll figure out how to fix it ourselves.' " Paula Aguirre died a few years ago, but her words still guide her daughter.

From her family, Martinez learned to break down barriers, to mend open wounds and to fix problems when they happen.

'First' Latina

Susana Martinez is seven months into her term as governor, a rising star nationally in the Republican Party who is identified, as politicians tend to be, by a one-dimensional label: the nation's first Latina governor.

It is an honor that gets noticed. When Jack Foster Gilbert, a classmate from law school, heard about the election of Gov. Martinez, he wondered whether it was the same second-year student he knew as an "aggressive questioner" during the 1985 National Trial Advocacy Competition. Gilbert learned that the driven law student he knew as Susan indeed had become governor.

"I remember thinking to myself, 'Somehow, I am not surprised,' " said Gilbert, now a senior attorney for a federal agency.

A year after her rapid rise in statewide Republican politics and only weeks away from a thorny special session of the Legislature, Martinez enjoys a high approval rating statewide. But she also has local and national political experts watching her carefully through the formative months of her administration.

She is leader to 2 million residents and manager of a recession-wracked state budget, and sandwiched in between is her insistence that she not avoid the hot-button issues. That is why banning driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants is near the top of Martinez's political agenda for a state that is 48 percent Hispanic.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, called Martinez's governorship "a real breakthrough." Vargas drew parallels between Martinez's achievement and that of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Immigration debate

But close observers such as Vargas also wonder whether a rookie in statewide politics with a prosecutor's background can find consensus and lead all New Mexicans — and quite possibly all Americans — in a forward-looking conversation about driver's licenses in particular and issues surrounding illegal immigration in general.

The big challenge, Vargas said, is figuring out whether she can become a role model for Hispanics and for all New Mexicans. "Her challenge is: Can she demonstrate she can represent everyone?" Vargas said.

The driver's-license issue played a big role during her gubernatorial campaign and her first session of the Legislature. She has promised to reintroduce a bill during the September special session to revoke driver's licenses for undocumented New Mexico residents. Only a few days ago, she announced that 10,000 randomly selected foreign nationals would have to show up at a Motor Vehicle Division center in Albuquerque to re-verify their New Mexico residency.

"We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. I swore to uphold the Constitution," said Martinez, stressing that immigration is a federal issue. To her, the issue is a matter of integrity. Martinez believes in keeping campaign promises, and the driver's-license issue was one of them.

"She's approaching it from the stance of a prosecutor," Vargas said of the license issue. A leader, he said, needs to get out into the community and hear peoples' stories. "An effective leader is able to bring those who disagree with you to your side ... and the best way to do that is be a good listener."

Active and studious

Martinez, a listener and a woman of action, is a product of a close family, orderly home, active neighborhood and serious studies.

As a child growing up on the edge of El Paso, she chased after butterflies in cotton fields where pickers arrived at sunrise to toil amid the prickly bushes. Her mother always wanted the doors closed at home. Cotton attracted mice, and Martinez's mother vowed to shut them out.

Neighborhood children played kick the can, baseball and chinche al agua until dark. The chatter in the street was a mix of English and Spanish.

"The street was our playground," Martinez recalled in a wide-ranging conversation in her car on the way to Las Cruces.

"I remember some travesuras (mischief) that got me in a lot of trouble," the governor said with a laugh.

In high school, she took advantage of a motivational program for girls and decided she wanted to become a lawyer. At The University of Oklahoma College of Law, she became one of a few hand-selected, second-year law students to make the 1985 National Trial Advocacy Competition. The team didn't make it to the finals, but a plaque on a wall at the school lists all the team members, honoring their achievements.

"I was determined to get on the team and have other minorities see it was possible," Martinez said.

Hooked on the law

During her law-school years, she interned for an El Paso judge presiding over the trial of a man who killed his eight-months-pregnant wife and threw her body into a river, all in the presence of his two young sons. That's when she knew she wanted to become a prosecutor.

After law school, she moved to Las Cruces with her first husband, a water attorney. She worked as a prosecutor in Las Cruces for 25 years, taking on many cases of child abuse, including the brutal rape and beating of Baby Brianna. She also sent bilingual staff to rural communities to provide services for people there.

Martinez doesn't back down from what she sees as right, said Donna Richmond, executive director of La Piñón, a sexual-assault recovery services center in Las Cruces. Richmond worked with Martinez on many child-abuse cases, and Martinez raised the bar and held everyone accountable for a share of the work, Richmond said.

Richmond's respect for Martinez only grew the day she witnessed the prosecutor interview a 6-year-old girl who had been raped by the boyfriend of the child's mother.

"They were coloring together, sitting at a table, talking about what had happened in Spanish and English. It was such a pleasant, calm situation," Richmond said. "I saw something that I wanted to replicate in myself and in the rest of my staff."

The instincts of a good prosecutor, though, don't always translate to politics, said David Cargo, an attorney, a former governor of New Mexico and a veteran political observer.

Bendable?

Cargo, a Republican who served as governor from 1967 to 1971, said Martinez is not letting go of her prosecutor mentality and is looking at government as "black and white."

The driver's-license issue should not be her focus, Cargo said.

"You are talking about very few people," he said. "But still again, is it the biggest problem in government? Well obviously, the answer is no. In government, you are dealing with critical issues, such as education."

Government is about negotiations and finding common ground, he said.

"If you want to fight, become a boxer or a wrestler. If you want to govern, you have to do it with sacrifice. You don't have to give up all your principles, but you have to bend a little bit," Cargo said.

Martinez has a quick response. Politicians who don't deliver results and forget about promises "get lost in the shuffle," she said.

As a new governor with no intention of going back on promises, Martinez finds the days at the Capitol long and her position sometimes isolating.

"It is a challenge that I don't fear," said Martinez, as she caressed a gold necklace with the image of the Virgin Mary.

Throughout her career as a prosecutor — and in life in general — she has been able to succeed because she has balanced when to go with her head and when to follow her heart. She tends to make decisions based on evidence, based on facts, she said.

"Once you lose balance, you start making decisions based on emotions," Martinez said.

Unpretentious

Even with security personnel around her all the time, Martinez does her own banking, arranges for her dogs to see the veterinarian and shops for her own groceries at Sunflower Market. She's witty and unpretentious. She dresses in blue jeans and black cowboy boots some days. At other times, she shows up in a skirt and high heels.

She was shaped by the need to manage what life threw at her. Her parents worked, so Martinez, a self-described latchkey kid, helped keep house for her older brother and disabled sister. Summers carried the added responsibility of feeding, dressing and bathing her sister. At 16, Martinez said, she decided she would not have children of her own.

Martinez never left her mother's side until she left for law school, where for the first time people asked about her background. Growing up in El Paso, her heritage had never been an issue.

Martinez smiled as she recalled the many times students and professors in Oklahoma mispronounced her name. Students "asked what I was," Martinez said. "I didn't understand what they were asking."

It wasn't until a student asked if Martinez had grown up speaking a foreign language that she was able to come up with a satisfactory answer.

"I'm American of Mexican descent," Martinez replied.

Contact Sandra Baltazar Martínez at 986-3062 or smartinez@sfnewmexican.com. Sandra Baltazar Martínez is a fellow this year with the Institute for Justice and Journalism's Immigration in the Heartland program, sponsored by The University of Oklahoma.

ON THE WEB

Read more stories by Institute for Justice and Journalism fellows, including Albuquerque NPR's Sarah Gustavus, at: http://immigrationintheheartland.wordpress.com/



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