The Beginning of the End of the Public University, by Rodolfo "Rudy" Acuña, Ph.D.

This historical perspective reflecting on the student movement of the 1960s and early 70s by Dr. Rudy Acuña is helpful as we deconstruct the political moment we're in with respect to civil rights and higher education. I would definitely read this in tandem with a recent historical and important post titled, "The Free Speech Movement at Sixty and Today’s Unfree Universities" by Robert Cohen, AAUP. One of more insightful comments from Dr. Acuña's piece is the following:

"Tom Hayden in an article on Mario Savio argued that “The current era of privatization and neoliberalism was born in Berkeley as a countermovement to the ’60s.” We did not see what was on the horizon, too caught up with our perceived victories perhaps to see a reaction building that would change higher education."

We need a new student movement to reign in neoliberalism that envisions and works toward a more equitable and sustainable future, prioritizing social justice, diversity and inclusion, environmental stewardship, and collective well-being over profit and exploitation. To move in this direction, we must consider what a caring university and economy might be, both of which exist in reciprocal relationship to Mother Earth. On that note,

Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël, Buon Natale, Feliz Natal, 圣诞快乐 (Shèngdàn Kuàilè), С Рождеством (S Rozhdestvom), Nollaig Shona, मैरी क्रिसमस (Meri Christmas), Mutlu Noeller, Весела Коледа (Vesela Koleda), Frohe, Weihnachten, Happy Hanukkah, & Happy Kwanzaa!!! 

-Angela Valenzuela

"They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds."

-Chicana/Chicano/Indigenous Proverb

The Beginning of the End of the Public University
Rudy Acuña: We were too young, naive or preoccupied with the Vietnam War, campus turmoil and the excitement of times to recognize the significance of the changes.

by Rodolfo F. Acuña | Jan 19, 2015 LA Progressive

“The best of times …the worst of times.”
The 1960s were “the best of times …the worst of times.” As one author put it, a backlash was underway that marked the “Slow Death of Public Higher Education.” In less than a decade California went from Master Plan to No Plan. The ill wind was ushered in by Ronald Reagan’s election as governor of California in 1966.

It should have been no surprise; Reagan had vowed to “clean up that mess in Berkeley,” harping about “sexual orgies so vile that I cannot describe them to you.” Reagan proposed tuition to make the bums work so they would be too tired to carry picket signs.

In office, Reagan reduced state funding for higher education, and laid the foundation for a shift to a tuition-based funding model. When students protested Reagan called the National Guard and crushed them.

Reagan shifted the political debate over the meaning and purpose of public higher education in America. He declared war on the poor, proposing to throw the “bums” off welfare. According to Reagan, universities along with an expensive welfare program were a problem and they took California dangerously close to socialism.

Tom Hayden in an article on Mario Savio argued that “The current era of privatization and neoliberalism was born in Berkeley as a countermovement to the ’60s.” We did not see what was on the horizon, too caught up with our perceived victories perhaps to see a reaction building that would change higher education.

At the time, however, we were too young, naive or preoccupied with the Vietnam War, campus turmoil and the excitement of times to recognize the significance of the changes. They were slow in coming – by 1970 the fees had increased to $50 a semester, which was affordable.

Berkeley was temporarily galvanized by the firing of Clark Kerr. In response to student protests, Reagan ordered 2200 national guardsmen onto the Berkeley campus. Because of the prestige of Berkeley and UCLA for all intents and purposes privatization began earlier there with the admission of significant numbers of out-of-state and international students and an avalanche of lucrative private and public grants.

Meanwhile, by 1959, San Fernando Valley State was no longer a satellite of Los Angeles State College. It was situated in a moderately conservative and overwhelmingly white suburbia. Spurred by freeways, it grew tremendously during the 1960s, and by June 1972 the college officially named itself California State University, Northridge.

My first student teaching assignment was in 1957 at SFVSC through LA State College. Over the years, I taught junior high, high school and at Pierce College in the Valley. Active in theLatin American Civic Association and the Mexican American Political Association, we lobbied SFVSC for programs. There were a few sympathetic professors such as Betty Brady and of course, Julian Nava.

Valley State was a Mormon institution, controlled by a Mormon hierarchy. The professors wore white shirts, ties and coats. There was a faculty dining hall (cafeteria). At the time I did not realize it, but although we were a cow college, there was a feeling of tradition. Most faculty members respected the liberal traditions of a university education, and consequently reacted toward any threat to these traditions. Governance was part of that mindset and it was defended by the faculty senate.

The selection of James Cleary in 1969 marked a transition from Mormon rule. Cleary was regarded as a genuine scholar, although his publications largely rested on his editorship of Robert’s Rules of Law. He had been a professor and administrator at the University of Wisconsin/Madison. He was Catholic and looked presidential, always with his pipe in hand.

He led CSUN to 1992. Cleary, for all of his warts, respected faculty governance and fought for the autonomy of the university. I cannot remember an instance during his tenure when he overturned the decision of the faculty senate. However, changes were taking place during the 1970s like the draconian Proposition 13. He and other administrators unlike today’s managers used their moral authority to slow down encroachments.
The decline in the traditions of the liberal university and the protection of faculty of the principle of faculty governance in all probability was facilitated by the decline of tenured track faculty and the rise in the number of part-time faculty.

