A Korean War veteran and a longtime antipoverty
activist in East Los Angeles with strong ties to
unions, Esteban Torres served eight terms in the
U.S. House. His career on Capitol Hill put him in the
vanguard of Latino influence in U.S. politics. “When he
took this seat in Congress, it was a period when we didn’t
have much representation in the Hispanic community,”
noted Vic Fazio of California, a longtime House colleague.
“Now the gates are down, their political power is on the
rise. It’s a career like Esteban Torres’ that has really made it
possible for these younger people to have the opportunities
for public service.”1
Esteban Edward Torres was born in Miami, Arizona,
on January 27, 1930, at a mining camp owned by the
Phelps–Dodge Company. When Torres was five years old,
his father was deported to Mexico and he never saw him
again. Esteban, along with his mother, Rena Gómez, and
his younger brother, Hugo, moved to East Los Angeles in
1936, where he attended the public schools and graduated
from James A. Garfield High School in 1949.2 He was
brought up by his mother and grandmother, Teresa
Baron-Gómez, who instilled in him a sense of cultural
pride. “My mother and my grandmother were very strong
women, very educated and very proud to be Mexicans,”
Torres remembered years later. “They were the ones that
taught me to defend my rights, to shame me for not
being Mexican.” Torres grew up in tough neighborhoods,
crediting his survival to a structured family life anchored
by his mother and his ability to find a middle ground
among competing factions. “I was a barrio kid,” Torres
recalled. “I grew up in the toughest environment anybody
could grow up in. A lot of gangs. It was a depression. It
was tough to get decent housing.… I was able to move
between gangs and not alienate one group or the other.
I had rapport with everybody. People always felt I was a peacemaker.”3 From 1949 to 1953, Torres served in the
U.S. Army, fought in the Korean War, and was honorably
discharged with the rank of sergeant first class. Torres
used his benefits from the GI Bill to study at the Los
Angeles Art Center in 1953. Over the next decade, he
took courses at East Los Angeles College and California
State University at Los Angeles. He took graduate-level
courses, at the University of Maryland in economics
and at American University in Washington, D.C., in
international relations. Torres married Arcy Sanchez of
Los Angeles on January 22, 1955. The couple raised five
children: Carmen, Rena, Camille, Selina, and Esteban.4
“I thought about teaching in fine arts, but we had started
raising a family and I had to go to work as a welder on the
[assembly line at an auto plant],” Torres recalled. “I would
take home pieces of metal, especially junk parts that were
going to get scrapped, and develop larger pieces, labeled
by the kind of car it was; Dodge, DeSoto, all those.” His
interest in metal sculpting remained part of his life. “I
saw so much conflict in the fight for social justice, in this
country and abroad,” Torres recalled, “I couldn’t help
being affected.… There’s a lot of frustration and revolt in
me that comes out in my work.”5
Torres was introduced to politics by way of his activism
in the local branch of the United Auto Workers (UAW)
Union. In 1958 his coworkers elected him chief steward of
the Local 230. He was later appointed the UAW organizer
for the western region of the United States. In 1963 he
was tapped by Walter Reuther as a UAW international
representative in Washington, D.C., and from 1964
to 1968 he served as the union’s director of the Inter-American Bureau for Caribbean and Latin American
Affairs. In 1968 Torres returned to Los Angeles, founding
The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU),
a community action organization that grew under his stewardship into one of the nation’s largest antipoverty
agencies. While serving as TELACU’s chief executive
officer, Torres also was active in other local organizations,
such as the Los Angeles County Commission on Economic
Development, the Mexican-American Commission on
Education, and the Plaza la Raza Cultural Center.
In 1974 Torres made his first bid for elective office,
running in the Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat
representing California’s 30th Congressional District. He
faced George E. Danielson, a two-term incumbent who
had been an FBI agent, an attorney, and a member of the
California state assembly and senate. The district was 42
percent Hispanic and covered a large swath of suburbs
east of Los Angeles. Danielson benefited from being an
incumbent and from the visibility he had gained as a
member of the House Judiciary Committee during the
Watergate investigation.6 Danielson prevailed in the June
1974 primary election, with roughly 54 percent of the vote
to Torres’s 37 percent.7
Torres returned to the UAW and for several years was
assistant director for International Affairs. In 1976 he was
appointed as a delegate to the International Metalworkers
Federation Central Committee meetings in Geneva,
Switzerland. When President James Earl (Jimmy) Carter
took office in 1977, Torres was considered for Assistant
Secretary of State for Latin America, but instead he
served from 1977 through 1979 as Carter’s Permanent
Representative to the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The
person who filled the position, whose rank was comparable
to that of an ambassador, was required to be confirmed
by the U.S. Senate. Torres served as a White House aide
from 1979 through 1981.
