Vito de la Cruz
Vito de la Cruz
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Vito de la Cruz is Yaqui and Chicano. He attended Yale and the University of California, Boalt Hall School of Law. After receiving a Juris Doctorate degree in 1985, he worked for California Rural Legal Assistance primarily in the area of employment discrimination, farm labor issues, migrant worker housing, health, and education issues.

From California Rural Legal Assistance, he worked for the Monterrey County Public Defender’s Office and later with the Federal Public Defender in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was one of the original staff attorneys for the Federal Defender’s of Eastern Washington. In 1998, he returned to Nevada when he joined the staff of the Reno branch office of the Federal Public Defender. He is now in private practice in Eastern Washington.

He was a regular faculty member with the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC) and has been a supporting member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). He teaches at the National Judicial College’s Tribal Court program in the areas of federal Indian jurisdiction, Constitutional law, trial practice, and procedure. He was recently added to the faculty of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy in the Tribal Advocacy program.

Vito’s outside interests include hiking, cooking and music. De la Cruz plays guitar, native flute and mandolin. He regularly gives motivational speeches and lectures to Native American and Latino youth in the areas of self-esteem, educational achievement, and diversity. The greatest influences on his life have been his grandmother, auntie, family, and growing up as migrant farm worker. The Reno Gazette-Journal recently named him one of Northern Nevada’s Most Watched Men. De la Cruz published a regular column with the Gazette-Journal and the Spanish-language newspapers, La Voz and Ahora. He was a guest essayist in Borderlines, a publication of the Latino Research Center, the University of Nevada, Reno.

Blog Entries by Vito de la Cruz

The Bill of Rights

1 Comments | Posted December 16, 2011 | 06:55:54 (EST)

I want to talk about the Bill of Rights this holiday season. Why you ask? What in Concha's kitchen does the Bill of Rights have to do with the holiday season when everyone is out and about "malling" each other (or perhaps it's "mauling" each other) over the latest smart...

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Immigration Truths

110 Comments | Posted October 24, 2011 | 01:30:49 (EST)

A pointedly appropriate saying comes to mind as the nation continues to heatedly debate immigration reform and some states launch anti-immigrant laws: the truth won't kill you but it sure is inconvenient. People opposed to immigration reform don't like hearing the truth about immigrants and consequently try to drown...

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I Don't Have To Celebrate Columbus

421 Comments | Posted October 10, 2011 | 08:31:15 (EST)

"In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." So starts the grade school rhyme that condensed Christopher Columbus' first voyage from Europe to the "New World." Columbus was not the first person to discover the Americas. Native Americans had been in the New World for millennia before Columbus...

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Civil Liberties Were Casualties of 9/11

Posted September 13, 2011 | 07:51:27 (EST)

It has been ten years since terrorists armed themselves with jetliners and attacked the United States; ten years since we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I have thought back on that day and listened to the remembrances and tributes, I have felt a profound sense of...

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Hang on Gente, It's Gonna Be a Bumpy Ride

Posted August 18, 2011 | 15:43:54 (EST)

The politics of the season have begun if indeed they ever ended. Back in 2008-2009, I prominently displayed two Obama-Biden stickers on my rear bumper -- one on the left side, the other on the right. Almost immediately while driving to and from work, my kids' college, dinner, I'd...

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The Nevada Republican Party's Smears And Fears

Posted October 25, 2008 | 11:03:45 (EST)

On the lower left-hand corner of the Nevada Republican Party's slick four-page fold-over mailer sits a blurry picture of a mustachioed curly-haired white kid with the name AYERS superimposed on it. From the upper right-hand corner stares a somber Barack Obama, half his face menacingly darkened by a purposefully added...

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The Truth On Economic Politics

Posted September 18, 2008 | 13:15:00 (EST)

Raise your hand if you earn less than $250,000 per year. You are targeted by the McCain-Palin campaign for a lie. The lie - that the Obama-Biden ticket will raise your taxes. The truth is Obama's tax plan will cut taxes for those who earn less than $250,000 per year.

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