Aztlán Reads

For the last couple of weeks, I have been revisiting pieces that I’d written in the past. They express concerns that formed my own consciousness and they are the bulk of the over 200 articles that will compose my new book: “My Journey Out of Purgatory.”

I had intended to rewrite the following selection, “The Making of the Political Pocho,” but never got around to it.

The term pocho is well known among Chicanos or Mexican Americans. It has been used for generations by Mexicans to describe Mexicans living in the United States.

Pocho can be a pejorative term that varies according to who is using it. It differs from a Mexican who has forgotten his culture, to one that speaks Spanish less fluently than a native Mexican.

Pocho literally means a fruit that has become rotten or discolored or has never ripened. I use the term in the latter sense.

Nationality has very little meaning for me. It is a construct and loyalty greatly depends on the ability of the state to bring about justice, which is iffy both here and in Mexico. Many of those using the term represent classes that brought about an uneven political and social landscape that forced the uprooting of millions of Mexicans.

Our grasp of a language depends on our vocabulary, which is learned; it is acquired through exposure to written culture. Vocabulary is enriched through reading and intellectual discourse.

The gist of the piece is that Chicanas/os and Latinos remain political pochos because once they are out of college most do not remain politically active. Their principle concern is how to make a living and support a family.

They are influenced by the vocabulary around them. They use words such as Hispanic that are gauche among current activists. Graduates of 70s are more moderate on social issues.

The piece itself was not only directed at the new Chicana/o middle-class but at the politicos who they spawned. It is a vicious circle: the masses of poor, the middle-class and the Latino politicos.

The piece criticizes Chicano politicians for not taking stands on the horrific police brutality taking place at the Ramparts Division. The atrocities involved were mostly against Salvadorans. I essentially accused the politicos of paying more attention to Mexican American voters, forgetting that it was the large numbers of Latinos, which included immigrants and non-voters that constructed their districts.

I faulted the Latino middle-class for not pressuring Latino politicos to defend the barrios. Was it a lack of political consciousness? A lack of a political vocabulary? What happened to the Sixties?

Rodolfo F. Acuña, “The Making of the Political Pocho,” June 2000

A byproduct of affirmative action programs such as Educational Opportunities Program and the creation of Chicano studies in the 1960s was the dramatic expansion of a Chicano middle-class.

EOP grew the base of Mexican American students in colleges throughout the United States. California State University at Northridge had only about 100 Mexican American students in 1969. This number has jumped to about 9,000 Latino students by the 1990s.

Theoretically, the new Chicano Studies programs were supposed to politicize students and help bond them to the community. Indeed, thousands of Chicano students graduated from such programs in the past 30 years, dramatically widening the Chicano/Latino middle class in the Los Angeles area. While at the university, many of the graduates were student activists, participating in Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanos de Aztlan (MECHA).

We hoped at the time that exposure to Chicano Studies would politically educate professionals who would work in the community, offering leadership and help nurture a political culture. Unfortunately, it is not that simple, human nature does not work that way.

As in the case of students throughout the world, most former student activists settled back, formed families, and reaped the harvest of the entitlements of being middle-class. It cannot, however, be concluded that the Chicano/Latino middle-class does not care about educational and social issues affecting the barrio. It is just that they become less aware of injustices because they are often separated from the barrio spatially.

The opportunity for political discourse diminishes over time. Chicano professionals become increasingly dependent on what they read in the papers or hear on the news about politics. A lack of exposure to ideas outside the popular paradigm as well as social issues thwart their political development, and, consequently, they remain what I like to call “political pochos.”

I use the analogy of a pocho because when many of us entered the public schools we spoke fluent Spanish.  It was in fact often our only language.

Unable to learn advanced forms of Spanish in school, our development in the language stalled at a primary school level and never advanced enough to enable us to read Spanish-language literature. For most of us, English became our primary language. Only in high school were we allowed to take Spanish classes, where we parroted, “¿HOLA PACO, QUE TAL? ¿COMO ESTAS?

Many former Chicano activists, due to a lack of political maintenance, have become political pochos. They learned the basics of Chicano studies, its language, but have not advanced beyond a grasp of basic cultural forms. They identify with Chicano culture but not the more complex political dimensions of culture.

Over time, they begin to think about the barrio as a justification for their entitlements. Notions such as the transformation of the barrio become foreign to their political vocabulary.