By 1977, enrollment at CSUN cost $95. Eleven years later it rose to a $342 tuition fee. Until the early 1990s, tuition and fees remained low. Nevertheless, tuition and fees more than doubled from the late 1980s to early 1990s. By fall 2006, the University had tuition of $1,260. Spurred by the 2008 recession it went to $2,000 per year. By 2011–12, it rose to over $6,000 per year at CSU. ($3,272.00 in the spring 2015).

It is merely speculative, but the decline in the traditions of the liberal university and the protection of faculty of the principle of faculty governance in all probability was facilitated by the decline of tenured track faculty and the rise in the number of part-time faculty. There were also structural changes; full time faculty was only required to be on campus two days a week. Today, many professors lack a sense of place; it is a job rather than an institution.

Administrators have also changed. They are not cut in the image of the pipe smoking Cleary, and not one since his departure can be called a scholar. They are what the neoliberal-privatized university require, overseers. Under their rule, faculty governance has declined and even the department chairs are today part of the administrative staff.

In a recent address to the faculty, Provost Harry Hellenbrand titled “Molting Season” defended the privatization of CSUN and rationalized the increase in tuition: “Yes, CSUN Charges students more than they paid fifty years ago. But factor in $150,000,000 more in aid.”

This echoes CSUN President Dianne Harrison who told members of Chicana/o Studies that students could afford high tuition and dorm costs because they were getting Pell Grants. It is cynical and it is important to note that even the conservative Chancellor Glenn S. Dumke had opposed the notion of tuition.

The “slow death of Public Higher Education” has come about from within. The managers have benefitted handsomely in terms of salaries, staff increases and slush funds. When a president comes in many of her housing perks are paid by non-state funds that do not have the restraints or scrutiny of state funds. Administrators have slush funds from which they can pay off cronies.

On the CSUN campus we have a private university that “molted” from the public institution. Privatization has contributed to the escalation of student costs with less and less public funds expended on education.

Privatization and neoliberalism that began in Berkeley as a countermovement to the ’60s is today in full swing. They are bringing about changes that will end public higher education and limit access to public higher Ed to the upper 50 percent.

Meanwhile, academicians will put together the narrative of the privatization and death of the public university. The patterns are easily discerned. More difficult will be to recognize and describe the changes that they have brought about in we the people.


Rudy Acuña

The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down, Washington Post, Dec. 8, 2024

Earlier this year in February, I alerted blog readers to this bone-chilling NBCNews.com report from workers whose job it is to recover bodies out of the water in the Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras border. First responders in a Texas town are struggling to cope with the trauma of recovering bodies from the Rio Grande [trigger warning]. Such macabre jobs should not even exist to begin with!

Migrants often opt for Eagle Pass, a city of 28,000, due to its proximity to a relatively safer region of Mexico, a distance from criminal elements, despite the Rio Grande's characteristic challenging conditions, including strong currents. There's a good reason why Mexicans give the Rio Grande River its name, "El Rio Bravo," meaning Wild River. Governor Abbott's cruel razor wire on the buoys (boyas) makes it a savage and inhumane one that has taken a shocking number of lives.

Between 2017 and 2023, at least 1,107 individuals drowned while attempting to cross the river, with the highest number of fatalities occurring in 2022, coinciding with a significant increase in attempts to enter the United States. Notably, there was a rise in the number of women among the deceased, and in 2023, over 10 percent of the drownings involved children. The story of 4-year old Angelica is gripping. It's so sad and tragic to learn—from this very well-researched Washington Post piece—that 75 children or more drowned in the river over this 7-year timeframe.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration have disagreed on how to manage this influx, with the state implementing cruel and lethal measures such as buoys (boyas) with razor wire and shipping containers that serve as barriers to river crossing. Knowing that so many people are literally losing their lives should force policymakers—especially the governor—to pause and reflect on how at some point, the collateral effects of policy with people losing their lives become indistinguishable from deliberately engineering it.

My heart aches when I read of migrants preferring this risk over that of losing their lives figuratively and literally in their countries of origin. Longer term, our countries in our hemisphere need to embark on a new path forward, one that involves large-scale investment to stimulate economic development, involving massive infrastructure projects while addressing systemic challenges, encouraging the development of binational institutions, and various other measures like investments in education and a spirit of binationalism and multinationalism that would promote stability across the region.

Regrettably, our country has chosen to take an extremely hardline approach, turning away from opportunities that could benefit everyone and address the root causes of migration—ensuring people wouldn’t have to risk life and limb to seek a better future for themselves and their families. With Donald Trump coming into power, it's only going to get worse.

-Angela Valenzuela

Border drownings rose as migrants rushed to cross and Texas clamped down

An investigation by The Washington Post and other news organizations found more deaths than Mexico or the U.S. have reported. Many were in Eagle Pass, where the Texas governor’s border crackdown is concentrated.


Migrants wade into the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Sept. 28. (Video: Jabin Botsford)

December 8, 2024

By Arelis R. Hernández, Melissa del Bosque, Charles Boutaud, Monica Camacho, Sarah Cahlan, Jack Sapoch and Miriam Ramirez


EAGLE PASS, Texas — Angelica had journeyed with her parents, older brother, aunt and uncle by foot from South America through a muddy jungle, ridden atop sooty train cars and slept in noisy city plazas hoping to reach the United States.

Now it was dawn and the 4-year-old girl’s family could see their destination from across the Rio Grande. The adults sent messages to relatives back in Venezuela before stepping into the river with the two children.

“Ya no aguantamos más,” wrote Robiet Farías, Angelica’s uncle, saying he could not bear waiting anymore to enter the United States.

