San Jose, Calif. ? Ronald Reagan’s death has unleashed a wave of adoring nostalgia and led to state and federal holidays for his funeral. But among Reagan’s many skeptics, the sentimental treatment he has received in death obscures the controversy he evoked in life.

For many minorities, AIDS activists and others sidelined by his political success, the conservative icon’s passing is as much an occasion to remember how angry he made them as it is to pay their respects.

Along with his gentlemanly demeanor, Reagan’s critics also remember how he cut aid to the poor, was slow to pay attention to the AIDS epidemic and turned Central America into a pawn of the Cold War.

“Even though he was a nice guy, I feel that Reagan, for most minorities, for education and for the environment, was terrible,” said Sidney Glass, 57, a criminal attorney from Oakland, Calif. “In this week of celebration, one shouldn’t forget that his legacy is mixed.”

Others were more blunt.

“Did God die or something?” asked Denise Misiph, who was selling her jewelry near the San Francisco Ferry Building. She said the state and federal holidays were “way out of line, especially for someone who didn’t care much for people with social needs.”

‘The mess at Berkeley’

Reagan has been the bane of liberals from the start. He began his career in elective office with a campaign for California governor in which he promised to “clean up the mess at Berkeley,” a reference to the burgeoning Free Speech Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests on campus.

“He didn’t start out as governor with a friendly or compromising attitude at all,” said Ray Colvig, 73, the campus’s chief public-affairs officer in the 1960s. “He was very tough in his rhetoric. He proceeded to try to cut the university’s budget any way he could, and at one point suggested we should sell off the rare books in the library.”

Colvig, who retired in 1991, said Reagan played a critical role in the board of regents’ decision to fire Chancellor Clark Kerr, despite his public profession that he knew nothing about it. Kerr lost his job three weeks after Reagan took office.

Reagan’s most infamous moment with Berkeley was in May 1969, when students and activists were trying to transform a plot of vacant University-owned land into a “People’s Park.” Their rally devolved into a riot, and Reagan sent in 2,200 National Guard soldiers.

Against the unions

As governor, Reagan also battled regularly with the United Farm Workers, which began organizing immigrant farmworkers throughout the San Joaquin Valley in 1965.

“Reagan was very much opposed to collective bargaining,” said Dolores Huerta, 74, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez. Huerta said Reagan never met with the farmworkers face to face and once told an interviewer that the union’s five-year boycott on grapes was immoral.

“He actually was eating grapes during the grape boycott,” she said.

Huerta recalls that for years unemployment insurance for farmworkers would pass the Legislature, only to be vetoed by Reagan. “Reagan did very harsh things for poor people.”

Silence on AIDS

In the early years of his presidency, the AIDS epidemic began. But some leading AIDS researchers at the time said the Reagan administration took several years to grasp the urgency of how fast the disease was spreading.

“His silence was deafening,” said Dr. Mervyn F. Silverman, who was director of the San Francisco Department of Health when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared AIDS an epidemic in 1981.

Reagan disappointed AIDS researchers at a meeting Silverman played host to in 1987 by calling for mandatory testing of ill gay men, a move Silverman and others called discriminatory.

“He is portrayed as a compassionate and caring individual, a leader who brought people out of the doldrums, but his silence on AIDS was tragic,” Silverman said.

Iran-Contra scandal

Later in his presidency, Reagan was engulfed by the Iran-Contra scandal, which resulted in a prolonged congressional inquiry and caused his popularity to plummet.

Reagan finally apologized for secretly approving the sale of weapons to Iran, in the hopes of winning the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. But he denied knowledge of the other half of the scandal, a scheme run by Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, to divert profits from the arms sales to the Contra rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.

At the time, the United States was involved in civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. Critics say the Reagan administration funded “death squads” that committed human rights abuses.