Hispanic Chamber founder Ernest I.J. Aguilar dies at 90

Ernest I.J. Aguilar, one of the first Latinos ever to run for political office in the Yakima Valley, has died at his Sumner, Pierce County, home after a long battle with cancer.

Mr. Aguilar, who died Monday, was 90.

Veteran Latino leaders from the Yakima Valley remembered Mr. Aguilar on Thursday for founding the first State Hispanic Chamber, for being on the board of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic and for running in the late 1960s against then-incumbent Angus McDonald for a county commissioner's seat.

"In those days there were no Latino candidates," recalled Ricardo Garcia, a longtime Valley activist and former director of Granger's KDNA radio station. Mr. Aguilar spent two years living with Garcia in his Wapato home in the late 1960s.

Garcia and other Valley Latino leaders first met Mr. Aguilar in Tacoma when he was a police officer. The eloquent, handsome and charismatic war veteran impressed them.

Mr. Aguilar had recently retired from the Army after having served in combat in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Somehow, the Valley's Latino leaders persuaded Mr. Aguilar to move to Yakima and run against McDonald, who would go on to become the longest-running commissioner in Yakima history.

Mr. Aguilar lost, but he managed to gain many votes and with it the respect of the Democratic Party. Garcia would also become a godfather to one of Mr. Aguilar's children.

Mr. Aguilar returned to the Seattle area, but not before he fell in love with Clementina (Tina), the daughter of the owner of old El Paso Café in Toppenish, Garcia said. They married and had six children.

Described by Garcia and other Valley Latinos as a human dynamo, Mr. Aguilar, who was born in Mexico, would go on to work as a civil-rights leader and promote trade to Washington state, especially with Mexico.

In return, Mexico awarded Mr. Aguilar with the Ohtli Medal, the highest honor that country bestows on civilians who live abroad.

He is survived by his wife, their children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, said Cris Guillen, president of the Association of Washington State Chambers of Commerce.

Guillen said that Mr. Aguilar's death was a tremendous loss. "But we are forever enriched for the time we spent in his company," Guillen said. "His legacy will live on in many ways and in the Hispanic Chamber he created so many years ago."

Joseph Trevino is the editor of El Sol de Yakima, the Yakima Herald-Republic's Spanish-language newspaper.