MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Prestigious Hispanic civil rights activist next US ambassador in Argentina

US ambassador Vilma Socorro Martinez

The President Barack Obama administration has named a prestigious civil rights activist of Hispanic-Mexican origin as the next US ambassador in Argentina. Vilma Socorro Martinez, 66, will replace Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne who has held the job for three and a half years.

Ms Martinez becomes the first US woman ambassador before the government of Argentina.

She was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1943 of Mexican immigrant parents. As a Mexican American, she was often treated like a second-class citizen and even when she was an honour student in high school, for example, she found herself steered away from academics by a counsellor who tried to convince her that someone of her background would be better off attending a trade school than a major university.

However Ms Martinez ignored that advice and instead enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin. While working her way through college in the biochemistry she met a professor who recognized her potential and suggested she should go on to obtain a graduate degree-preferably out east, far from the state of Texas and its history of prejudice against Mexican Americans.

Thus, after receiving her bachelor's degree, Martinez went on to Columbia University in New York City, where she studied law.

While still in her twenties, she participated in an important civil rights case that came before the US Supreme Court. Martinez subsequently served for nearly a decade as head of one of the most prominent advocacy organizations in the country, the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, which was patterned after its counterpart the NAACP, Legal Defence and Educational Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

In 1982, after spending nearly a decade at the helm of MALDEF, Martinez was ready to make a change. She stepped down from her position as president and considered a variety of options that included running for elected office or teaching law. She ultimately settled on a position with a prestigious Los Angeles law firm, Munger, Tolles & Olson.

In addition to her work as an attorney, Martinez has been a popular speaker at educational institutions around the United States, including Harvard Law School, Yale University, the University of Notre Dame, and her alma mater, the University of Texas.

Martinez has received a number of other awards and has been invited to sit on numerous civic and corporate boards, among them Shell Oil Company. She has also played an important role with the federal government as a consultant to the US Commission on Civil Rights and as a lawyer delegate to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference.