Militants Fight to Retain Spanish as Their Language
January 14, 1969

EL PASO—The Spanish language, spoken in the Southwest long before Plymouth Bay and Jamestown were settled, is under fire in some quarters as being detrimental to Americanism.

The result is that militant Mexican-Americans, who prefer to call themselves Chicanos, are fighting back with a rising chauvinism which had begun to blur after years of conditioning by U.S. society.

Throughout the Southwest, and especially along the Mexican border, the old controversy of whether Mexican-American students should speak Spanish in school and on the playground is stirring racial sensitivities.

In the lower Rio Grande Valley, more than half of 150 high school students demonstrating against a rule that prohibited the use of Spanish on the playground were recently arrested.

Students Threaten Walkout

In El Paso, students threatened a massive walkout at Bowie High School, composed of about 95% Mexican-Americans, over a rule against students speaking Spanish. The rule was enforced with detention for any violations.

In both cases the defenders won the day—the lower Rio Grande Valley students were exonerated and the contested rule at Bowie was rescinded. Nevertheless, the issue, long an explosive one in the Southwest, is again out in the open with its complicated implications.

Shortly after the Rio Grande Valley and the El Paso incidents, Mexican-American high school students at Uvalde —the Texas hometown of the late Vice President John N. Garner^[*] —staged a "Chicano happening."

* John Nance Garner served as vice president of the United States between 1933 and 1936 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Attending the year-end school dance, which is the semester's big affair, Mexican-American students showed up in Mexican ponchos, while the rest of the students came dressed in conventional dark suits and long dresses. The Mexican-Americans then segregated themselves from the rest of the crowd and started making tacos with tortillas, chili and meat which the girls had brought in containers.

It caused a stir, not only among Anglo students, parents and teachers, but also among Mexican-American parents who couldn't understand why their children were "disgracing" themselves after they (the parents) had worked so hard to give them clothes like the ones the other students wore.

Puzzled by Youth

Mike Gonzales, an attorney and controversial Mexican-American leader in Del Rio, said: "Anglos and older Mexican-Americans just don't seem to know what is happening. Mexican-American kids are in the throes of self-identification."

Use of the Spanish language, say other leaders, is one thing that Mexican-Americans have over other students and they tend to exploit it.

The controversy centers on two arguments:

Mexican-American students should concentrate on English because speaking Spanish too much hurts their proficiency in the "national language," English. Besides, said a school psychologist, children growing up in a bicultural environment are more prone than others to neurosis and mental disorders.

Mexicans are indigenous to the Southwest, and so the Spanish language is part of their culture which should not be tampered with. Having colonized the Southwest, Spanish-speaking people refuse to abandon their traditions because of the advent of Anglo-American culture.

The controversy is not one of whether Spanish, or any other foreign language, should be taught in school. All educators agree that a person is better off speaking two or more languages. But some school officials object to Mexican-American students speaking Spanish in school and on the playground not only on the basis of it being detrimental to their English but because it irks other students who don't speak Spanish.

In south Texas, a teacher, commenting on the controversial issue, wrote a pamphlet which reads in part:

"They are good people. Their only handicap is the bag full of superstitions and silly notions they inherited from Mexico. When they get rid

of these superstitions, they will be good Americans. Their schools help more than anything else."

Change Foreseen

"In time, the Latin will think and act like Americans. A lot depends on whether we can get them to switch from Spanish to English. When they speak English at home like the rest of us, they will be part of the American way of life. I just don't understand why they are so insistent about using Spanish. They should realize that it's not the American tongue."

This approach infuriates the growing number of militant Mexican-American leaders, many of whom now insist that meetings held to discuss the problems of this ethnic group should be conducted in Spanish.

Some education experts say that what is needed in the Southwest is for non-Mexican-Americans to become "Mexicanized"—not the other way around. Asked how the Mexican-American can find his way into U.S. society, Dr. Jack D. Forbes, research program director of UC Berkeley's Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, recently told the U.S. Civil Rights Commission:

"The Anglo-American, quite obviously, is the new-comer." It is the Anglo-American, he said, who should learn more about the Mexican-American, his heritage and his culture. No one, he continued, can truly call himself a Southwesterner "unless he is a Mexicanized person to a considerable degree."

Not Enough

To the extremist Mexican-American leaders not even this is enough. What these leaders want for the 5 million Mexican-Americans in the five Southwestern states—California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas—is separatism not a "Mexicanized" society.

The controversial New Mexico Spanish-speaking leader, Reies Lopez Tijerina, who preaches to his followers that they should speak Spanish as often as possible, is a prime advocate of a separate—but equal—state for Mexican-Americans.^[*]

Though few take the separatist movement seriously, educators in the Southwest worry about Mexican-Americans retreating into a "Mexican shell." Not only are many Mexican-American students affecting Mexican

* Beginning in 1963, Reies López Tijerina organized the Alianza Federal de Mercedes in New Mexico to renew claims to land grants stolen from Mexican Americans as a result of the conquest and annexation of New Mexico by the United States in 1848.

rural dress but many have posters in their bedrooms depicting such Mexican revolutionary heroes as Emiliano Zapata and slogans reading "Primero la Raza" (the Mexican race first).

"Attempts to prohibit the use of the Spanish language, no matter how lofty the reasons, will only make things worse," says an El Paso teacher.

Those who would try to abolish the use of Spanish in informal situations in school and on the playground are guilty of the "cowboy-and-Indian viewpoint," says Harold Howe II, former U.S. Commissioner of Education.