Santiago, left, and his uncle, Robiet Farías, ride atop a Mexican train headed for the U.S. border in November 2023. (Family photo)

The family held one another’s hands and formed a chain with other migrants crossing the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass that November day in 2023. But as they got deeper into the river, something went wrong. Panic set in. The Farías family disappeared into the water.

This stretch of the Rio Grande has become a graveyard as the number of people dying while trying to cross rises. An investigation by The Washington Post; Lighthouse Reports, an investigative news organization, and the El Universal newspaper in Mexico found that hundreds more people have drowned than the U.S. and Mexican governments have reported.

And nowhere in Texas have more people died than in Eagle Pass, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s $11 billion border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, is concentrated.

Wristbands scattered in the mud on the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. The bands are typically used by smugglers to verify that migrants have paid for their crossing. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)



Clothes belonging to migrants are tangled in concertina razor wire near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The news organizations collected death records from every Texas county and Mexican state that borders the Rio Grande since 2017, when President-elect Donald Trump first took office pledging to crack down on illegal migration, to examine the effects of enforcement and migration policies on asylum seekers, and whether these factors have increased drownings.

The data shows that at least 1,107 people drowned trying to cross the river in the seven years from 2017 to 2023. The deaths peaked in 2022 as the number of people trying to enter the United States soared. A rising number of women were among the dead. In 2023, more than 1 in 10 drownings involved a child.

The spike in deaths coincided with a record surge in people attempting to cross into the United States illegally. Many of those migrants chose to cross the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, a city of 28,000 that has emerged as a flash point in the nation’s debate over migration. Abbott and the Biden administration have clashed over how to respond to the surge, with the Texas governor installing dozens of miles of razor wire, shipping containers and buoys, and the White House accusing the state of blocking its access to the river.

Migrants often choose Eagle Pass because it is across the river from a part of Mexico that is considered safer than other regions controlled by criminal gangs. But the river there has a significant current in certain areas, and gets deeper as people reach the midpoint. Weeds and rocks can make it difficult to get one’s footing.




The records obtained by the news organizations show drownings in Eagle Pass have risen significantly in recent years. The Post and its partners mapped the fatalities there using location data provided on death records. The analysis shows that as the number of deaths rose, bodies increasingly began washing up in new locations

From 2017 to 2020, more than half the victims in Eagle Pass were found near the downtown area. After 2021, the year that Operation Lone Star began, drowning victims were largely discovered away from the city’s center.

While it is unclear whether Texas’s border security initiative caused that shift, interviews with dozens of asylum seekers, state and federal law enforcement officials, migration experts and elected officials indicate that the barriers pushed migrants to cross in new and, sometimes, more dangerous areas.

“The intention is to make it more difficult for people,” said Margarita Núñez Chaim, the coordinator for Iberoamericana University’s migration issues program in Mexico. “And that, as a result, makes it more deadly.”

Abbott’s office disputed the idea that Operation Lone Star might have contributed to any deaths, saying that the initiative is deterring migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. In a statement, officials said the Biden administration is to blame for increased drownings by encouraging people to “make the unsafe and illegal trek across the border, ultimately taking the lives of migrants.”

White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said the Biden administration has reduced border crossings by more than 55 percent since introducing new restrictions on applying for asylum in June. He called the president’s approach “effective and balanced,” and said that Republican officials are more interested in “dangerous and inhumane political stunts than securing our border.”

Deaths dipped by nearly 40 percent in the state in 2023, but data from Customs and Border Protection show they rose this year.

For the Farías family, crossing the Rio Grande felt like their best choice. They had fled Venezuela for Peru, but quickly realized there would be few opportunities to advance their lives there. Thousands of Venezuelans were wading across the river into Texas and claiming asylum. Angelica’s parents planned to do the same. The Post is identifying the girl by only her middle name because she is a child.

It wasn’t long after they entered the water that another migrant found Angelica clinging to her father’s back as his corpse floated near a pecan orchard called Heavenly Farms. She was alive.

Other people who had been traveling with the family took her to authorities. They told officers her first name. But they knew almost nothing else about her. Her entire family was dead.

For decades, it was mostly men — usually from Mexico or Central America — who braved the river to find work in the United States.

But as gang violence, chronic poverty and political instability grew, many more women and children began making the journey in the mid-2010s. Smugglers spread the word that minors were released quickly and allowed to stay in the United States. By 2014, so many children were crossing the border alone that President Barack Obama declared it an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

Then in 2020 came the pandemic. Migration to the United States plummeted, but a year later, people began making their way to the Rio Grande. Entire families from countries such as Venezuela were arriving. Unlike those who had crossed years earlier, they wanted to surrender to U.S. authorities in hopes of qualifying for asylum.

Migrants are detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents moments after crossing into Eagle Pass 

on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Migrants wait to be processed by Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass after crossing the Rio Grande on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Death records reviewed by The Post and its news partners reflect that changing dynamic. More and more people from South American countries began washing up dead in Texas and Mexico. 

In 2022, women made up nearly 22 percent of all deaths, higher than any of the other years examined. At least 75 children drowned in the river from 2017 to 2023.

The Rev. Paulo Alfonso Sánchez, who operates a shelter in Monclova, a city many migrants stop at on their way to Eagle Pass, said that in the fall of 2023 rumors began spreading about various dates by which an asylum-seeker had to reach the United States before Biden would bar them from entering. The information was false, and immigration advocates think it probably came from organized crime groups seeking to stoke urgency.

