Biography
Mario Cantú was a San Antonio restaurateur and Chicano-movement activist who became, by his account, the first U.S. citizen convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants. Radicalized during a 1962 drug imprisonment, he turned his family's West Side restaurant into a hub of Chicano organizing and founded "Tu Casa," a group that helped Mexican immigrants obtain legal status, along with a committee against police brutality. His immigrant-aid work brought a federal prosecution for harboring undocumented workers; despite a Mario Cantú Defense Committee that drew prominent Chicano, political, and religious support, he was convicted and sentenced to five years' probation. In 1978, summoned to explain trips to Mexico the government deemed probation violations, Cantú chose self-exile instead — traveling to Paris for a year-long campaign denouncing U.S. human-rights abuses against Chicanos and Mexicans.
