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Janet Reno (1938-2016) was an American lawyer who was both the first woman to serve as a State Attorney for Florida - she served Dade County (now Miami Dade) from 1978-1993 - and also the first woman to serve as the Attorney General of the United States. Reno was nominated for Attorney General by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and served until 2001, making her the second-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history, after William Wirt. Characterized for what has variously been described as her “plain-vanilla style,” (qtd. in Williams) or more generously, her “understated and self-effacing manner, both public and private,” (Santelle) Reno’s career, however, was not without controversies. Notable cases over which she presided, including the 1993 Waco siege where the Branch Davidian compound was raided, and the 2000 case of Elián González, made her a target of intense public scrutiny. More so, throughout her life in the public eye, Reno’s physical appearance (she was 6 feet 1 inch tall) garnered consistent - and frequently obsessive - press attention. Williams notes, “She is doubtless also the first human in that office to be so objectified by body parts and personal attributes.” Though diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1995, Reno remained steadfastly determined to continue to serve as Attorney General until 2001; her unwavering dedication and sense of moral obligation to those whom she advocated for, even in times of tumult, is perhaps how she will best be remembered.

Reno was born on July 21st 1938 in Miami, Florida, to a family with a long track record of chronicling the city’s unfolding history; her mother and father were both reporters, writing for The Miami News and The Miami Herald respectively (though, as a woman, her mother wrote under a male pseudonym), and her grandfather was a photographer who photographed the building of Miami. Reno was principally raised in a modest home made of cyprus and brick on the border of the Florida Everglades, which her mother built with her own hands - a fact that would later garner her the dubious term of endearment, “swamp girl,” (qtd. in Williams) from the news media. After graduating from Coral Gables Senior High School Reno enrolled at Cornell University in 1956, where she majored in Chemistry. After graduating from Cornell in 1960, Reno then enrolled in Harvard Law School as one of only sixteen women in a class of 500. Once a lawyer, Reno practiced in Miami for two law firms from 1963-1971. After joining the staff of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives and accepting a position with Dade County’s State Attorney’s Office, Reno went on to eventually become State Attorney herself in 1978 and held this position until becoming Attorney General.

As would be expected during Reno’s tenure as State Attorney, but perhaps less so in context of her role as Attorney general, Miami figured as a pivotal space in her career. In 1980, Reno was the lead prosecutor in the Arthur McDuffie trial; she indicted four white police officers with charges of manslaughter/second-degree murder for the death of black insurance salesman, Arthur McDuffie, and charged a further officer with evidence tampering after the fact. Though considered an open-shut case, an all-white jury in Tampa, FL, nevertheless acquitted the police officers of the charges. Enraged by the blatant miscarriage of justice, rebellions erupted in Liberty City, the Black Grove, Overtown, and Brownsville; three days later, eighteen people were dead, over four hundred were injured, and there was $100 million of property damage.1 Reno was (at least, partially) blamed for the outcome of the trial; however, many of her critics were impressed by the way that in the weeks and months following the trial she visited Liberty City at night without police escort in order to console and share her disappointment with residents. She was equally the subject of Miami-based scrutiny after her decision in the Elián González case; Cuban-born González was staying with relatives in Miami after his mother and stepfather died at sea during the voyage to the U.S. and, after his father had won a case petitioning for the custody of the child, Reno made the decision to seize González from the relative’s home and return him to his father in Cuba. After the decision was made, there were protests in Miami organized by the city’s large Cuban-American population that explicitly targeted Reno.

Reno’s reputation for doing what she thought was right carried throughout her entire career - even when her decisions led to tragic outcomes such as the Waco siege, which she later described as “the worst day of [her] life” (qtd. in Santelle). From early on, Reno advocated for the vulnerable at times when the legal justice system did not recognize such vulnerability. In 1998 she wrote, “When I took office in 1978, everybody laughed at me for being concerned about domestic violence … if I brought a domestic violence case when the victim didn’t want to prosecute, the court looked at me as if I were crazy (Reno 78). Motivated by her desire that “nobody falls through the cracks,” (Reno 76) Reno wrote and spoke extensively on the need for improvements in child education, increased funds for the juvenile court system, and preventative rather than punitive measures in addressing crime rates.