“It was a desperate situation,” Sánchez said. “Big groups tried to cross, stepping over each other at the riverbank and both sides, U.S. and Mexico, had to rescue people.”



Texas DPS pull migrants in distress from the Rio Grande. [Go to link to see the
harrowing video.]

The Post and its partners documented 858 migrant drownings in Texas from 2017 to 2023, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 587 along the entire southwest border during that time. The agency is required under federal law to record how many people die trying to enter the country each year, though federal investigators have acknowledged the data is incomplete.

Asked about the discrepancy, a CBP official noted the challenges in collecting data on migrant deaths, and said the unit tasked with tracking those fatalities has a limited budget, though Congress has offered more funds in recent years.

Sister Isabel Turcios runs Frontera Digna, a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, and estimates that in 2023, about 4,000 showed up in the city each day. She said most people went straight to the river without resting. Many were afraid of being robbed, beaten or deported by Mexican officials and wanted to leave quickly.

Across the river, migrants now found towering shipping containers, giant buoys in the water and armed troops. They were all part of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, which the Texas governor launched after accusing the Biden administration of not doing enough to curb illegal immigration.

"Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans,” Abbott said in announcing the initiative.

On the Mexican side of the border, migrants encountered more soldiers patrolling the border. Then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had deployed thousands of troops to crack down on illegal immigration in response to pressure from then-President Trump. By 2022, there were 11,500 troops stationed along Mexico’s northern border — nearly twice as many as there were three years before.

A spokesperson for Abbott’s office said the state has put up hundreds of miles of barriers such as fences and shipping containers, as well as more than 51 miles of border wall. Reporters from The Post and partner news organizations mapped approximately 250 miles of state and federal security infrastructure using available satellite imagery through 2023.

The mapping of the state’s barriers showed that at least 40 percent of the fences, buoys and other deterrence devices erected as part of Operation Lone Star were concentrated in and around Eagle Pass.

That included a fence near Heavenly Farms. The sprawling property where Angelica’s father was found is about four miles from downtown Eagle Pass and filled with rows of pecan trees. In 2023, more and more bodies were turning up there.



The Texas National Guard patrols the Rio Grande on Sept. 26 near Eagle Pass. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Border agents had long patrolled the Rio Grande near the pecan orchard by boat. But migrants still frequently passed through Heavenly Farms after crossing into the United States.

In 2022, Operation Lone Star law officers built a fence along the river near the farm. Soon after, they deployed spools of sharp concertina wire by the banks. And in the summer of 2023, troops placed a thousand feet of large orange buoys on the water close to the property.

Border Patrol agents began cutting Abbott’s concertina wire to reach migrants. They claimed Texas state troopers had blocked their agents from a boat ramp at a municipal park. The standoff shifted from the border to the courts as Texas and the Biden administration took turns suing each other in legal disputes over buoys, wire and river access.

Meanwhile, the number of people found dead in the Rio Grande near Heavenly Farms was rising.





The deaths mapped by The Post and its partners and available satellite imagery show that two drowning victims were found near the farm in the five years before a fence was constructed along the property. Thirty-three victims were discovered in that same area in the two years after the fence was built.

There was the Venezuelan folk musician trying to join his niece in the United States. The man from the Ivory Coast whose family did not find out he was dead for two years. The 6-year-old boy from Colombia who’d lost his mother’s grip as they entered the water.




Large orange buoys float in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass on Nov. 15, 2023. (Video: Justin Hamel for Lighthouse Reports)

Texas National Guard concertina razor wire, fencing and buoys are seen along the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass on Sept. 27. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The data on drowning deaths alone is not sufficient to show whether any of the new barriers played a role in the deaths. Where people are found does not necessarily indicate where they crossed. But interviews with migrants and shelter operators indicate that more and more migrants were choosing to cross away from Shelby Park, a green space near the city’s downtown where troops were concentrated, to more isolated parts of the river.

Abbott and others admonished migrants for not choosing legal options, such as surrendering at a port of entry. In the fall of 2023, when Angelica’s family crossed, the Biden administration was asking migrants to request an appointment at an official U.S. port of entry through its CBP One app.

Angelica’s parents had registered through CBP One. But that was just the first step in the process. Getting an appointment could take months. And many migrants felt they could not wait. Some had run out of money. Others thought it was too dangerous to stay in Mexico.

Immigrant advocates in Mexico also said Mexican officials and organized crime groups were blocking migrants from accessing border bridges, unless they had an appointment.

For many people, the river felt like the best way to quickly get into the United States.

Migrants cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass on Sept. 28. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Angelica’s parents had met working at Venezuela’s Department of Health.

They were both analysts, and they dreamed of building a life together while advancing their careers in the medical field. Zelnays came from a family of three close-knit siblings who had lost their mother when they were all still teens. An aunt, Norkys Farías, had taken them in and continued to raise them as her own.

Miguel Perez Carles fit right into Zelnays’s family. He had a knack for making her laugh with jokes and funny stories. The two gathered frequently with her family in the coastal city of La Guaira to celebrate milestones.

Their daughter arrived in 2019. Zelnays had a son, Santiago, 11, from a previous relationship. Family members said he was a talented soccer player who wanted to attend a specialized academy for the sport.

But their life in Venezuela grew more difficult as hyperinflation skyrocketed and the nation’s economy tumbled. So when her sister left for Peru, they followed.

