Lauro Cavazos, first Latino Cabinet member, dies

By MARK PRATT
Associated Press

Lauro F. Cavazos Jr., a Texas ranch foreman’s son who rose to become the first Latino to serve in a presidential Cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Education in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, has died. Texas Tech University, where he served as president, says he died Tuesday at his Massachusetts home. He was 95. No cause of death was given. A Democrat whose entire career up to that point had been spent in academia, Cavazos was appointed education secretary late in Reagan’s second term. Cavazos resigned his cabinet post in December 1990, reportedly under pressure.