San Antonio Committee Against Mercenary Recruitment and U.S. Intervention in Foreign Countries Physical Archives

Description: Mario Marcel Salas was born in San Antonio, Texas on July 30, 1949. Salas became an advocate for San Antonio's African-American community in the early 1970s and was a key member of local activist groups such as the San Antonio chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Organizations United for Eastside Development, Black Coalition on Mass Media, and Frontline 2000. He was elected to the City Council of San Antonio in 1997, where he served two full terms as Representative for District 2. In addition, he was involved with political issues relating to social justice and human rights struggles world-wide. In particular, Salas supported the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa and through the San Antonio Committee Against Mercenary Recruitment (1977-1978), opposed the recruitment of Americans as mercenaries in the revolutionary war in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Organizations represented in the collection include the African Liberation Support Committee (both national and in San Antonio), National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, San Antonio Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation (1978-1979) and the Texas Committee on African and World Affairs. The Topics and Events subseries encompasses local and global aspects of the human rights struggle and includes information on domestic African-American civil rights issues as well as revolutionary and progressive political movements abroad. The plight of political prisoners was of particular interest to Salas and the collection profiles activists wrongly imprisoned in the U.S. and African countries. U.S. groups like the Wilmington 10, the Houston 12, and South African prisoners such as Nelson Mandela, are represented by newsletters, bulletins and news clippings. The topics series also contains news clippings, bulletins and fliers related to the Vietnam War and political unrest in countries such as Grenada, Namibia and South Africa. This series additionally incorporates materials - boycott posters, liberation pamphlets and news clippings - highlighting the struggle against Apartheid and the subsequent boycotting of the Krugerrand coins of South Africa. The archive includes a folder on the Conference in Solidarity with the Liberation Struggles of the Peoples of Southern Africa (1981-1982). Materials were donated by Mario Marcel Salas in 2003 and 2006.