Late Gov. Raúl Castro's family wins settlement over U of A's plans to sell home

The surviving family members of late Gov. Raúl Castro were awarded a six-figure settlement from the Arizona Board of Regents after the University of Arizona abandoned plans to turn Castro’s former Nogales home into an academic space.

In 2015, the Castro family agreed to convey the family home to the UA so the university could launch a border studies program, named after the former governor, in the house. In February, the university decided to halt the plans and announced its intentions to sell the home.

The Castro family has formally reclaimed the home in addition to receiving the settlement, said their attorney Briana Ortega. A specific dollar figure for the settlement was not made public.

“We recognize that this outcome is not only a victory for the family, but also for our border community,” Ortega said in a statement after the settlement was announced.

The family claimed that if the UA sold the home, which the university listed in February for $300,000, “the Castro Family (would) suffer irreparable injury which are not remediable by compensatory damages.”

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“The Castro Home holds more than monetary value to the Castro Family,” the lawsuit said. “Specifically, the Castro Family enjoyed the Home for two decades and, upon Raúl’s death, wanted the Castro Home to be dedicated to supporting Arizonans and the Santa Cruz County community.”

The home, which is 3,774 square feet and located at 429 W. Crawford St., was purchased by Castro and his wife, Patricia Castro, in 2003. Castro died in 2015 and the UA approached the family about headquartering its emerging border studies initiatives in the house after his death, according to the family’s lawsuit.

The UA planned to have the Raúl H. and Patricia M. Castro Border Studies and Outreach Center serve as a hub for the UA’s various border studies initiatives. Pam Scott, a spokeswoman for the UA, said the university still offers opportunities in Castro’s honor.

“In this agreement, the University of Arizona has returned the Castro home to the family,” she wrote in an email. “While we were not able to realize our collective vision for the former home of Governor Raúl H. Castro, the university is proud to offer the Raúl H. Castro Scholarship and to be the home of the Raúl H. Castro Papers honoring the life and legacy of Arizona’s first Hispanic Governor.”

Castro is best known as the state’s first Mexican American governor, serving from 1975-77, and the former U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Bolivia and El Salvador.