This lack of a political development was painfully evident during the Ramparts Police scandal in Los Angeles, which in many ways represented the most blatant violation of civil rights in the City of the Angel’s history. Yet, the silence of Chicano/Latino elected officials and our community’s middle-class leaders was deafening. It was as if we had no political leaders.

Perhaps it is not fair to draw comparisons, but we can recall the reactions of African American politicos and leaders during the Rodney King upheaval; of New York Puerto Rican elected officials over the situation on Vieques, including the arrests of Puerto Rican Members of Congress involved in acts of civil disobedience.

Is it too much to expect the same level of commitment from Chicano elected officials? After all they are the beneficiaries of the dramatic growth of not only a Mexican but Central American population.

Is it too much to expect some sense of outrage from the Chicano middle class? After all they are the recipient of the sacrifices and the common historical memories of the 1960s. It seems as if they do not understand the significance of civil rights or how it protects them.

Indeed, the protection of civil rights has been a centerpiece of the struggle of Jewish Americans, African Americans and Mexican American organizations, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum. Why then the silence? And, what is the political price?

To put it more succinctly, what is the duty of the Chicano middle class to the barrios in matters concerning civil rights? Have we grown too complacent? Have we come to believe that equality and justice can be gotten solely through the election of Mexican American elected officials?

Or, even more cynically: Is our contribution to the barrio measured by our individual success? Don’t we have a duty to others once we make it?

The lack of response by the Chicano middle-class has consequences. It delivers the message to the public at large and to all elected officials that we simply don’t care.

Much the same criticism can be leveled at the Latina/o middle-class today. Even the graduates that made sacrifices to get Latinos into the universities and to form Chicana/o Studies are not reaching back to assist the present generation of Mexican American and Latino students.

For as rough as previous generations had it, our education was relatively inexpensive. I fear that some of us are becoming like the baby boomers that want their senior citizen discounts but fail to give back. Getting money for scholarships is like extracting teeth.

Police brutality has graduated to higher levels. I expected more former Chicanas/os to be outraged by the shameful violations of civil rights in Arizona. Calling a spade a spade, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce and Tom Horne are Nazis by another name. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, the Koch brothers and their gaggle of friends are subversives. They have an agenda to subvert the U.S. Constitution – it is called nullification.

Nullification is a constitutional theory that gives a state the right to declare null and void any law passed by the United States Congress – it led to the Civil War.

Today the rights of Mexican Americans and immigrants are being blatantly violated by state and local officials in Arizona. Where are the voices of middle-class Latinos? Where is the fight back?

Just last week they fired Sean Arce, the coordinator of the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program. They did not renew the contracts of the majority of the teachers in the program. To make things worse Attorney General Horne is raising money from private donors to fund a civil suit against Arce and Jose Gonzalez. Horne has got a former white MAS employee to sue them and charge defamation.

Imagine what would happen to whistleblowers in California, if the state raised private funds to bring lawsuits against whistleblowers.  The purpose of suing the whistleblower is to harass and intimidate.

Imagine the chilling effect that it would have on a person who complained about sexual harassment if the employer could then raise funds to file a civil lawsuit for the express of bankrupting the whistleblower.

When I first entered into teaching, the principal told us at our opening faculty meeting, “If a Jewish or white parent complains, do something right away. If a “negro” parent complains, you can take your time. If a Mexican parent complains, don’t worry.”

Well, we should be worried.

It ain’t going to get any better

– by Rodolfo F. Acuña

Aside from the injustices in Arizona, i.e., the scraping of a highly successful education program, the evident war against Mexicans, and the nullification of the U.S Constitution, I was seduced to the struggle by David A. Morales’ “Three Sonoran” blogs in the Tucson Citizen.

His crusade against the white business cabal that runs the City of Tucson resembled the epic battle of David and Goliath, making enemies of those in power. It was this fight that is the real reason that he was fired from the Citizen, forcing him to begin his own site. (www.threesonorans.com ).

Reading about the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC) was Déjà vu.

A 19th Century U.S and Mexico historian I got hooked on the issue of urban renewal (AKA people removal). I got interested in the subject in the late 1970s when I began to microfilming articles on Mexican Americans in the Eastside Sun (Boyle Heights). I was attracted to the Sun because I wanted to piece together the relations between the progressive Mexican and Jewish communities.