“They had a vision, as young people do, for the life they wanted to live,” said Lizmar Farías, Zelnays’s cousin. “They wanted to help the family and build a house.”

After some time in Peru, they decided as a group they would have better luck realizing their goals in the United States.

The journey from Lima to the U.S. border with Mexico was difficult. In a group chat with relatives back home, they recounted sleeping on streets as they moved from one country to the next. When they reached Panama, they crossed the perilous Darien Gap, a jungle that is home to jaguars, anacondas and venomous insects. They told their family members that they sat in their tents terrified at night listening to the sounds of animals lurking nearby.

They’d managed to endure all of it by staying united, relatives said.

“They were always together,” Lizmar said. “In photo after photo, at the beach, in the city, at birthdays, they were inseparable.”

They reached the Mexican border with Texas early on Nov. 18, according to interviews with relatives and information from other migrants.

Francisco Contreras, director of the state civil protection services in Piedras Negras, remembers the soaring number of people trying to cross around that time. He said there were groups of 400 or 500 people gathering at different points along the riverbank. The width of the river near Eagle Pass is between 250 and 300 feet.

His team and Mexico’s migrant rescue squad, Grupos Beta, were repeatedly called to help pull screaming children and splashing adults from the water. He said they performed CPR on too many people for him to count.

“You know we always ask them why — why risk their children?” Contreras said. “And they always tell us, they’d rather die here, in this river, than back in their countries.”

Texas Department of Public Safety agents patrolling the river the day Angelica’s family crossed told Maverick County Sheriff’s deputies that about 200 migrants were attempting to cross together from Mexico, according to incident reports.

A group of migrants struggle to cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass on Nov. 18, 2023. (Video: Justin Hamel for Lighthouse Reports) [Go to link to see video.]


The family linked arms as a human chain and waded into the Rio Grande with other migrants. As they got deeper into the water, chaos ensued. The relatives got separated.

A Maverick County Sheriff’s Office incident report of the Farías family drowning states that 14 to 16 people “were visualized to have been taken by the river’s strong current.”

A woman who was traveling with the family later told Angelica’s relatives in Venezuela that she saw a man she didn’t recognize holding the child’s hand and leading her to Border Patrol agents. The child had been rescued after someone noticed her clinging to her father’s back. He was dead, and his body floated down the river toward the pecan farm.

Border agents patrolling the river on boats recovered Zelnays’s body from the water. She had a printout of the family’s CBP One registration email in her pocket. The bodies of her siblings, Thailyz and Robiet Farías, were found together near a cement plant’s boat ramp. Angelica’s brother, Santiago, is thought to be in a morgue in neighboring Webb County, but officials are awaiting DNA confirmation.

Word did not reach their relatives in Venezuela for 10 days. A migrant who had been traveling with the family sent them a message on Facebook.

In an instant, Norkys had lost five family members. She had reason to believe Angelica was still alive. But she had no idea how to find her.




A makeshift memorial is set up at a park along the Rio Grande in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on Sept. 26. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)


Angelica’s family in Venezuela scoured the internet for any information about the girl with dark eyes that they knew as “Caraota,” or bean.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela are strained, so Norkys and her relatives had to rely on the International Red Cross and consular officials in Mexico to make inquiries. They called every Texas and Mexico number that might have information. For weeks, they could not figure out where she was.

But a worker at a funeral home in Eagle Pass had given them reason to hope. He told them that Angelica’s relatives were dead, but that officials had confirmed to him that she had indeed survived.

A month after her family drowned, Angelica surfaced in the U.S. immigration system. U.S. officials had taken her to a shelter for young unaccompanied migrants. With no relatives in the United States, child welfare advocates began arranging her return to Venezuela. It would take an additional eight months to bring her home.

During that time, the number of people crossing the Rio Grande dropped. Mexican authorities continued to stop migrants from reaching the river, and the Biden administration imposed new restrictions on applying for asylum over the summer.

But many migrants are still wading into the Rio Grande. Migrants interviewed at shelters in the Mexican state of Coahuila, across from Eagle Pass, said Texas troops have begun using rubber bullets and pepper balls to deter them. One pregnant woman showed a Post reporter marks on her belly where she said she had been hit. A spokesperson for the Texas Military Department said Operation Lone Star troops do not use rubber bullets or tear gas.




Angelica reunites with her family at the airport in Venezuela. (Video: Lizmar Farías)

Angelica flew home to Venezuela in August dressed in a pink top and jeans. Her curly black hair was tied up with a matching bow. Norkys and her mother’s cousins waited for her at the airport in Caracas.

When they saw her tiny figure walking through the terminal, they called out: “Caraota!” She turned in their direction and giggled nervously. When she got close, Norkys bent down so that Angelica could see her face up close.

Angelica studied her gray hair and brown eyes. Then she opened her arms. She nestled her face in Norkys’s neck and didn’t let go.

***

Charlotte Alfred, Ariadne Papagapitos, Jason Buch, Michael Gonzalez, Geysha Espirella, Carola Briceño, Jorge Luis Sierra, Priscila Cardenas, Cecilia Diaz, Imogen Piper and Jordan Lindbeck contributed to this report.

