After 35 Years, Lawyer Continues His Fight for Texas’ Tigua Indians

EL PASO, Texas — When Tom Diamond came into their lives, many Tigua Indian children were going without shoes and their older siblings were dropping out of school to help pick cotton.

It was the 1960s, and the people who called themselves Tiguas were not officially recognized as an Indian tribe. They received none of the aid provided to other Native Americans.

Then Diamond, a Stanford- and Baylor-educated attorney and Southern California transplant, took on the cause.

Since that time, Diamond not only has won the Tiguas federal recognition and the benefits attached but has helped them build a casino that nets at least $60 million a year.

Though 76, the stocky, silvery-haired Diamond is not about to quit --especially now that he feels he is up against a new adversary: Republican presidential front-runner and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

For more than a year, Bush has pressed the state’s attorney general to take the Tiguas to court over the casino on their southeast El Paso reservation. He has said he believes their slot machines and card games violate state law.

Atty. Gen. John Cornyn recently sued to shut down the 6-year-old casino, called Speaking Rock. The case is pending in El Paso federal court.

Now Diamond--who had focused on condemnation work and construction problems before making the Tiguas his life’s work--may be facing his toughest battle yet.

“If anybody can save [the casino], it’ll be Tom Diamond, because Tom Diamond fits naturally on a white horse,” said El Paso historian Leon Metz.

It wouldn’t be the first time Diamond took on the government on behalf of the Tiguas and came out on top.

“If it wasn’t for Tom Diamond, there wouldn’t be a Tigua tribe,” Metz said. “There would simply be a group of people who call themselves Tiguas.”

Diamond moved to El Paso in 1960 upon finishing law school. His family had come here a decade earlier.

He first heard about the Tiguas’ troubles in 1964, while he was county Democratic chairman. Diamond began poring through archives in Texas, Mexico and New Mexico, and he solicited the help of Indian leaders and state officials.

In 1967 Diamond won tribal status for the Tiguas, and they were placed under a state trusteeship. Twenty years later, he pushed through the congressional Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (Tigua) Restoration Act to put them under federal control because he believed they were not getting enough money from the state.

The cause became so near to Diamond’s heart that for several years he didn’t even bill the tribe, according to Joe Sierra, tribal governor from 1975 to 1978.

“Personally, I will give my life for Tom Diamond,” Sierra said. “If he ever needed a lung or a kidney, I’d give it to him, because he is the man who did wonderful things for our community.”

These days, with the prosperous casino, Diamond no longer works for free. And his association with the Tiguas has made him known throughout the Southwest.

“Tom Diamond made the Tiguas, but let’s face it, the Tiguas made Tom Diamond also,” Metz said.

In the latest tangle with the state, Diamond was on the offensive before Cornyn sued in September. A month earlier, Diamond ran full-page newspaper ads in El Paso and Austin titled “An Open Letter to Governor George W. Bush.”

The ad stated: “Dear Governor: Get your own house in order before you pick on Native Americans.” It went on to say that “Texas runs the largest gambling enterprise in the world,” calling the state lottery “a giant slot machine with 10,000 terminals.”

Diamond argues that the state cleared the way for Indian gaming when voters approved a lottery in 1991. He said the Restoration Act allows the 1,300-member tribe to conduct the same activities that the state conducts--and that slot machines and the lottery are identical games of chance built around random number generators.

But state officials contend that the 1991 constitutional amendment allowed for the state to run a lottery--nothing more.

The Tiguas are unique among dozens of gaming tribes around the country in that they must abide only by their own restoration act and not by the 1988 federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which states that tribes must enter into compacts with state governments if they wish to conduct gambling.

“We really need the court to break the deadlock,” said Cornyn, noting that under the Restoration Act, the only way to challenge the casino is by going to federal court.

“The law provides that they cannot do any kind of gambling activity that is prohibited under Texas law, and they are doing exactly that,” he said.

Diamond has questioned the timing of the latest volley by the state, accusing Bush of using the issue to try to appeal to “radical conservative religious interests” in his run for president.

Bush spokeswoman Linda Edwards said that is not the case.

“Gov. Bush has always said the courts are the proper place to address these issues, and that some of the gambling activity that is taking place at the Speaking Rock casino is against Texas law,” she said. “It’s his responsibility as governor to enforce the laws fairly and equally throughout the state, including the laws against gambling.”

The attorney general has not said whether he plans to sue the Kickapoo Indians, who operate the Lucky Eagle Casino in Eagle Pass, the only other casino in the state. The Kickapoos fall under the federal Indian gaming act.

Without Speaking Rock, which employs about 100 Tiguas and provides college scholarships and per-capita payments to members in good standing, “the economic viability of the tribe will cease to exist,” Diamond said.

“The tribe has achieved enormous success, and now it’s all in jeopardy,” he said. “If I’m 100, if I’m alive and the Indians need me, I’ll be around.”