Jewish Americans once the dominate group in the Heights did not become a minority there until the 1950s. Mexicans were greatly influenced by left leaning Jews and they joined organizations such as Henry Wallace’s American Independent Party (1948).

Members of both groups graduated from Roosevelt High School where they formed friendships. Two prominent Roosevelt alumni are Judge Harry Pregerson who serves the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and former Ambassador to Mexico Dr. Julian Nava.

The Jewish community left many landmarks. Hollenbeck Park was a replica of German Tiergartens – built by German Jews. Many former synagogues such as la Casa Del Mexicano have become public spaces.

While microfilming the Sun’s articles, I had long conversations with its publisher, Joe Kovner, who although he had moved to the Fairfax area had strong ties to Boyle Heights. Kovner led an incessant war to preserve Boyle Heights. He did not want it to meet the same fate as Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine where the Committee of 25, the Los Angeles Times and their gaggle of elected officials joined to “develop” these areas for their own profit.  Kovner called it a war on the poor.

The articles opened up a new world for me; they inspired me to microfilm articles in the Belvedere Citizen that serviced the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles. I then made research notes on articles on 5 x 8 cards. They were included as a timeline in the second half of a manuscript. I synthesized the Citizen and Sun articles year by year beginning in 1934 and ending in 1975.

UCLA published Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975, 560pp, in 1984. It was one of my least popular books; nevertheless heavily used by urban planners and graduate students studying the city.

After this point, my research turned to urban spaces. I found that Los Angeles shared a history of real estate foreclosures and the bulldozing of entire communities. So-called elites under the leadership of the Los Angeles Times and other media sold the notion that they were “developing” the city much the same as Wall Street banks and the corporate elite today claim that they are “job creators.”

I found similar patterns in Tucson, El Paso and Chicago. In L.A. they were led by the Committee of 25 that even today operate in a different form. Real Estate lawyers led by ex-mayor Richard Riordan have made fortunes in buying public real estate. Riordan along with developer Eli Broad control local politicos from the mayor to board members of the Los Angeles Unified Schools.

Riordan is the king of privatizers. As mayor he wanted to privatize the City’s main library. Today he is attempting to privatize the schools. In a heated exchange I asked him whether he wanted to make Olvera Street another MacDonald’s; he answered yes just so it went to the highest bidders.  Broad, a billionaire is his closest ally.

In Chicago the Daly Machine was the developers’ and bankers’ dream. In the windy city what was not being renewed was being gentrified. If it was not accomplished under the cover of the law, entire housing projects were burned out – all in the name of progress.

In the 1980s and 90s I wrote for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Los Angeles Times. In the aftermath of Community Under Siege, I naturally wrote many articles about the notion of community and issues related to urban space, i.e., immigrants, the cultural pimping of Olvera Street and museums, racism and sexism on the campuses, the building of a prison in East Los Angeles, the building of a gas pipeline under Boyle Heights – events showing a profound disrespect for Latinos.

The profits in development of urban space and the schools are humungous: service contracts, building of public utilities lines, roads, construction – all of which are approved by governing boards and commissions.

In the 90s at Riordan’s behest Superintendent of Schools Ruben Zacarias was removed. Latino elected officials in their majority supported Zacarias. However, there were powerful Latinos who defected.

On April 2, 1990 in an op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times titled “History Is People,” I wrote:

News that a small group of preservationists seeks to transform Olvera Street from a Mexican marketplace into a multi-ethnic museum should outrage Latinos. After all, the plaza area has been inhabited by Mexicans since 1781, when a dozen or so peasants, mostly from the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora, founded the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Spending time on Olvera Street is thus a trip through tradition.

From 1900-1930, bulldozers virtually cleared the civic center of all else that was Mexican, mostly family homes. Then, Christine Sterling and members of the city’s social and economic elite moved, in the late ’20s, to save and preserve Olvera as a symbol of Los Angeles’ Mexican heritage. The street was little more than an alley. Like the Avila adobe, which had been condemned, its days were numbered.

At first, Olvera was part of California’s “Fantasy Heritage”-a tourist trap. But over the years, its people reintegrated it with the plaza and Our Lady Queen of the Angels, the city’s oldest church. Mexicans and other Latinos began returning to Los Angeles’ Bethlehem. Today, Olvera Street is where many of us go to celebrate our holidays or to enjoy the oldest remnant of the Mexican heritage in the center of the city.