In 1982 Torres considered running in the 30th District
after Representative Danielson was appointed to a seat on
the California court of appeals, but Matthew Martínez,
the former mayor of Monterey Park, decided to run in the
special election to fill that vacancy. House Democrats, led
by California Representatives Phillip Burton and Edward Roybal, convinced Torres to run in the newly created
34th Congressional District. As the state’s Democratic powerhouse, Burton had orchestrated the decadal statewide
redistricting plan, which supporters hailed as masterful
and detractors deemed maniacal. One political observer
described Burton’s effort—which netted the Democrats
six more congressional seats in the 1982 elections—as
a “jigsaw puzzle designed by the inmate of a mental
institution.”8 The editors of the Almanac of American
Politics noted that the new 34th District “was Burton’s
pièce de résistance” along with two other majority-Hispanic
Los Angeles-area districts.9
The new crescent-shaped district included a large swath
of suburban East Los Angeles that was bounded roughly by
the Interstate 10 corridor to the north and the Interstate
5 corridor running south and east; West Covina, Valinda,
and La Puente lay on its northern side, and Norwalk and
South Whittier lay on its southern borders. The district
was 48 percent Hispanic. Torres secured the support of the
local political machine, led by U.S. Representative Henry Waxman and California assemblyman Howard Berman
(who won a Los Angeles-area seat in the U.S. House in
the fall of 1982). His platform was pro-labor, but he took
a more conservative approach on social issues, such as
abortion, which he opposed. In the Democratic primary,
he faced former Representative Jim Lloyd, a three-term
veteran and a former mayor of West Covina, who had lost
a bid for re-election to the House in 1980. Torres stressed
his experience in Washington and won the endorsement
of most House Democrats in the California delegation.10
But Lloyd, who had the backing of some prominent
Democrats, such as Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, argued that
Torres was a “carpetbagger,” who had not registered in
the district until early 1982 after declaring his candidacy.
Torres, who was a longtime resident of East Los Angeles
(just west of the new district), responded that Lloyd had
“never picked walnuts or cabbage or lived in the barrios
here.”11 Torres was better funded than Lloyd, and in a
sometimes-bitter race that political observers predicted
would be neck-and-neck, he prevailed over Lloyd by 51
to 36 percent. A third candidate received 13 percent of the vote.
In a district where roughly two-thirds of the residents
were registered Democrats, Torres was heavily favored
in the November general election against Republican
candidate Paul Jackson. Jackson had lived in the district
for decades, served on a number of civic associations,
and enjoyed a long career on the Los Angeles police
force. The two candidates clashed on major issues.
Torres derided President Ronald W. Reagan’s supply-side
economics, supported a bilateral nuclear freeze between
the superpowers, and advocated pumping more federal
dollars into urban infrastructure improvements. “Our
cities are really in a state of decay—our road systems,
our bridges, our waterways, our court facilities,” Torres
said.12 Jackson, whose platform embraced the policies of
the Reagan administration, including a massive defense
buildup, hoped to tap into the large number of blue-collar
Democrats who helped give Reagan a 13 percent margin of
victory in the district in 1980. But with a plethora of built-in
advantages, including the poor economic conditions,
which he pinned on the President’s policies, Torres
prevailed, 57 to 43 percent.
Reapportionment after the 1990 Census made the
district “an almost ideal place for someone like Torres to
run,” observed a political almanac.13 The new district was
62 percent Hispanic and added Montebello, an upper
middle-class Hispanic town, to Torres’s existing base. In
his subsequent seven re-election campaigns, Torres won by
healthy margins, garnering at least 60 percent of the vote.
In his final election in 1996, he won 68 percent of the vote
against Republican candidate David Nunez and two minor
party candidates.14
When Torres took his seat in the House in January
1983, he won assignments on the Banking, Finance and
Urban Affairs Committee (later renamed Banking and
Financial Services) and the Small Business Committee.
He chaired two subcommittees during his tenure: In the
102nd Congress (1991–1993), he chaired the Banking
panel’s Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs and Coinage,
and in the 101st Congress (1989–1991), he chaired the
Small Business Subcommittee on Environment and Labor.
At the start of the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), Torres lobbied for and won a seat on the exclusive Appropriations
Committee, leaving his other assignments. He served on
the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related
Programs Subcommittee and eventually gained a seat on
the Transportation Subcommittee.
Torres chaired the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in
late 1988, before the start of the 101st Congress (1989–1991). Torres’s Democratic colleagues from the California
delegation elected him whip for the Southern California
area, giving him an entry-level position on the party
leadership ladder. In the 102nd Congress (1991–1993)
Torres was tapped by the Democratic leadership as a
deputy whip.
Torres’s position as an early advocate of environmental
justice for minorities developed from his efforts to close
a neglected landfill in his district. He helped craft the
Hazardous Waste Control Act of 1983, which required
landfill owners to conduct studies on the health risks
their properties posed to nearby communities. He served
as chairman of the Small Business Subcommittee on
Environment and Labor in the 101st Congress.