Until the very end of her life, Reno remained active in her advocacy. After her role as Attorney General ended, Reno ran for Governor of Florida in 2002 and lost; this loss marked her retirement from politics in the official sense, though she continued to work in other capacities. She toured the U.S. giving talks about education and criminal justice reform and also served on the founding board of directors for the Innocence Project - a nonprofit organization that uses DNA testing to exonerate people who have been wrongly-convicted of crimes. In 2009, Reno was awarded the Justice Award by the American Judicature Society, which is the highest honor bestowed by the AJS. On November 7th, 2016, in the house built by her mother that she grew up in, Reno succumbed to the effects of the Parkinson’s disease that she had lived with for two decades; she was surrounded by friends and family at the time of her death. In her last will and testament, she bequeathed her “correspondence, memorandums, reports, journals, diaries, and files … relating to [her] service as State Attorney and Attorney General of the United States”2 to the University of Miami Special Collections.

Laura Bass
UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020.

Notes

1. The University of Miami’s Special Collections and the Law Library’s Florida Collection have a number of additional holdings pertaining to the 1980 Miami rebellions. For example, see: Robert A. Ladner. Community Attitudes and Riot Participation in the Miami Riots of 1980: Social Change, Ethnic Competition and Urban Conflict. 1981. Coral Gables Behavioral Science Research Institute, University of Miami Library Special Collections; Robert A. Ladner. The Miami Riots of 1980: Historical Antecedents and Riot Participation. 1981. Coral Gables Behavioral Science Research Institute, University of Miami Library Special Collections; Bruce Porter and Marvin Dunn. The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds. 1984. Lexington, University of Miami Law Library Florida Collections; Robert Allen Hardin. Miami, From Quiet to Riot: An Alternative Viewpoint of The Miami Herald’s Role in Events Leading to the Riots of May, 1980. 1980. Keyes-Hardin Productions, University of Miami Library Special Collections; Liberta Randolf. Riot City 1984: Miami 1980. 1981. University of Miami Library Special Collections; Julian Williams. Gloom Over Miami: A Comparative Analysis of the 1980 Miami Rebellion. 1999. University of Miami Library Special Collections; Daryl B. Harris, The Logic of Black Urban Rebellions: Challenging the Dynamics of White Domination in Miami. Praeger, 1999.

2. Janet Reno. Janet Reno Papers. University of Miami Library Special Collections, Miami.

Works Cited

Reno, Janet. “Taking America Back for Our Children.” Crime and Delinquency, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 75-82.

--. Janet Reno Papers. University of Miami Library Special Collections, Miami.

Roca, Gustavo. Protest in Support of Elián González in Miami, Florida. 2000. Photograph. University of Miami Cuban Heritage Collection, Miami.

Santelle, James R. “The Janet Reno I remember.” Wisconsin Lawyer, vol. 90, no. 6, 2017, www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/WisconsinLawyer/Pages/Article.aspx?Volume=90&Issue=6&ArticleID=25671. Accessed 11 Sept. 2019.

Williams, Maureen. “The Gentle General: Janet Reno’s ‘Consubstantiality’ with the Press.” Women and Language, vol. 18, no. 2, 1995, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A18499213/AONE?u=miami_richter&sid=AONE&xid=7e6202aa. Accessed 11 Sept. 2019.

Repertorio Español was founded in 1968 by producer Gilberto Zaldívar and Artistic Director René Buch to introduce the best of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic-American theatre to a broad audience in New York City and across the country. Robert Weber Federico joined the company two years later as Resident Designer and Associate Artistic Producer and is currently the organization’s Executive Director.

From its earliest days, Repertorio has maintained a dramatic ensemble, attracting many talented veterans and emerging Hispanic actors, including Ofelia González, the first actress to win an OBIE Award without having performed in English. Another addition was Pilar Rioja in 1973, marking the beginning of a relationship that has established Ms. Rioja as a legend in Spanish dance. In 1980, Pablo Zinger, Musical Director, initiated a musical ensemble that presented zarzuela, operas, and elegant musical anthologies, and in 1992, Jorge Alí Triana of Colombia’s Teatro Popular de Bogotá began an association with Repertorio and since then has adapted and directed some of the company’s most epic works.

Repertorio Español received the 2011 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement; a 1996 Honorary Drama Desk Award for presenting quality theater; along with many citations by ACE (Association of Hispanic Theatre Critics) and HOLA (Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors). The company has also received an ENCORE Award for Excellence in Arts Management and Theater Communication Group’s Theater Practitioner Award for Messrs. Zaldívar and Buch’s contributions to the development of American theater.