Certainly, a tradition worth preserving, right?

Jeane Poole, curator of El Pueblo Historic Park, has embraced Olvera Street’s dilapidated buildings-mostly stucco and red brick-rather than its traditions and people. It’s no secret that she believes the Mexican presence on Olvera Street so overwhelming that the contributions of the Chinese, the Italians and other neighborhood ethnic groups to the city’s development have been eclipsed. To dilute the Mexican presence, she has advocated that restoration of Olvera Street spotlight the architecture of its buildings. Toward this end, she has enlisted the support of architectural historians.

For 12 years, Poole and her gaggle of Anglo historians have been plotting to impose their Mexican-less vision of Olvera Street. Their opportunity for success came when administration of El Pueblo Park passed from state to the city Recreation and Parks Commission. Eager to renovate, the commissioners put together a proposal. Since they and the Recreation and Parks Dept. lack the expertise to make historical recommendations, Peter Snell, an architectural historian, was paid to make some. Snell is a close friend of Poole and has acted as a consultant for El Pueblo Park.

The commission’s proposal calls for Olvera Street to be renovated and its history interpreted in conformity with the architecture of the “Prime Historic Period” of 1920-1932. Why 1920-1932? Why not 1880-1910? For one thing, the latter would involve tearing down what constitutes today’s Chinatown to make way for reconstruction of Sonora Town.

In any case, historians will tell you that “Prime Historic Periods” are convenient covers for diluting the influence of unwanted groups. In the case of Olvera Street: No Mexicans Wanted.

What the commissioners and the building-oriented historians are forgetting is that, like it or not, if it had not been for the Mexican marketplace, there would be no preservation debate, since there would be no buildings to preserve. Before Mexican merchants moved in, many of Poole’s “Prime Historic” buildings were slated for demolition-the preferred people-remover technique in the ’30s. But when the alley became a thriving marketplace, those dilapidated stucco and red-brick buildings that Poole now waxes poetic over were saved.

History is made by people, not by buildings. The Latino hegemony in the plaza area is a reminder that Mexicans, here long before the Gringo, are not aliens. Put a plaque on those buildings to indicate that they are proud examples of the Poole’s “Prime Historic Period.” As for Olvera Street, the plaza area and its people, they are too alive to be turned into a musty museum built by Poole and Associates.

Without getting into too much detail, when I decided to support the effort to preserve Tucson’s Mexican American history, I encountered the same history of pillage as in LA. Where had the people gone that once lived in the adobes? Where were the communities?

I had reviewed University of Arizona Professor Lydia R, Otero’s book proposal “La Calle: Spatial Conflicts and Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” for the UA Press. It was a major contribution to the field of study.

It was, however, the Three Sonorans that took that history to the level of struggle. Morales’ passion reminded me of Joe Kovner as well as Ernesto Galarza’s applied scholarship.  Galarza often spoke of his role in preserving Alviso in San Jose, California. For Galarza, Alviso represented the struggle of the Mexican American urban poor to preserve community, which to him meant the preservation of a historical memory which gave residents the knowledge to check the monopolistic tendencies of the urban elites.  Galarza said that without a historical memory Mexicans were vulnerable to the robber barons, developers who manipulated the historical narrative.

Observing and knowing the historical processes, I applied these experiences to Tucson.  The parallels are obvious. They answered the question as to why SALC opposes Mexican American Studies.  They explain the extreme measures that it is taking to wipe out the Mexcan’s historical memory.

There is a lot of money involved; the stakes are high. It goes beyond real estate. It is racial in nature because it uses race to justify its actions. The cabal exploits the fact that Mexicans are the majority of the school population and that they are becoming the majority of Tucson residents to raise fears.

This tactic depends on eliminating Sean Arce, the MAS teachers and Morales. They remember the words of Lalo Guerrero’s “Barrio Viejo:”

Viejo barrio, old neighborhood,
There’s only leveled spaces
where once there were houses,
where once people lived.
There are only ruins
of the happy homes
of the joyous families,
of these folks that I loved…

As Galarza once said, a people constantly on the move do not form communities. That is why historical memory is so important to preserving space. Barrios should not be for sale and when they are developed it should be for the benefit of the community and not elites such as the Committee of 25 or the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.

