Briones, Jesus

Part 1 was recorded on November 18th, 2021 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes: 

b. 1940 

  • Family history in Obregon, Sonora. Leaving home at 12 and traveling to Nogales, Sonora. 

  • Description of Nogales. Selling costume jewelry and becoming a door-to-door salesman of religious paintings. 

  • Immigration to the United States in 1957 and path to Tucson. Other family experiences with U.S.-Mexico immigration. 

  • A brief stint as a cotton picker. Contrast with working in Nogales and being unable to save money from day-to-day labor. Lack of Spanish speakers in commercial settings in the US. The physical work of picking cotton. 

  • Starting a job in home construction. Meeting local friends and hearing negative things about school in the United States. Digging trenches for plumbers at a general contractor. Decision to avoid joining a union because of lack of future advancement. Learning plumbing by observation. An unexpected opportunity to work as a plumbing supervisor. 

  • An aside about hustling for work in Mexico. 

  • Differences in construction materials and styles between the U.S. and Mexico in the 1960s. 


Part 2 was recorded on November 22nd, 2021 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes: 

  • Private well water for subdivisions in the early 1960s. 

  • Proliferation of subcontractors in the 1960s. Changes as plumbers and electricians ceased to work for general contractors. Influence of California on building codes and construction styles. 

  • Leaving a general contractor and taking a job with plumbing subcontractor Leo Rice in the mid-1960s. Union versus non-union advantages and disadvantages. Ethics. Becoming the general supervisor for Leo Rice. Increase in Spanish on job sites. 

  • A survey of home construction in Tucson during the 1960s and 1970s. Building spec houses with fellow plumbers during slow periods of construction. 

  • Aesthetic changes to houses in the 1970s. Suburban sprawl. Redlining and the difficulty in getting a loan for a new home in the barrios. 

  • Becoming a general contractor in 1972 while continuing to work for Leo Rice Plumbing. 

  • Living in Barrio Hollywood during the El Rio Golf Course protests. 

  • Learning technical drafting. New permitting requirements for plumbing system diagrams in the late 1960s. 


Part 3 was recorded on December 1st, 2021 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes: 

  • Barrio Hollywood from the 1960s to 1990s. Home construction, City of Tucson neighborhood redevelopment, sense of community.  

  • Experience building first home in 1972. Building permits and code. 

  • Buying Leo Rice Plumbing in 1978 and selling it in 1988. Operating plumbing and construction businesses simultaneously. Financing homes. 

  • Pitching an apartment project to the Industrial Development Authority in the early 1980s. Obtaining financing through Great American Savings. Over-leveraged buyers, changing tax laws, and the collapse of a housing bubble in the mid-late 1980s. Narrowly avoiding bankruptcy. 


This interview was recorded on May 26th, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona and it covers the following themes: 

  • Recovering from the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Submitting projects for low-income housing tax credits.

  • The challenge of working with tax credits as a small builder. Getting approved to build three low-income projects. The difficulty of breaking even when constructing low-income housing.  

  • Transition from building apartments and entry-level houses in Tucson to building custom homes in Green Valley. Differences between building homes in Tucson, Green Valley, and Sahuarita. 

  • The housing bubble of the 2000s and market collapse of 2008. Company structures, construction loans, devaluing properties. Long-term debt from the 2008 collapse. 

Aengus Anderson