Mariel, Revista de Literatura y Arte was a magazine published between 1983 and 1985 by a group of Cuban writers and artists who had arrived to the United States during the Mariel Boatlift. The magazine focused primarily on Marielista works and issues.

Rosario Rexach (1912-2003) was a Cuban exile teacher and author of essays and books on Spanish and Latin American literature and art, particularly that of Cuba. Being of the second generation of Cuban intellectuals of the Republic (1902-1959), Rexach’s research and scholarship focused on foundational literature, that is, her work probed into questions of national identity, often specifically addressing the role of women in the arts and professions. Rexach enjoyed a lengthy publishing career, with her first essay, “Orientación Vocacional de la Mujer en Cuba,” published in the newspaper El Mundo in 1938, and her last monograph, Nuevos estudios sobre Martí, published in 2002 just a year before her death. Other notable works include: El Pensamiento de Varela y la formación de la conciencia cubana (1950); El Carácter de Martí y otros ensayos (1954); Estudios sobre Martí (1985); Dos figuras cubanas y actitud: Estudios sobre Félix Varela y Jorge Mañach (1991); and Estudios sobre Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1996). Rexach also penned a novel, Rumbo al punto cierto, in 1979.

As her friend Eduardo Lolo describes, “despite her modest beginning and her status as a woman in a world where women were still second-class citizens,” Rexach acquired a strong academic training at the Normal School for Teachers in Havana and became professionally active in the early 1930s. The graduate assistant and then colleague to national icon and professor at the University of Havana, Jorge Mañach, Rexach was a trailblazer of her time and promoted the professional advancement of women and was involved in innovative pedagogical teaching exercises. As Patricia Pardiñas-Barnes relates in an article that was written using source material contained in this very archive of Rexach’s housed in the Cuban Heritage Collection, Rexach also “belonged to a youthful group who deposed the dictatorship of Machado (1925-30)” (159); this bold commitment to voicing her beliefs would eventually result in her permanent exile from Cuba in 1960. “Taking the school beyond the traditional classrooms would be a constant in Rosario Rexach's efforts in promoting culture,” Lolo writes, her teaching praxis extensively developing at the University of Havana where she was one of the first Cuban women to make use of modern technology in education. Pardiñas-Barnes narrates: “Her voice was heard via CMQ radio waves from 1949 to 1953, where she participated in ‘long-distance learning’ (in today’s pedagogical jargon) at La Universidad del Aire, opening the virtual classroom to as many Cubans as possible to present and discuss national identity concerns and cultural issues. The Universidad del Aire was a cutting-edge educational program created by Jorge Mañach, her mentor and university colleague” (160).

Additionally, Rexach was twice elected President of the prestigious Lyceum de la Habana, “a private non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the culture” (Lolo), and a member of the Comisión Cubana de la UNESCO. By 1960, Rexach left Cuba and relocated permanently to New York City because it was believed she was a counterrevolutionary as Patrick Iber relays: “Another member, the professor of sociology Rosario Rexach, left after a Communist student minder – there was one in every university class – denounced her as a counterrevolutionary because her lectures on the French Revolution credited it with having done much to develop systems of modern education … Rexach said that she could have stayed if she had kept her mouth shut, with a good income of $6,000 a year, an air-conditioned house, and three servants.”

Even when in her seventies and eighties, Rexach was “still publishing with the brió of a much younger generation” (Pardiñas-Barnes 163). But in excess of her scholarly and teacherly vigor and the volume of her published works, Rexach will be remembered for her distinct style and flair of writing, best summarized in the words of a friend who knew her voice in life as well as through the many pages she left behind: “Her essayistic prose is literature, even though literature itself is its content. She talks about the art of others through her own art, as if the waves commented on the sea or the cold the snowfall. Form and content go hand in hand to the bottom of the idea and the soul of the text studied, shaping their own soul and idea as a new literary text … it is the case that Rosario Rexach wrote ‘a la Rexach,’ in a formula that is completed when the receiver enjoys both what he receives and the way he receives it” (Lolo).