– by Rodolfo F. Acuña

My dream was to live in Tucson. In the early 1970s I even applied for a job at the University of Arizona, but the interview invitation was withdrawn after I participated in a protest there the weekend before my interview. I woke up.

The saying, “Be Careful What You Wish for ’cause It Might Come True,” could have not have been more prophetic.

I did much of the research for my dissertation in Tucson. The pueblo’s charm was seductive and eclipsed its flaws: Whites and Mexicans rode separate bus lines and housing patterns created two Tucsons. Yet, change was possible and white and brown progressives coalesced on many issues.

In the late 1960s there were not many Mexicans at the U of A. Most professors there seemed to believe that Arizona history began in 1853 when US minister James Gadsden told Mexico, sell us southern Arizona for $10 million or we’ll take it.

Western history was Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral. A well-known U of A history professor taught his classes with six shooters holstered at his side, wore cowboy boots and had a swagger to his walk and talk.

Aside from exceptional anthropologists such as the great Edward Spicer, the U of A reminded me of what Tombstone would have looked like circa the 1880s.

Things over the years went from bad to worse and by the 1980s vigilantes on the border resembled the unshaven characters in the movie “Deliverance” that abused Bert Reynolds’ friends.

Over the years there have been changes – somewhat. An example is the outlandish statements Tucson Unified School District Board Member Michael Hicks made on the Daily Show. Hicks is important; he sets policy for the school district.  His embarrassing statements that can be heard on the internet (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-2-2012/tucson-s-mexican-american-studies-ban) are not an aberration. They are a repetition of what Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and State Superintendent of School John Huppenthal often say.

From reading comments addressed to the Hicks interview, it seems that his remarks did not offend most Tucson viewers. They only objected that Jon Stewart had made them public. I guess they prefer the business approach of TSUD Superintendent John Pedicone and his cabal at the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.

This week Pedicone’s business style showed itself as he mimicked the baptism scene in the “Godfather.”  In a matter of hours, the SALC mob wiped out its enemies just like Michael Corleone settled family business.

The first victim was Tucson Citizen blogger David Morales, AKA “The Three Sonorans.” David is a doctoral candidate in Applied Mathematics at the UA who works in the field of anthropological genetics.

Mark Evans, the administrator of the Citizen’s bloggers, said he shut down the blog because of a “reckless disregard for the truth.”  (Evidently Evans does not read the Citizen or for that matter Arizona newspapers).

Evans explained that “This decision wasn’t taken lightly. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks after (Morales) took out recall petitions on (TUSD Governing Board member Michael) Hicks.” This is the same Hicks of Daily Show fame that has made a career of bashing Mexicans. Incidentally, he is reputedly a member of the Tea Party.

David’s departure is a tremendous loss. He stands almost alone in opposition to SALC mob. True that he has ticked off many politicians, Mexican Americans included. However, this is the nature of free speech, a free press and democracy.

Aside from my academic work, I was a columnist for the now defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the Los Angeles Times and La Opinión. I know that people in high places get perturbed — that comes with the territory. In conversations with professional journalists, I have been told that the only time you have to worry is when the advertisers get upset.

In Tucson, it is SALC who is the major advertiser in the City, controlling local institutions such as the city and county governments, the colleges and university, and yes, the TUSD, which Pedicone, a former vice-president of SALC, heads.

David upset them with his courageous defense of the TUSD Mexican American Studies Program and the Mexican community. For him, Barrio Viejo is a symbol of what is being done to the Mexican’s presence in Tucson.

The next target was the lynchpin of MAS, Sean Arce, its coordinator who has fought courageously against the censorship of books used in the program and against its dismantling.  Sean committed the sin of whistle blowing and exposing the chicanery of the system and those who run it.  He also spearheads a federal case challenging HB 2281 and is calling attention to the district’s avoidance and defiance of federal court orders.

Sean is a recognized national scholar whose program has resulted in keeping students of all colors in school. His pedagogy works. For this he has been honored by the Howard Zinn Project and supported by thousands of people nationwide.

Christine Sleeter, President of the National Association for Multicultural Education, calls Arce a “steadfast pillar of an outstanding program that was unlike what he had access to as a student.” She and other educators attest to the program’s success.

