Ricardo Jasso

A cultural scholar, community leader, mentor and advocate, Ricardo Jasso has spent more than five decades identifying and addressing barriers to the prosperity of Mexican Americans in the United States and has helped to improve health and social service approaches among providers throughout Arizona and around the nation.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Jasso experienced structural and everyday racism at an early age. He saw firsthand how long working hours, low wages and poor living conditions took their toll on the Latino community. Jasso's activism began when he joined a student walkout in high school demanding the right to speak Spanish without consequence, and the implementation of bilingual education. He was further inspired by the Chicano movement, Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers' March while in college. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Our Lady of the Lake University before completing a Master of Education degree at Antioch University.

Jasso's master's thesis focused on the development of a 20-question survey, the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans, a first-of-its-kind assessment that allowed researchers to better understand the impact of acculturation on Mexican American populations. His work is considered a cornerstone to the understanding of acculturation processes in nearly all Hispanic/Latino population research and is the most cited acculturation measure ever developed.

After serving in the Army, Jasso returned home to Texas, where he was an active member of the Texas Raza Unida Party and the Texas Farm Workers' movements. Those movements directly led to the creation of statewide, college-level Mexican American studies programs and Chicano cultural centers.

In 2006, Jasso founded Amistades, Inc., a Latino-serving nonprofit committed to addressing race and equity issues in Southern Arizona. The organization provides culturally responsive social services, advocacy for social justice and community empowerment. Since its founding, the organization has raised more than $20 million in grant funding for cultural programming designed to fit the needs of emerging issues for the Latino community in Southern Arizona. The organization collaborates with the University of Arizona, local and regional government, police and sheriff's department offices, county and state departments of health, tribal leaders and grassroots community organizers.  

Amistades has hosted community and holiday events across campus, worked closely with a number of University of Arizona faculty on research, provided mentorship for undergraduate interns training to be the next generation of community activists and collaborated on various studies and initiatives.

Jasso and Amistades are nationally recognized for their work. In 2018, the White House honored the organization as one of its "Bright Spots in Excellence for Hispanic Education" for its holistic perspective in supporting Latino families, and Jasso was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition by Rep. Raul Grijalva.