Antonia Rey was born Maria Antonia Francesch on October 12, 1927, in Havana, Cuba to Antonio Francesch, a dentist, and Emilia Rey, a nurse. Antonia’s father died before she was born and she was given her mother’s surname. Rey’s grandmother raised her while her mother studied nursing. Her mother later married Rafael Rangel and had two sons. Antonia was a teenager when her mother remarried. From a young age, Rey wanted to be an actress, but she decided to study the law at the University of Havana, which garnered her stepfather’s approval, unlike her dream of acting on stage. However, Rey dropped out of law school and went on to pursue theater, making her debut in 1948 in “Numancia Cervantes,” at the University of Havana.

In the 1950’s she rose to prominence on the stage in Havana, playing principal roles such as Madge in William Inge’s “Picnic,” the title role in George Bernard Shaw’s “Candida” and Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” During this epoch, she met her husband Andres Castro who owned the theater, Las Mascaras. Castro, born July 27, 1917, in Havana, Cuba, was from an affluent family that was in the furniture business. He and Rey married in 1958. Reportedly they tied the knot during the intermission of a show they were rehearsing at the time. After the Castros rose to power in 1959, Rey and her husband who were famous in the theater community and considered to be pioneers in the pre-Revolution theater movement. Post-1959 they were presented with the offer of National Theater and getting a plethora of roles in its productions. Rey and her husband, however, decided to flee to the U.S. in 1961 as part of the “first-wave” of Cuban political exiles, which mostly consisted of upper and middle-class professionals and their families. Although she left her illustrious theater career and possessions behind in Havana, Rey’s niece reports that Rey never regretted their decision to leave Cuba.

In the United States, Rey and Castro settled in New York City to continue being part of the theater world. Like many Cuban exiles, the couple had to start from scratch. Through a connection she made, Rey was given a small role, which expanded to further opportunities. Rey made her debut on Broadway in 1964, when she played the role of Lupa in the chorus of the musical “Bajour,” which starred Chita Rivera at the Shubert Theater. Rey also played a Mexican woman in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1973 and had small roles in two other productions of Tennessee Williams plays, “The Rose Tattoo” in 1995 and as Madrecita in “Camino Real” in 1970 at the Lincoln Center Theatre, New York City; as prisoner in, “Poets from the Inside”, and as Mamita, “The Wonderful Year”, both Public Theatre, New York City; as Fula Lopez, “In the Summer House,” Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City; as Maria in, “Back Bog Beast”, at American Place Theatre; as mother in “Blood Wedding,” INTAR Theatre, New York City; as Ranevsky in “The Cherry Orchard”, in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and as Mrs. Warren in “Mrs. Warren's Profession,” all Westside Repertory Theatre in New York City. She also appeared in “The Engagement Baby” in 1970, as Mrs. Murino in “42 Seconds from Broadway” in 1973 and “The Ritz” in 1975.

Antonia Rey began appearing on screen in film and television roles, although during the time period when Rey was active, many of the parts available to her were “ethnic” supporting roles that followed the tropes of maternal figures, Gypsies, witches, and fortune tellers. She appeared in 30 movies from comedies to psychological thrillers, including as the landlady in “Klute,” a 1971 crime thriller with Jane Fonda, the 1979 musical “Hair,” “Moscow on the Hudson,” the 1978 drama “King of the Gypsies”, “Coogan’s Bluff,” in 1968 was her first movie appearance,” “The Lords of Flatbush,” the comedy “Kiss Me, Guido” in 1997, the thriller “Jacob’s Ladder” in 1990, as Mrs. Stella in one of the “Die Hard” films, the voice of Trixie in the 2005 animated film “The Corpse Bride,” and the voice of “Abuela” on the children’s show “Dora the Explorer.” She won cameos and small roles in sitcoms as well as soap operas (“As The World Turns,” “All My Children”), police procedurals (“Law and Order” and “Third Watch”), the TV-movie pilot for “Kojak,” and “Who’s the Boss Her final appearance was as Assunta, Blue and Isabella Scaramucci's spiritual aunt on the second season of the series “Happy!” for the Syfy Channel, which premiered after her death.The episodes where she appeared were dedicated in her name.

In 2003, Rey received a lifetime achievement award from the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors. (HOLA) Her frequent appearance on television and in movies caused her to be recognized while out and about. She was beloved by those who world with her and fellow actress Gilda Miros referred to her as “Good-hearted Antonia.” Rey died at the age of 92 on February 21, 2019 in New York City.