If and when the federal suit is successful Arce’s leadership will be needed to rebuild the program which is what Pedicone and company fear. To make sure that the program is not resurrected my inside sources tell me that Pedicone has put six other MAS teachers on an elimination list.

In order to mute the opposition, Pedicone is frantically trying to buy out the Fredo Corleones in the community and in the school district.

Fredos are easy to come by. People have their motives for compromising: they get tired of struggle; they rationalize that they can do it within the system; money and power seduce them.  There are very few people like David and Sean who don’t have a price.

I have been told countless times, “I have to think of my family.”  I feel like telling them, “I also have a family, cabrón.” But over the years I have learned that this does no good. Changes come about because of the sacrifices of a few. Still, I feel like grabbing their faces and screaming, “You broke my heart, Fredo.”

To sum up, I am fortunate that my dream did not come true.  I live in a state where we have unions and where academic freedom for the time being exists. Sean has been a teacher for over a decade and a half and he has to have his contract renewed annually. It is a state where academic freedom is qualified; where the Constitution is being nullified.

When I taught in the Los Angeles Unified Schools, I openly opposed the Vietnam War and was critical of the system’s race policies.  Fortunately, I was never threatened with dismissal, I belonged to a union.

In my forty-two years at California State University Northridge, I clashed violently with administrators, criticized them in the press, and appeared on television denouncing them. But, the late President James Cleary always defended my academic freedom and responded to vicious red-baiting.

The co-editor of “Robert’s Rules of Order” Cleary respected the traditions of the academy. He respected the institution. He did not bend to the CSU Chancellor or the lynch mob that wanted to fire me.

As mentioned, Hicks is not an aberration in Arizona.  He mirrors those in power who have media consultants that filter their words. They are the biggest threat to traditions of free speech that made this country different.

– by Rodolfo F. Acuña

It has always been difficult to convince Anglo-Americans that they should know more about Latinos.  It did not seem to matter to Anglos that their ignorance spawned stereotypes that damaged Mexican American children.

Even after World War II and the Korean Wars when Mexican American proportionately received more Medal of Honors than any other group, just convincing Anglos that Mexican Americans were entitled to veterans benefits was difficult. This rejection forced Mexican Americans to form the American GI Forum and other organizations to demand equal rights.

I remember that as late as the 1970s when Mexican Americans students began to enter graduate schools, counselors would refer them to the foreign student office.

Mexican Americans had to sue and convince judges that they were an identifiable minority who had been historical discriminated against and consequently entitled to equal protection. This right was not clarified until Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District (1970).

It was a frustrating experience for those struggling for fairness and equality. We tried to explain the consequences of benign neglect of a group. Mexican Americans were disadvantaged because of poverty, unequal schools, racism, and a society that did not care – not because of their genes.

The problem was exacerbated during the War on Poverty in the 1960s when many some whites tried to play blacks against browns, trying to frame the Civil Rights Movement in Black-White terms.  When this did not work, they brought up arguments such as “If we give it to Mexicans, how about Asians and Native Americans?”

The majority society could not overcome its tunnel vision. They could not get it that it was not solely a matter of color. It was about human rights; it was justice rather than “just us.”

Liberals could not understand that the best way to insure fairness and correct problems was to know about people.  Not all Mexicans played a guitar and not all blacks tap danced. Not all Mexicans craved jalapeños and not all blacks liked watermelon.

Mexican American (AKA Chicano Studies) came about because of the failure of the educational establishment to deal with systemic problems such as high school drop outs. Chicana/o Studies proposed improving the education of Mexican Americans (who by 1970 were 22 percent of the LA Schools) by increasing knowledge about them.

It was not just about Mexican Americans knowing about themselves but about others knowing about them.  Very really in 1969 many white people could drive to and from work without seeing a Mexican American.  The only white people Mexicans saw in the barrios were teachers, cops and some merchants.

In the San Fernando Valley, neighborhoods were neatly separated. It was the land of the Valley girl and San Fernando/Pacoima was like foreign colony – a gated community within a gated community.

When the upheaval began at San Fernando Valley State in 1968, Mexican Americans were fortunate that there were enough faculty members on campus who knew what a black American was and knew enough history to realize that blacks were oppressed.

At SFVSC and on other campuses there was not overwhelming support for outreach to Mexican American high school students. This lack of support should not be confused with the black-white syndrome –seeing every issue in terms of black and white. It was more a matter of Mexicans being invisible – an issue that I addressed more fully in my book Anything But Mexican (Verso 1996).