The Washington Post, El Universal and Lighthouse Reports spent a year collecting drowning data from every Texas county and Mexican state that lines the Rio Grande for the years 2017 to 2023.
Based on the research of academics, experts and reporters, we identified all the local, state and federal authorities in Mexico and the United States that collect reports or data on Rio Grande drownings. Reporters submitted requests to 165 different authorities in the two countries, ultimately obtaining data from 52 sources. Although challenges were encountered in the United States, data availability and completeness were particularly problematic in Mexico, where neither the federal Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs nor the National Institute of Migration could provide usable data. Additionally, the municipality of Juárez did not provide any data. Decedent age was included in only 16 percent of the cases from Mexican sources.
Data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Safety Initiative Tracking System, which was checked against annual CBP figures, was obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests from Bryce Peterson of the Arizona-based humanitarian organization No More Deaths, University of Texas researcher Stephanie Leutert and from a request by journalist Gabriela Villegas that was published on MuckRock.
Because data came in different formats and layouts, all information was manually entered into standardized spreadsheets and then spot-checked for accuracy. It was deduplicated to remove cases where multiple agencies had reported the same death. To avoid overcounting, drownings that were one day apart, within 1 mile of each other or had spelling variations of the same name were considered matches for duplicate values.
We counted all deaths that occurred directly as a result of an attempt to cross the Rio Grande. This included cases where drowning was a contributing cause of death or where death occurred elsewhere, such as cases where a cardiac arrest triggered by drowning led to death in the hospital. One case in 2016 involved a fetus of 30-31 weeks gestational age who died as a result of the mother’s drowning.
We excluded deaths of U.S. nationals, as well as cases where bodies were recovered with signs of potential criminal involvement, such as gunshot wounds or mutilation.
If geographic coordinates were missing from reports, we geocoded by hand locations wherever possible. Reporters who had travelled to the area reviewed incident reports that used local landmarks or ranch owners’ names to describe a location. If a location was too large (such as a ranch that spans 10 miles along the river), no coordinates were assigned. Ultimately, 551 drownings reported by U.S. agencies were geolocated.
We plotted nearly 250 miles of security infrastructure – including fences, federal border walls, containers, and a floating buoy barrier – along the Rio Grande using satellite imagery through 2023 from Planet Explorer, Google Earth Pro and Maxar Technologies. We distinguished between federal and state infrastructure projects by cross-referencing satellite images with official statements, news reports and witness accounts, and compared satellite imagery from various dates to determine when each barrier was completed. Read the full methodology here.
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By Arelis R. HernándezArelis Hernández is a Texas-based border correspondent on the national desk working with the immigration team and roving the U.S. southern border. Hernández joined the Post in 2014 to cover politics and government on the local desk after spending four years as a breaking news and crime reporter at the Orlando Sentinel. follow on X@arelisrhdz

By Sarah CahlanSarah Cahlan is a video reporter and one of the founding members of the Visual Forensics team. Her work combines open source and forensic technologies with traditional journalism and documentary filmmaking. She shared in a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Jan. 6 insurrection and a Dupont for her coverage of the clearing of Lafayette Square.follow on X@SarahCahlan

25th Anniversary of "Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring," by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Friends,

Before the end of 2024, I want to highlight that this year marks the 25th anniversary of my award-winning book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, published by the State University of New York Press. 

My book was honored with several prestigious awards, including the 2000 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association, the 2001 Critics' Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association, and an Honorable Mention for the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

I'm pleased to know that teachers and university professors are continuing to use this text in K-12 schools and college classrooms and that it continues to be a source of transformation for those who read it.

It is selling as strongly as ever, indicating that the dynamics I captured 25 years ago remain highly relevant today. It is also useful to researchers who want to understand differences in what I term, "subtractive acculturation assimilation," or "acculturation," with empirical findings on perceptions of schooling that distinguish immigrants from non-immigrant, regular-track youth in a Houston, Texas, high school where I conducted my case study research. 

I have presented my text throughout the country—too many to name—and without exception, it opens a window to understanding regardless of context. 

Thanks to Dr. Christine Sleeter who back in 1999, allowed my book to appear in her SUNY series, The Social Context of Education where she served as series editor, as well as for her writing of the book's foreword. She and I are great friends and colleagues today. Thanks, as well to Bill Ayers, Jonathan Kozol, the late Nel Noddings, and the late Henry Trueba for their strong, beautiful endorsements at such a critical point in my career.

I am humbled by all it took for me to bring this text to life, paralleling, as it were, with the births and early childhoods of our two daughters, Clara and Luz, and with Emilio's own challenges on the tenure track while teaching at the University of Houston. The late Dr. Linda McNeil was also pivotal to mine, and the book's success. Ok, I'm getting teary-eyed here. I need to post before the year ends!

Thanks for considering this for your classroom. Credible accounts that illuminate the dynamics of schooling that marginalize far too many of our youth remain necessary. Make Subtractive Schooling a holiday gift for someone you care for and love. 🩷

-Angela Valenzuela

SUNY Press Description

Subtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U. S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U. S.-born youth.

Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Texas Observer

Friends,

I encourage you to read my just-published piece in the Texas Observer, titled "Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin." When I saw the list of censored words circulating at my university in mid-November—exposed by KXAN’s Jala Washington—I was deeply angered and offended. I felt compelled to write about it. I'm grateful to the Texas Observer for publishing it.

 -Angela Valenzuela

As a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, each day feels like a precarious game of Jenga, with the iconic tower of our institution at constant risk of collapse. This instability stems not only from legislative actions but also from behind-the-scenes maneuvers by university leadership, leaving many students and faculty in a state of uncertainty, fear, and foreboding, wondering what may happen next. This tension has been exacerbated by recent events, including the sudden “departure” of a respected College of Liberal Arts dean, difficulties in recruiting faculty, failed job searches, the departure of valued colleagues to other universities, unexpected retirements, declining faculty morale, and an increasingly fragile system of faculty governance—if it can be said to exist at all.