As chairman of the Banking panel’s Subcommittee on
Consumer Affairs and Coinage, Torres pushed measures to
empower customers of financial institutions. In the 102nd
Congress, Torres authored the Truth in Savings Act, which
required banks to clearly disclose information about fees,
terms, and conditions for savings deposits.15 The measure
was signed into law. He also advocated for legislation that
would give consumers better access to their credit histories
and allow them to more easily challenge errors in their
credit reports—a reform prompted by changes in financial
recordkeeping practices made possible by new computer
technology. That bill languished in the 102nd Congress
but was enacted into law as part of a fiscal omnibus bill
in the 103rd Congress.16 “Today, consumers’ lives are an
open book. Sensitive personal and financial data is bought
and sold with little or no regard for the privacy of the
consumer,” Torres noted. “Workers are denied employment
or even blackballed because of erroneous information in
their files.… Clearly, it is time to regain the balance to
protect American consumers against the abuses of the credit reporting industry.”17 Torres also had a hand in
major housing legislation in the 102nd Congress, inserting
language that provided assistance to low-income victims of
disasters. After Torres gave up his Banking post for a seat
on the Appropriations Committee, Democratic leaders
temporarily reassigned him to the Banking panel in the
105th Congress (1997–1999) as the Republican majority
sought to overhaul national housing programs.18
A key vote in Torres’s career took place in 1993, when
he supported the bill to implement the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S.,
Mexico, and Canada, that created a regional trade bloc
and eliminated tariffs on finished imports and agricultural
products. It also dispensed with barriers and deterrents
to investments within and among the three countries.19
NAFTA’s proponents believed it would spur U.S. job
growth by increasing exports while improving the standard
of living in Mexico; its opponents believed NAFTA would
endanger American wages and jobs. The treaty was signed
in late 1992 in San Antonio, Texas, and by mid-1993 a bill
to fund and implement the treaty began making its way
through Congress.
Many Americans in unions and the manufacturing
sector opposed NAFTA because they believed it would
send working-class jobs overseas. The William J. (Bill)
Clinton administration sought to rally support for
NAFTA by targeting key lawmakers, identifying Torres
as an important ally because of his background as an
autoworker, his membership in the UAW, and his ties to
the Hispanic community. A Clinton advocate in Congress
commented, “The symbolism of Torres supporting NAFTA
is powerful.”20 To woo Torres, the Clinton administration
agreed to include a provision to create and fund a North
American Development Bank (NADBank) in the
legislation to implement NAFTA. NADBank, which the
Clinton administration promised to finance up to $225
million, would help initiate badly needed infrastructure
and environmental cleanup projects—particularly in the
Southwest along the border with Mexico—and through a
Community Adjustment and Investment Program assist
communities whose economies were negatively affected by NAFTA. The Mexican government would match U.S.
contributions, and the bank would secure international
loans of approximately $3 billion. With the NADBank
commitment, Torres swung his support behind NAFTA.
“What has surprised me is that my friends on the North
American labor movement, so far, have failed to grasp the
enormous opportunity and potential in the NAFTA for
spreading the vision and reality of industrial democracy
throughout this hemisphere,” Torres remarked, announcing
his decision.21 While he understood union members’
opposition, he told the Los Angeles Times, “They have
to live in the real world. I believe this [NAFTA] is the
future.”22 Torres’s influence on fellow Hispanic lawmakers
was unclear; roughly half voted for the measure, and half
voted against it when the bill passed the House by a vote of
234 to 200 on November 17, 1993.
Torres and a group of other Hispanic Representatives
later expressed disappointment with NAFTA and its
implementation by the Clinton administration. “I’ve
taken a lot of heat,” Torres said. “Certain promises were
made about helping the adjustment to free trade, and
they were not kept.”23 Impatient and disillusioned because
the administration had been slow to fund NADBank
projects, Torres conceded, “One could argue that the
Administration used ‘bait and switch’ tactics to secure our
support for NAFTA.”24
In 1990 Torres had given serious consideration to
running for a seat on the Los Angeles County board of
supervisors, but he was unable to register as a candidate
because the incumbent held onto the seat until just before
the filing deadline, by which time Torres had already filed
papers to seek another term in the U.S. House.25 In 1996,
during President Clinton’s transition to a second term,
Torres’s name appeared on a short list of candidates for
Secretary of Labor and Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development, but he was not chosen for either position
and remained in the House.26
In early March 1998, days before the filing deadline
for the fall elections, Torres announced that he would
retire from the House at the end of the 105th Congress,
in January 1999. “I have reached the pinnacle of success in my own eyes,” he told reporters. “I’m leaving while in
good health. My wife and I want to enjoy life, my family,
my grandchildren and pursue personal goals.”27 Torres
endorsed his chief of staff and son-in-law, Jamie Casso, to
succeed him in the Democratic primary, but Casso lost
to longtime community leader Grace Napolitano, who
garnered the support of the AFL-CIO. She went on to win
the general election.28 In retirement, Torres has pursued his
passion for sculpting and painting. Esteban Torres died on January 25, 2022.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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