When I arrived at Valley State in the spring of 1969 to set up a Mexican American Studies Department there was resistance. Some faculty members could understand that African Americans had a corpus of knowledge and a history of oppression. However, they did not have the same awareness about Mexicans in the United States. I would venture to say that most did not even have a Cliff Note level background on the Mexican American War, remembering only the movie versions of the Alamo.

I soon found that you could not equate their ignorance to ideology. Many were good liberals –against the Vietnam War and in support of civil rights for blacks. These people were color blind to the extreme. They failed to see a lack of equality in having an institution with 18,000 students with only fifty students Mexican Americas. They had a harder time with demands for a Mexican American Studies program.

While blacks were begrudgingly acknowledged as Americans, it was up to Mexicans to earn this right. It was not a matter of citizenship. At the time, most Mexican Americans were born in this country, and many of their fathers were veterans.

The ignorance was systemic. For example, when I was doing my teacher training at Los Angeles State College very few of my education professors were from the southwest; fewer had taught in Mexican American schools; but they were there to teach us how to teach Mexican students.

When I expressed my desire to go into higher education, I was advised to go to the East Coast because California universities were reluctant to hire PhDs from local universities. They wanted to avoid intellectual incest which is when where too many people in a group all think alike. They rationalized that intellectual incest would “exclude legitimate diverse viewpoints.”

Outside of academe, this principle has fallen apart with the growing popularity of fads such as home-schooling where it is taken to a ridiculous end.
Cal State Northridge has the largest Chicana/o Studies Department in the nation, offering 166 sections per semester, which is larger than some small colleges. Over 11,000 students are Latino; however, over 75 percent of the academic departments do not have a single person of Mexican descent. Why?

It is not because of color blindness but an adherence to it. Most conservative and liberal professors want to select people that look like them. They tend to repeat the ideas of their professors.

While I believe that the notion of intellectual incest in the first instance was wrong, it goes on all the time in life.

Take the Supreme Court.  Most justices in this and the past century have come from three law schools, Harvard, Yale and Columbia. This term is no exception. Most of these justices are from upper middle-class families and worked for large firms representing corporate interests. Their friends are from the corporate world and some even receive honorariums to speak before the one percent. Is it being divisive to point this out as an example of intellectual incest?

Bill Clinton nominated my friend and former student Samuel Paz to the U.S. District Court. Sam did even make it out of committee. Many Republican and Democratic senators said he could not be fair and objective. Sam had been president of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties chapter and he did not practice the right kind of law, representing the poor against police brutality. Sam also did not go to the right law school – the University of Southern California.

Can we accept the logic that Clarence Thomas and his gaggle can be fair?

This brings me back to Tucson, which as you all know has been on my mind. Right now the issues are being played out in the courts where the state courts punctuated by intellectual light weights are beholding to politicians beholding to the same special interests as those influencing the Supreme Court.

Red flags went up when United States District Judge, David C. Bury, held “This Court finds that discontinuance of the MASD courses during the remainder of the USP’s life expectancy will not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by intentionally segregating or discriminating against student’s based on race or ethnic group.” The issue with many of us was the enforcement of the law, which Arizona has avoided with impunity since Brown v. The Board of Education.

Bury acted on the recommendation of Special Master Willis Hawley who on paper has a good record in supporting progressive education. But most of his experience is with African Americans in Maryland and he has had little exposure to Latinos and even less with Arizona politics.  The decision alarmed many of us since we have seen the decimation of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program and the retaliation against teachers through retaliatory, disparate, and discriminatory practices.

At this very moment the Tucson Unified School District is refusing to renew the contract of Sean Arce, the coordinator of its highly successful Mexican American Studies program – his crime, he defended the community.

Thus far, Hawley has chosen to consult with TUSD leadership rather than Mexican American educators who know the needs of the Mexican American students. At this point, it does not appear that Hawley or Judge Bury are considering fifty years of non-compliance as well as the manipulation of the appointment of school board members. Intellectual incest has a way of distorting reality.

It is a scary process not only for Mexican Americans but society in general. I don’t want to be a pessimist but consider,  “Would you want to be judged or taught by someone home schooled by Rick Santorum?”

– by Rodolfo F. Acuña