This editorial, authored by St. Mary's University law professor Al Kauffman, provides a quick tour through the political and organizational life and rich history of Mexican Americans in San Antonio. It is not only an undeniably special place, but also next year's site of our annual conference, The American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference, Thursday, April 27 – Monday, May 1, 2017 San Antonio, TX.
I see a lot of masters thesis and doctoral dissertation possibilities in what he lists below.
Angela Valenzuela
By Al Kauffman, For the Express-News
Updated 5:02 pm, Friday, November 22, 2013
Catarina Velásquez
admires a painting of her father, Southwest Voter Registration Project
founder Willie Velasquez, in 1988, four months after his death.
San Antonio, distinctively Latino for all of its history, is
naturally distinctive in another respect: as birthplace and incubator
for scores of state, national and internationally renowned Latino
organizations.
Univision, recently in the news because of controversy over the
demise of its original building in San Antonio, is one of many of these.
Let's take a look at some, starting with the organization that was in
on the ground floor of the boom that has become Spanish-language
broadcasting.
Univision developed from KCOR radio in 1946 and KCOR television
in 1955 in San Antonio, the first Spanish-language stations in United
States history. English language radio and TV stations ignored the
Spanish-speaking populations and resisted their development.
However, Raul Cortez and, later, Emilio Nicolas Sr. persevered and
built what has become one of the largest media systems in the world.
Nielsen ratings did not include Univision until 2005, and now
Univision is the leader in many time slots. The network is best known in
San Antonio for its great local talk shows and interviews, exposing the
community's leaders and ideas to the broader population.
That original building was not just walls and fixtures; it was a memory of struggle and redemption.
Following this model, the 1965-1975 decade was one of incredible
energy and creation in the Mexican-American community, leading to a slew
of now-familiar acronyms. Among them: MALDEF, MAUC, MACC, IDRA, SWVRP,
COPS and AVANCE (advance, in Spanish).
These community, educational and legal organizations were followed
the next decade by the arts organizations, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts
Center and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Each of these
organizations deserves a book to explore its development and impact, but
a very short description is still important to help us understand San
Antonio and some of its recent struggles.
The Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC) began as an effort by
Willie Velásquez to promote respect for Mexican-American students and
culture and the Spanish language. It developed into an engine of
economic development and an advocate for low-income housing. It was the
first affiliate and model of a national organization that became the
National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest Latino-focused
organization in the country, now headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Velásquez then developed the Southwest Voter Registration Project
(SWVRP) in 1974 and San Antonio is still the center of its efforts to
increase Latino voter registration and participation and to hold Latino
elected officials accountable.
Pete Tijerina, Greg Luna and others started the Mexican American
Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in San Antonio. MALDEF began
representing the Mexican-American community in courts in 1968. MALDEF
is now the most effective and respected law firm for Latinos in the
United States, with an incredibly large and diverse set of cases and
U.S. Supreme Court wins to its credit. MALDEF's greatest victories
involve confronting Texas' long history of discrimination against
Latinos in voting, education and immigrants' rights.
San Antonio also led the country in educating the religious community
about the Mexican-American community. Bishop Patricio Flores (the first
Mexican-American bishop, and later the first Mexican-American
archbishop) and Father Virgilio Elizondo, working with nuns and priests,
developed the Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) in San Antonio in
1972 to share Mexican-American culture and language with church
officials who had little knowledge or understanding of the communities
they served.
San Antonio is also the birthplace and home of the Intercultural
Development Research Association (IDRA). Dr. José Cárdenas, former
superintendent of the famous Edgewood School district, began IDRA in
1973 to study and describe the insidious barriers to equal educational
opportunity faced by Mexican-American children. IDRA is now the leading
national organization focusing on the education of Latino, low-income
and minority children.
IDRA has been the national leader in studies and advocacy around
school finance, bilingual education, early childhood education and
school retention. It has even replicated some of its programs in Brazil.
AVANCE began in both San Antonio and Dallas in 1972-73; however, the
organization was developed into a national force and leader in family
education by Dr. Gloria Rodriquez from San Antonio. AVANCE has chapters
and affiliates all over the United States and focuses on the importance
of educating parents and their children about the importance of parental
involvement and the nurturing of their children's development and
language skills.
Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) was the first
Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate in Texas and led to the formation
of similar groups in other parts of San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley,
Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth. Ernesto Cortez — like Willie Velásquez
and Henry Cisneros, a Central Catholic High School graduate — was the
first organizer for COPS and still leads its statewide and national
efforts.
COPS and its sister groups have had major impacts on funding of
projects in Latino and low-income neighborhoods, education initiatives
and issues of school finance and school reform. It began with parishes
on San Antonio's West Side and has focused on learning the community's
needs before setting any agenda. It now has both state and national
impact and respect.
Latino arts and culture were long neglected in San Antonio. The
Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (GCAC) was created in San Antonio in 1983
to confront this neglect. GCAC has developed and maintains nationally
and internationally acclaimed programs in Latino arts in music, film,
dance, visual arts and multicultural programming. While GCAC has had to
struggle to fund its activities with a combination of national funds and
grants and city support, it has preserved a set of historic buildings
on San Antonio's West Side, long the poorest part of our city.
Graciela Sanchez was the lead organizer of the Esperanza Peace and
Justice Center in San Antonio in 1987. The Esperanza Center combines its
activism to obtain civil rights and economic justice for all with
Latino arts programming and advocacy for the LGBT community. Esperanza
had to go to court to gets its city funding back after San Antonio
ignored its arts advisory committee and cut off funding because of
Esperanza's nationally respected advocacy activities.
In 1974, in my first month as an attorney at MALDEF, I worked with
Willie Velásquez on voting cases, Dr. José Cárdenas on bilingual
education, Dr. Charles Cotrell on voting rights and wondered why so many
Mexican-Americans walked around with big COPS buttons. Later, MALDEF
gave me the opportunity to work with representatives of all the rest of
the organizations discussed here.
I have no doubt I left out many other important Mexican-American
organizations formed in the crucible of San Antonio and Texas history. I
offer my apologies to those other organizations and their leaders;
however, I know they join me in celebrating the city's pre-eminent role
in efforts to improve our city, state and country by addressing the
barriers erected.
Al Kauffman is a professor of law at St. Mary's University