These developments reflect a broader trend of censorship—targeting certain bodies, protests, and speech—imposed through top-down power and control. The result feels less like a functioning academic institution and more like a manifestation of despotic corporate control.

I leave open the question of whether the structure will eventually collapse. Some in my circles are already speaking of irreparable damage done, or at least of an urgent need for action from faculty, students, and the community to prevent further deterioration if long-term consequences to society are to be averted.

When one further considers that, per a recent Austin Chronicle report, since 2018 the university’s Legal Affairs department has hired a majority of its attorneys straight out of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, a more fitting game metaphor than Jenga might be “Monopoly Tycoon,” which transforms players into landlords and empire-builders. Employing tactics of “strategic expansion,” this video game rewards players for takeovers of influential, or simply less powerful, competitors. 

UT-Austin’s College of Liberal Arts faces a comparable challenge: the establishment of a new, seemingly redundant entity—the School of Civic Leadership—which will teach from a Western Civilization perspective, mirroring much of the liberal arts school’s existing offerings but without all of the “pesky” material from scholars who challenge Eurocentric histories.

This strategy undermines the College of Liberal Arts’ market influence by promoting the false and untenable narrative that there is a lack of intellectual diversity within the largest college on campus. It leverages the broader anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, which mischaracterizes DEI efforts as “discriminatory” when nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, DEI efforts exist (or existed) to counter decades of exclusion faced by Black and Brown students and faculty who are just beginning to establish themselves in academia. Consequently, faculty find themselves on the defensive as programs, offices, and initiatives aimed at fostering a diverse student body and a sense of belonging are dismantled.

Despite my use of gaming metaphors, what’s happening at my university is no game at all: UT faculty and students are currently experiencing profound disruption and distress. This starkly contrasts with the arrogant posture and detached, dismissive demeanor of those perpetrating this harm, which has significant consequences for Texas and society as a whole.

Rooted in the civil rights movement, the principles of DEI represent a holistic framework for cultivating environments, programs, organizations, teaching strategies, and institutional practices that empower and uplift historically marginalized communities. These principles extend beyond the boundaries of any curriculum.

Although these initiatives often target specific groups requiring particular forms of support—such as first-generation and transgender students, students with disabilities, veterans, or immigrant students—they ultimately benefit the entire academic community. By fostering environments where individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and identities can interact, collaborate, and learn together, these initiatives enhance the educational experience for all. Consequently, opposition to DEI efforts can only be interpreted as a deliberate choice to neither support this agenda nor these students, despite the university’s increasingly diverse student population.

For many, the first shakeup took place on April 2, 2024, with the firing of 60 staff members who were formerly associated with the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement to ostensibly comply with Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which took effect three months before the firings. Shockingly, this occurred after individuals in all DEI offices had already been reclassified to other non-DEI jobs. Those terminated were largely staff of color, mostly women. At a legislative hearing a month after the dismissals, Chancellor James B. Milliken informed legislators that 311 positions were eliminated system-wide, with the caveat that this number could change pending ongoing audits.

At UT-Austin, this decision, with its dizzying feeling of a Jenga tower wobbling, was executed with such calculated swiftness that it swept through the university in a single day. Timed precisely with President Jay Hartzell’s email to all university staff titled “Organizational Changes,” it resembled a strategy from Monopoly Tycoon, reflecting a well-orchestrated plan of monopolized resource control, literally bypassing schools and colleges, with terminations dictated from the top. The university’s approach was endorsed by Republican state Senator Brandon Creighton, author of SB 17, who described the ban as “a fundamental shift in the operations of our higher education institutions” to ensure “a merit-based environment.”

As for myself, I experienced my own Jenga moment even earlier, with an email I received on January 7, 2024, asking me to quickly consider making changes to one of my university websites. As the spring session had not even begun and we were barely past the New Year’s holiday, it seemed to be an effort to comply with the looming SB 17 compliance deadline.

The experience felt like psychic whiplash, causing me a great deal of distress at the time. I received this request just prior to a departmental retreat, where I exclaimed, “What the administration perceives as a bureaucratic request for compliance, I interpret as a hostile act of censorship.” Anxiety-ridden, I felt sick to my stomach and left the meeting. This was a first for me. Afterward, several of my colleagues reached out, thanking me for having the courage to express my views and lending their support.

Specifically, the words that they flagged—“diversity,” “diverse,” “equity,” “equity infographic,” “DEI programs,” and “DEI initiatives”—appeared on a research-based policy brief that was on my website’s landing page. SB 17 had a carve-out for teaching and research, yet here we saw my university over-complying. I got legal counsel when this happened and was advised not to make myself a target, so I reluctantly archived the brief on another page.

The next Jenga block to drop was on April 24, when university police and state troopers showed up to a peaceful, pro-Palestinian student-led protest in riot gear, carrying batons, and on horseback, arresting 57 protesters. “Everything was peaceful until the police arrived,” a student of mine who was present expressed.

My student’s words reminded me of the massive pro-Palestinian protest on November 12, 2023, which began at the Texas Capitol and wound its way through the heart of downtown Austin. I remember thinking that even in a very dense crowd packed with students, children, and families, it was not only entirely peaceful but visibly included the participation of Jewish Voice for Peace-Austin with their “#JewishResistance” and “#CeasefireNOW” banners, met by a welcoming, cheering crowd that contradicted the view that pro-Palestinian protestors are anti-Semitic.

