Gutierrez, along with State Senator Art Hamilton and others “introduced a bill… to found this college” and he believed that “the message was very clear to the [Maricopa District Governing] board, certainly to the Chancellor that we wanted a college built down here.
Alfredo Gutierrez spent his life advocating for educational access, but it took him more than fifty years to complete his own degree. He had served as the Arizona Senate Majority Leader and President of the Maricopa Community Colleges Governing Board - all without a bachelor’s degree. He returned to college at 78 years old and graduated in 2024. He died in 2025.
Born and raised in the mining town of Miami, AZ, Alfredo Gutierrez learned early about the power of education. “My mother came across in 1945. She was pregnant at the time with me. And I was born up, up the hill in a mining town. Schools were segregated. Mexicans went to one school; Indians went to another school and white people to another school.” After graduating from high school and serving in the Army during the Vietnam War, Gutierrez moved to Phoenix to attend Arizona State University, and though he lacked an academic focus, it was at ASU that Gutierrez found his calling in political leadership.
Gutierrez’ leadership of the student strike on behalf of female laundresses at ASU in 1967 is well-documented. So too is his very public dismissal from ASU. “Look. Someone had to pay,” he explained to SMCC students in 2018. “There was an outrage at the legislature,” in the media, and among university leaders. “So they threw me out of school.” Five years later, Gutierrez was elected to the same legislature. In 1974 he became State Senate Majority Leader.
While in the State Senate, Gutierrez advocated for public education in Arizona, particularly in South Phoenix. “The demand for education was very real” in South Phoenix. He described South Phoenix in the 1970s, “You wouldn’t have known there was a river there. There were no bridges over the river. There was one [explicit] bridge over the river. And so every time it rained, nobody could get down here. Nobody could get out of here.” Gutierrez, along with State Senator Art Hamilton and others “introduced a bill… to found this college” and he believed that “the message was very clear to the [Maricopa District Governing] board, certainly to the Chancellor that we wanted a college built down here.”
He remembered of his time in the State Senate, “I spent fourteen years in the leadership of this state. I was one of two or three people who set the direction of the state for well over a decade with Burton Barr and Bruce Babbitt.” That’s how Gutierrez, once he was elected to the District Governing Board in 2014, became its president. “I knew how to get things done.” The irony wasn’t lost on him. He went from being “defined as a leftist socialist,” to the “guy that controlled the state budget” and the guy that managed one of the largest community college districts in the world.
When asked to reflect on his legacy Gutierrez said, “I think legacies are overrated. I mean, look, you do what you do in your life, and that's what it is. I mean, it is it is what it is.” Gutierrez’ legacy, however, is firmly cemented in Arizona history. He is well-known for co-founding Chicanos Por La Causa, for fighting on behalf of migrant and workers’ rights, and for being instrumental in the development of South Mountain Community College.
Gutierrez died on July 28, 2025 of esophageal cancer. He was 79 years old. He finally graduated from Arizona State University in 2024. (He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1999, but joked “you can’t get a job with that.”) He was interviewed in Fall 2018 by students Alfonzo Mendez-Diaz and Diego Lorenzana for the South Phoenix Oral History Project.
Click here to read Gutierrez’s student-written profile or request to view his complete interview: https://southphoenixoralhistory.com/narrators/alfredo-gutierrez/