Rebecca Munoz Gutierrez; Pioneering Educator

Rebecca Munoz Gutierrez, 83, a pioneering Mexican American educator and advocate for the children of East Los Angeles. Born in Mexico in 1916, she came to the United States in 1918 and grew up in Texas and Arizona. In the 1930s, she graduated from Arizona State Teachers College (now Arizona State University) before teaching in Mesa, Ariz. While at Arizona State, she was an early and active member of Los Conquistadores, an organization advocating improved education and opportunities for Mexican Americans. The organization sponsored conferences, programs and recruitment efforts to encourage more youths of Mexican heritage to go to college. Through that organization she met her future husband, Felix Gutierrez, who was active in similar efforts in Southern California with an organization called the Mexican American Movement. In 1938, he founded The Mexican Voice, a publication reporting the accomplishments of Mexican American youths. She began by covering Arizona activities for the magazine and later wrote commentaries and essays. Moving to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, she began a 30-year career as a teacher and counselor with Los Angeles city schools. In the mid-1960s she moved into counseling and testing, where she developed early translations of standardized tests for Spanish-speaking students so they would not be disadvantaged when tested. After her retirement from the school district in 1972, she continued her counseling and testing work in private practice. On March 14 in Pasadena.