While it is impossible to argue that there is no anti-Semitism among pro-Palestinian protestors—or no Islamophobia among the defenders of Israel, for that matter—this was not a significant element of the protests I witnessed. Nor did anti-Semitic sentiment seem to surface in testimony at a May 14 Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education hearing that I attended. Witnesses, comprised of UT students and faculty, overwhelmingly expressed concerns over the violence against peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors, the climate of fear on campus with the takedown of DEI centers and offices, SB 17 over-compliance, and violations of students’ First Amendment right to free speech—connecting the censorship of certain bodies, protest, and speech.

Unsurprisingly, our university was recently ranked eighth in a list of 251 universities that are the “worst for free speech” in research carried out by College Pulse in the wake of nationwide campus protests and encampments at other universities. Specifically, close to half of all UT students surveyed said that they censor their own speech at least once or more every month. The Spring semester ended with many UT students feeling betrayed.

The most recent Jenga block to drop at UT was reported in November by KXAN’s Jala Washington: a list of words being flagged, in university audits of UT websites for compliance with SB 17, including “Latino,” “Latinx,” “Latina,” “colonizer,” and “trans.” Although the university is not banning or taking formal action related to most of these words, this amounts to at least a form of implicit censorship with institutional power behind it.

The list also raises critical questions: What message is being conveyed here? What rationale underpins this decision? The terms “Latino,” “Latina,” and “Latinx” are not “DEI-related words”; rather they are significant identities for those of us who identify as such.

I am aware of “Latino,” “Latina,” and “Latinx” UT students who are very disturbed by this. It’s hard not to be. I am sure that our gay, lesbian, trans, queer, and bisexual student communities are feeling just as unsafe, especially since the terms “ally” and “safe space” have also been flagged.

Is this an attempt to marginalize the student and faculty communities associated with these identities at our university? If so, what is the underlying rationale? Is the objective to restrict teaching and research related to these communities? Such actions can be perceived as a form of censorship, effectively silencing and rendering invisible communities that hold significant importance to both our state and nation.

As Latina/o and non-Latina/o faculty, are we not to hold on to our scholarly career commitments to teaching and conducting research on this significant and consequential community to our state and nation? Is a shadow, Monopoly Tycoon group serving to usurp the interests of an autonomous and independent faculty?

We are all adults here. Rather than engaging in censorship, our university administration should empower faculty to be the true voice of the university. Shared governance, especially on matters of curriculum, is a time-honored practice that relies, as it should, on the expertise of the faculty and promotes both student and faculty morale.

All this should alarm Texas taxpayers whose hard-earned money helps fund higher education and whose children attend our universities. As one of Texas’s two flagship institutions, alongside Texas A&M, these actions mark a troubling decline and a predictable loss of reputation that will be challenging to reverse if this agenda continues to gain traction. We cannot allow the Monopoly Tycoons who are ideologically vested in this takeover to continue trampling over students’ free speech and faculty’s academic freedom.

Ironically, in allegedly wanting to minimize so-called bias in the university curriculum, anti-DEI censorship is itself a demonstration of bias, against Latinos and Latinas and others. In education, a subject that I teach, one can never stand outside of either bias or the politics of education as the entire enterprise is inherently subjective, comprised of value judgments, ethical and moral dilemmas, sociocultural factors, power dynamics, and so on. 

Clearly, a subjective, values-based decision was made with the list of flagged words to marginalize Latino identities, along with other important identities and critical topics, within the university curriculum. This action is not only anti-Latino but also un-American and un-Texan. It represents a direct assault on the teaching and research mission of our university. As research faculty, our teaching and research are intrinsically linked—each informing and enhancing the other, even though they are never entirely reducible to one another.

We are facing a threat to democratic principles and the legitimacy of the UT-Austin. However, this will only persist if we, as a campus community and the public, allow it. Together, we must respond every time with equal force to stop the Jenga tower from collapsing for good, toppled by the Monopoly Tycoons.

Particularly as faculty, we must demand a stop to these censorious audits targeting speech, identities, and ideas that are of vast importance to the college classroom and an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

Together with our students, civil rights organizations, and the broader public, we must also prepare for and lead the fight in the 2025 session of the Texas Legislature, the policy arena where the battle over the future of higher education in Texas will continue.

For the benefit of the university and the very notion of public higher education, it is imperative that we respectfully dissent while crafting a restorative narrative of faculty governance and shared responsibility. This narrative should prioritize inclusivity, free speech, academic freedom, and the collective well-being of the entire university community.

List of flagged terms:

Diversity	Bisexual
DEI	Trans
Diverse	Queer
DEAI	Nonbinary
Equity	Decolonize
Equitable	Colonizer
Equity	Marginalized
Inclusive	Underserved
Inclusion	Microagression
Safe space	Whiteness
BIPOC	Anti-Colonialism
Implicit bias	Institutional racism
Intersectionality	Systematic racism
Anti-racist	White privilege
Oppression	White fragility
Gender identity	Social justice
LGBTQ	Bias
Lesbian	Racism
Gay	Minority
Bisexual	Latino, Latinx, Latina
Trans	Privilege
Gay	Ally

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the National Academy of Education and author of the award-winning book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring.

TAGS: 

• censorship
 
• DEI
 
• pro-palestine protest
 
• UT-Austin