Cheers to a Successful 5th Annual Summit of the NACCS Tejas Foco!

I am happy to report that our 5th Annual Summit of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Tejas Foco Summit was a huge success. We recorded the entire event that will get edited and posted to our MAS4TxSchools website. 

There are many people to thank for this, but those that must have surely lost the most sleep and that deserve special mention are our Chair University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Professor Christopher Carmona, University of Texas Education Policy and Planning doctoral student Eliza Epstein, and Cassie Smith, doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque. The entire four-hour event was powerful. Gracias to all! 

Special thanks, as well, to our elected leaders that participated, expressing their wholehearted support and personal commitment to our cause of making Ethnic Studies a requirement for high school graduation, and "Comprehensive Ethnic Studies," as we term it, a reality. By this, we mean the full menu of support and resources that Ethnic Studies to scale requires, including resources for professional development, curriculum development, Grow Your Own educator pathways, expanded dual credit options, and restorative justice practices grounded in the languages and cultures of our communities. Note: When we say Ethnic Studies in Texas, we always also mean African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Native American Studies.

Specifically, Congressman Joaquin Castro (serving San Antonio and Bexar County) opened up our beginning session, followed by Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (serving Eastern Houston), both of whom courageously and powerfully represent us in the U.S. Congress.  

They were followed by our equally courageous and powerful representatives in the Texas House of Representatives, beginning with Texas State Representative Mary Gonzalez (who serves the City of El Paso and El Paso County), followed by Texas State Representative Rafael Anchia (who serves the western corridor of Dallas County), and Texas State Representative Christina Morales (who represents Houston and parts of Harris County). 

I get goosebumps just thinking about not solely their involvement in our Summit—that incidentally, would have been near-impossible to orchestrate in person—but most especially for their sincere and encouraging words of support.

Others present were State Board of Education members Ruben Cortez and Marisa Perez. Texas LULAC was also in attendance with Education Committee Chair, Rene Martinez and member, Velma Ybarra present. Other notables in attendance were Austin Community College Trustee Nora Comstock,  former member of the Houston Independent School District school board Sergio Lira, and Dr. Lisa Ramos, former Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Mexican American Studies Field of Study Advisory Committee. 

With such "people power," the future of education in Texas is a bright beacon of hope, brimming with possibility and promise.

I don't know if other people in other states experience their state leaders in the ways that we do. As the events of yesterday showed, we know them and their staff and experience and enjoy them as trusted members of our community with whom we have literally rubbed shoulders in this positive, life-giving, legacy agenda to which we have all dedicated our lives and careers. I cannot say enough... 

Thanks to the opening prayer delivered by Carrizo-Comecrudo nation elder, Juan Mancias, as well as for the opening statements provided below by 

Drs. Christopher Carmona and Emilio Zamora that set the tone for this inspirational day.

-Angela Valenzuela

Opening Remarks by Christopher Carmona and Emilio Zamora

Dr. Christopher Carmona 

      As the Chair of Tejas Foco Committee on Mexican American Studies, I welcome all of you to our 5th Annual Statewide Summit on Mexican American Studies for Texas.  Our theme is “Now is the Time for MAS!” and our purpose is to rededicate ourselves to advancing Mexican American Studies as critical pedagogy and subject matter in our Texas public schools, colleges, universities, and community-based education.

      When I was seven years old, I remember sitting outside of my elementary school’s principal’s office.  My parents inside discussing my behavior.  You see, I only spoke Spanish when I was a kid.  When they came out, they didn’t look angry at me, they simply looked at me with a look that I did not recognize. It was a look that I wouldn’t understand for years.  After this moment I remember they only spoke to me in English.  The principal had explained to them that the only way to succeed in this country is if you speak English and my parents took that to heart.  It was from this point on that my ability to speak Spanish began to die and almost forgotten.

      I was lucky as a kid though. My uncle was a poet. I remember being at my grandma’s house when the first box of his poetry books showed up at her house. He opened them and there was a book written by uncle. A Mexican American poet. This grounded me in wanting to be writer. I always had that in the back of my head. I have since become a poet and a writer. But in school, I never read any writings by a Latina or Latino author. I never saw us represented in our American literature or our American history, unless we were the invaders, the villains, the poor workers in the fields. My father and his brothers and sisters and my grandparents were migrant workers, but they were also veterans, businesspeople, and were able to send their kids to college. To have their own Mexican American dreams.

      I never learned our stories in school. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I read Bless Me, Ultima and it wasn’t even assigned in class. It was part of a UIL event. Then it wasn’t until college, specifically grad school that I read Occupied America, Anzaldua’s Borderlands, They Call Them Greasers by Arnoldo Deleon and many others. It wasn’t until grad school that I got the education that I should have received in school. That is why I do this work. So that the next generation will see themselves as part of America, which is just as much as theirs as it is ours from the first days of school to the last.

   Today we will be tackling these issues. Teachers, students, professors, artists, education activists, elders and other community representatives will be leading the discussions.  The discussion topics on Mexican American Studies will include the following:

1. Innovative practices and learning opportunities in the classrooms, 

2. Impressive curriculum and professional development activities, 

3. Extraordinary policy work and advocacy, 

4. Significant accomplishments in Mexican American Studies,

5. Innovative educational programs in Texas, 

6. and the inspiring cause for social justice in the education of our youth. 

We invite you to participate in these discussions and to join us in the ongoing work of advancing Mexican American Studies in Texas.

Dr. Emilio Zamora

            This is the fifth time that we gather to promote Mexican American Studies, but it is not the first time that we have stood up for our right to an education that is authentic and liberatory.

      Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Mexicans established independent schools, and teacher training and curriculum development programs in response to discrimination and segregation in official Texas schools;

* In 1911, the delegates that gathered in Laredo as the 1911 Congreso Mexicanista condemned racism and segregation in the schools and called for developing their own;

* In 1930, Mexican parents from Del Rio filed the first desegregation suit against separate and unequal schools;

* Beginning in the late 1930s and continuing in the 1940s, Mexican educators convinced the Office of the Superintendent of Texas schools to establish state-sponsored workshops in Texas to develop curriculum on Mexican Americans and Latin Americans and to prepare teachers in the use of these materials;

* In the 1950s, LULAC sponsored the Little Schools of the 400 to teach Mexican preschool children a vocabulary of 400 basic English words to challenge the official, questionable claim that record numbers of them failed the first grade because they did not have a basic knowledge of English; and

* Beginning in the late 1960s, Mexican students of college and university age waged a movement that continues to win battles for Mexican American Studies.This was followed in 1968 with the passage of the Bilingual Education Act by Lyndon B. Johnson.

* Fifty years later in 2018, we in the NACCS Tejas Foco convinced the Texas State Board of Education to adopt Ethnic Studies courses for Mexican Americans, African Americans, Asian American Studies, and Native Americans

We are the inheritors of this revolutionary tradition abetted by a spirit that will never rest until we secure respect as a community, together with the educational right to know our history, culture, language, and the bases of oppression on behalf of our communities.

Enjoy the summit!